Sex dreams. You know the sort.
Living with the ghost of your dismembered rapist—with absolutely no friends to distract you—is like trying to sleep on a freezing tower-cell floor the night before your impending execution: It’s really fucking clear you’re not going to be saved and you’re grappling with the notion that God actually wants you to suffer, there’s some bullshit Earth lesson you’re supposed to be memorizing prior to joining your Adventist needle-prick blood siblings in a cyanide-fireworks mass suicide. On the rare occasion that I can focus, that I’m able to feel his presence like the minor subsequent vomiting following a virus rather than the terrible first eruption of stomach acid and day-old falafel, I start reading this book on representations of Anne Boleyn that Luna lent me, and I think too much about Luna, then I think about how Anne Boleyn lived with ghosts, just like me, ghosts of her own split brain stem and neck stump, just like how Tripp appears to me at night, dangling his own head over the quilt-stacked foot of Rachel’s bed.
I think about dropping three of my classes, but then I’d only be a part-time student. I think about how to get rid of him with magic, but none of the hexes I have screenshotted on my phone do a damn thing to the ghost (he just laughs at me, sits on my bed, and grins). And I still have no idea where the grimoire is. But my previous understanding of how death works has been obliterated, so I don’t hurry to kill myself. Maybe I’m already dead—this is purgatory, this is a preview of hell, this is what I deserve, for being unhappy and getting raped and trying to have a constructive response but only ending up worse than at the beginning, friendless and haunted and probably antifulfilling Luna’s prophetic statement about me being unable to fail a class. Studying with him, no matter where I go, the library or Chapin’s common room or the new tea shop downtown where you don’t have to wear shoes, there’s a constant background stream like a long-as-fuck medical center message some robosecretary is reading off on your answering machine and it won’t fucking stop even though there’s no actual information being relayed. All night, all day, Tripp whistles, sings, taps my shoulder—and always follows me to the bathroom.
I try to confront him. “If you don’t stop singing LeAnn Rimes, I’ll pass out, hit my head on the toilet, crack my skull, and die. Not that you care.”
The ghost, peering over the stall, grins. “I could give the grimoire to someone else. Luna, maybe.” He whistles. “Would you prefer a different soundtrack? What about from when Luna and I went on our date last year? It was at Sigma, we couldn’t really hear the music downstairs but I think it was Spice Girls. If you wanna be my lover—”
“Fuck you—”
He follows me out of the bathroom. “Clara and I, we were in the back seat of my car, she had this little skirt on. She ended up staying the whole night!”
As soon as we’re in my room, I charge at him, reaching for his bloody neck, but I just end up slamming into the wall.
There should be solutions coursing through my brain, I should fucking stick up for myself, I should try to get the grimoire back because the coven apparently isn’t doing fucking anything, even if all I do is give the grimoire back to the warlocks so they’ll leave us alone, I should should should should should should, but every effort seems futile, and I just keep thinking about how I failed when I really tried to get rid of him, how he wouldn’t go down the drain. And I’m terrified of trying anything else, especially after the next night, when Rachel’s at her envi sci lab so I’m all alone. I drink a glass of water and as soon as I swallow the last drop, there are fingertips on the back of my tongue, nails scratching my tonsils, and it’s really true what Charlotte mentioned about sticking your fingers down your throat, it really works if you want to vomit up all the pho you ate for dinner—plus one of his arms, his toes, and, of course, his dick.
My chest seizes. I’m moving, but not of my own accord.
“Fuck you!” I scream. He doesn’t have my voice yet. I don’t care if the girls next door can hear; I don’t care if Rachel gets back early. “Get the fuck out of me! Get out! Get out!”
I start to laugh, then sneeze, and he materializes in front of me, picking up his arm and forcing it back into its empty socket. I stumble to the floor, limp, closing my eyes, sobbing, the wood splintery and cold, slick like wet tiles.
I touch my bedskirt, hoist myself up. He’s still laughing. That’s all he does, laugh.
“Let’s end this,” I say. “Too afraid to fight me? I dare you! I dare you!”
He steps over the vomit, settles onto my desk.
“Why?” I start to scream. “Why me? Why was it ever me?” I stare at his lolling gray face. “Why did you do it? Why did you decide to destroy my life? Why me? Why?”
He stops laughing, shrugs, which is the best answer he could possibly give.
His mouth starts to move. “You want to settle this?” His voice slaps me, takes me back, but I keep looking straight at him.
My door creaks open.
“Lee?” Rachel says, eyeing the vomit.
“I’ll clean it up,” I shout as she leaves.
Rachel tells me, the next day, that Ayesha’s roommate left for study abroad and their room is Super Big so she’s going to move there instead, and I smile and nod, and she grabs a box and I help her pack, carry her I’d rather be at the Cape poster and her framed seashells and two pairs of North Face boots up to the third floor, and I let her know that if she forgot anything, she can knock anytime. We hug, she thanks me, and I get what I want. No one, nothing, total solitude. Just me, the ghost, and my medication.
I keep having that dream again. The broomstick, the chase. In this version, a cloud descends over Tripp, trapping him, encasing him. When the cloud parts, he reaches out to grab me, dangles me from the stratospheric sky by my throat.
In his other hand is the grimoire, always a few inches out of my reach.
When I get my first B+ on a paper, I march immediately to Sienna’s office hours, because there has to be something she can give me, some magic tranquilizer or enchanted earbuds, so I can at least sleep and bide my time until I definitively figure out how to get fucking rid of Tripp, and stop mistaking every creak of the floorboards for a fratlock’s clumsy stomp.
Sienna’s office door is open. I knock, then enter, expecting to see her languid as a famished dragon in her wingback chair. Instead, her office is silent, but for the cats and Tripp’s ghastly steps behind me.
On her desk is a ninth-circle array of mismatched papers, an open laptop.
“Why don’t you go see what it is?” says the ghost.
“Because it’s private.”
“Never stopped me,” says Tripp. He floats over to her desk and begins further dismembering the papers.
I rush to his side. “She’s going to notice it’s out of order—”
I seize the paper in Tripp’s hand. It flies across the room. I race to retrieve it, the ghost continuing to cackle.
Just as I pick up the rogue sheet, catching a glimpse of the heading—GENDER, POWER, AND WITCHCRAFT, FALL 2012, AMHERST COLLEGE—Sienna’s pointed snakeskin boot kicks open the door.
“There was a breeze,” I say, to justify my possession of the paper. “It flew off your desk.”
“The windows are all closed,” says Sienna, grabbing the paper from me and returning to her desk.
I sit across from her. “So you did teach at Amherst last year?”
Sienna holds the page up for me to see. “This says Smith, Leisl.”
I read the heading again—it’s the exact same syllabus we got in the fall (SMITH COLLEGE clearly emblazoned under the course title), but with 2012 and different due dates.
Sienna asks me how I am—no mention of her attempt to render us defenseless, lambs in leather jackets, vulnerable young meat fooling no one into believing we’re not helpless—and I wonder how I’m going to tell her: that I just don’t care anymore, that I just feel so dejected, like a deflated blow-up doll, the world’s saddest excuse for a witch. Maybe I shouldn’t have b
een entrusted with any power at all, if it was all going to turn to shit. If I would just want to give up, like I always do. Right now I would do anything to unkill him; I just want to rest; I just want this all to end, but I’m sure I’ll find a way to botch my own suicide the way I’ve fucked up every other area of my life.
I try to summarize. “Awful, to be frank.”
Sienna folds her hands and frowns. “Why is that, Leisl?”
He kneads my shoulders; I start to cry. He scoffs. “Is she always this clinical?”
Sienna grabs a box of tissues and hands them to me. “Is this about your sisters?”
I shake my head. “Not entirely.”
“What is it, then?”
The ghost of my rapist is currently standing behind me? He’s got his hands on me? Gabi Avery is an abusive cunt, and even though I know that word is misogynistic I’m going to use it anyway because I hate her? She’s a stealer and a liar and a cheat and she hit Luna and Goddess knows what else they haven’t talked about? You, Sienna Weiss, robbed us of full use of our powers at our most vulnerable moment, and any day now the warlocks are going to invade Chapin and slit our throats? John Digby Whitaker III is a ghost? But I can’t tell anyone because my reputation is already strung up by the ankles, ready for the butcher, and no one would believe me anyway? No one fucking believes anything I say even when it’s really fucking true and I can prove it, I can prove it with DNA and body parts and dismembered dicks and, least of all, my own fucking word?
“We found the grimoire back in December. But we don’t have it anymore,” I blurt out.
Poker face. “What happened to it?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Does this have to do with the trouble with the rest of the coven?”
“No. Yes. It’s complicated.” I pause, look her over, frown and arched brow and faux-concern, and it occurs to me that she really does hate me. I clear my throat. “That kid who disappeared at Amherst? We killed him.”
Sienna stares at me for a long time. “Leisl, why would you tell me that?”
“I’m not sure,” I admit. “You know, I’m not exactly like you. I’m not going to do what you would have done. I’m my own person and I get to make my own choices.”
“Leisl, if you need counseling, I can help you get an appointment—”
“I’m not like you. I do what’s right for me. And we killed him. Oh, we definitely killed him. We knocked him out and cut him up and buried his parts in the woods behind Chapin. I could bring you to his body, if you don’t believe me. No one believes me, but I’m telling the truth. We did it. We killed him. We were responsible. I was responsible. It’s real. It’s true. I’m telling the truth.”
Tripp cackles, claps. “Keep going, Leisl, you’re doing a great job.”
Sienna: “I never said you weren’t being truthful—”
I clamber out of the chair, sling my bag over my shoulder. “It’s true. No one believes me but it’s true. I killed him. I really did, I killed him. That’s why he’s haunting me. That’s why he’s always screaming commentary in my ear and always singing LeAnn Rimes. He stole the grimoire, I’m not irresponsible, I’m not careless, a fucking supernatural entity stole the grimoire and that is not an excuse.”
I turn, and there’s Tripp, laughing, his mouth inching close to mine, his bloody nails reaching for my shoulders.
I step around him, toward the door, finally knowing where I’m going, what I have to say, what I have to do, what’s my purpose, my point, my ending.
I’m about to turn the knob when a firm gust of wind knocks me to my knees.
Sienna stands in front of her desk, hand outstretched. “Leisl, you’re in no state to be alone.”
I try to stand. She keeps me down.
“What are you going to do, turn me in?” I say. “It wasn’t just me. It was actually Luna who killed him; she held the knife. I just orchestrated it, you could say. I’ll take credit, sure. But Luna was technically the one who really did it.”
Sienna approaches me, passing through Tripp like she’s hitting a patch of sun beaming through stained glass. “As I’ve tried to tell you before, magic is a privilege.”
“Is life a privilege?” I try to raise my arms, can’t. “Is a sense of basic safety a privilege? You brought us into this world, then you changed the rules as soon as we got into the exact trouble you asked us to get into—”
“You actively ignored my orders by attacking the warlocks in a manner that attracted media attention and potential legal consequences,” Sienna spits back.
Tripp cackles. “Even your professor thinks you’ve gone off the deep end. I could have told you that months ago, for free. Before you committed a murder, lost all your friends, turned your one faculty supporter against you—”
I talk over him. “Oh, so you were ordering us the whole time? We were just your lackeys, you were just using us to get the grimoire back—”
“Leisl, your current mental state prevents you from responsibly practicing the craft—”
I try to rise again; she’s still holding me. “Right, call me crazy. Talk about how unhinged I am. What are you, afraid of me? Is everyone afraid of me? Is that why they keep hurting me and taking things from me? I don’t have a lot to take. If you strip me of magic, I’ll have absolutely nothing. If you take it away—”
The spell lifts.
I leap from the ground, reach for the door. As I’m forcing open the dry old wood, I see Tripp, holding Sienna’s hand, perhaps unbeknownst to her. But the shock, the indignation, the how-dare-you on her face is clear.
First, I go back to my room. I robe myself like a priest of the night: black turtleneck, black coat, black scarf to complete my midnight habit; cross and snake necklaces intermingling over my collarbones, pendants dripping into the space between my breasts, scissors in my pocket; I can feel the twin blades on my skin and bones. I charge my phone, repeatedly try to turn off a pesky series of nature recordings that sound like the drowning, bubbling deep—but that’s just Tripp’s ghost pretending to drink, bottle after bottle of Poland Spring coursing over his body, cracking and splashing onto the sheen-lit hardwood.
“You might be the only college kid who doesn’t have any alcohol in your room,” he says, squeezing the plastic. “Guess that sake really was too much for you.”
I glance in the mirror—even though I’m a witch and he’s a ghost, I can see us both—and make the phone call.
There’s a couple of German shepherds, off-leash, congregating officers and cars and silent flashing lights, local reporter, no cameras, they already don’t take me seriously. But they don’t need to take me seriously, because I have real fucking evidence, I’ll make them touch his body, watch the coroner inject formaldehyde up in the rotten remains of his brain; they’ll put me in jail overnight, which is fine, I didn’t wear any makeup today so I wouldn’t have to take it off, jail is going to suck but they won’t have a choice, even though I’m a little girl and you can’t help but take pity on me, they won’t have a choice because I have evidence and I’m telling the truth and I’m right, I’m a survivor but I’m more than that, I’m a murderer.
I lead the procession into the woods, down the path we took with Tripp’s unconscious body that night, over the snow-covered branches and booby-trap patches of frost and ice. I can hear the doubt in their congested winter breath but don’t they know, I’m no Jane Doe, no cardboard-cutout Mary Sue victim, I’m a witch, I’m Medusa in a superior version where she beheads Perseus instead of being killed for defending herself. You can doubt me, question me, laugh at me like one of those looked-the-other-way-in-1930s-Germany types, I see the problems with both sides, but don’t you know, justice is obvious, one of the simplest things, the Babylonians had it right, burn the red tape and if he hurts you, cut out his eye.
We come to the burial site, in view of the lake’s thin ice; the dogs are circling, digging for leaves caught under the snow.
I point to the tree, the ground beneath. “That�
��s where I buried him.”
The officers exchange a glance, then start to dig, the dogs crowding around the pile of dirt.
Five minutes in: “How deep did you bury him?”
“Three, four feet,” I estimate.
The dogs go to the lake, pawing the ice.
“And this is definitely where you buried him?”
I look to the tree, see the runes inscribed above the lowest branch. “Yes. Absolutely positive.”
A gruff, quiet exchange between the officers. The taller, broader one, freckles blended into a tan, emerges from the hole in the ground, shaking his head.
“There’s nothing, miss,” he says. “No body. No bones.”
I shake my head. “No, there’s definitely a body. I know there is.”
“There’s nothing,” he insists as I look down into the earth.
“There’s nothing, miss,” says the other officer, looking up at me, hair dusted with snow.
I look to the runes again; I stare down into the hole. My stomach churns; I hear laughter, his laughter, but I ignore the ghost.
“There has to be some mistake,” I’m saying, not totally cognizant of my own voice. “There’s something wrong. I definitely killed him and I definitely buried him here.”
When I start to cry, the taller officer puts his arm around me and tries to move me back down the path.
“Don’t touch me!” I reach for my phone. “Here, we can call my friends, I have witnesses, I really did it, I really killed him—”
Consensual Hex Page 18
