A Lesson in Vengeance

by Victoria Lee

  I used to spend hours in this room, poring over the papyrus boards of Grimoirium Verum and caressing its cobra-skin spine. I scrawled pages of notes from The Book of Paramazda.

  I should be flipping through pulp horror novels and having nightmares over The Yellow Wallpaper. I should be spending my afternoons in the general stacks with cozy, comfortingly fictional books, then returning home to hot tea and a warm bed. I shouldn’t be picking the lock on the Godwin case, washing my hands at the sink, settling in under the amber glow of a desk lamp to read.

  But the Dalloway occult collection is the only place in the country where I might find the information I need: how to unravel the curse Alex and I brought down upon ourselves, how to close the ritual a year too late.

  The spine makes a faint cracking sound when I open the second volume of the Dalloway records, its heavy leather binding settling reluctantly against the surface of the desk. The smell of it hasn’t changed. It’s like the inside of a grave. The title, in brown ink, is inscribed in eighteenth-century calligraphy atop the first page:

  Report of the Trial of

  Margery Lemont, Beatrix Walker, Cordelia Darling, & Tamsyn Penhaligon,

  On an Indictment for the Murder of Flora Grayfriar

  The trial took place in 1712, well before the advent of photography, but like most of us at Dalloway, the accused girls came from money. A portrait of Margery Lemont has been preserved here in the bowels of the Dalloway library; it hangs on the east wall next to the painting of her mother, the founder. When I look up from my book, Margery is watching me with a cool and impenetrable gaze. The artist painted her in luscious pale silks, her black hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, in defiance of the style of the time. Her nose is long and narrow, her lips faintly smiling, but it is her eyes that have always captured me most. Pale green along the lower curve of her irises, they deepen to black past the meridian of her pupils. A pinprick of light gleams against that shadow but fails to illuminate.

  Some say she haunts the school along with the rest of the Dalloway Five—Godwin House, in particular. That legend isn’t true, of course; or it wasn’t until Alex and I made it so.

  Flora Grayfriar was found exsanguinated in the woods, says this particular record, her sternum split and her white dress soaked red. She was the last body in a series of smaller corpses to be found: a slaughtered rabbit, a bloodless sheep. The trial makes no mention of a musket wound, although the account of the herbs and flowers strewn about her body is repeated here.

  I reread the girls’ testimonies. It’s hard to imagine that they were alive once, pink-cheeked and vibrant, when the tales of their deaths loom so large.

  In fact, tonight I reread the entire record of the murder trial, although I’ve scoured it enough times I nearly have it memorized. There are other accounts, of course, but I keep coming back to this one. Maybe a part of me heuristically assumes that if it was reported in a courtroom, it is likely a truer account of what happened—although I’m sure that isn’t actually the case. Every time I read I think I’ll find some new detail: another hint about what spells they cast, what arcane arts they practiced that required Flora’s death—if any. It’s useless. The girls claim they never touched Flora. They do admit to having held a séance, the details of which I had bastardized last year for my ritual with Alex. But the girls insisted it had all been in the name of good fun, a joke between friends, nothing more insidious. And nothing to do with Flora’s death.

  Never mind that some townspeople testified they’d seen the girls holding bacchanals in the woods, drunk on cherry wine and consorting with devils—this wasn’t Salem. Nor was it Norfolk, Virginia, where Grace Sherwood survived the water test and was acquitted of witchcraft; or Annapolis the year following the Dalloway trial, where Virtue Violl was similarly found innocent. The town leaders were educated and wealthy, not Puritans; they did not believe young girls were capable of such satanic cruelty.

  Or perhaps they were just afraid of Dalloway’s then headmistress, the daughter of the Salem witch.

  If being Deliverance Lemont’s daughter had saved Margery from the stake, it hadn’t kept her alive for long. And if the town’s leaders were too scholarly to believe in magic, well, that did not apply to the common folk who relied on healthy crops and cattle to survive. If the girls at the school were witches, and if they were to turn their evil eyes toward the fields and farms, the town could not endure. Normal hardworking people can’t live off tuition and inheritance money, after all.

  At least, that is what historians commonly believe happened to the girls. Fevered and idiotic mobs out for brutal justice.

  And so one by one the Dalloway Five died—each in mysterious circumstances, each horribly. Flora Grayfriar’s ritual murder was avenged with their blood.

  These are the deaths Ellis wants to recapture. These are the deaths she insists weren’t caused by magical means, although I still don’t understand what she thinks is the alternative. I don’t get the sense she buys the mob account, either.

  I want to interrogate the concept of the psychopath, Ellis had said.

  Maybe she believes Margery is responsible.

  It’s what I believe, too. She confessed, according to later records, once the trial was complete. She confessed. Angeline Wilshire, the baker, claimed that Margery Lemont boasted about murdering Flora as the devil’s sacrifice while buying bread one Sunday. Allegedly, Margery had said that she was possessed by a spirit, or a demon. And if Margery was responsible for Flora, then why not the rest of them, too?

  The demon part is what used to suspend my disbelief.

  Yet Alex and I were there the night Margery Lemont’s ghost stepped out of legend and into the real world. I invited her into our lives, and I kept her here against her will. I still feel her fingers tangled up in the threads of my fate.

  If Margery really had been possessed…if the girls had failed to close the séance, if they’d trapped a spirit in our world who would not rest until all of the participants were dead…

  Who is to say she hadn’t done the same to us?

  How long will you punish me? I ask the ink that inscribes Margery’s name.

  But that’s not why I’m here. Or at least, it’s not the only reason.

  I pull out my notebook and turn to the list of references, cross-checking the values against the tome open on the desk before me. I take notes for Ellis—anything that could conceivably be relevant, anything that suggests Margery’s guilt, paired with book and page numbers in case she wants to come herself.

  When I’m finished I return the trial record to its glass case. I should leave. I’ve done what I came to do. There’s no need to look at any of the other books.

  But I can’t stop looking at the spellcraft tome in the case nearest the door. It’s bound in a blue so old it appears nearly gray, the cover stained dark where some ancient witch spilled her wine while reading.

  My hands clench into fists. I really shouldn’t. I can’t. If I start with this again, I’ll never be able to stop.

  On the other hand…On the other hand, it was so difficult to get in here. I can’t be sure I’ll ever have a chance again. And what if Ellis could use some spells for her book? It might be helpful.

  In for a penny, in for a pound—

  I open the case and take out the spell book, carrying it quickly to the reading table. Irrationally, a part of me thinks magic won’t infect me if I don’t touch it for long.

  My mouth has gone dry as I stare down at the book. And it is just a book. It holds no special power. It can’t hurt me if I don’t let it.

  The leather bends easily as I open the cover, worn soft by a hundred years of hands. The thick parchment paper is scratchy against my gloved fingers when I turn the pages.

  This book has more than one author. The handwriting is all different—sometimes steady and slanted, sometimes erratic. Somet
imes the ink is thick and black; other times it’s a pale red brown so faint I can barely read it at all.

  I flip over my notebook and uncap my pen again. My own calligraphy is shaky—blotches welling at the tail of each letter, jagged cross-strokes—as I copy down a spell for banishing evil spirits. But Ellis might want it.

  And me…I won’t use this incantation. But I’ll have it, just in case.

  I turn the page again, and abruptly it’s hard to breathe. The air has gone heavier, wetter, like I’m choking on tar.

  A full illustration consumes the verso, a young woman kneeling, nude, at the feet of a tall figure with a bone-white face. The mask is gaunt and elongated, with curving horns and black pits where the eyes should be, its nostrils sharp and jagged: a goat’s skull. The figure reaches out one spindly arm, dripping blood, to paint a sigil on the woman’s brow.

  Initiation.

  Members of the Margery coven don’t talk about it often, not outside the rituals. Even Ellis probably doesn’t know initiation exists. The secrets of Dalloway are given only to a select few: those of us thought worthy, those of us strong enough to survive our fear. But behind closed doors, in secret gatherings of two or three girls from each house, some of us lean into the dark.

  Will I ever forget the way Alex looked that night? They’d positioned us facing one another, the two new initiates of Godwin House. Alex was in flannels and a tank top that exposed her slim collarbones and muscular shoulders. She’d looked so out of place surrounded by the elder girls in their black robes and skull masks.

  They lit candles and burned herbs. They chanted in Latin and Greek and Aramaic—a bizarre and meaningless mix of languages, it strikes me now, but at the time it felt like the shadows grew taller and wilder, shifting with our occult power. The night was endless and magnificent; it could have lasted three hours or three days. When they smeared the goat’s blood on my brow, it was still fresh, cutting down my face and catching in my eyelashes. With my hands bound, I couldn’t wipe it away; I could only sit there as scarlet tears streamed down my cheeks.

  That was the night I felt like I had finally become one of them—a girl of Dalloway, a girl of Godwin—heiress to the witches who planted the stones on which we stood.

  That was the night I first wished magic were real.

  I shut the spellcraft book and put it back where I found it. I feel as if the darkness breathes out a sigh behind me as I leave the library: as if the spirits there had been watching, waiting for me to go.

  It’s a silent and solitary trip back to Godwin House, especially once I’ve left the quad and must tread through the woods up the hill. The windows of Godwin are black and shuttered; I’m left with the strange impression that its soul has been sucked out through the cracks beneath uneven doors.

  I don’t go in. Instead I slip around back, shoulder open the rickety door to the gardening shed. The small stone structure is steeped in shadow, a gloom somehow more complete than pitch.

  I find the masks where we always kept them—even if I spent a year away, even if the sisters who initiated me have graduated, some things never change. I crouch on the pounded-earth floor of the gardening shed and stroke a finger around a mask’s hollow mouth; shears and trowels, which had concealed the memento mori of our craft, litter the floor around me.

  I might have been expelled from the Margery coven, but Ellis hasn’t.

  Ellis is in the kitchen when I return to the house, her typewriter set up on the table overlooking the forest behind Godwin, face and page both lit only by a single flickering candle. She twists round to look at me when I come in, and the light shifts in shadows across her face like panes of stained glass.

  “I have an idea,” I tell her.

  If Ellis wants to understand the Dalloway witches, if she wants to prove that magic isn’t real, she has to become one of us first.

  “This is perfect,” Ellis says once I’ve explained the Margery coven. I told her of the sanitized version of a coven that exists between the other houses, of course—but also about the Dalloway Five dancing nude and worshipping old goddesses around towering bonfires, taking arcane herbs. Stories of their magic have survived at the school even throughout the most austere administrations.

  And so help me, I don’t care what Dr. Ortega says anymore. The legend is real.

  At the very least, Ellis should know about the Margery coven. She should see if she can be initiated.

  “It’s magic,” I tell her. “Or the Dalloway Five believed it was. Doesn’t that run contra your entire thesis?”

  But Ellis is still pacing the narrow kitchen, the soles of her Italian leather shoes clicking against the stone floor. “Not at all. It’s no different than the spiritualist séances of the Victorian era—people went wild over the idea of mediums who could commune beyond the grave. It was occult as entertainment, nothing truly paranormal. Who says the Dalloway girls couldn’t have enjoyed the same kind of fun?”

  “This was 1711, not 1870,” I say. “That kind of fun would get you killed.”

  She stops pacing and turns to smile at me, a scant foot away from where I stand. She lifts a hand and trails it along my temple, tucks a stray lock of hair behind my ear. I barely remember to breathe.

  “No, this is perfect,” Ellis says a second time. “I promise. But who cares about those posh modern girls and their party coven. Let’s make our own.”

  My air comes back all at once; I choke on it. Ellis pats my back as I cough until my throat is raw.

  “I beg your pardon?” I croak at last.

  I wanted Ellis to join the Margery coven. I wanted her to wrap herself up in the shroud of their dark games—not drag me down with her. The Margery coven felt safe. They didn’t practice real magic—their craft was all about aesthetics and pretension, the foolish games of wealthy girls who wanted to feel powerful, who wanted to touch the hem of night’s cloak but nothing further, nothing real.

  “Real magic is something different. Real magic has risks.”

  Ellis lifts one shoulder and drops it. “Let’s make our own coven. Why not? If I’m to do this properly, like a real method writer, I should explore the same pastimes the Five explored. Even if they didn’t die by magic, some still believed they practiced it.”

  My palms are clammy as I press them to my face and suck in several hot, recycled breaths. I’m well aware of my own hypocrisy: I try to get her to join a coven, and then I balk at the very idea. But Ellis doesn’t understand—even if she can flirt with devils, I can’t. I can’t.

  “Some things shouldn’t be toyed with, Ellis. Magic is dangerous.”

  “Magic isn’t real,” Ellis says.

  “You don’t know that.”

  She sighs. “I suppose, if you’re the kind of person who also chooses to be agnostic as to the existence of deities or fairies in the garden. Yes, there’s always a chance it’s real. But is that what you really believe?”

  My jaw hurts from gritting my teeth so hard. “You know I do.”

  “I told you that I’d prove there was no magic involved in the Dalloway Five’s deaths. There’s no magic, period. We can make our coven as magical as you like, but no demons will rise from the underworld to meet us. And besides…this could be precisely how the girls are killed in my book. The Margery character needs to lure her victims away from safety. This is how.”

  I think that once we’re out there in the forest, under the moonlight, she’ll see things differently. Who knows what lurks in the woods, which beings rule the cold space beneath the trees?

  Still, perhaps this is harmless. Perhaps I’m overreacting: maybe Ellis’s presence alone would serve as a shield, her rational mind stalwart against the insane. I spend the rest of the night thinking about it: planning what spells we could try, how we could adapt magic that might have worked three hundred years ago for the modern day.

  It isn’t unt
il the next night that my fear surges back like a briny sea, my body frozen at the door of my bedroom with my shoes on but my coat still clutched in both hands.

  Something about this feels wrong. I promised I wouldn’t do magic anymore; all those fantasies from last night about bonfires and bacchanals reveal their sharp edges when dusk falls.

  I’m afraid that if I take this leap, there will be no coming back. I’ll free-fall forever.

  But that’s why you have to do it, a voice whispers in my head, one that sounds suspiciously like Ellis Haley.

  I need to be able to touch the dark without being consumed by it.

  We had sent the invitations as three notes, handwritten on paper Ellis tore out of the backs of books she doesn’t like and slid through the uneven cracks beneath the Godwin House bedroom doors:

  Meet me here at midnight. Tell no one you’re coming. Then a set of coordinates, signed with Ellis’s name.

  The times Ellis gave were staggered, to ensure that no one runs into each other as they leave the house—every one of the Godwin residents thinks she is coming alone.

  I exhale and make myself open the door. Ellis is waiting for me downstairs, already masked. She emerges from the poor light like a slim black bone, inhuman and hollow-mouthed. It’s difficult to imagine a soul exists behind the void of those empty eye sockets. In the Margery coven they told us that when the initiated wear the mask, their spirit departs their body; we are possessed instead by the ghost of a Dalloway witch. One of the Five.

  I press my hand against my chest, and my heart thumps against my palm. My heart?

  Or someone else’s?

  This is a mistake.

  What if this is what Margery wants? Her spirit could be watching me, waiting patiently for my willpower to snap. She could possess me while I’m vulnerable, one foot already stepping into the night. She would force me to dance on her strings. To kill until the dead are satisfied. To perish so that her ghost can rest.