Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle

by Carlos Allende

  “Rosa, Victoria!” she said, helping the girls get off the goat. “You look so beautiful!”

  The two girls bobbed their heads courteously.

  “You two are the most adorable girls I’ve ever seen. You must be so proud,” the wench said to the mother. She boasted an ear-to-ear smile, but her eyes seemed full of anguish. “Let me see your dresses,” she continued. “Turn around… The little ribbons…! Is that a mouse?” She espied a little rodent climbing down Rosa’s hair into her dress.

  The girl replied with a giggle.

  “How cheeky of you! How very cheeky of you, you enchanting little doll,” the woman pinched Rosa’s nose.

  The mother thanked her with a smile.

  “Now, look at this little boy,” the wench approached the twins who had just jumped out of the basket. “And his sister. How plump and beautiful! How big are their eyes! How red their lips! What did you do, my darlings? You probably didn’t eat your soup, did you?”

  The twins nodded with a sob.

  “And did you say your prayers? You didn’t! Oh, don’t you cry, you poor babies. One should do as told. That’s a lesson to learn—a little too late, in your case. And who is this?” The wench noticed the little girl getting off the goat. “Is this your youngest?” She asked the mother.

  “Yes, ma’am,” responded the mother, expecting another compliment.

  But the greeting witch had lost her smile. “God’s hooks,” she said, covering her mouth and looking at them with pity. “She’s the ugliest child I’ve ever seen. By far! Who was the father, a boar?”

  The little girl hastened to bob a curtsy, remembering her mother’s words about how witches are expected to be rude to one other, but her mother pulled her by her arm and turned a disdainful eye back to the hag. The two elder daughters started laughing, but their mother threatened them with a tight fist and they stopped.

  “You should at least have dressed her properly,” the wench said, adjusting the little girl’s dress. “And washed her face,” she added, pulling a handkerchief from one of her sleeves to clean the little girl’s face with saliva. She gave up after a few passes after seeing how dirty the cloth got. Putting it back into her sleeve, she gave another look of disapproval to the mother, and then moved on to talk to other witches.

  Freed from its load, the goat left to join other familiars. Rosa and Victoria disappeared too, to join a pig chase occurring nearby.

  The little girl looked at her mother’s sullen face. How come she was upset, when an insult was the expected thing to hear at the Sabbath? She didn’t understand the logic of the Devil, and the mother didn’t care to explain. The woman took her youngest daughter by the hand, who in turn took the hand of the little boy, who in turn grabbed the hand of his sister, who ended up carrying the basket with the fecal biscuits, and the four set off walking uphill through the crowd, the two children still crying for their mother.

  Everything looked strange and confusing to our little friend that night. Earlier, Rosa and Victoria had explained to her what she should expect from the Sabbath. They told her there would be a procession, a banquet and a Black Mass. They said there would be a dance in which all of the witches and the warlocks would sway back-to-back with each other, and then, just before dawn, they would all lose their clothes and have an orgy. The program was correct, that was precisely what was supposed to happen. What they didn’t say was that one event wouldn’t succeed the other, but everything would happen at once, the women would be feasting, fencing, fisting, fighting, flaunting, dancing, and parading long before any of such businesses had either properly started or concluded—all at the same time, for it was more important to just do than to do well, another common, if incorrect, presumption among witches.

  A clever eye would note that this party was the most perfect imperfect illustration of a reversal of celestial harmony. It made no sense, but if it did, it wouldn’t be the like of the Devil.

  Here, a group of witches marched in a circle, each of them holding a large wooden stake with a hog’s head on top and a cloud of flies flying behind them. Blood ran down the poles covering their arms and faces. There, a pair of witches sang a cantata, squatted under a long table set across four tombs, on top of which another woman swore by all the names of the Emperor of Hell, which are many, that if they didn’t move she would cut off their breasts and eat them. Over there, a group of witches walked backwards, some on two legs, some on all fours, with their chins pointing up and their pubes indecently exposed. Yonder, a few were engaged in seducing a sexton. Many were fighting and a few were snoring, already drunk. Hundreds of spirits floated above them, playing with their hair and clothing, disappearing and reappearing at will. Some of the women sang alleluias to the spirits, as if they were symbols of rejoicing. The demons responded by spreading out their wings as if they were angels in ecstatic merriment. You could feel the breeze they caused when their wings flapped; it was a sudden chill, as if you had left a window open in the middle of winter.

  The twins trudged with mouths and eyes wide open, commenting with a squeal or with a scream at everything they saw, or with a “Do it again!” if a goblin did a cabriole or a pirouette they fancied.

  “Disgusting,” the mother said, every so often.

  The little girl walked openmouthed too, but for all the awe in her gaze, and all of the terror in her heart, she remained silent.

  The witches had profaned the tombs and, temporarily revived, a few corpses wandered around, wailing and grieving. Others remained inside their graves, barely showing their heads above the ground, pulling on the few hairs they had, completely baffled, wondering what awakened them before Judgment Day, and what was the spectacle they were being forced to watch.

  One of the flying demons yanked an arm from one of these corpses and started using it as a club to pound on a woman.

  “Harder!” the witches yelled as the woman received a hit on the buttocks.

  A second fiend snatched a head and threw it against the same woman being beaten. Then a third grabbed the poor wench by her feet, raised her up in the air and let her fall inside a pond of water.

  The little girl got scared and started crying.

  “Do not cry,” the mother said coldly. “That only happens to the weak, to the ones that didn’t finalize their list of evil tasks on time, to those that had relinquished their allegiance to our master. These are our friends—” She pointed to the spirits flying around them, monsters with the faces of goats and lions, bodies full of scales, and bat-like wings ending in elongated spikes like the fangs of a tiger, “—they like us for what we are, not for what we’re supposed to be. As long as you remain true to your own self, they’ll never hurt you.”

  At the top of the hill, at the very center of the cemetery, lay a small charnel house inside a fenced section surrounded by a circle of willows. It was from up there that the Lord of all Mayhem and Despair, the Little Master, presided over the chore of Sabbath. To there, as well, was where the witch and the three children headed.

  Unearthed corpses dangled from every major branch of the trees surrounding the crypt, eerily lit from the inside, like flashing lanterns hanging from a Christmas tree. These were no ornaments, the witch explained to her daughter, but tools of which the demons availed to contain their essence in order to have commerce with the witches. As our group approached, the corpses started shaking their arms and legs, singing and whistling, trying to call their attention. One of them made eye contact with the little girl and, mistaking the horror-struck expression on her face for fascination, started gnawing the rope from which he hung to meet her.

  “Not yet,” said the witch, pulling her daughter and the two children forward. “We’ll get to play later.”

  As the group passed by, the bodies collapsed, insentient.

  Behind the trees and before the mausoleum awaited a pack of black hounds fastened by His Malign Majesty’s most loyal officer,
Prince Beelzebub, Chief Lieutenant of Hell and Lord of All Things That Fly, in whose honor the parade downhill was being held.

  The hounds barked ferociously at the children, threatening to get free of their leashes. The demon held them tighter. The twins let go of the little girl’s hand and tried to run away, screaming, but they were intercepted by a group of vampires that locked them inside a crate, which they then piled atop other crates containing more children.

  The witch picked up the basket full of excrement biscuits that the little German girl had dropped, gave it to her daughter, and pushed her closer to Prince Beelzebub. The little girl resisted, hiding behind her mother’s dress, but the witch grabbed her by the hair and whispered something into her ear that made the little girl prefer to face the demon.

  She had reason to be scared. Prince Beelzebub was over ten feet tall. He had the legs and the body of a buck, four human arms covered in fur, the wings of a vulture, and just one head, but three faces. The one to the right was the yellow face of a lion; the one to the left, the rosy face of a young maiden; the one in the middle, the face of a boar, with big fangs coming out of its mouth. All three faces had long beards braided together. The lion and the young woman’s faces chewed little children offered by the vampires standing at both sides; the boar’s lips moved as if mumbling a prayer. He was dressed in a white cassock with a golden hem, pontifical gloves and a purple biretta, and smelled so strongly of blood that every other smell in the air seemed to vanish.

  The little girl offered Prince Beelzebub one of the excrement biscuits and then retreated slowly, bowing down and without turning her back to the demon.

  Prince Beelzebub ate the biscuit. Then, one of the vampires fed him another child.

  The little girl watched the demon devour the poor rascal.

  “He refused to bathe,” another vampire hissed into her ear.

  “They were disobedient to their mothers,” Beelzebub’s maiden face added, pointing with her chin towards the wooden crates full of children.

  The dogs stopped barking. The little girl approached the crates. The eyes of the maiden face followed her steps, but otherwise, the demon seemed indifferent to her presence.

  “I didn’t brush my teeth,” said one child, with tears in his eyes.

  “I stole candy,” said another one.

  “We didn’t finish our soup,” cried our twins.

  The little girl sniffed.

  A boy inside one of the lower crates pulled the hem of the little girl’s black dress to call her attention.

  The little girl squatted down.

  “Are you coming to meet the Devil?” the boy asked.

  The little girl nodded. She took one of the biscuits from her basket and offered it to the child. The boy wrinkled his nose, shaking his head politely. The little girl put the cake back inside her basket.

  “With that nose?” asked a proud voice from atop the pile.

  The little girl looked up to the one speaking. The voice came from a girl with red curls dressed in a gingham dress with furbelows and trimmings far too modish to let her play anywhere dirty.

  “You are certainly not meeting the Prince of Darkness with that nose, are you?” the snooty girl continued. “It’s full of boogers.”

  The little girl stuck her two index fingers inside her nose to clean it and then rubbed her fingers on her dress.

  “Yuck!” said one of the boys.

  “She’s disgusting!” said another.

  “She’s filthy!” said the snooty girl atop.

  “How gross!” said the snooty girl inside the crate. “How icky, yucky, repellent, and repulsive. You are such a mess. Cleaning your boogers on your new dress—if you can call that thing a new dress. Show me your hands.”

  The little girl looked at her hands for a second; realizing how dirty they were, she then hid them behind her back, and shook her head from one side to the other.

  “Her hands are filthy!” said one of the boys in the lower crates.

  The little girl hid her hands under her dress.

  “And your teeth?” asked again the snooty girl atop, with a deep sigh, realizing how pointless it was to expect clean hands in such a grimy individual. “Did you brush them?”

  The little girl opened her mouth and showed her teeth in a gesture more typical of a rodent than of a little girl proud of her choppers.

  “How incredibly filthy, dirty and disgusting. And you expect the Devil to find you to his liking?” the snooty girl continued. “He will think you’re disgusting—I, myself, think you’re terribly inappropriate and disgusting, and I must be right, for mommy always says that I am incredibly clever.”

  The little girl slouched her head down. She felt like spitting on that snooty girl’s tidy dress. She was repulsive, yes, she very much knew it, but there are more courteous ways to say these things, it is not necessary to hurt people. No wonder the children inside the crates were the Devil’s supper, she reckoned. Those misbehaved rascals had never learned to say thank you, or please, or excuse me, much less to have a courteous conversation with a stranger. They deserved well to be eaten.

  “I bet your skirt smells like tinkle.”

  The little girl pulled her skirt up to her nose. It did smell a little.

  “And those shoes. I would be so embarrassed if I had to wear them.”

  The snooty girl had just finished saying that, when one of the vampires feeding Beelzebub wielded a hook to lower the crate that contained her. Another one seized the crate, opened it, snatched the snooty girl by her curls and offered her to the demon.

  “Mommy!” sobbed the poor snooty girl, before the maiden’s face swallowed her completely.

  “Are you here to meet the Devil?” asked again the little boy that had pulled the little girl’s skirt before.

  The little girl nodded.

  “They’re going to make you sign something,” the boy said, gesturing towards the demon.

  The little girl followed the boy’s gaze back to Prince Beelzebub. The demon called her with a sign of his finger and reached inside his garment for a piece of parchment, which he then extended to the little girl.

  Our little friend stared at the document but made no attempt to grab it.

  The document was a pact of allegiance between her, the nameless little girl from the adobe house at the end of the only road in Rancho La Ballona, in Los Angeles County; the seven princes of Hell: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Elimi, Astaroth, Belphegor and Leviathan; and at least sixty other demons, plus witnesses. The terms were the usual: her soul and the promise of a sacrifice of blood every year to her new masters in exchange for a series of banalities: honors, pleasures and riches. Very standard.

  A small wingless fiend with the face of a cat, the body of a squirrel, and the limbs of a lizard, slipped from under the three-faced demon’s cassock holding a long pin. He took the biscuits from the little girl and gave them back to her mother. Then, he used the pin to prick the little girl in her right palm. He then extended the pin to the little girl and asked her to sign the document with her blood, “right at the bottom.”

  The little girl took the pin, but still made no attempt to grab the document. Instead she kept staring at it.

  “She can’t understand what it says,” said one of the caged children.

  The little girl didn’t know how to read yet, and even if she did, she would have not been able to understand it. The document was inscribed in mirror writing and in Latin, using only consonants and no vowels.

  “That’s all right, she don’t need to know what it says,” said the small wingless demon.

  “She doesn’t know how to sign, either,” said a vampire.

  “Then just an X, sweetie,” said the small wingless demon.

  “Right here,” said Beelzebub, through the mouth of the lion, extending a long finger to the document to indicate where the li
ttle girl was supposed to sign

  The little girl did as the demon told her.

  “What is important is that it is your blood.”

  “Now—” another demon, this one all black and gangly, like a match that’s been blown out, appeared from nowhere and grabbed the parchment, “—let us fill the date and place in here, and sign it here and here, and…that’s it. You do understand that your soul belongs to us now, don’t you?”

  The little girl nodded.

  The vampires stepped aside. Now there were almost two dozen demons surrounding her, each presenting the most diverse physiognomy: dogs and lizard heads, goose feet, vampire wings, serpent tails, wolf-like torsos and dragons.

  “And that you are bound to us for all eternity?”

  The little girl nodded again, unaware of what the words “bound” or “eternity” meant.

  “Now, you have to kiss it,” laughed the boy that had asked before all those questions about seeing the Devil. “You have to kiss the Devil’s butt!”

  That was the last step. She was supposed to give the Little Master the osculum infame, the kiss of shame.

  The little girl pursed her lips and raised her neck trying to give a little peck to Beelzebub’s haunches, but the demon moved back with a frightened expression on his three faces.

  “Not to me!” he said, covering himself with three arms and drawing a five point star in mid-air with the other.

  The girl turned then to the small wingless demon that had pricked her hand to sign the contract, but the aberration rapidly hid under Beelzebub’s cassock. Before she attempted to kiss another demon, all of them moved aside to reveal what stood behind them. It was his Malign Majesty, the Devil himself, the Little Master, the Prince of the Damned, the Perverted and the Ruined, Emperor of Hell and King of All Things Rotten, an even more horrendous creature than any of the other four thousand six hundred sixty-two demons in the party, seated atop a wooden stool, thirteen feet above ground, presiding over the banquet.

  He was a foot taller than Beelzebub. He had the body and the legs of a goat, the tail of a cat, enormous bat wings and the face of a Babylonian warrior, with dark, rough skin, bony cheeks, a black beard and eyelashes so long you could feel a soft warm breeze whenever he closed his eyelids. Thick curls of dark hair framed his forehead. On the top of his head, he had a set of antlers, like a deer, and he was totally naked. He too spent his time devouring naughty children, but he seemed to be sucking them, rather than chewing, as Beelzebub did. The lips closed around the little children heads as if he was about to kiss them; then, he slurped them in, like oysters.