Manhattan Grimoire

by Sandy DeLuca

  “It is,” he says evenly. “Unless you choose to believe in it, then like anything else, it has power, power you gave it.”

  “Why can’t you just believe me?”

  “Come lie down with me. Get Mojo out of your head, I’m tired of talking about it.”

  If it were any other time I’d melt at the thought of sleeping beside Daniel, but not now.

  “Stop treating me like a little girl, like I’m crazy.”

  “Look, we’ve both been through one hell of an ordeal, and we’re exhausted, not thinking straight. Just lie down with me for a while. We’ll talk more after we get some rest, OK?”

  I stare at him defiantly for a long time before I finally give in and allow him to lead me to the bedroom.

  I lie down first, wait for him to pull the covers up over me. Then he lies down next to me, wraps his arms around me and holds me tight. I feel about as safe as I can, considering, but I know in my gut all hell is breaking loose around us. I heard Mojo’s laughter, laughter he allows only me to hear, and I wonder how long he’ll torment me like this before he grows bored and tries to destroy me completely.

  24

  Daniel’s breath is soft in my ear. He mumbles something in his sleep. I wonder if Mojo DeCanne speaks to him in dreams, comes to him disguised as a perp wearing clothes stained with his last victim’s blood. Daniel’s hold on me loosens as he shifts in his sleep. More unintelligible words escape from his lips.

  I can’t fall asleep, not now. So I’ll just listen to Daniel’s dreamtime sighs and words whispered to beings that reside in his subconscious. The window in the bedroom rattles as a gust of wind strikes hard. A cracking noise erupts. A minute or two later, it happens again. I slip out of bed, afraid that perhaps a buildup of ice has cracked one of the windowpanes. Two windows cracked last winter during a cold spell and I heard that noise before it happened. But when I reach the window, there’s no damage.

  With sleep no longer an option at this point, I move into the living room and perch on the window ledge, holding my breath for a moment, and pray Mojo DeCanne isn’t standing in the alley. He isn’t. Instead I see the woman from my dreams making her way up the fire escape. She’s wearing a black velvet shawl and a long vintage dress. Her hair falls in thick dark braids down her back. She sees me and smiles. She slips and I fear she’ll tumble down the stairs, but she regains her balance just in time then continues to climb upward. A warm, safe feeling engulfs me as I unlatch the window, wait for her to complete her ascent then watch her lift her dress, hook one leg over the ledge and climb inside.

  “The Devil’s out there,” she says, brushing snow from her clothes and shaking her head. Bells tied within hair ribbons jingle, and her bracelets click. “Colder than I ever remember.”

  Isn’t this woman supposed to be dead, an apparition? Or is this someone else, someone I’ve seen, someone that’s following me, someone that’s mad as I am? “Who are you?”

  She smiles. Bells chime. “Anna DeCanne.”

  My heart pounds. “DeCanne?”

  She leans forward as though she’s about to bow, and I detect the scent of flowers, roses and lilies. “My son,” she says, “you fear my son. I brought good magic with me to this country, but he twisted it.”

  “This is another dream, isn’t it?”

  “Perceive it as you like. I’ve been trying to tell you things, but you’re allowing the dark things—him—to invade your thoughts and feelings.” She holds out her hand. “Come with me, be quick and don’t think of him. I promise you’ll be safe if you stay close and listen.” She moves back toward the window, raises one leg over the ledge and then the other. “Take my hand.”

  I give her my hand and she gently pulls me over the ledge. She holds on tightly as we climb the fire escape, and then I wait as she raises a window on the fourth floor landing. She eases herself inside, helps me into an empty room. “Keep your windows locked,” she urges. “If I can find my way down then so can others.” She kneels on the floor, lifts a board then removes a box and begins to rummage through it. Eventually she removes a book, torn and shabby. “Your sister stole Mojo’s most potent spell, put it in one of her artsy creations. He’s still chasing her, trying to get it back, through the veils of life, death and back, they go round and round.”

  “I’ll give it back. Will he stop? Will he leave us all alone if I give it back?”

  “It’s not that easy.”

  I shrug. “Nothing ever is, is it?”

  “He brings the dead back with that spell, brought lots of us back already. No telling who or what he’ll infect the good Earth with if he gets it in his hands again.”

  “Allie, she—”

  “She did it on her own, came back on her own power.” Anna shakes her head. “Smart kid, but doomed.”

  “What do I do?”

  She hands me Mojo’s book. “Use the spell of reversal. It’ll work. You can do it. You’re Allie’s blood.”

  “Spell of fucking what?”

  Footsteps sound in the hall. “I have to go. Go home. I’ll see you again.”

  “No, wait. I don’t know what to do.”

  Ignoring me, she stands and exits through a splintered door. The footsteps grow louder but I’m frozen in place even as the doorknob turns.

  And then he’s standing there, blood trickling from his lips. Eyes filled with hate. DeCanne holds a knife, something ancient and wicked, and begins to laugh. “It’s a dream, little Gina. Once you wake, the book will disappear. I promise. You believe in my promises, don’t you, bitch?”

  I remember my mother kneeling on the floor, screaming at the top of her lungs, telling her demons to go away and I say. “Go away, just leave me be. You’re not real.”

  He takes a step closer. “You have something of mine. I can take it whenever I choose, but I like playing with you, seeing you shiver.”

  “You’re not real.”

  “Believe in me, and I can take death away. Don’t you want to walk with me forever, Gina?”

  “Fuck you.”

  He laughs, loud and chilling. “You do believe in me. You know you do.”

  “Go to Hell,” I whisper, his breath on my face, his cold fingers touching me.

  Suddenly I’m sitting on the window ledge, hands pressed against cold glass. Mojo is gone, and so is Anna.

  “The book.” It must have been a dream, I think, it had to be. Unless I left it behind. My heart sinks.

  I can’t get Mojo out of my head, the way he looked at me, his dark promises, the things he did to my sister.

  I walk to my bookcase, rub my hands over bindings, over book tops. Something falls to the floor. It’s the book, torn and tattered. It must have been in my collection all the time. I crack open the book, the words Spell of Reversal jump out at me. I close the book and gasp as I look at the withered cover.

  In spidery writing scrawled across the face of the book, is the name Mojo DeCanne.

  25

  The book has beauty in it, but also contains dark and unthinkable things. I think of Daniel’s grandmother and her Manhattan grimoires. There are spells for love, for protection and for wealth, penned in lovely flowery writing. Perhaps Anna’s, I’m not sure. And then there’s information about summoning demons to murder your enemies, to steal the souls of the innocent and give them to a dark master. There is a torn page where instructions are given about how to call the dead from Hell. The remainder of it is glued to one of my sister’s collages. I’ve put them together, read the awful words and know why DeCanne wants it back. Allie must have stolen the whole book, torn out the page. I read, listen to my heart pound in my chest…

  On any night, no need to wait for a full moon, for that is old witch superstition, you can call the demons. Simply find a creature with blood like your own, someone with skin like yours, someone with strength and valor who the world needs to protect them. Cut out his heart and offer it to the night, to the Master and say: Open your hell gates and free your servants, the murderers and all those wh
o have defiled the Earth. Make them walk here again so that they may serve you under my command.

  I place the book on the window ledge and look to the top of the building. I swear a dark figure watches me through blinding snow and that at any moment he’ll crash through window glass and take back his treasure. I feel Daniel’s arms around me as his lips brush the back of my neck. His voice is sleepy and sexy. “You OK? Thought I heard voices, something—”

  “Daniel, the top floors, somebody could’ve gotten to Lilly and the others by opening a window and climbing down the fire escape. Did you—”

  “I climbed up to the top, almost broke my neck on the ice. I tried every window, ones near ledges, near fire escapes, wherever possible. Windows are all nailed shut from the outside. Nobody, but nobody got in or out. Believe me.”

  I look to the top of the building, to snow-covered ledges, to the ice-glazed and rickety fire escape. I sigh. “You could have gotten killed.”

  “I’ve been in worse situations.” He turns me around, looks in my eyes then pulls me close and kisses me hard. “Wake me if you need me.”

  I say nothing, just wait for him to leave me then I turn my attention to the window I climbed through with Anna in my dream. I see her again, waving, smiling at me, beckoning for me to join her, and I don’t know how, but now I’m standing before the window. It isn’t nailed shut as Daniel promised. It’s open and snow is melting on the stained wooden floor inside.

  I climb inside, walk gingerly through the empty room and push open the splintered door.

  Voices whisper to me from dark corners. Shadows waver and sway on the walls. All doors are ajar and people roam the hallways like ghostly specters. Their clothing is soiled and torn. No one looks my way as they drift from doorway to doorway in silence. Footsteps sound behind me. I bolt up a flight of stairs. Breathless, I lean on the banister, stare in awe at a man sprawled out on the landing. Blood trickles from his mouth.

  I climb another flight. A man and woman lay together at the foot of the stairs. He is slowly climbing on top of her, pushing her dress to her waist then rocks back and forth. The woman stares straight ahead, her mouth slack, eyes glazed.

  I back away slowly until I move into a room. It’s so cold in here. I hold several brown paper bags in my arms, but have no recollection of picking them up. It’s then that I realize I’m dreaming again.

  Mojo DeCanne sits at a table. A platter and oversized silverware piled beside it sits before him.

  “What is this place?”

  He motions to the table, and though I don’t want to, I obediently move to his side and hand him the bags.

  “Bad part of town,” he says through a wicked grin, tearing open the brown paper. He removes containers, greedily spoons rice and chicken into his mouth. After a moment he stops, rummages through the boxes until he finds whatever he’s looking for, then carefully lifts it out and gently places it on the plate. A heart, a human heart, still beating somehow. He smothers it with rice. “This place was once a bordello. When the girls got too old I’d bring them to the church in Harlem and offer them up for one trinket or another. Can’t get much for used goods like that, but they’re still human souls, still good for certain commodities.”

  He continues to stir his food, and I can see the heart beating, rice and blood spilling onto the table. Mojo laughs. It is a hideous sound. “Lots of shit went down here in the 70’s. Dope, crap like that. There was a weird cult here in the 80’s.” He puts his finger to his chin. “People die here all the time. It’s a bad place.” He smacked his lips. “My family still owns this rat hole, relatives somewhere else in the city—or maybe in Florida—I’ve forgotten. Daniel is wrong. Members of my family still live. They have strict instructions never to open up the top floors.”

  “There were people in the hallway having sex. The woman, she looked—”

  ”Yeah, she sure did.” Blood drips from his chin, stains his teeth. “Eat something.”

  I want to back away, but can’t.

  “We both know what you came here for. A little spin in the hay with DeCanne and then you give me back what’s mine.”

  “Is this how you got to my sister? Were you in her dreams too?”

  A black bird perches outside the window, pecks on the snowy pane as if answering for him then flies away. Blood smears the glass.

  DeCanne reaches over, touches my hand. His flesh is hot, alive. “Lay down.” He smells of old sweat, of rotting city alleys and of things indescribable and evil.

  “I’d rather die.”

  “Oh, you will, Gina. You will.”

  “This is only a—I’m dreaming, I’m only dreaming. You can’t hurt me.”

  He smacks his lips. “A lonely sad little chick walked through the alley a few nights back. She got knifed by a junkie. I saw the whole thing. She’s on the fifth floor now. Only she’s not lonely anymore.” His fingers crawl from my hand to my arm, wrap around my elbow. When he releases me a red smear stains my forearm. “The dead and the damned got to go somewhere. This is one place they come once they realize there’s no hope. It never stops, they just keep coming, and time swallows them whole.”

  Finally able to move, I bolt from the room. People are lined up in the hallway. They don’t look human in gathering shadows. Their faces are too white, their bodies distorted. Feral cats weave in and out between their spindly legs.

  The dead guests bend down, pet the cats and smile as guttural growls fill the hallway.

  “Gina,” they call, reaching for me as I pass.

  More wait for me on the landing, their demon faces leering, elongated fingers burning my flesh.

  A woman steps out of the crowd and kisses me. “I can make love to you,” she whispers, “is that what you want?” Half her face is missing and the fingers on her left hand have been severed. Her right arm dangles from her shoulder by thin tendrils of flesh. “My name’s Bella. I was a lot like you, I can—”

  I stagger away, keep running.

  A skeletal black man with dreadlocks and a Bible in his hand emerges from the center of the crowd. His mouth splits into a wide toothless smile. “Nobody can save you now.”

  I squeeze shut my eyes, bring my hands to my head and cover my ears. “Get away!”

  I’m holding the book. It’s open to a page with beautiful and flowery writing and Anna’s voice is in my head. “If someone has died and that person was bad then you can turn around the spell my son has cast. Cut out the heart and…”

  “Good book?” Daniel is awake again, standing in front of me and smiling. “Looks old.”

  I look around. I’m awake too, the dream and its demons gone. “It’s interesting,” I tell him.

  He takes the book from me, puts it on the window ledge then pulls me to my feet and kisses me. “Wish things were different.”

  “One day,” I say softly, “maybe they will be.”

  I nestle into the warmth of his arms and wish the storm and the dreams it’s sent to haunt me would end.

  I suddenly find myself thinking about Dave Souza and how he was in life, how he taunted me, how he got a friend of mine fired last spring. People said he didn’t call 911 when his father complained about chest pains during a hunting trip they took together a few years back. He let the old man die then inherited all his money. Nobody could prove a thing, but the cops suspected. I think about Anna’s words, “If someone has died and that person was bad then you can turn around the spell my son has cast.”

  A vision of a woman straddling Dave’s body and cutting his heart out with a large ornate dagger blinks in my mind’s eye. When the woman stops and looks back over her shoulder at me, I realize I’m watching myself.

  Daniel sighs and releases his hold on me, and I can’t be certain if it’s because he’s somehow seen the horrible dark things that fill my mind, or if those same demons are now tormenting him too.

  26

  “I had a dream about my grandmother,” Daniel says softly. “I have the same dream a lot. She’s in her bedr
oom in the old house where she lived, surrounded by these odd dolls she used to make, some with pins and charms stuck in them. She has books spread out on her bed and she’s crying, telling me she’s always with me, always there in spirit. There’s another woman behind her, and, it’s hard to explain, but it’s like I know this woman, and yet, I don’t.”

  “Anna, her name is Anna,” I tell him. “Her picture’s in that book. She’s Mojo’s mother.”

  Daniel’s eyes widen. “She told me that in the dream.” He waves his hand, as I’ve seen him do many times now when he chooses to dismiss something. “Coincidence,” he says, and pulls his cell phone from his pocket. “We’ve got to be rational.” He punches a number into the phone and suddenly smiles. “Holy shit, it went through, it’s ringing.”

  “Please let someone pickup.” I cross my fingers for emphasis, like I did when I was a child.

  Daniel puts a hand over his left ear to block out noise, and presses the phone tighter against his other ear. He moves away from me and into the hall, probably hoping for a better signal there. I hear him tell someone what’s happened here. I hear the words “forensics” and “homicides.”

  “They’re coming,” he tells me as he crosses back into the room. “Hold tight, girl.”

  A rush of relief surges through me, and I’m suddenly elated that we won’t be alone in this death house much longer. I go to the window, no longer afraid that an evil magic man may be lurking in the street or leering at me from a window above. “Snow’s finally stopping.”

  “City’s coming back to life,” he says with a weary smile. “They told me plows have cleared the main avenues and that a few stores are opening so people can get food.”

  I try to imagine just how bad it must be out there, how enormous and deadly the storm must have been to shut down a city like New York. I wonder how many other dramas played out across the city during this brutal dark night, and how countless others must also be hopefully awaiting rescue.