Tony Marcella 07 - Call of the Witch

by Dana E. Donovan

  I let it go, not seeing the point in arguing with her. Instead, I brought up my attempt at scrying back at the station. “It wasn’t a total failure,” I told her. “I did see a great map of new Castle. I just couldn’t see where Kelly was.”

  She dismissed me cold. “Then it was a failure.”

  I gave her that one. “So what makes you think it’ll work now?”

  “Three reasons,” she said. “First, because this time we’ll be using sand, the proper medium for a search and rescue endeavor. Secondly, it’s because I’ll be doing the scrying and not you. No offence.”

  “None taken.”

  “And thirdly, it’s because we’re going to intensify our attempt with a cross-application approach.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Look. I did this a few times in Doctor Lieberman’s class. It’s not exactly psychometry, and it’s not strictly scrying. It’s a combination of both.”

  “I thought you couldn’t do Psychometry.”

  “Technically, I can’t. But I can improvise. As you probably know, psychometry is a method of reading latent images recorded in ordinary objects left by ones psychic aura in the things they touch or come in contact with. The theory behind that belief derives from the understanding that the mind is a multi-dimensional abstraction of constituent energy. That energy is ever flowing. Ever flowing that is, when generated proportionally to the rate of exhaustion, with residual dissipation of varying degrees. That varied amount feeds the spirit within. As a sensitive, I’m able to tap into the essence of that entity, harnessing the non-somatic forces driving it, and hopefully eliciting a metaphysical response.”

  “English, Lilith.” I reached out, grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Tell me what the hell that means in English.”

  “It means I can’t read the past from material objects, but I may be able to connect with Kelly through her Met Tet.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Met Tet? It’s a voodoo term. Think of it as the spirit in your head, like a guardian angel. We all have one. Sometimes we listen to it. Sometimes we don’t.”

  “Oh, so you’re into voodoo now?”

  “Tony.” She grazed me with a stabbing glare. “All religions are based on intangible forces of inexplicable definition. Some attribute it to Divine providence; some to the macrocosmic order of nature. Though no two religions agree entirely, most prescribe to the belief that self-awareness is the spiritual acceptance of a non-physical certainty. I used the voodoo example for your benefit, to put a name to the phenomena.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Sorry.”

  She returned a look of acceptance. My eyes moved to the panties still in her hands. She laid them on the table, spreading them flat and raking the wrinkles clear from the center outward.

  “Think of a bloodhound,” she said. “He can pick up the scent from an object and track it down to its source miles away. This is kind of the same thing. Scrying with objects of intimate association improves the chances of a successful connection tenfold.”

  “That’s good,” I said, “because you can’t get any more intimate than a pair of panties.”

  She rolled her eyes up at me for all of two seconds. I directed mine back to the table. She pointed to the spice jar. “Hand me that.”

  I handed it to her. She removed the cap, spilled a large pile of sand into the palm of her hand and set the bottle aside. I thought I knew what to expect next, having seen her scry before, and having done so myself with some success, despite her assertion to the contrary. But her unusual method of prognosticating this time differed from anything I had witnessed in the past. She held her hand over the table, made a fist and turned it down so that the back of her hand faced up. A few grains of sand fell out, but most stayed within her grasp.

  She cited an incantation.

  “By speed of sound and weight of light, guide thee now thy spirit’s flight. Let time and space forever part and show these granules where thou art.”

  She opened her fist and allowed the sand to drop. Surprisingly, though, it did not freefall. It scattered in a cloud-like pattern horizontal to the table, floating midway between the garment and her hand. I marveled as the graduals danced in nervous migration, suspended with no apparent means of levitation, defying gravity as if subject to the vacuum of space.

  “What’s happening?” I asked, my voice buried in a whisper.

  She shushed me. “Watch.”

  And I did. I watched the sand rearrange itself in ever-shifting patterns, forming map-like images with topographic highs and lows, the likes of which my attempt at scrying could never produce. I recognized the city of New Castle first, the riverfront along Edgewater, and the Madison Avenue neighborhood where the Brewbakers lived. Soon that yielded to precisely defined interpretations of other cities like Danvers, Reading, Salem, Swampscott, Ipswich, Peabody and Wakefield. I could see outlines of rivers and lakes, valleys and hilltops. Even highways and intersections morphed accurately through the changing topography, as if an aerial flyover made it all possible. Then, as if confused by lack of direction, the entire sand cloud collected in a spiral, rose in a column three feet high and dropped onto the undergarment in a dusty splash.

  I studied the new pattern closely, trying hard to determine what city or town it was trying to depict. When I could no longer guess, I said to Lilith, “I give up. It looks like just a pile of sand to me. What is it?”

  She pushed her chair away from the table, stood, and clapped her hands clean. “It’s a pile of sand.” She pulled at her shirttail to cover her butt.

  “So where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders and dropped them. “It can’t tell us.”

  I stood and grabbed her hand. “It was trying to tell us. I saw the maps.”

  “Yes. I saw it, too. But it can’t decide.”

  “Why not?”

  She shook my hand loose. “I don’t know, Tony. It’s not an exact science.”

  “What am I suppose to do now?”

  She smiled, moved in closer and folded her arms around my waist. “We still have the consummation ritual.”

  No, Lilith. Come on. I’m serious. We have to try something else. What about the mothers?”

  “The mothers?”

  “Yes, the mothers. The sisters. The other witches. We can pool the resources of the Coven and try a super scry.”

  “Tony, there’s no such thing as a super scry.”

  “How do you know? Have you ever tried it?”

  “Well, no I’ve never––”

  “Then what do we have to lose?”

  “I don’t know, but calling forth the Coven is a big deal.”

  I cupped her shoulders and held her at arm’s length, assuring firm eye contact. “Lilith, this is a big deal. I’m sure the other witches will understand. Besides, aren’t you the one who’s always telling me that I should practice witchcraft more often?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m calling you out on this. Let’s summon the Coven and ask them for their help.”

  I watched Lilith’s expression soften by degrees. I didn’t know why she was hesitating, but I felt certain my request was worth any inconvenience it might cause her. She broke eye contact after what seemed like considerable contemplation.

  “Okay, fine,” she said. “We’ll do it, but I’m making no promises.”

  “No. Of course not, no promises. I understand.”

  She pointed to the bedroom. “Go get the black mirror and the athame.”

  I went back to get the items Lilith mentioned while she gathered the things she would need to cast the circle. By the time I returned, she was almost done sprinkling brick dust along a faded nine-foot chalk circle already outlined on the floor from the last time we called on the Coven. Once done, she began assigning the candles, lighting and placing them accordingly, all the while chanting whispers and ancient rhymes.

  She set the four primary candles down in a specific order: yellow, red,
blue and green, the prime essentials in necromantic rituals representing air, fire, water and earth. Yellow went to the east side of the circle; the remaining three she positioned on compass points following clockwise: south, west and north. Her chant, again in ancient rhyme, mimicked the mantra recited during the dusting of the circle.

  As she finished that, I gathered up another dozen or so candles, all of them white and in glass jars. I arranged them on the coffee table, stacking them in pyramid fashion to create an altar of sorts. Lilith handed me some matches to light them, and then made off to the kitchen to gather the rest of the elements we would need.

  “Okay,” she said, returning moments later with two small finger bowls. “Are you almost done?”

  “Lighting the last one now,” I told her.

  “Good.” She set the bowls down, grabbed the bottom of her tee shirt with both hands and peeled it off over her head. “When you finish that, go on and strip down. We’ll get started right away.”

  “Strip naked?”

  “Yes, of course, naked. I want you wearing nothing but a smile.”

  “How come?”

  “Tony, we’re going through the black mirror. Your clothes can’t go with you. Do you want to get hung up in the void?”

  “The void?”

  “The emptiness between dimensions. If you get stuck there, you can never return. You can’t go forward; you can’t go backwards. You’re just stuck for all eternity in the vacuum of nothingness.”

  “Hell, I don’t want that.”

  “Neither do I. Now strip.”

  I didn’t argue. I finished lighting the last of the white candles, stripped down to just the smile Lilith requested and pitched my clothes into the corner. “Now what?” I asked.

  She pointed to the altar. We both took up positions in front of it. She then set the two small bowls that she got from the kitchen up on the coffee table. One bowl held water; the other salt, the same ingredients she used the last time we consecrated a circle. She placed the athame across the top of the water bowl and whispered, “Mothers of the Coven, thy magick is sure, cleanse this water. Make it pure.”

  She nudged me with her elbow. I said, “Cleanse this water. Make it pure.”

  She placed the athame across the second bowl. This time I was ready for her. “Mothers of the Coven, thy magick is sure. Cast thy salt and make it pure.”

  “Cast thy salt and make it pure.”

  Then she took the athame, walked to the east edge of the circle, pointed it at the yellow candle and blasted it with a white-hot bolt of lightning. The discharge obliterated the candle and set one quarter of the circle ablaze from east to south.

  Next, she annihilated the red candle with similar results, and half the circle was on fire from east to west. Though the flames were small, they were intensely hot, heating the brick dust to a molten, bubbling mass in barely an instant. I stepped aside and allowed her access to the last two candles. Once she zapped those, the shallow ring of fire encircled us completely.

  She returned to the altar, picked up the bowl of salt, and poured it into the water. She then dipped the athame into the water and flicked it at the fire bordering the east. She began walking the perimeter of the circle, flicking water from the athame onto the fire and throughout the circle as she progressed clockwise. Her mantra, as before, in whispered rhymes, the likes of which I could not understand.

  Once done with that, she returned the bowl to the altar. I placed the black mirror against the bowl, leaning it back at a sixty-degree angle. Lilith waved the athame over the mirror three times and began her final call.

  “Hear ye spirits through this glass,” her words were decidedly louder and more pronounced than before. “Turn to night and let us pass.” She pressed the tip of the athame to the face of the mirror.

  “Let us pass,” I said after she elbowed me lightly again.

  Then she took my hand. All around us, tiny lights began flickering in fleeting specs like shooting stars. I felt a familiar tingle in my stomach and a cool numbing in my feet. The room outside the circle faded to black and then disappeared entirely.

  Lilith pressed the athame to the mirror once more. This time the tip did not stop after touching the glass. Instead, it passed through it like an open window. The emptiness swallowed the blade to the hilt, leaving no reflection and no image beyond.

  She withdrew the blade, and the sleek finish of the black glass rippled. She let it settle before plunging the blade forward again, this time without stopping. Her hand passed through the mirror up to her arm and then to her shoulder, and in a blink, we both passed through the ruffled blackness and found ourselves suspended in the middle of absolute nowhere.

  “We’re here again!” I said, referring to the last time Lilith took Ursula and me through the mirror and delivered us to the strange realm of emptiness. Nothing but ink-black skies surrounded us, yet Lilith and I could clearly see each other as if our bodies offered the luminous energy by which we needed to see. I remember looking down at my feet as before, where from nothing came a silent rage of light, a tiny spec that grew in exponential bounds. It charged us like a freight train through a black tunnel, its light source getting brighter but illuminating nothing around us.

  I felt Lilith give my hand a gentle squeeze, perhaps sensing my unease, and strangely, that’s all I needed to feel relaxed. I allowed the rush of light to overtake us, the breeze it carried raising goose bumps on my bare legs, arms and buttocks. Lilith must have sensed that too, as I felt her warm hand let go of mine and rub my butt cheeks briskly.

  “Easy boy,” she said, and then gave me a final slap.

  “Thanks,” I said in a voice so hushed I thought she didn’t hear.

  She smiled back and whispered, “You’re welcome.”

  In that instant, the breeze that so chilled me ceased, and a silvery light moved in like fog that bathed me in utter warmth. I knew at once that the mothers of the Coven were upon us.

  Lilith stepped forward. She arched her back, her hands high above her head, stretching on tiptoes as if reaching for the impossible.

  “Mothers of the Coven receive us. Embrace us thee as thou wilt.”

  I don’t know how she knows to do these things, but she does, and as a witch, I can say that she makes me damn proud. At her command, a thousand souls appeared before us in human form. Women of all ages came forward, all naked and glowing in the light of the fog from which they came. Some looked like Lilith, tall, young, beautiful with dark hair and eyes and perfect bodies. Others were older looking, gray-haired, hunched over and feeble.

  And of course there were the children, young prepubescent girls no older than Kelly. All bore rope burns around their necks from when they were hanged. I did nothing to cover myself, remembering Ursula’s words the last time we were there. “`Tis no shame here,” she said after seeing me put my hands over my privates. “They appear as we do for our sake, is all.”

  Lilith offered outstretched arms and received the witch I considered the matriarch of the bunch. She looked older than most in the group, but not the oldest. “Merry meet, Mother Abigail of Salem,” she said. “Blessed be.”

  “Lilith of New Castle. Blessed be and merry meet.”

  Lilith craned her neck to see past the old woman. “What hath come of sister Katharine of Newburyport? Hath she not the time for us this night of nights?”

  The old woman shook her head. “`Tis not the time she lacks but for timing’s sake. There is but another who calls for her through the dark divide.”

  “Another witch?”

  “Aye.”

  “In New Castle?”

  “In Suffolk County proper.”

  “Be it Ursula of Salem?”

  “Nay, `tis not blood of thine nor mine, but that of kindred spirit.”

  “Do I know her?”

  “If not now, thou shalt know in time.”

  “I see. Mother Abigail,” Lilith reached back for my hand and pulled me forward. “We come seeking your help. We need th
e power of the Coven to find a lost child.”

  Abigail pointed past Lilith at me. “And who art thou, this mortal man with thee?”

  “This is my husband, Anthony of New Castle. He’s a witch. I took him through the rite of passage.”

  “Husband you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “I recall no ceremony of consummation.”

  Lilith turned and gave me one of her looks. I suddenly realized why she was so hesitant in asking the Coven for help in finding Kelly. “I know, Mother Abigail. Tony and I got married here before the eyes of the Coven, but we haven’t yet the chance to consummate.”

  “Doth he cherish not the vows of matrimony?”

  “No, it’s not that. It’s me. I’m the one who’s been putting it off. He wants to do it. He does. He tells me all the time. I keep him waiting.”

  “What hath thee against this worthy thane?”

  “Nothing. He’s a good man.” Lilith wrapped her hands around me and pulled me in close. “I love him as I have loved no other. I want to be with him forever after.”

  “Then what pray tell keeps thee from thy sacred obligation?”

  “`Tis no one or no thing, Mother Abigail, I swear, but for my whim is all. We’ll do it soon, very soon. I promise. It’s just that this girl, Kelly of New Castle, she needs us now. She needs our help to find her. Will you please, I beg of thee.”

  Lilith unlocked her fingers and eased away from me in measured steps. Approaching the seemingly endless line of onlookers, she said, “This child is lost. She is scared. She has no one. I’ve tried to locate her through scrying, but I came up empty. I think if we focused the powers of the Coven, together we could find her. What say you all?”

  “This child, be she a witch?”

  “No, ma'am, she is but a mortal, born to a mortal man and woman.”

  “We shall confer.”

  Mother Abigail turned to the others, splayed her hands in silent survey and returned to Lilith. I could tell from the look on the old woman’s face that the news was not good.

  “Lilith of New Castle,” Abigail began. “Ours is not a coven of convenience. Thou doth not but call when thy whim it doth fancy. Such is not the purpose of the Coven. That and more for certain. What fate doth lie in mortal hands doth lie beyond our reach. `Tis with heavy heart we return to thee these words.”