Warlock

by Ray Garton

  The warlock stepped closer to the window and his hand froze on the cat’s back.

  The picture switched to an imposing man seated on a colorful platform holding a black book in his lap. He wore a gray suit, eyeglasses, had perfectly coiffed silver hair, and fat sparkling rings on his fingers.

  “I believe,” the man said in a powerful voice, “that the practice of witchcraft and the worship of Satan has permeated every facet of life in this great country of ours and it will likely take years—years!—of prayer and devotion and dedication to our Lord Jesus Christ to rectify what we have allowed to happen in America and to rid this God-fearing land of these evil people who come not to bring peace, not to bring love or understanding, but who come to bring destruction and hatred and—”

  The warlock stepped back from the window and released a deep musical laugh that rocked his shoulders.

  Ah, they have still not yet changed, he thought. Still they wallow in their weakness and fear all who are not as they.

  He walked on, feeling good, feeling satisfied—

  —and saw another sign:

  THE CRYSTAL TOWER

  Metaphysical and Occult

  Books and Paraphernalia

  Crystals

  Witchcraft

  Full Body Channel by Appointment

  “An appointment,” the warlock whispered to the cat as he made his way toward the dark little shop where . . .

  . . . several women sat and stood in a semicircle around Sylvia Malette, who, at the age of thirty-seven, had left her restaurant-managing husband in Bullhead City, Arizona to move to Los Angeles and try her hand at spiritual counseling. She’d always been a good listener; all her neighbors back in Bullhead had come to her for advice or just to talk.

  If her husband Jack hadn’t been so rude and inhospitable to those neighbors when they came to see Sylvia, she might have given him the loan he’d asked for a couple weeks ago.

  Then again, probably not. During the three and a half years she’d been away from Jack, she’d become a new person, the person she’d always wanted to be. She’d dropped twenty-five pounds, gotten a tan, had her hair done right, and was making enough money now to afford a little nip and tuck now and then.

  She’d traded in housework and Jack’s regular morning cigarette hack for write-ups in the Los Angeles Times and a packed appointment book—both business and social.

  Jack had not called her because he still felt close enough to her to ask for a loan, as he’d said, but because he’d seen her on Carson last month trading quips with George Hamilton (with whom she’d had dinner the following night).

  Spending six months reading books on spiritualism and channeling and reincarnation had made her a star.

  God bless Shirley MacLaine.

  And God bless the people filling the back room of her shop.

  They knew her as Sylvana; Sylvia sounded so frumpy. She wore an exotic but chic outfit, dark, with a sort of Beverly Hills gypsy skirt and plenty of crystals and charms, each of which was available for sale in her shop.

  Most of her seekers (that was what she called her clients, “seekers”) were the wives of men so boring that they’d rather talk to dead people and aliens. Some were the widows of men so rich, they wanted to make sure the old fart hadn’t buried half the family jewels or started a secret bank account somewhere before he kicked off. Some were just lonely, others simply curious. She felt she was doing them no harm; they were paying her for a service which made them happy, made them feel better. Was that a crime?

  Usually there were only six or eight people present for a channeling of Tresharr, a high priest of the dolphin race, interstellar cousins to Flipper, who served as intergalactic traveling teachers to other less advanced races. Today—and every day since her appearance on Carson—the room was standing room only.

  Tresharr’s voice had improved over the past year—she was working on it and getting better—so much so that some of her female seekers were too intimidated to ask any questions.

  Sylvia sat now in her purple-upholstered throne-like chair before her audience, holding the cylindrical aligning crystal which was supposed to concentrate the entity’s energy into a beam which could then be transferred into her, she held the crystal between both hands at her breast. There had been silence in the dark room for a long while now, and one woman timidly stepped forward and took in a breath. “Tresharr? Um . . . it’s me. Fern.”

  “I see you, Fern,” Sylvia said, her voice deep and guttural, with just a dash of some vaguely European accent. “Even light years away, I see you.”

  “Yes, well . . . last week we got into a discussion about knowingness! And how it could affect a dematerialization of my life?”

  “Tresharr remember.”

  “Well, it struck such a resonance with my innermost self that I did what you suggested. I sold my car. You were right, Tresharr, I mean, it was just a leftover trapping of my prior existence.” She didn’t sound finished, but she didn’t go on.

  “And what troubles you still, seeker?”

  “Well, it’s just that. . . I’m glad the car’s gone, I really am, but . . . well, now I can’t get to work.”

  “Ah, solution simple. Tresharr say . . . swim to work. Eh?”

  “Swuh . . . swim?”

  “As we, the dolphin race, use just our minds to swim the currents of interstellar oceans, you, Fern, must use your mind to swim the currents of your own life . . . no matter how turbulent they may become. Eh?”

  “Swim . . . to work,” Fern whispered musingly.

  “And work to swim,” Sylvia said. Part of her business was being quick on her feet.

  “Yes,” Fern breathed, nodding slowly, with understanding. “I . . . I think I understand now.”

  “More than you know, Fern. More than you know.”

  There was impressed laughter from the small crowd, then applause.

  With eyes closed, Sylvia moved her head as if scanning the audience, and said, “Who next?”

  By the end of the hour, even those skeptics who’d come simply because they were intrigued by the posters she’d put all over town promising “a few words with Tresharr and Aquataine, benevolent dolphin entities from the constellation Orion” ended up asking the entities questions about the most private parts of their lives.

  Sylvia gave all of her seekers herb tea and bran muffins before they left, gave them a chance to talk with her, and, of course, an opportunity to buy some spiritual supplies in her shop, like crystals and incense.

  After the last woman had gone, Sylvia flipped the sign on the door to CLOSED so she could take a break, have a coke, and smile. She kept a little vial of the very best in the top drawer of a filing cabinet in back; on top of the cabinet was a small framed photograph of Ronald Reagan because she thought he was the most spiritual president the country had ever had.

  Sylvia turned from the door and went to her cash drawer for the key to her filing cabinet.

  “You are a spiritualist.”

  She was so startled, her hand jerked out of the drawer and slammed it shut.

  A man stood on the other side of the shop looking over shelves of minerals and herbs and sparkling incandescent wands.

  “Oh, I-I’m sorry,” Sylvia said. “I-I thought everyone had gone.”

  “You hail spirits, do you not?”

  “I . . . well, I channel them, yes. Um . . . you weren’t here for the session, were you?”

  He ignored her question and turned to her, saying, “Channel me a spirit, woman.”

  The man was absolutely incredible.

  He was over six feet and had the most touchable tangle of hair she’d ever seen, and his eyes! They were animal eyes, wild and a little . . . seedy, as if he knew a few dark things that she’d never dreamed of. In his arms, he cradled a cat.

  “W-well, really, um,” Sylvia stammered, “I only do grope sess—group! Group sessions.” She bit her tongue and turned her eyes from him, her face hot with embarrassment.

  The str
anger came toward her, came close until only inches separated them.

  “Channel me a spirit,” he said again, his voice so low, so level, and so close that she felt herself growing warm and moist between her legs.

  This wasn’t the way it was supposed to go. She was supposed to have the upper hand, he was on her turf. But she melted under his gaze and her tongue became clumsy.

  “Well, I don’t . . . I’m not sure I can . . . you see, I haven’t—”

  He touched her cheek and her words clogged in her throat.

  “It’s important,” he breathed on her.

  And somehow she sensed that it was.

  “What . . . who do you have in mind?” she asked. “Is it, like . . . a friend? A relative?”

  “Like a father.”

  “And . . . what’s your father’s name?”

  “He has many.”

  “Well . . . I’ll need one.”

  “Zamiel.”

  Something about that name sounded familiar and Sylvia ran it back and forth in her mind, trying to remember where she’d heard or read it.

  The man held up a fist before her; jutting from his fist was a long aligning crystal like the one she’d used a while ago.

  “You used one of these,” the man said, gently taking her hand and placing it on the crystal. He wrapped her fingers around it and moved her hand up and down the shaft. “I watched.”

  Sylvia’s heart was beating overtime.

  “I wish to see,” he said, “how it works.”

  “Yuh-yes, well . . .” She coughed, tried to find some moisture in her dry, sticky mouth. “Um, well . . . come . . . in the back.”

  The cat meowed as she took the aligning crystal from the man and led him to the back room and through three short columns of empty folding chairs. She seated herself at her table and he across from her and she held the crystal in front of her as before, mentally shouting at herself to concentrate. That was why it was important she have the upper hand; she had to be comfortable and at ease to concentrate on her performance and she absolutely had to concentrate but—

  —the man was staring at her with dark jungle eyes and she knew that if he told her to get up on the table, lift her skirt, and spread her legs, she would do it in an instant.

  She assumed a trance position—back straight, both hands wrapped around the aligning crystal, head tilted back a bit, eyes closed—and remained there for a while, easing into it, letting her shoulders gradually sag, her breath become uneven, her lips to work silently and—

  —suddenly she made her entire body rigid until she trembled all over, clutching the crystal with white knuckles, making a low gurgling sound in her throat—her seekers loved their entities to make a dramatic entrance—and then snapped her eyes open and sucked in a sharp breath before saying, in a voice an octave lower than normal, “I am here. Zamiel. Newly come. What is it you care to ask of me?”

  “I would ask that we wait.”

  She paused, hoping he would continue, but he didn’t. He just ran his long fingers through the cat’s fur, eyeing her somewhat sternly, as if he were angry. But what gorgeous anger . . .

  In her new Zamiel voice, Sylvia said, “Time is infinite, yet never to be wasted. For what do we wait?”

  “For the true Zamiel to appear.”

  Oh shit, she thought, what’s he doing? Having a little fun? Having a little smartass fun with the fortune teller? The fact that she was so attracted to him made her even angrier.

  Sylvia tried not to flinch as the man reached across the table and curled his fingers around her wrist.

  With the slightest of smiles, he whispered, “I have waited this long. I can wait a bit longer.”

  His hand was strong but touched her so gently, his knuckles lightly brushing her breast, and she wondered if he had the same thing in mind that she did, if maybe he wanted her right there in her back room, like in one of those smutty Jackie Collins novels, maybe he was just going to take her right there, and she hoped he kept his eyes open because she wanted to look into those wonderful feral eyes when she—

  Snap out of it, Syl, she told herself, licking her dry lips to try again.

  “I am Zamiel, the father,” she said, wondering what his cock would taste like, because he had a . . . well, a rugged smell about him—not offensive, like body odor, or anything, just . . . natural—and she took a deep tremulous breath before going on. “Only when you have . . .” She stopped, blinked her eyes several times, and shifted in her chair because she really was getting wet down there, so wet she wondered if maybe she’d sat in something. “. . . only when you have put aside all doubts will you . . . will you . . .” Something was happening inside Sylvia, something very inappropriate and extremely out of place, something that usually only happened when she was in bed with a lover, a very good lover, like that young performance artist she’d spent a weekend with a few months ago, he’d made it happen, just like it was happening now . . .

  Sylvia felt a wet yawning emptiness in her middle that had to be filled. She wanted this man inside her.

  She squeezed the aligning crystal in her trembling hands and the stranger’s smile grew.

  Sylvia forgot where she was and stammered on, struggling to maintain her Zamiel voice.

  “Only, only when you . . . have put aside all d-doubts . . . will you b-be able to . . . to ask me . . . ask me . . .”

  She closed her eyes and bit her lower lip because if she looked at him a moment longer she would at least have to touch herself or she would scream, she was quivering to be touched, and something else was happening, too, something—

  —inside her, something was moving, swelling, beginning to throb, and she couldn’t talk anymore, couldn’t form words, and her whole body was quaking, and the shape of the aligning crystal felt so good in her hands, so right, long and hard and, without even realizing what she was doing, Sylvia—

  —touched the crystal to her lips, licked it, sucked on it, pressed it between her swollen breasts and squeezed them together around it, gasping, whimpering, and she opened her eyes and saw—

  —the man standing now, grinning, looking at her expectantly and with surprised pleasure as she—

  —writhed in her chair, tearing at her clothes with one hand until her breasts were free, lolling back and forth as she moved the aligning crystal down between her legs, pulled aside the sopping crotch of her panties and slid the shaft inside her, moaning with pleasure, looking at the man and gasping—

  —“Please! Pluh-please!”—

  —as she drove the crystal in and out, never able to get it in deep enough, still feeling empty, unsatisfied, and the man—

  —stepped around the table, still grinning, apparently waiting for something—

  —as Sylvia bucked in her purple chair, legs spread wide now, knees lifted high, needing the stranger to take her, enter her, fuck her senseless, but she couldn’t find the breath or the words to tell him, and—

  —then it went bad.

  Something moved through her, shot up the center of her body like a pencil thin laser beam, hot and sizzling, all the way from her clitoris to her brain where—

  —it exploded.

  Maggots squirmed behind her eyes.

  Her tongue became a useless chunk of raw meat. And something burned like lava inside her breasts. Sylvia dropped the aligning crystal to the floor and clutched her burning breasts, giving a strangled cry of pain as she lifted her head and looked at them, expecting to see them running off her ribs like melting wax.

  They weren’t. They were whole and unmarked. Except . . .

  Her nipples were splitting. A horizontal cut was opening in each one.

  Sylvia’s ragged scream covered the moist tearing sound her nipples made when they opened up and blinked on fiery cat-like eyes that stared from her breasts, looking around the room and finally settling on—

  —the stranger, who bowed to one knee and reverently lowered his head.

  Her scream went on and on as she stared in horro
r at her breasts, but was cut short when the muscles in her neck suddenly snapped taut and her head was thrown back and a voice—a new voice not her own, that came from whatever foul thing had nested inside her—spoke through her mouth:

  “Ask me what you will.”

  The breath that was expelled by the voice smelled like shit and clogged Sylvia’s nostrils. She tried to scream again but had no voice of her own, had no control of her tongue or lips. She couldn’t even move her arms.

  “How comes it that you have brought me here, Lord?” the man asked, standing straight.

  “Perhaps to redeem yourself,” the voice said. It sounded like bones being crushed.

  “What would you have me do?”

  “Bring together what has been thirded.” Sylvia felt the eyes flare with evil delight in her breasts as the voice savored its next words: “Bring together my Bible.”

  The man licked his lips and breathed, “The Grand Grimoire?” His voice was filled with awe.

  Sylvia closed her eyes to shut it all out but was bludgeoned by nightmarish mental images—

  —puss-dripping sores covered with flies and human flesh being sliced open with razorblades and penises thrusting in and out of messy emptied eye-sockets—

  —and she opened her eyes again, wishing she would die.

  “Is it here?” the stranger asked. “Now?”

  “It could be taken . . . perhaps . . . by a resourceful witch.”

  “My efforts, Lord . . . how might they be rewarded?”

  The voice roared from her. “Service to Satan is reward!” The entity’s anger swelled in her, making her feel bloated to the verge of exploding and she felt her organs shift and her skin tighten and—

  —Sylvia Malette felt a part of her mind shrivel.

  “For others, surely,” the man said. “But for that most cunning witch who steals back your Bible? The book that can thwart creation itself? What for him, my Lord?” He smiled hungrily.

  The voice croaked out a patronizing, vaguely pleased chuckle.