“So you said that there were other spells that were worse?” I asked. My interest was in her story rather than the tome, but it was up to Wendy how to tell it.
“Yes,” she said. “The other spells, I found, were more unusual and unnerving. One of them had illustrations along with instructions on how to bring down the powers of the Timeworn Order with sacrificial children.” Her face was a little pale again.
“Do you want to stop for now? Take a break?” I asked, shifting in my chair to get up and give her respite. She shook her head.
“No. I need to tell it. I can’t keep this inside any longer.” Wendy punctuated each sentence banging a weak fist against her leg.
I called in the nurse to bring her some food and coffee, and gave her some money to get me a snack from the vending machine. The break would do me some good, too—I could feel the inner quakes of low blood sugar.
It gave me time to reflect. That anyone believed it in the first place was unnerving. How many children were murdered because of a belief? The images my mind brought forward—of little innocent bodies piled up while believers worked themselves into an orgiastic frenzy to raise deities who didn’t exist made me want to take a power drill to my skull. Even the mind’s eye wants to stop seeing such things, and yet, the more one tries not to pay attention, the more those images flood the mind. The brain is a cruel thing sometimes.
Food services came, and the RN came in with my snack bar. I thanked her and told her she saved me from passing out on the floor.
Wendy picked at her meal. “I have to say I didn’t believe it, either, and it made my stomach clench thinking that people would do something so horrific. But I continued to translate, and as most translations go for me, I was getting better and faster at it as I went along, finding more and more commonalities among each spell, chant, incantation, and some gruesome recipes that made me want to vomit.”
I didn’t ask. I ate my granola bar and checked the recorder to make sure it was still working.
Wendy kept going after looking at me to see if I’d say anything. “One ‘recipe’ required severed baby fingers from a newborn. That disturbed me the most.”
In the ER, I have witnessed some of the worst child abuse imaginable. I wished I could go back in time and take this tome with me so I could shove it sideways up the author’s arse. I put down my half-eaten granola bar and tried to hold what I’d eaten down. The gore didn’t upset me. What upset me was the thought of long-forgotten infants and bereaved mothers. They must have been beside themselves when the feverish believers cast those spells. In my mind’s eye, they tore at their dresses and wailed over the dead newborns with their missing fingers, faces twisted in gray grimaces.
Wendy wanted to move along. “One chant was to be done to get money, fast. Seemed innocuous enough,” she said. “It promised riches without consequence, in exchange for a night with Undaga. Undaga of the Underworld. I didn’t know who that was. I can only assume it’s one of the Timeworn Order, but I’m no cultist and I never studied religions of any sort. So I laughed it off. Spend one night with that guy for untold wealth without consequence? Too funny. I kept working through the translations.”
She took another bite of her food, finishing the tray except for a few bites, and set it aside. I put my re-wrapped granola in my lab coat pocket and gave Wendy my full attention.
“I made a dent in the translations—about fifteen out of two hundred different passages, when I call from Grace City General back home. My mother had fallen down the stairs and broken her hip.”
I gave her a grim nod. “At an advanced age, that can be a death sentence.”
“True. Mother was eighty-seven, and her prognosis wasn’t good. I left for a short while, with the tome in a safe at my rented place. I’d had gotten far enough into the translations to be obsessed with it, but not enough to take it with me and risk losing any of the pages.”
Obsession was her word, not mine, although I would agree that it was accurate.
“I spent all of my waking hours with it, and there were times I forgot to eat. I lost weight—twenty pounds in, well, I don’t know how long. Even when visiting my mother in the ICU, it was all I dwelled on and talked about to my brothers. I mean, I was concerned about her health and her care, but my mind would travel back to the book and everything it offered—to further my career and helping me advance in academia.”
“I’m glad you said that,” I said. “For a moment, there, it sounded like you meant you obsessed over the spells and what they offered.”
Wendy gave a chuckle that sounded more like a resigned sigh. “Oh, no, not exactly. The spells were fascinating—I was a bystander looking at a pile up, I suppose.”
I nodded. “Gruesome, but fascinating. I understand.”
“My mother recovered, but needed a great deal of physical therapy and home health care. The bills for the whole family were piling up after the long hospital stay. Union Care only covers so much and there are several extras that can only be covered through private insurance or out-of-pocket. She had extra coverage, but you know that the in-home services she needed were huge and they didn’t cover everything. The co-pays are insane on some of them.”
“Union Care is getting better now, but it takes time for things to change, and for costs to come down,” I said. “But that hurt you when you needed it.”
Money was something I never worried about, coming from a fortunate family. That didn’t mean I was oblivious to the struggles of others though.
Wendy said the amount owed was in the hundreds of thousands. That was for ICU, surgery, ER, the physical therapy, all the pharmaceuticals from beginning to end, and the visiting nurses. Unsurprising—the costs pile up so fast.
Her mother was distraught, not knowing how she would afford the payments and be able to stay in her home. At that point, she couldn’t afford to go into a convalescent home, either. Not on her daughter’s meager stipend.
“My poor mother was recovering, but she was worried and depressed. My brothers tried to help with some of the bills, but their jobs didn’t pay enough to support her and their families. You know Grace City’s expensive. So, while at home with her, a pile of bills, and my stress mounting by the minute, I decided that spending a night with Undaga and getting money might not be a bad idea.”
I held back a laugh and kept my face neutral by taking in a deep breath, turning my head, and swallowing hard, which hurt enough to keep me in line. Wendy seemed so sincere in her storytelling I couldn’t laugh. With her stress as it was, it was understandable.
Crazy ideas come to people when they’re desperate, and the whole family was getting desperate. They weren’t rich—just a middle class family on a downward slope. It was that fact which kept me sober, along with the pain in my throat.
Things like that are the reason I donate to charity. I work because I enjoy it, but I realize that so many people hit rock bottom through no fault of their own, and that’s where Wendy’s mother was. It was only natural that her daughter would want to help.
“I laughed at myself for believing in the tome’s power in the first place, and moved on when it didn’t work,” Wendy said, upper lip curling into a snarl. She looked out the window of her room, then back at me, eyes glossed with tears. I handed her the box of tissues in case she needed them, but she set them aside.
“I was bitter about it. It wouldn’t have meant anything to spend a night with whatever it was to save my family, and I suppose it was a childish fantasy, but I needed it to be real. I needed magic.”
She sounded like a child pleading for food and I fought the urge to whip out my checkbook and ask her how much she needed.
Wendy took out a loan on her house in Grace City. After contacting the bank back home, she filled out an application and took a second mortgage out on her place. That raised about half the money she needed. She paid what she could and negotiated with the accounts receivable departments to cut some of the charges to get the bills to co
me down.
“I was lucky to have a house.” She slumped over again and took a deep breath. “Most people don’t even have that. But Dad left me some money for a down payment, so I’m glad I went for it.”
While the bills went down, they still owed more than they had. The collection calls stopped for a while.
Days passed, filled with disillusioned translations, but not much else. No sign of Undaga. Where was he? Why did he not come when summoned? Did she actually believe he would show?
That’s the human condition, or at least part of it—to get caught up in magical and fairy tale solutions. It happens to everyone. Even to a hard scientist (now and then). I even wonder about the divine sometimes—in the pantheist sense. That kind of god makes much more sense than a bevy of ancient gods or a saint that interacts with human beings. Then I realize it’s just my mind trying to make sense of the world, seeing patterns in chaos. That’s all.
No, I won’t lie. I’ve prayed to any Gods that might be listening. ‘Please, nothing else is working, save this patient.’ Desperation forces our hands, and makes us try things we’ve never dreamt.
Sometimes my prayers are answered with such an exactness I almost can’t write it off to coincidence. Perhaps the Universe is intelligent, but I doubt it. I still think I’m just a primate seeing patterns where none exist.
While all that philosophy and theology is a fascinating exercise in futility, Wendy had real problems on her mind with no real solutions on the horizon. The collectors calling and harassing Mother Willow weren’t going to go away. They loomed over the mother and daughter. Wendy needed a way to pay her mother’s remaining debts.
“So while I’m translating, I discovered that the money spell was only half finished.” Wendy looked over at me with her mouth half-turned up in a grin.
“First, you have to gather some different ritual items,” she said. “Chalk, black powder, and blood, and then gather a small amount of the common currency. The chalk is used to draw a kind of ritual circle, and the black powder forms a sigil: a circle with four compass points and a dot in the center. From there, five drops of blood are placed in the middle of the sigil.
“There is then a chant to be repeated three times while walking clockwise,” she said, but didn’t describe the exact words. In fact, she hesitated so long when she came to that part, I leaned forward to see if she was beginning to have a seizure. But her freezing hadn’t been for medical reasons. Wendy did not wish to repeat the words. I don’t understand why—it could be they intimidated her, or she did not want to share them with me for other reasons. As if I might try them.
In the dim light of the bedroom, I sit here, still thinking about her story as I type out this journal entry. The silence of the house, interrupted only by the pops and creaks of a settling foundation might give someone more superstitious reason to be unnerved. Why she would think I’d try magic is beyond me.
“The money spell,” Wendy said, tracing one slender fingertip across the rim of her cup. “That fell on its face, and I was about to write it off when I discovered a page shoved into the back of the book. It was the other half to the spell. Because of this, I didn’t know what to do with the currency.” She paused. “It only appeared in the ingredients section.”
“I’m assuming it’s like some strange recipe book,” I said. “That’s sort of what it sounds like; and a rather morbid one, at that.”
“Yeah,” Wendy said. “It does kind of read like a recipe book. It lists the tools and ingredients needed, and then the instructions to carry out the spell.” She shrugged. “But the currency—I thought it was a mistake. There it was on the list, but no mention on what to do with it when I finished. So I left it aside the circle and continued the ritual. I knew nothing about spells, so I never suspected it was incomplete. What a difference a missing page made.”
I held up my hand to halt her for a moment. “How did you find the missing page in the back? I mean, did you skip to the end or something?”
Wendy shook her head and chuckled. It wasn’t a joyful sound. “No—it was just an accident. I was picking it up before going to bed. See, with the special collections, you have to handle these things with respect—dry hands or while wearing white cotton gloves. When you wear the gloves, you have to watch out not to put too much pressure on the pages if they’re paper. I was tired, and I grabbed the book by the spine which I shouldn’t have done. Anyway, that’s when the back opened and the page fell out. I could have slapped myself for my carelessness, but it was undamaged. That was lucky.”
She heaved another sigh. “‘Lucky,’ I say. At the time I thought it was lucky. Just the same, sleep was no longer an option once I made that discovery, and I translated the missing page.”
Wendy discovered that one is supposed to create a small fire in the circle, and burn the currency once the chanting is done, then invoke Undaga to come and take the exchange. Untold riches for one night with Undaga. That was all.
“I felt recharged by my discovery and that magical thinking crept back into my head. I had no expectations it would work—except for that little voice of false hope inside. You know, it was almost just for fun, and hey, if it worked, so much the better, right?”
“We all give into superstition and wishful thinking when we’re pushed into a corner,” I said, putting as much sympathy into my voice as I could. My voice is often cold and unfeeling, and Wendy didn’t need that from me. So I tried to soften my edge as best I could, and when she didn’t recoil, I saw I had done well enough.
“Right. That’s what I thought it was, just wishful thinking. Well, nothing came about for about three days,” she said. “The weekend passed, and Monday came, and I figured whole ritual or not, it was worthless. Perhaps a long time ago, these incantations meant something, but now, the old magic meant nothing. I put that foolishness away and made plans. Although this time, I didn’t know where to get more money. There were only so many things I could do to raise funds.”
She’d translated about half the tome by now, and Wendy’s mother was in need of more hospital care. That meant more bills, and the bill collectors were harassing the poor old woman again. Things were getting worse, and I suppose that’s why Wendy gave that old spell another try.
When people are desperate, they do things that are mad. Some people make deals with the devil, in a manner of speaking. I don’t know if I believe in all that—but before I tread the waters of theology once more, it’s important to explore what Wendy told me and what I could confirm in reality.
Wendy stopped thinking about it and went on about her translations that Monday night. After a grueling day trying to work things out for her mother, it seemed almost a welcome break, to play with her new favorite obsession.
She stayed up most of the night, going to bed at around 5:30AM. She slept hard until a loud knock at her door around 10:00AM woke her up.
Fuzzy-headed from being stirred, she went to the door and looked through the peephole. No one was there.
Opening up, she looked down to see a rather large package. It had her name and address, but no return address.
“The box was huge, and I didn’t think about what could be inside it—I was so groggy. There was no lifting the thing, either, so I had to drag it inside. Made it all the way into the living room before I gave up and went off to the kitchen. Before I did anything else, I needed to clear the cobwebs from my brain so I made myself some coffee. I’m a dimwit in the mornings—there could have been a bomb in that package and I wouldn’t have given it another thought.”
That made me laugh. “I can relate to that feeling. It’s why I prefer night shifts.”
“Me, too. I’d rather teach evening classes and work all night, myself.” Wendy raised a hand to her shaved head, then stopped, putting her hands in her lap. “Where was I? Oh yeah. I went back to the living room and opened the package.”
She mimicked the activity with her hands. “Inside was a beautiful wooden box. Looked like a cher
ry wood, and it smelled like roses. It was a heavy box, and large. Perhaps the size of a large dresser drawer. On the lid, there was an intricate carving. It was the sigil I’d drawn for the spell was in the center of it. There were additional symbols I thought looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place. I bubbled with excitement to see it. I giggled when I touched it.”
As she contemplated the carvings over the lid, she realized they were not just doodles, but words written all over it, and one of those was Undaga. Another was the word ‘gift’ and yet another was two words, put together, and Wendy could find no direct translation. She wrote it down and referenced her notes. She discovered, the first word was ‘friend’—which is what her first name means. The second word was her last name’s meaning (which I am keeping confidential, it wasn’t Willow).
“Sounds like the box was made just for you,” I said. She gave me a narrow-eyed look.
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
I shook my head. “It’s not that I don’t believe you—it’s just that it sounds incredible, Wendy.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I know it does. I have moments where it doesn’t seem real. I wouldn’t believe it either if it hadn’t happened.”
“If you think it’s true, then that’s good enough for me,” I said. Anything else might shut her down, and I needed to hear what she had to say.
That seemed to be the right choice because her face relaxed and she slipped back into her story.
The box was not something she could remove from its outer packaging due to the weight, so she had to cut it apart to remove it.
“I dragged it to the center of the living room and opened the top. In it was—as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now—bundles and bundles of money. All in large and small denominations.”
I held back a huge sigh because I promised to be opened minded—but it was almost too predictable. It had to have been an elaborate delusion. I couldn’t accept it as anything else. Scratch wounds or no, this woman must have had an encounter with a wild animal while in a manic state, and her mind invented an elaborate story to protect her. Any other explanation would have been supernatural, and complete nonsense.
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