Midnight Magick

by Katerina Martinez

  Before I could trace the foul aroma to its source, someone rapped at my door. Damien didn’t pack an umbrella but he was wearing a leather jacket and boots so the rain didn’t bother him.

  “Hey,” I said, letting him in. I fetched him a towel, despite the darkness. I was used to keeping my apartment dim. Feeling my way around had become second nature to me.

  “Some weather, huh?” he asked, wiping his face dry.

  “Yeah, it just came out of nowhere… lightning shot out of the sky and blew the transformer out and everything.”

  “I saw,” said Damien. He stared at me from beneath his wet mop.

  “You have to be careful calling the South” he said, “No single Witch can channel the South.”

  “You knew it was me?” he asked.

  “The Currents don’t lie. When a Witch uses magick other Witches feel it.” He handed me the towel. “First the currents pull toward the Witch, and then they explode outward.”

  “I’m sorry, I just thought—”

  “Don’t mention it okay?” he said, interrupting. “You’ll learn. Just be careful. Let’s go and do what we have to do.”

  “We’ll take my car,” I said, grabbing my jacket.

  No single Witch can channel the South. I wondered why, if that was true, I felt compelled to call for the South and not any of the other Watchtowers.

  CHAPTER 28

  I didn’t know who Lilith Colt was before she died, but I remember my heart wrenching when her pictures got plastered over every local TV newscast. It was a cold, rainy afternoon. Eliza and I were at my place eating Indian take-out and watching old movies. We both went white when we heard the news.

  She’d been the second girl of around our age to die in a short period of time. Neither one of us wanted to entertain the idea this had been done on purpose, but here I was, chasing down a ghost.

  Though only a stone throw’s away from my home, getting to Lilith’s place seemed to take far longer than it should have. We stopped at every red light and were forced—due to the power outage—to drive slowly on roads which already seemed to stretch endlessly. I’m sure the silence in the car didn’t help.

  Lilith’s home was a regular suburban; driveway, front lawn, backyard with a tall sycamore standing out from behind the building. The two bay windows at the front of the house sunk into the walls in the dark of night casting thick, dark shadows. Wet blades of grass on the lawn shone like blades in the moonlight. The rain ceased as we arrived, but a howling wind remained, kicking up wet leaves and swooshing trees all around.

  I parked in the drive and glanced at Damien who hadn’t moved from the passenger’s seat.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” said Damien, “I’m fine.”

  He stepped out of the car without another word and waited for me to do the same. We stared at the gloomy house for a moment before approaching the front door. On either side of the path I noticed a collection of garden gnomes. The ones which hadn’t been stolen lay in pieces on the grass. One such mangled garden gnome pointed an accusatory finger at the house.

  We reached the black door to Lilith’s home. Damien didn’t have a key but he honed in on the exact rock he needed to turn over. He stopped and stared at the key inside the rock for a moment.

  “Damien?” I said.

  He snapped out of it, retrieved the key, and put the rock back on the ground. The key went in the lock. Time seemed to slow to a complete halt as the lock gave way. The door groaned open and a stale, dusty breath exhaled from inside.

  Damien led the charge, stepping into the tomb-like house before me. I followed, doing my best to control my steadily quickening breath. A gush of wind shut the door behind me and I gasped.

  “Shit,” I said to myself.

  Damien turned around. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I couldn’t see much of the house behind him—there wasn’t enough ambient light—but the darkness seemed to be moving, swirling. My chest tightened, but I nodded. Damien remained motionless for a moment, scanning the shadowy foyer.

  “What are we looking for?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure, but if we’re going to find answers they’ll be here somewhere.”

  I shared Damien’s opinion. Somehow, I thought, we had to be here, doing this, right at this exact moment. As if all of the conditions were right for something, although I hadn’t a clue what that something was.

  We moved into the adjacent living room, careful not to trip or knock anything over. Everything seemed to be exactly as it had been left. I spied Lilith’s altar in the corner of the room, by the large sliding window to the patio, and approached. It was a wooden podium with a fresh pinewood scent and appeared light enough to be portable. A crimson, gold-trimmed mantle had been draped over it. I noted a rectangular indentation where a book should’ve been.

  Every so often I’d glance over at Damien to see what he was doing but he didn’t seem to know where to go. The memories must have been tough to deal with. A cold chill crawled up my left arm and into my spine, as if someone had drawn an ice cube over my forearm. Fluttering bed sheets. The thought didn’t seem like it was my own, almost implanted somehow.

  “Let’s go to the bedroom,” I said.

  Damien went first, climbing the stairs to the next floor ahead of me. The wallpaper on the staircase wall seemed discolored at points, as if pictures had been removed from their original place. A thousand spiders crawled up my back, as if someone was digging up my own grave.

  The door to Lilith’s bedroom was ajar when we arrived and creaked with a stray breeze. The door gave way to a mess of a bedroom. The bed was undone, dresser drawers were untucked, the window behind the fluttering curtains was open and Lilith’s closet seemed to have thrown up its contents all over the floor.

  I rubbed my shoulders as I walked in to the room. A howling wind strong enough to rattle branches and shutters outside threatened to spill indoors. I quickly approached the window and closed it before scanning the room. There were photographs strewn all over the mattress. I picked a few up to examine them. The first photo was a portrait featuring younger versions of Lilith and Damien, smiling, with the Golden Gate Bridge as a backdrop. I smiled with them. There were a few such pictures of the siblings in various parts of what I thought to be San Francisco; one of them eating at a restaurant, another of the pair on a boat.

  “That was taken when we went to Alcatraz for the day,” said Damien who was standing over my shoulder, “She never liked Lilith, so we’d call her Lilith.”

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. Brown curly locks, tattoos on her shoulders, she could’ve been a model. I found a few more photos of just her posing for the camera, but the distance between her and the lens made me question who took them. After digging through the pile, I found my answer. My hand trembled. “Damien,” I said, shakily handing him the picture.

  Damien’s nostrils flared. We both recognized the man in the picture; his plump lips and gap tooth were all over the news a few weeks ago. Frank, the primary suspect in what was, originally, Lilith’s murder case, stared back at us from the picture. Lilith pouted into the camera while Frank smiled widely.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “I’m fine,” said Damien.

  I rubbed his shoulder. “His alibi was airtight.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything; it just means he had people who could lie for him.”

  “Did you know she had a boyfriend?” I asked still sifting through other pictures to find more of Frank.

  Damien shook his head.

  I handed Damien another picture of Lilith. This time her lips were lovingly locked with another woman’s; the girl from the picture downstairs. The photo, I noted, was taken in the Raven’s Glen town square. I recognized City Hall looming in the background. The photographer must have been Frank.

  “What about a girlfriend?” I asked.

  I let Damien process the information while floated delicately around the room trying hard not t
o disturb anything. My senses, attuned to the current of magick, pulled me toward the open dresser. With surgical precision I reached into the drawer, pulled aside some clothes, and fumbled around until a loose board came off. Beneath it I found a diary; Lilith’s diary.

  CHAPTER 29

  I sat on the edge of the bed with Lilith’s diary while Damien tried to make sense of the photos. The thought of peering into her personal life left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I wasn’t presented with any other choice. The diary was dated, and the first entry was written in January meaning that she may have kept other diaries, but I didn’t have a clue where they’d be.

  Lilith wrote an entry every couple of days, whenever she had a moment do to so. I admired her tidy handwriting and enjoyed the mundaneness of her life. Though Lilith was a Witch, she did her best to keep her day-to-day affairs magick free. In fact, I got the impression that her worst days usually coincided with days where she’d decided to use—out of choice or convenience.

  As I flicked through the pages mention of a girl called Joanna, and a man named Frank, started to appear. Frank was Lilith’s best friend, a Witch, and an ex-junkie. According to the diary, her and Joanna were trying to get Frank off the drugs and succeeding. Joanna, I learned, was Lilith’s girlfriend; Lilith was gay.

  The diary entries were light at first, detailing Lilith and Joanna’s move, daily struggles, happy moments and fights, and even accounts of the first few rituals the Coven performed together. I’d never met another real Witch before Damien came into my life. Everything was happening so fast.

  “Joanna’s dead,” read the diary, “This morning they found her hanging from a tree in the woods. I’m devastated. I can’t cry anymore. I don’t feel anything now. My whole world is gone and I don’t know why. All I know is that I don’t want to live without her.”

  “Damien,” I said, “Come have a look at this.”

  He sat beside me and we shared the diary between us. Lilith’s entries were hard to read. A ball wedged itself into my throat and my eyes glistened with every turning of the page. Diary entries were made every night from the moment of Joanna’s death, and they took a dramatic turn for the strange and the ghoulish.

  Lilith described seeing Joanna everywhere, from dreams to supermarkets to her bedroom window at night. Lights would go on and off around the house, doors would slam shut, windows would open and close and frequently upon returning home her bedroom would be a torn up mess. Glancing at the disorder evident in Lilith’s bedroom I wondered what the bedroom looked like the last night Lilith slept there, and if the activity continued even now.

  “Open the last entry,” said Damien.

  “I’m going to find her tonight,” read the diary, “If Joanna is trying to tell me something then it’s time I did what she was asking. Maybe that’ll bring her peace. I caught a Raven tonight and read its entrails; they told me to go to the spot where Joanna was found. I don’t know what I’ll find, but I can’t take much more of this.

  Damien, if you read this one day, I love you.”

  A strange weight descended upon my shoulders as I read the last line. Damien was oblivious to the change in the atmosphere, reading the words over and over, but something wasn’t right. The window shot open with a violent crack and all manner of windy hell came screaming into the room. The door to the hall slammed shut, photos and clothes circled around the room caught in the tempest, and dresser drawers opened and closed on their own.

  I dashed toward the window and wrestled with it as it bucked wildly with a force of its own. My fingers turned white. I yelled, channeling all of my strength into the feat, and something yelled back! Stunned, I staggered away from the window as a deathly apparition manifested in the glass, a face twisted into a hateful glare with eyes as black as singularities.

  “Get away from it!” yelled Damien.

  I hadn’t moved far enough. Damien raised his hand from across the room and willed the window to slide shut with no more than a thought. Immediately the activity ceased, the bedroom door creaked open and the drawers stopped kicking. All I could hear was my heart, and the specter’s screech.

  “Amber,” said Damien, “Are you alright?”

  “What the fuck?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. Let’s just get out of here.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I picked up as many photos as I could get, grabbed the diary, and headed for the stairs. The whole house seemed different. The air was so thick it could’ve wrapped me up in cellophane and choked me to death, and all around us we heard bumps and knocks, as if the house itself were trying to kick us out.

  I couldn’t think. What the hell just happened in that bedroom? I wanted to try and explain everything. What if I imagined that warped face? Then again, what if I hadn’t? Who was it, and why was it so angry?

  I saw the flashing red and blue lights only moments before we opened the front door to the house. There, in the front yard, the Sheriff was waiting for us.

  CHAPTER 30

  The Sheriff towered over us both. His deputy hung back a few paces. Both men were black silhouettes in front of the high beams on the squad car behind them.

  “You two taking a stroll?” asked the Sheriff.

  “Did we do something wrong?” I asked.

  “We got a report of a couple of kids snooping around an abandoned house. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that would you?”

  “Kids? Snooping? I—”

  “This is my sister’s house,” said Damien, interrupting, “I have a key.”

  “That so?” asked the Sheriff.

  Damien nodded. “I can show you my ID too if you want. Lilith Colt lives here.”

  “Lilith Colt is dead, son. Her own brother should know that.”

  “Maybe, but this is still her house.”

  The Sheriff eyed us both from above the clouds. Reading him proved to be impossible.

  “If you’re going to visit a dead relative’s home then fine, but be quiet about it. This is a good neighborhood. We don’t need people causing a ruckus.”

  Ruckus? “Wait, what—” Damien took my hand and squeezed it. I shut up.

  “Sorry Sheriff, we’ll be quiet next time,” he said.

  The Sheriff turned around and headed toward his car. The Deputy kept his eyes on us until the last; stepping into the car a few moments after the Sheriff. I took a deep breath when the car disappeared, and turned to Damien.

  “What in the world just happened tonight?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Damien, “But you should go home and get some rest.”

  “And you?”

  “I will too. I have to meditate on this.”

  “But Damien… what about Frank? We need to talk to him. I don’t think he had anything to do with what happened to your sister, or Joanna. They were friends.”

  Damien shook his head. “I don’t think so either.” He sighed. “C’mon, go home, clear your mind and your aura from all this stuff and get some rest. I’ll come to the shop tomorrow and we’ll talk about Frank.”

  I nodded and let go of his hand. “Let me drive you home at least.”

  Just like our drive to Lilith’s place, Damien and I sat in silence. We parted ways without more than a tired goodbye, which spoke volumes about the way Damien was feeling. I wanted to help, but I also didn’t have any energy left in me.

  Once home I locked up, undressed, and took a bowl of water into my attic wearing nothing but my red ritual robe. I lit a few candles, drew a pentacle into the ground, and sat cross-legged in front of my circle of power. I brushed my hair out of my face and over my head, then slid the robe off my shoulders and let it fall behind me.

  In my mind I called a beautiful orb of silvery light from the aether and asked it to envelop me in a protective cocoon. “I am protected by your might, oh Gracious Goddess, day and night,” I said, repeating the prayer under my breath. I dipped my right hand into the bowl of water and dripped some over my naked shoulders. The cold water trickled
down my chest and breast toward the ground, exciting my warm skin.

  I continued for a while, uttering the prayer of protection and cleansing and allowing myself to get lost in my own movements. With wet fingertips I lightly caressed my tender flesh; arms, breasts, stomach, legs and feet letting the tingles consume me in a delightful fire.

  When I opened my eyes I found the room full with sparkling silver motes fluttering around me. Some got close enough to bounce off my skin and pinpricks raced through me each time a sliver touched me. I smiled at them and extended my arms. This time they weren’t afraid of me. They approached and surrounded me, landing on my arms and hands and dancing for me.

  “I am your child,” I said in a soft voice.

  A formation of motes fluttered toward the middle of the room. Soon others joined them, their lights adding to each other’s creating a brilliance no individual orb could produce. Together they formed a shining silver orb, and I recognized them for what they were.

  This was the Goddess.

  CHAPTER 31

  I must have stayed up too late the night before because I wasn’t ready for the world the next day. With no energy inside of me I staggered to class, struggled to stay awake during the lectures and barely made it to the bookstore in one piece. I collapsed on the arm chair like a dead weight as soon as it came within reach.

  “Jesus, Amber,” said Eliza, “What the hell happened to you?”

  I groaned.

  “Are you hung over?”

  “I’m tired,” I grumbled.

  “Yeah, no shit.” Eliza grabbed my face and turned it towards her. My eyes snapped open all on their own. “Here, drink this.”