by Sandy DeLuca
“Stop.” Mojo is near, too near. “I command you to stop.”
I throw the heart into the hole I’ve dug then scoop up more snow and bury it, covering it in the hopes of killing this horror and finding my way back out of Hell.
Mojo stands over me, tears stream down his face. “Unbury it now!” He gasps as clouds part and sun streams from a startling blue sky.
“Too late.” I hear Anna’s voice blending with sirens, blending with footsteps, with voices I know. “You’re damned and so am I.”
* * *
Daniel bends over me, his arm in a sling. Rico limps towards me, blood on his jacket.
“Just your arm? It’s only your arm?” I say to Daniel. “And, you. You’re alive,” I say to Rico. I blink and realize neither Daniel or Rico are really there. I hear sirens and think perhaps they’re taking Rico away, wonder if Daniel is still lying on the cold floor back in my apartment building.
A detective hovering over me cups my elbow. “Rico’s hurt bad, not sure if he’ll make it.” He says nothing of Daniel and I fear he might be dead.
“Martin…Mojo,” I gasp, not sure if I actually got the words out.
“Took him away,” the detective says, helping me up. His eyes are stoic, filled with compassion. “It’s OK. You been drinking the same kinda coffee as in that container we found here?”
“Yeah—my sister Allie—she brought it—”
“Laced with Peyote,” he interrupts, “or something real similar. According to the lab guys it’s most likely some strange mixture or strain of it that they haven’t been able to completely identify yet. Definitely consists mostly of Peyote, though, the stuff they use in magical ceremonies. Causes hallucinations and in some cases can simulate psychosis and even bring on psychotic episodes.”
“You don’t say?” I look at him blandly. “I did the spell of reversal.”
“What?” the detective picks up my bag. There’s no blood on it. No heart stuffed inside.
“Anna told me what to do. It’s in Hell. Dave’s heart is buried in the snow in Hell.”
“Sure, absolutely, that makes perfect sense.” The detective shakes his head. “Need to get you to the ER, pump that shit out of your system, and make sure that bastard DeCanne didn’t do any physical harm.”
I look to the ceiling and see Anna floating above me. Is she holding Dave’s heart in her hands?
As cops and forensic scientists spread out through the church, my knees buckle and everything begins to fade. Maybe I’m not really OK after all. I wonder if Mojo DeCanne is permanently in Hell where he belongs and if Martin will spend the rest of his sorry life behind bars, maybe get the needle? Or am I the one trapped in my own Hell?
Sirens sound and I’m inside an ambulance. Rico is sitting beside me, muttering about peyote, coffee and how he saw demons inside the church. But when I reach for him, I see it’s not Rico at all, just a paramedic silently taking my pulse.
I make a silent promise to be a better person, to stop making dolls with pins and to think good and positive thoughts, to get myself together and to help others. I close my eyes and begin to drift away, listening to the siren, to the sounds of a city coming alive again. I want to see Daniel and Rico. I imagine Daniel’s soothing voice, then hear Rico telling jokes about handbags he’s sold down on Canal Street.
It sounds so good, but something deep in my gut tells me to beware.
30
A doctor stands over me. He’s wearing a spotless white coat. His hands look soft and there’s compassion in his gray-blue eyes. “Your heart’s racing,” he tells me, “most likely due to trauma. I’m a bit concerned about your head wound.”
“Head wound?” I ask. I touch my head and feel thick bandages. I don’t remember being hit in the head. Did DeCanne hit me with something?
The doctor nods. “Nasty gash, slight concussion, looks like you hit the cement pretty hard. I also want to make sure the herbs you’ve been guzzling didn’t do any permanent damage.”
“The stuff in the coffee?”
He smiles sympathetically. “Yes, strange brew. Forensics is still dissecting it.”
I remember dropping acid with Allie years before, and how I saw God standing by a purple waterfall. On another trip something dark and alien tore through the ceiling and was about to swoop down on me. I screamed and Allie grabbed me, told me it was OK, that she was there and nothing could harm me. I believed her. Then.
“Do you have family, friends? We could get in touch with them.”
I stop and think. My family’s all gone. My ex was dead when I met him. “Rico,” I say, “my friend Rico.”
“The young man you were with in the church?”
I nod. “He’s my only friend.”
“He’s in intensive care. It’s touch and go right now. His doctor is doing her best.”
“You bastard, DeCanne. It’s not fucking fair.”
The doctor’s eyes widen, and his face reddens. He flips his chart. “You’ll stay the night for observation. Do you feel up to answering some questions? A detective’s been waiting. If you’d rather not, I can send him away.”
I think of Daniel. “No, it’s all right, I want to talk about it.” Maybe Daniel’s the one waiting, maybe he’s OK and back on the job.
The doctor exits, his white coat billowing behind him like a cloud of white smoke. I think of angels for some reason. I wonder if they watch over me.
Someone enters the room. His hair is shoulder-length, thick waves, like Daniel’s hair. He’s wearing jeans and a leather jacket. “I’m Detective Barry,” he says. “I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself earlier. I hear you’re going to be fine.”
I realize he’s the officer from the church.
“I’m trying. Where’s Daniel—Detective Harris?”
The detective sits in a chair by the bed. “I haven’t heard any news. Last I knew they were still operating on him.”
“Is he here, in this hospital?”
“No, farther uptown. Listen, I’m supposed to be the one asking the questions.” He smiles slightly, tips his head then speaks slowly. “What were you and your friend Rico doing up in Harlem in that God-forsaken place? Did Martin DeCanne lure you there?”
“In a way. We knew his family had a history there, a bad one, and we thought we could make things right, end a lot of bullshit by going there.” I think of Dave’s heart, how I brought it with me, how the blood drenched my purse.
“I know the DeCanne’s are evil, that they conjure up the dead and only Anna is good, only she looked out for me.”
“Anna, huh?” He shakes his head. “They found a can of that coffee you’d been drinking in the church and another in your apartment. Cops took some from Rico’s place too. Where’d you guys get it?”
“My sister. She’s dead.”
“Any clue where she got it?”
“She knew a lot of people. Some bad, some dead.”
The detective sighs heavily. “Look, I’ll come back when you’re more lucid.”
“I can’t tell you anything I haven’t already told the cops about my sister. It all leads back to her—her and Mojo.”
Detective Barry stands. “When you’re more lucid, that’s when we’ll continue this conversation.”
He walks away slowly, seems to fade a bit as he walks through the door. I wonder if any of this is even real. Maybe I’m really lying on an operating table fighting for my life. Maybe I’m still in Hell with Dave’s blood on my hands.
I think of Allie just then, and she comes to me like a dream. We’re sitting on the bed we shared when we were little. She’s holding a little white pill. “You’ll see God again,” she laughs. “Stick out your tongue.” I obey and she places the pill there.
She leans back against the bedpost. “I saw a funky Madonna last time I tripped.”
I remember a series of paintings she made entitled Funky Madonna, all of a woman wearing a veil, surrounded by magic cauldrons, crucifixes, candles and statues of strange Africa
n Gods. In one painting she held a baby. His face was sweet, eyes the deepest blue, but he had talons and fangs protruded over rosebud lips.
“I don’t know where you get ideas like that.”
“I see them when Mojo fucks me.” She leans closer. “In Hell.”
She kisses me, puts her hand on my breast. But it’s not Allie, not anymore. It’s a girl I saw walking in Soho one bright Sunday afternoon. She had dark hair and wore a black dress that was too tight for her. She asked me directions to a gallery on Green Street. I told her I didn’t know then kept walking. I saw her every time I went to Soho after that, and I thought about her when men made love to me.
“When they made you bleed,” I hear Allie say.
The girl pushes her fingers into me.
Then Daniel is making love to me, gently, lovingly, the crimson between my legs gone.
* * *
Morning. It feels like I’ve been asleep forever. The doctor is standing over me again. “Good news. I’ve cleared you to be discharged today.”
I look into his gray-blue eyes and see reflections of the dark-haired girl from Soho, of Anna laying out Tarot cards, of me lying by Daniel in a loft where through a window I see the East River sparkling while a full moon spills a yellow circle in its rippling water. But there, alongside it, I also see Mojo pushing me into a mound of snow, laughing insanely as he leans over to kiss me. The images melt together, play out one by one again.
“The immediate hallucinatory effects of the herb have worn off and shouldn’t pose any problems we’re aware of. But, we can’t be entirely certain how long the drug may impact you psychologically. There is most probably something of a residual effect, as found in most hallucinatory drugs, but the extent of what that may be or how it might play out in your system specifically is something we simply don’t know. All of our tests have concluded that at this point you’re in good physical health and your brain has not sustained any damage due to the ingestion of the herb. However, should you experience any severe headaches, strange flashes or alteration of lights, extreme nausea, dizziness, double-vision, that sort of thing, let us know immediately, all right? If at any point you just don’t feel right, or should you feel any number of unusual symptoms, such as paranoia or inexplicable anxiety, unsettling thoughts or feelings of deep depression, come back and we’ll have another look at you, understand?”
I nod as the doctor scribbles something on my chart.
“But I really don’t expect any further problems, Gina. I think you’ll be just fine.”
“I can go?” I ask.
He smiles at me. “Yes, you’re being discharged as we speak.”
I turn away so he won’t see the moisture welling in my eyes, so he won’t see the truth written across my face, so he won’t know that I have no idea where to go once I leave here. I want to tell him I have no idea how to even begin to resume my life, but instead I close my eyes, feel the tears trickle across my cheeks then softly say, “Thank you, Doctor.”
31
“Daniel,” I whisper.
When he doesn’t answer I call out to Rico. Only the sounds of the city, traffic, a siren and a car horn answer.
Sitting in the dark by myself, I wonder if everyone I’ve loved these past few days has died. If not, if they’ve lived, have they abandoned me, gone on to other lives, to other friends and lovers?
“They’re dead,” I tell myself.
I close my eyes, try to remember Daniel’s smile, Rico’s laughter.
Work. I should have gone to work yesterday, or the day before, but I just sat here, lost in sorrow. I’m a guardian in this empty building where everyone has been murdered, where ghosts are trapped and confused. There are evil things on the upper floors. I know this because I’ve seen them, I’ve felt them. I know them, and they know me. I know now I have to sit here, a sentry given the task of containing the darkness that resides here. I remain on guard to prevent them from unleashing their wrath on the city I love.
The doctors can talk about dope or magic herbs, crazy concoctions of hallucinogenic narcotics all they want. This has nothing to do with any of that. This building is something more…it’s a portal to the demonic. I know it. The things that live here with me know it.
The phone rings. I let the answering machine take it. My boss’s voice, harsh and angry, tells me not to come back. Don’t worry about it, bitch, I never intended to.
I always felt a certain amount of darkness around me, desperation each time I entered this building. But it’s different now. What lurks upstairs is stronger than before…meaner…but it can’t get to me as long as I continue to guard the gateway…
“You have to give yourself to it,” Mojo whispers. “You have to let it take you sooner or later. You’re insane. You know that, don’t you? You’re insane, Gina, just like your mother and your sister before you, you’re insane.”
I push him from my mind and reach for a piece of Allie’s artwork I like to keep close by. I fondly run my hand over torn paper she collaged, and for some reason it makes me think of poor Rico, all these torn pieces of paper put back together in mishmash to form something else, something different from what it had once been. Destroyed and then reassembled, but not as before, not exactly as intended.
Rico. Sweet, sweet Rico.
32
Rico sits across from me holding a steaming mug in one hand and twirling a lock of hair with the other. He’s thinner than ever, slumped over a bit as though still in pain. A thick bandage is evident beneath his shirt. “Man, thanks for seeing me. Streets are tough, you know? Now more than ever.”
“We got tight, shared some heavy shit.”
Rico smiles, but there’s something wrong. His eyes don’t light up like they used to. I realize I’ve been holding something in my hand, Allie’s miniature collage. I read the words on a torn scrap of paper. “Bring back the dead. Let them walk the Earth in my service.” I sigh. “Do you know what a Grimoire is?”
“Yeah, an old magic book, sometimes wicked—sometimes not. Most times a mystery.”
“I think they’re hidden all over the city. I think pieces of Mojo’s bad magic and pieces of stuff from people who wanted to stop it are all over fucking Manhattan. Good and evil, you know?”
Rico puts the mug down. There’s blood in it, bits of flesh float at the top. “Daniel’s waiting,” he says. “They’re all waiting. They’ve been waiting so long now, Gina.”
I reach for the cup, look into the thick vermillion then pour droplets over the art. “I made a circle of blood. Allie always did, always. Some things are just meant to be,” I tell Rico as Daniel knocks on the window just like he did that day when he was checking this place out, trying to keep us safe.
Only the man at the window isn’t quite what he once was either. Torn to bits then hastily reconstructed. Reborn in fire as another Daniel, something like Daniel, but not quite.
“We can all walk together,” Rico whispers, “just like Mojo wanted. All of us, together.”
Footsteps sound on the stairs, on the pavement below. The city screams with the voices of the dead. Somewhere, maybe in Heaven, things are different and I’m a different girl, but once you touch Hell, once you kiss the Devil, there’s just nothing you can do to change your fate.
I leave them both there. They’re already gone, already dead to me now.
I open the door to my apartment, but the stairs are empty. I descend to the ground floor, walking where dead bodies were once strewn. Upstairs, I can hear the ruckus, I can sense the darkness moving and writhing about.
Mojo and his ilk have their forces here, but so do we. Like him, I am only one of many. Fire with fire…an eye for an eye.
I think of my mother and how she endured so much, so very much. And I remember Allie, and how despite her suffering, she always seemed to know something no one else did, something that always seemed comforting to her somehow.
Beyond the front door of the building, the city pulses and moves to its own rhythm, hustles and bustles
and knows nothing of what lies within these walls. It doesn’t wish to know, doesn’t have to know. Not yet. But that day will come. Until then, I stand vigil, stealing bits and pieces of spells and magic to keep it and its messengers at bay. Just as my mother and sister before me, I will hold off the darkness and evil until I can no longer manage it, no longer survive the madness, and then it will take me too. I will let it take me. Then just as I was chosen to follow Allie, I too will have an eventual successor.
With a smile, I gently caress my belly. It grows inside me even now, unaware of its destiny.
My child. Daniel’s child.
The next guardian. The next keeper of Hell.
Something inhuman growls and then scurries off on the floor above me.
“You’re insane,” Mojo whispers.
With a grin some might think positively devilish, I sing a soft and loving song to my baby as I turn and slowly climb the stairs back to my apartment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
In addition to Manhattan Grimoire, Sandy DeLuca has authored three other novels; Settling in Nazareth, Descent and From Ashes. In addition she has written critically acclaimed novellas such as Darkness Conjured, Reign of Blood and Into the Red. She penned several poetry collections, including Burial Plot in Sagittarius, which was a finalist for the Bram Stoker award.
Sandy is also a painter who exhibits her work in the New England area. She spends her days painting, writing and caring for several beloved felines.
For more information please visit: SandyDeLuca.com.
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