Conspiracy of Ravens

by Chrystal Vaughan

  His worry lines smoothed. “That’s easy to fix. I’ll take you shopping when I get off today.”

  I walked over to where he sat, standing in front of him and looking down at his heartbreakingly handsome face. He wrapped his arms around my hips and gazed up at me with those intense eyes. “You’d do that for me?” I teased a little, trying to lighten my mood.

  He was very serious, saying, “I’d do anything to make you happy.”

  We made it to the prison by nine, but just barely, grabbing coffee and breakfast at my little coffee shop by the hotel. Brad drove fast, joking he couldn’t arrest himself. He’d gotten a ride from one of his officers last night, but even after me leaving him there, we still took my rental car. I thought it was a nice show of trust.

  Catherine seemed secondary to me now, though she was what had drawn me to Pittsburgh. Brad was all I could think about, all I wanted to think about, and she knew it the second I walked into her cell. She was having none of it; I’d never seen her so angry.

  “Did you forget why you are here? Let me give you a hint. It’s not to fuck all the cops in town, Sophia. I brought you here! ME! You will listen to what I have to say!” She was screaming at me. All I had done was walk in and sit down, but I was late and she knew why.

  “Calm down, Catherine. I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  “Not in your head, you’re not,” she spat. “You’re with him!” She pointed to where Brad stood sentinel by the door. She was right, too; he was a distraction, but I wasn’t about to ask him to leave in his own prison. He took care of the problem on his own, though, seeing how worked up she was. He radioed for another officer to take his spot, nodding to me and winking, a move which elicited an actual growl from Catherine’s throat. I was grateful for his acuity, happy he wasn’t offended but knew what had to be done.

  “Happy?” I asked when he’d left. An older officer stood in his place, looking bored.

  As per her usual behavior, she ignored my sarcastic comment and switched moods like a radio station turning to another station.

  “The ninth raven drew the Hanged Man card. Can you guess how that one died, Sophia?”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “No, you can’t. But I’m going to tell you. I drove the hunters’ big black truck to a spot near Tyrone and ditched it in an empty parking lot in an old strip mall. I hitched into Tyrone and found a job at a burger joint. The tips were lousy but there was a trailer behind the place the boss, an old lady who smoked like a chimney, said I could stay in as part of my wage. I’d fed her my usual line, battered wife fleeing the abusive husband, and beneath that crusty exterior I could tell a real softie was feeling sorry for me. People are so gullible. I stayed at that job for a while, actually, until spring.”

  Well that shot my forty two day cycle theory all to hell. She continued, “The dark lord was quiet for a while, resting and working with the Goddess to wake up nature, to produce and create and make the world new again. I felt a slowness within me too, a gathering of strength and stillness. It was very restful.”

  By my calculations, Catherine would have reached Tyrone by mid-March. I needed to pin down the time of her next kill. “How long would you say you stayed dormant in Tyrone?”

  “‘Dormant’,” she mimicked. “Eager to hear blood, guts and gore? I knew exactly when it was time for the next sacrifice. I felt the dark lord’s presence return to my soul at the end of April. A time of rebirth, and a reminder of the death to come. Spring, summer, and fall are only temporary sentinels against winter. It was at the town’s Spring Festival that I saw the next raven, waiting on the sidewalk for the parade to end. She was a beautiful girl, Sophia, with long hair as dark as, well...a raven’s wing,” she guffawed at her own wit.

  I was surprised. “A woman? For the Hanged Man card?”

  “The card is symbolic, I’ve told you this,” Catherine responded, waxing scholarly again. “It doesn’t specifically mean a ‘hanged man’. All of the cards carry symbolism. Everything we do can be linked to a symbol of some kind. I try to tie in my sacrifices to the card they’ve drawn but not every situation is exactly at face value.”

  “When the...sacrifices...draw their cards, do you mean they literally draw from the deck in some cases, or do you always choose for them? Which comes first, the card or the person you choose to kill?”

  Her strange eyes were fathomless. “The dark lord chooses, Sophia, you know that.”

  Her gaze held mine, hypnotic, like a snake. For the first time, I wondered if there was some way to purposefully pull information from her, using my abilities, without letting her inside of my head any further than she already was. Rick’s voice echoed in my head, urging me to embrace my ability.

  Her mouth stretched into a wide grin as she read my mind. “You’re not strong enough to do both. Which will you choose? Keeping me out, or getting inside?”

  My turn to ignore her question. “So, what symbol did the Hanged Man hold for this dark haired woman?”

  “The Hanged Man does depict a man, strung upside down from a wooden beam. Or a cross, if you prefer. It symbolizes not death but martyrdom, or a suspension of some kind. Such as a suspension of belief in order to achieve sainthood. That was the meaning of the card for Mary. I crossed the street that afternoon, my nerves singing after a long time of disuse. She told me her name after I introduced myself and the sound of it zapped me like an electric shock, I felt the dark lord’s satisfaction burn in my veins like good liquor. This was the perfect raven for our next sacrifice, his sibilant whisper echoed through my ears. I invited her to the burger shop, offering to make her a milkshake. I said I didn’t know many people and thought it would be nice to have a friend to hang out with. I was pathetic, and perfectly believable. She said she’d come by on Friday afternoon. I left, not wanting to push my luck, or creep her out. Plus, I had some preparations to make.

  She showed up at the burger place on Friday like she promised. I got her the milkshake I’d promised and we chatted in between customers, getting to know one another. She confessed quite a few things to me, did Mary. I showed her a couple of things, too. Show and tell,” Catherine winked.

  “What do you mean? Like...witchcraft things? Like you did with Melissa Anselme?”

  “Yes, like ‘witchcraft things’,” she mocked. “I turned the lights off in the diner and then back on again. You know, the weak parlor tricks you can do. She was impressed though. People are so stupid. They need proof of something before they believe it’s possible. Mary was not a young, foolish girl but she was no different. She wasn’t a young girl, but a mature woman and she’d begun to question her religion. Guess what it was?”

  I shook my head, not wanting to play games.

  “Spoil sport,” she pouted. “Fine I’ll tell you. She was Catholic! It was too rich. But her faith was wavering. She was like a fallen woman. I changed all that quickly,” she smiled her cat-like grin, full of herself. “She called me a witch and a demon, insisting on praying for my soul, right there in the burger shop. Down on her knees, worshipping some white, long-haired hippie dude that never helped anyone, far as I can tell.”

  “Gee Catherine, didn’t that hurt? Even burn a little, praying to God?”

  “Very funny. Don’t you listen? I’m not evil. I’m not Satanic or any of that shit. I’m merely the darker side of the natural world.” She licked her lips and leaned forward. “Want to know how I killed her?”

  “Not especially,” I replied, knowing she was going to tell me no matter what I said.

  “I lured her to my trailer with the promise of some good old-fashioned prayer,” she grinned. “Mary was gonna save my witch ass single-handedly and help me enter the kingdom of heaven. She kept on praying when we got there, on her knees in the living room until the sleeping pills I fed her in that milkshake kicked in. I tied a rope around her ankles so I could hang her upside down but couldn’t really think where to do it until inspiration struck. The Catholic Church of course!”

  “W
ait a minute...you hung her upside down inside a church? Where did you do this, in Tyrone?” “Don’t jump ahead!” Catherine snapped at me. “I wanted to hang her from the Catholic Church but the stupid priest lives there and besides, it’s practically in the middle of town. I would totally have gotten caught. I was lucky she’d driven to the burger shop in a car, one of those Outback things, so I could stash her in the back of it and take her someplace secluded.

  "Tyrone is famous for railroads, so I thought I’d do something with that. I hauled her out to one of those railway bridges and tied her feet to the track. I had to do the circle and blood ritual on the tracks, which sucked. She started to come around so I acted quickly, slitting her throat with my big knife and then throwing her over the side of the bridge. I peeked over the edge and watched her for a while. She hung there bleeding out and twitching for a really long time. Then I left. I assume, when the next train came, the rope was severed by the wheels and her body dumped into the water underneath the bridge. Only ‘God’ knows where she is now,” Catherine finished, her pleasure in her own pun a horrible thing to behold.

  13-Death

  “As usual,” the Raven Witch Killer continued, “I stole the car and got the hell out of there.”

  “Worried about God’s retribution?” I asked facetiously.

  “You wish!” she crowed. “I don’t know how people like you and I can ever embrace a god like that. Maybe you’ll tell me when we’re done here.”

  “I doubt a degenerate like you could understand,” I answered. I was having trouble with that belief myself, trying to reconcile a deity who let this woman live. In spite of myself, I was beginning to embrace the idea the other part of my legacy, the wilder side that did not demand rhyme or reason for the forces of nature or the presence of evil, was maybe the right side. I knew she could hear my thoughts and for once I didn’t care. I could hear her too, now. Her happiness buzzed in my brain like a sickness until I concentrated and shut her out.

  “Questioning your faith is not shameful, Sophia. All humans suffer from an existential need to believe in something greater than themselves. That I have found proof of my dark lord’s love should not sway another from their path. I chose you because I knew you were like me, and I refuse to be judged by a lesser creature than my own peer. Whichever side you choose, now, makes no difference. You have the same power I do, and you believe even if you choose not to admit it, therefore you are fit to be my judgment and that means I have nearly won my goal.”

  “I judged you long before now, Catherine. I judged you to be an evil bitch who deserved to burn in hell for what you’ve done.”

  “Heaven and hell are Christian concepts,” she replied, sounding disappointed in me. “I seek only true judgment. You, as my peer, as a fellow witch, will provide it, so my work may then be presented to my dark lord as completed and so my name will live on to bring honor to Him.”

  “You won’t get that from me. I’ll write your story and then everyone will forget you once the initial horror has died out. You’ll just be another psychotic raving lunatic in time.”

  She gritted her teeth. “We’ll see.”

  “So what’s next? If I’m guessing correctly, it’s the Death card, am I right?”

  She sat in stony silence. I said, “Actually, I believe that card only signifies true death if it’s in the reversed position. In the upright position, it can signify rebirth or some sort of transition...”

  She refused to speak, staring at the walls of her cell. Shit. I had to get her talking again and in light of her recent diatribe about what I was and what she was, I came up with an idea on the spot. I knew the surveillance camera was watching and so did she, but I leaned forward anyway and touched the handcuffs on her wrists, half convinced it wouldn’t work. But it did. Her handcuffs unlocked themselves and fell away; I felt a surge of sheer power course through me and I was elated at my success in controlling my ability to perform a task on purpose. Catherine rubbed her wrists and stared hard at me before breaking into a huge, delighted smile, winking at me like I was her fellow conspirator.

  I heard the guard gasp in fear and amazement at the cell door, heard him muttering urgently into his radio and knew our time was short for the day. Brad would be down here any minute to put the cuffs back on and haul me out of there. The door guard would never come in here by himself, unless she was killing me. It was against the rules. Brad would be pissed.

  “Naughty, naughty, Sophia,” she teased with a gleam in her eye. “Let me tell you quickly about Death before Daddy comes to spank you. The raven chosen to honor the Death card, in the reversed position, I might add, as a small child. A baby, actually.”

  I closed my eyes in pain. “Look at me!” she hissed, grabbing my arm. The contact joined my consciousness with hers and I saw through her eyes how the Death card’s promise had been fulfilled.

  A small, innocent baby, chubby arms and blue eyes stared at me/Catherine from its little seat in the grocery cart. Catherine’s/my arms reached for the baby and snatched it from the cart, tucking its soft green blankets around it and holding it tight to her/my chest. The mother’s back was turned, the stupid woman staring at a selection of deli meats and paying no attention to her baby. One minute there, gone the next. Leaving the grocery store, a sign reading “Hunker General Store” dwindling behind us, we sped away to the forest green Outback waiting in the parking lot. We placed the baby on the passenger’s seat and arranged the seatbelt around its tiny body. It wasn’t apparent if the baby was a boy or a girl. I could feel Catherine’s thought that the dark lord demanded innocence and so she took it, no matter what form it was. We drove to a secluded spot behind a rest stop just off the freeway and entered a wooded area. We cast the circle with handfuls of salt from our pocket and blood from our wrist, and placed the baby in the middle. It waved its chubby arms and legs in the air, tiny fists clenched.

  I felt tears streaming down my cheeks and a burning pain where her claw-like hand clenched my arm, forcing the link between us to remain open so I could see what she saw. My mind rejected the images painted in my brain, vehemently denying what I was seeing. I heard a commotion at the cell door as if from far away but I was hypnotized by her eyes and something inside me screamed that I must bear witness to the baby’s death.

  The infant began crying, the cooling June air cold on its fragile skin. I cut my arm in a different spot to get the blood flowing again, Catherine’s arm, and drew the raven symbol on the baby’s chest. It liked that, smiling at me with its wide eyes and toothless grin. I cooed at it for a moment with Catherine’s voice before covering its nose and mouth with my hand, cutting off its air. The baby struggled briefly, like a bird with a broken wing...straining for air, trying so hard to live...

  Our connection was broken when Brad’s voice shouted, “What the fuck? Let her go you sick bitch!” He reached her side and she reared back, letting go of me and appearing ready to strike at him like a snake. He was taking no chances. He hit her with a Taser, stunning her so that the two officers charging in behind him could re-cuff her.

  He turned to me, eyes blazing with fear and fury. He didn’t say anything to me. He hauled me from my chair and half-carried me to his office. I knew he was enraged at the risk I’d taken, possibly even afraid of what I’d done. He was shaking, the hair on his muscular arms raised where his white dress shirt was rolled up. He stared at me like I was...well, a witch. Something evil, to be feared.

  I was still crying for the loss of the baby’s life, the shared memory of its death galloping through my brain over and over again. My abilities were growing too strong since I’d acknowledged them, or she was much stronger than I’d thought. Either way I’d seen too much. The fear and anguish in Brad’s eyes were too much to bear. I sank to the floor and buried my head in my arms, dying inside.

  After a moment, I felt his hands on me, gathering me in his arms. He told his staff he was leaving early and to call him no matter what if anything untoward happened, holding me upright and stu
ffing me in the rental car. He drove me to the hotel, asking me questions and peering at me with that worried look on his face. I was so tired, though, I wanted to sleep so badly that it was hard to concentrate on his words.

  He led me up to the room, letting us in. He undressed and bathed me, then wrapped me in a blanket from the bed. “Sophia? Where’s your phone sweetheart?”

  I gestured vaguely to my purse. He fished it out. I dimly heard him talking to someone but couldn’t muster the will to eavesdrop. He hung up and put the phone aside, undressing quickly and joining me on the bed. He pulled me against him, his back resting against the headboard. “Sophia,” he whispered in my ear, “come back to me.”

  I wanted to but something about what happened between Catherine and I had drained me completely. The look I’d seen in his eyes sent me from one extreme to another, from anguish and fear to heartbreak and dejection. I couldn’t seem to swim my way out of any of it.

  Brad started talking to me about his life. We’d had long, heartfelt talks before but this was different, deeply personal. He told me about his childhood, a happy one, and his parents, who loved each other until they died.

  “They were older when they had me,” he explained. His voice was soothing, his chest rumbling beneath me. “I was a surprise.”

  He kept talking until I felt something inside me break free from its moorings, no longer bound by the crushing weight of the baby’s death and the crevasse in our relationship.

  “How did they die?” I asked finally. He clutched me tighter but didn’t otherwise acknowledge my return to the land of the living. “Old age, actually. They died in bed, first Mom and then Dad a couple weeks later. They’re buried out on the property. They loved that place so much, I had to get permission but that’s where they are.”

  “What did you do after they died?”