Pentacle - A Self Collection

by Tom Piccirilli

  I'd met Julia Tether briefly several weeks ago at the Museum of Modern Art, as she sat crying in line behind me at the water cooler. It didn't take long for the hyperkinetic artist to dissolve into discourse, telling me her trials and travails on the New York art scene, quoting from the scathing reviews she'd received, and urging me back to her apartment where I could peruse her latest works. I'd done so, finding them quite good but ultimately a bit unfulfilling—though certainly she proved to be better than the reviewers led one to believe. After some take-out Italian, a bottle of wine, and an invitation to both her bed and tonight's gala opening, I'd turned down the one and thought it only right to stop into the second for a moment, to pay due to Julia at what I suspected would be a disappointing night for her.

  The waiter gripped my face the way a loving aunt pulls the cheeks of a child, and I somehow found it within myself not to break his jaw. "Oh, go on, Julia's in the corner talking shop with the critics. To think they lambasted her six months ago, and now the toadies are nearly down on humble knee ready to propose." He let go and resumed fluttering among the crowd.

  My second self rose, scrambled up my back and nuzzled my neck. Did you see that? The guy had pierced nipples. What is it with some people? The inquisitors used to do that checking for devil's marks.

  People dressed in Greenwich Village regalia accosted me as I walked by, shaking my hand, touching; transvestites with serpent tattoos, women in blue pumps and black capes, the elite real estate moguls in three-piece suits, and fashion models I recognized from designer jean commercials. The Penthouse Pet of the Year took my hand and gave it a hearty shake. Several times I was called a muse, kissed by strangers, drinks thrust upon me, and my business card requested. I still didn't know what anyone was talking about.

  And I always thought we were kind of weird, Self said. My familiar crawled down my leg and crept forward through the gallery, agilely avoiding feet. Aw, hey wait a minute.

  What?

  Look at the walls.

  They could hardly be made out in the throng, everybody loud, the smell of sweat and marijuana prevalent; oddly positioned track lighting threw strange shadows across Julia's dark paintings, all blacks and grays with thick swirls underscoring white and tinges of red. I recognized two as works I'd seen in her loft, but the others—here was the muse—the others were of me and not me, myself and Self.

  "Oh, cripes," I muttered.

  I noted seventeen paintings of me before I gave up counting. She had captured an essence that gave me chills to look at, knowing she possessed a sight I had not recognized while drinking our wine. She'd not only seen and unearthed a secret, but had then presented it for public viewing. Centuries ago that would have been more than enough to condemn a man—a finger pointed, a hysterical child's accusations. Self cooed and jabbered, reminding me of the witch trials in Bury, St. Edmonds, England, where sixty-eight had gone to the gallows.

  I was on the wall: my face smeared in broad dimensions, close-ups, elongated, twisted and drawn to a near photographic perfection, she'd used me at every angle. In each painting, peering from behind my head, from up out of my chest, kissing my neck and licking my ear, hopped a shaded figure that wasn't quite a face or a form, an unperson not me but not so different.

  Julia Tether caught a glimpse of a bane she wasn't doomed to carry but had somehow become her burden: bordering my portrait were ancient sigils and the hexagram Seal of Solomon, hex signs and pentagrams, fertility symbols she could only know if she'd read the grimoires of Abin-sur, swastikas, solar wheels, the horned women and Sumerian mother goddess, and a ten-foot image of Baphomet, the Judas goat-devil of Aleister Crowley, with its arms around me in familial embrace.

  I whispered, "Holy God," and laughter resounded in my mind.

  She didn't do too well getting my good side, Self said.

  I floundered through the crowd searching for Julia, and though the gallery wasn't exceptionally large, it had been split into alleys and hallways designed to spotlight each of her works. Finally I grabbed a different waiter and he pointed me to the far corner, where the murals and mobile bar had cordoned off a section of the maze-like place.

  Julia Tether stood encircled as if bound for the stake. She looked as if she hadn't slept since the day she'd met me—eyes flitting and shadowed, makeup failing to camouflage the baggy pouches and heavy stress lines around her mouth. Her bountiful auburn hair was pulled back in a heaped pony tail. She tittered hideously as the Penthouse Pet finished telling her a joke.

  I took her elbow. Julia turned, smiled at me, and said, "Well, if it isn't the poor damned soul," and collapsed in my arms.

  Apparently this was considered chic in the art world; as I carried her back into a lounge area, I heard a smattering of applause for Julia's dramatic display. I opened the door, laid her on the divan, and pressed my hand to her forehead. After a moment she groaned, mouthed a string of words in a millennia-dead language, then sighed and settled back.

  Has she been hexed? I asked.

  No.

  Spells of any kind?

  No, it's the effect of her own emotional imbalance. She's sensitive and obviously caught a glimpse.

  Of what?

  Me. Or maybe something coming for her. Or for you.

  I waited an hour while Julia slept peacefully, the furrow between her eyebrows easing as the glimpse drained free like poison into a poultice. A knock at the door drove Self to the knob, where he bared his teeth. A lady's giggling voice, slippery with double entendre. "Oh, Julia, dear, we're all going on home now. You can lock up when you've finished with your latest artistic effort. Don't strain anything now, you've interviews all tomorrow afternoon, and please, remember not to get any of that awful lead-base in places that might prove most frightful to remove." I expected her to end with a "Ta-ta" but thankfully, she left without another word.

  Julia opened her eyes and murmured, "Please, I'm thirsty," swallowed thickly and said, "And I love you." I found a bottle of seltzer on a table near the window, but by the time I poured a glass she'd fallen asleep again.

  Do you have this effect on all women? Self asked.

  It took only a few minutes of poring over the paintings to find what I was looking for: hidden in the subtle symbols of Mrs. Delaney's twelve-foot work, Self and I were looking off at something in the distance, both of us squinting. There, in the faint flint in our eyes, was a nearly imperceptible face I'd been warned against in prophecies when I was a child, and again spoken in whispers by Native American ghosts on the spectral highways I'd hitched in my youth: it was called Sorrowsire.

  "What in the hell . . . ?" I said and was blown through the air by a killing hex striking deep in the middle of my back. The stink of my own burned flesh surrounded me. I screamed and landed fifteen feet away on my face, tumbling and rolling, toppling easels and art. An explosion of black static blazed in the center of the room, my shirt in flames. Self patted me down and spat out the fire.

  The waiter with the pierced nipples and suspenders stood over by the painting, grinning insanely, completely taken over. Trails of cocaine lined his upper lip; he must've been in the bathroom the whole time. Cackling didn't describe the sound he made, or the viciousness it contained. He wriggled his fingers at me again, and languorously transformed inch by inch like a redesigned portrait.

  Skin unwound and altered like hot wax, reforming thin and ropey and fat and taffy-pulled, as if a great hand were squeezing; the body went first, clothes shriveling and shifting, the smell of freshly harvested wheat and arcana wafting through the air, mold and wet cloth. His eyes vanished into slits, nose receding to a charred lump, until only the red lips remained drawn across a scarecrow's potato-sack face. Sorrowsire took this form during its days in Salem, walking among the crops of New Englanders, spreading madness among their children. Its lips scurried across the sack in a mockery of a mouth, raggish, tatterdemalion garments clinging to a warped skeletal structure, bones always moving. "Necromancer, there's a circle in Hell set aside all for yo
u."

  I coughed and gagged on blood, finally managed to say, "You have a grudge for some reason?"

  "Not in particular. Let's just say I don't like the company you keep."

  What's happening here? I asked.

  We met a long time ago, Self told me. On a level I never mentioned. It commanded a legion in Beli ya'al's army to take over the world against Satan.

  Let me guess. You deserted.

  Something like that.

  "Time to pay what's due," the scarecrow said, its stuffed hands alive with hellflame. Malignancy has a weight, and I could feel it pressing down from the demon, the air clammy and oozing. I unleashed a protective spell and dove for cover at the same instant. Sorrowsire foisted a banishing curse, glowing sigils whirling through the room, a hot wind blowing burning hay and smoke into my face. The room was on fire, the paintings curling at the edges, Self and I sizzling and bubbling. Sorrowsire pushed back harder—broad smile arching ear to ear as it cackled—throwing up incantations I could barely understand. No wonder Salem never had a chance. I parried the spells one by one, out of breath and weakening beneath the fierceness of its majiks.

  Self raced up the scarecrow's back and repeatedly bit and ripped, tearing out clots of hay and flesh and fetid mucus. Sorrowsire barely seemed to notice.

  Then Julia walked in, and screamed. She looked at me, my hands glowing blue with an Assyrian spell, the room burning. I dove and made an attempt to tackle her, catching her around the legs and hauling her down. Sorrowsire threw a hex at our heads, and the nearest wall gave way. Julia clung to me and said, "What!" She raised her face, eyes blacker than before, all that vitality from the day at the water cooler completely eradicated.

  Self scrambled and cartwheeled and leaped, his claws caked with ichor.

  Tear it up, I ordered.

  Can't, it's too strong, Self said. This clown's the Rambo of nine circles. Help me.

  How?

  He repeated, urgently whining now, Help me!

  The door to the gallery had shattered during the fight, and through the smoke I could see a crowd milling in the street. I shoved Julia forward and whispered, "Now," stood and grabbed the scarecrow by the neck, hoping to keep it off balance long enough for her to get out. I brought it back to the physical, jabbing the thing in its grotesque face, kicking at a groin I knew wasn't there, chopping and elbowing. Sorrowsire laughed.

  It smacked me with a backhand that lifted me off my feet and put me through a coffee table. I felt my legs snap easier than I thought possible, my own shriek deafening me. Rolling in excruciating pain, gritting my teeth, I looked up just in time to see Julia, with her hands over her heart, fall to her knees, trying to hold in the blood pumping from her chest. A spear of one of the broken frames protruded from between her breasts.

  Sorrowsire grinned. Self ran over and danced in the falling streams, unable to let it go to waste, the shower revitalizing him. He glowed and giggled, drinking, finding the help he needed. Rushing back, he did a jig now on the scarecrow's shoes, reaching up and disemboweling what had no bowels. He sprang forward and tore into Sorrowsire again, their auras colliding, the heat and brilliant light setting a different kind of fire beneath them. Sorrowsire's cackling ended, and took on a different tone, the maliciousness now spiced with something akin to fear, or ecstasy. Sacrifices were power. The black static rewound, flashing faster and faster toward its center, a portal opening and shutting like a gaping set of fangs, and the scarecrow—now reverting to the screeching, weeping waiter—fell through.

  I crawled to Julia, my knees spiked with agony. I took her face in my hands. She raised her fingers to my cheek, and coughing, spitting blood, it took her forever to say, "I'm sorry. I think we might have liked each other." I believed her, and tried to kiss her, too late. Her head drooped back, until she rested like a sleeping lover across my lap.

  Self clambered onto my knee, his magic mending me as I held back screams, ligaments and muscles rejoining bone. We have to go, he said.

  I held her in my arms, a new painting spreading beneath us. Did Sorrowsire do this or did you? He kept working, healing me with his gentle, loving touch. I groaned in relief. Did you kill her?

  My second self responded, innocently enough, Who me?

  GO BACK TO THE CHURCH

  Music and murder, like mist, settled over the sweat-streamed night. I wiped my wet face and the fog of nightmares rolled over with my ghosts as I woke and sat up on the bench. Someone whispered for help, low and pained. Leaves spun in ugly, ancient patterns, drifting across Handy Park in the ashen moonlight, predicting the fall of the cross.

  Darkness crept forward full of jazz, other corners soaked with the blues, saxophones trembling alongside guitar riffs thick with Mississippi cotton. The slats of the bench had been drenched in blood over the years, and my second self, roused by the stink, uncoiled and shifted to lick the wood and coo in the hot breeze.

  Signs and eidolons packed the park. Shadows thrashed, nailed to trees, calling my name. Christ, they knew my name. Branches bobbed as if aiming for my throat, knowing just where to strike. I drew back further, reading their meaning. The dead swung and twirled, still pinned to the world—the lynched and lamented, like plumes of smoke that condensed into these forms of the tortured. Dangling from their necks, ankles, and their wrists, they whispered and continued to mutter. They offered no further insight or secrets.

  Wake up, Self said, flicking his bloody tongue in my ear. Somebody's been busy.

  One of your friends?

  Perish the thought.

  They know my name.

  Whoever had done this had tremendous power—it takes immense force of will to capture souls in this manner. I stood and touched the tree where the murdered whirled, stuck on 14-Penny nails. Most of them didn't even know they were dead yet, still feeling the music, living within it. I felt the current running from the spells, the possessive depth of hell.

  Can we save them?

  Not while they're bound like this. They've already been sacrificed. Self tapped his toe and began hopping in time with the twelve-bar, bent-note melody.

  To whom? For what?

  Listen. Listen. Somebody's croaking.

  My mother appeared to be extremely near, much closer than she'd been since the anniversary of her death. I could feel her soothing touch on my brow, her fingers working through my hair. She'd always been there to bandage me and ease the aching. First when I was a child with scraped knees, and rubbing lotion on sunburn from being on the beach too long with my father. Later, tying ligatures and dressing wounds after the first disaster of the first coven, running ointments and balms made of hazel, belladonna, henbane and aconite on my slashes and bites.

  She'd once sung to me and my father out on the porch, in the spring nights when the weeping willows leaned and trellises were crowded with roses, while the preacher sometimes stopped on the sidewalk to listen, heading home from church. She'd been too good for their choir, too beautiful not to cause resentment, until the petty jealousies bred and choked the congregation. The bitter ladies tilted their chins at her and squabbled with their husbands and withheld their tithing, pissing off the preacher. My mother had deferred, as was her way, without anger. She'd laughed and kissed me at night while the dark clouds roiled—before the fear in the house set in—before the wrong promises had been made, and worse, had been kept.

  Self sniffed the air and so did I; he tittered and sighed, and I could feel his mouth water. Syrupy saliva washed against his fangs as he began to tremble in the heat. I couldn't tell if her perfume wafted about me in the world, the afterlife, or only in my barbed memory.

  Someone's reaching for you, he said.

  Oh Christ, is it my mother?

  No. Maybe.

  Shadows tugged at my sleeve and I followed.

  Self bopped and wove in front of me, rushing through the park, tasting the music tumbling in on the steaming wind. When he found the body next to the guitar he slowed and crawled forward, using his claws to scr
atch under the chins of the nailed souls grasping for us. I went to my knees beside him—one of us hoping to see my mother there, the other fearing it.

  The guy on the ground could've been sleeping. On his back, his suit jacket slightly bunched around his waist, with leaves in his hair, he whistled through his nose as he breathed. His collar had grass stains on it, as if he'd been lying here a long time, contented, turning over and getting more comfortable in the dirt, lying nearly beneath the statue of W.C. Handy, the father of the blues. He had the hands of a guitarist—his fingers so thick with callous that you could have driven a razor a quarter of an inch into them and he wouldn't have felt it. They moved gently as if performing chord changes to the music that trailed down Beale Street.

  He could've been sleeping, except that his eyes had been kicked out.

  I eased my satchel under the man's head while he spat blood. He tried to turn when he heard me, but couldn't quite make it. He reached out and clutched at my shirt, using his fist to pull himself up into a seated position. His face ran as if he could still weep, and when his hand found mine it tightened into a death-grip. I felt the weight of unfinished business bearing down.

  "It's back again," he whimpered. His breath came in stuttered gasps, made even worse because he was laughing. "Listen, listen to that joy, he's got the touch again. Been a few years, but it's back."

  "Lie down," I told him.

  "Don't hurt none, not like you'd expect. You an angel?"

  Self held his belly and yawped, Ha!

  "No."

  "You got a storm of God around you, I see it." His ruined face glanced past me, watching the other side take shape. "I see a lot now. Wonder why it took so long." A deep-wheezing rattled in his lungs. "You're the one he's always talked about, you're the one he's been waiting for."