The Occult Persuasion and the Anarchist's Solution

by Lisa de Nikolits

  27. MARGAUX

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Graham and I were still at the hospital. We wanted to be there when Nancy woke up, but we had no idea when that might be.

  I went to grab coffees from the cafeteria. I was standing at the vending machine when I sensed crazy Nancy Senior next to me. I looked at the reflection in the vending machine and yep, there she was, with all her terrible beauty.

  “I don’t want any part of your damaged life,” I told her. “I was angry, yes. But I’m moving on, and I’m moving on without you.”

  Her face stretched wide like an elastic doll in a House of Horror carnival ride and her black mouth was dark as a cave. She screamed her silent scream, and thousands of tiny green worms poured out of her mouth and swirled around me, cloaking me with their sticky wet skin. My worst fear. Worms. I froze. I couldn’t scream or move. The worms like a cold, living, writhing, porridge, crawled all over me.

  “You’re not going anywhere without me.” Nancy’s voice was clear and loud inside my head. “You think you’ve dispelled your anger? You’ve dispelled nothing. Actions, sugar, actions. Actions speak louder than words.”

  “I emailed Adam. I made things right,” I muttered, addressing her less with my voice than my thoughts. “What else do you want me to do?” The worms were inside my clothes now, wriggling and squirming.

  “Sacrifice.” The word echoed. “I want you to sacrifice something dear to your heart.”

  “No. I won’t. It will feed you. I’m going to fight you. I’m not you. Yes, I was weak for a moment, and I gave in to hatred, but I’m not you.”

  I heard her mocking laugh. Then the worms became moths, tiny as dandelion seeds and as suffocating as a woollen blanket. So, I drew into myself as much as I could. I told myself they weren’t real, but they felt real. The moths fluttered around me, a malevolent cloud of evil intention, but I stood my ground, although my heart was pounding. My mouth was so dry, I feared I would choke. The moths became a black swarm of midges, closing in on me, filling my ears, my mouth, and my nose. I was going to choke to death. I could not breathe.

  And then, they were gone. There was nothing there. I took a cautious breath and tried to steady myself.

  “You gonna use that thing or not?” a man behind me said.

  I turned around, startled. “Sorry. You go first, I’ll wait.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He nearly pushed me aside. I waited until he was finished, and then I made two coffees and took them back to Graham. She glanced at me and immediately knew that I’d met up with Nancy again.

  “She hates me now. Whatever that lie was, about her wanting me to help her apologize, it was just a ruse. She wants a patsy to help vent her anger and I was there.” I told Graham about the moths and the worms and the midges, and she shuddered.

  “I am sorry. That’s so gross. But don’t worry, Trish will help us. You sit with Nancy, and I’ll give Trish a call and bring her up to speed. We need to see her as soon as we can.”

  I sat down, and shortly after she left, my phone rang. Part of me hoped it was Adam but another part of me feared that crazy Nancy had found a way to get inside my phone. But it was Tim.

  He sent me a text message with a single line: Found him.

  28. LYNDON

  MARTHA HAD LEFT ME at the wall. “Things can improve for you,” she’d said. And with that parting shot, off she went, that tall, grey-haired Amazon.

  I sat down on the grass and stared at the wall. How could things improve? Jason was dying. I kept trying to push the thought away, but it kept coming back. He had rescued me, and now he was dying. I’d be all alone. I had Queenie, that much was true. But little else. What would I do with the rest of my life? Was my work on this earth done? Was it time for me to die? Perhaps I should kill myself. I wasn’t suicidal, but what was the point of being alive? No one needed me, and I couldn’t stand being me. Everything was so uncomfortable. Queenie would go back to her original home, the world would carry on turning, and I would simply be dead.

  I lay back in the grass and put my hands behind my head. The sky was cloudless and alarmingly uniform. I searched for a small discolouration, anything to break up that monotonous blue, which echoed the bleakness inside my chest. My rib cage was supporting nothing more than a hollow man. I was nothing. Yes, I thought. I should kill myself. I would support Jason through this venture and his illness, and then kill myself in the least problematic way so as not to make things difficult for my family.

  But then, out of the blue, and I later amused myself with this pun, a contrail shot diagonally across the sky, marking it with a thick chalk line. And then another contrail came, and it intersected with the first one and stopped abruptly. The result was a cross. A cross? What did that mean? It had to mean something. I sat up. Only seconds before, I had been convinced that my life lacked any kind of meaning, and that the entire universe lacked meaning, and that the only solution was death. But now there was a sign. A sign that was telling me what? That I had meaning?

  I needed to see Jason. I leapt to my feet and scurried back to the motel and burst into the room. Jason and Sean were sitting on the verandah, watching a fiery sunset settle over the ocean.

  “Heya. Are you going to come to dinner with us, mate?” Sean asked. I was about to say that if Martha was going, then it was over my dead body. But before I could open my mouth, I remembered that Jason was dying. What kind of friend was I being?

  “Of course,” I replied, rallying cheer into my voice. “Where are we going?”

  “Amazing vegan place,” Jason said. “Who knew Tarcutta had such a variety of vegan places? We are going for Thai. Did you have fun on your walk?”

  “I saw a really depressing memorial wall for dead truckers,” I told them, pulling up a chair. “Then Martha came over and depressed me even more. She said there was a man following us. After she left, I lay down on the grass and thought about killing myself when two contrails made a cross in the sky. And that was when I realized I am being a poor friend to you.” I looked at Jason. “I am henceforth going to be a better friend.”

  “You’re fine as you are,” he said. “Don’t kill yourself until I am gone. I’ll send you a sign to tell you if the other side’s any good or if you should hang in here for as long as possible. Which might be the case, you know. You had a busy afternoon. What man? Who was following Martha?”

  I shook my head. “I didn’t ask her.” I didn’t tell him my theory that Martha hated all men except Jason.

  “I’m going to find her and ask her,” Sean said, and he left.

  “He gives credence to what she said?”

  “There are constant nutters out there, trying to shut down the anarchist movement,” Jason said. “Mostly retired policemen who never managed to catch us at any real crime during their careers and can’t give it up. It’s always worth checking out.”

  I felt terrible. When it came to Martha, I kept getting it all wrong.

  Sean came back with Martha in tow, and we moved the chairs until we were all sitting in a row with our feet on the railing, watching the sun.

  “Magnificent,” Martha said, and she was right. The sun in Australia was enormous compared to the one in Canada, or so it seemed to me. Of course, I knew it was the same sun, but this one was an angry ball of fire. I could practically see the flames coming off the surface and lashing out.

  “Who’s following us?” Jason asked once Martha was settled.

  “A very large man. A man who looks like he could be the incarnation of evil but most probably is not.”

  “Okay. But we need more that. Describe him with more of the usual kind of details like height and age.”

  “He was about sixty or older. He was shorter than me but not by much. He was as broad as he was tall, and he looked like he was a boxer or a bouncer who had melted around the edges. He had a lion’s mane of white hair and his skin was white, albino wh
ite, with a pinky-yellow tinge. He was a flat, even white, not like us with some darker areas than others, or patches of colour. He was so creepy. And his eyes were like black olives, and even his mouth was black, a Halloween-lipsticked black. I think he might have tried to smile at me and it was ghastly. He was ghastly. His face was like a floury moon and there were those two black olives for his eyes and two smaller ones for his nostrils,and then a black slash for a mouth.”

  “Anything else?” Jason asked, although I thought that was quite a lot.

  “He was wearing black.”

  “And he tried to smile at you. What do you mean he tried? Did he smile or not?”

  “It looked like he was making an effort because he wanted to, but it didn’t work and so he stopped.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “First at the shop, after Sean came to fetch me from his place, and later just near the memorial where I was talking to Lyndon.”

  I had wondered why she stayed at Sean’s and not at Jason’s, and then I realized it was because of me. I also wondered why Jason hadn’t told me about her, but then again, it wasn’t like he spilled his guts on a daily basis or was a contender for the chatterbox-of-the-year award.

  “Why do you think he looks like the incarnation of evil but most likely isn’t?” Sean asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’s just afflicted by his strange appearance. He looks like an enormous fleshy ghost. And he had extremely long eyelashes.”

  “You saw his eyelashes?” Naturally, I was the one to voice the objection.

  “You’d be amazed by what we humans see in a fraction of a second,” Martha said. “Yes, they were very long, girly eyelashes. And they were real, I could tell that.”

  “Was he wearing makeup?” Sean asked.

  Martha thought about that. “Maybe eyeliner. But I can’t be sure.”

  “We will keep a watchful eye out,” Jason said. “Let the sun lay its body to rest upon the water and we will go out and get dinner.”

  We sat in silence for the rest of the sunset, and I was sorry when the last tip of the great circle dipped below the horizon.

  I traipsed out after the others, the last in line, not looking forward to dinner during which I was sure that Martha would further attack me for my long list of failings. But I was wrong. She regaled us with tales of celebrity parents of her troubled schoolchildren and the evening passed in a chatter of good humour and excellent food. We went back to the motel and Jason left to share Martha’s room while Sean and I bunked together.

  “Martha does like you,” Sean told me through a mouthful of toothpaste foam. “She’s just putting you through your paces.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was the correct expression, but I knew what he meant.

  “I don’t care what Martha thinks,” I said, and Sean grinned at me, like yeah, right, and spat in the basin.

  “So this thing with sex with flowers,” I said. “Do you ever get it on with a bouquet?”

  “No way, mate. I’m not into orgies,” Sean replied, and he changed into a pair of plaid boxers. “And before you mock me, you should try it.”

  “Not likely,” I told him, but then I thought that at one point in my life, I wouldn’t have thought my current situation would be likely either. But sex with flowers? The odds were extremely slim.

  29. MARGAUX

  TIM SAID THAT LYNDON was on his way to Sydney. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t believe that Tim had found him so quickly. I had a sneaking suspicion that Tim had started looking for him shortly after we met, but that he’d been waiting for me to give him the heads-up to track him down for sure.

  But I couldn’t waste time thinking about Lyndon because Nancy woke up. We told her that Mite was safe with the neighbour and then Graham and I got going, to meet with Trish.

  It was early, not even nine a.m., and the day was going to be a scorcher. I would have loved to have a shower and a change of clothes, but we needed to see Trish as soon as possible. I could still feel the fluttering moths flaking their dandruff onto my skin, and those awful clammy, bug-eyed worms rubbing up against me. And how could I forget those suffocating midges flying up my nose and my mouth?

  As Trish welcomed us into her home, I thought, Just your average white witch. Her purple hair was Einstein-wild, and she was wearing blue-framed glasses, a tie-dyed skirt, and silver platform boots.

  I was apprehensive. The moth-cloak episode had scared the bejesus out of me, and I knew that Nancy’s power was growing.

  Trish took us to her back garden, and we walked through a spiral of stones to a table in the centre. There was a pitcher of water with slices of fruit in it: oranges, lemons, cherries. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was, and I gratefully polished off the first glass that Trish poured for me and sipped at the second.

  “Water is holy,” she said. “Merely by virtue of being water. Every time you take a drink of water, imagine the skies and the earth and all of nature that brings this magical elixir into being. And when you take a bath, thank the molecules that make up the droplets that cleanse and heal you.”

  I could see Graham looking at me questioningly, as if she was worried I would dismiss Trish as a flake and run out of the spiral without looking back. But I was so terrified of Nancy that I did as Trish said. I imagined the water blessing me and cleansing me of those awful moths.

  “Graham has told me all about your plight,” she said. “The demon has grown in power since we had lunch.”

  “Demon?”

  “Yes, a supernatural being that possesses a person, alive or dead and torments them. We will need to find the right spell to ground her power.”

  “What does she want? To possess me?”

  Trish shook her head. “She wants to do as much damage as she can, however she can. You will most probably end up dead if we don’t try to stop her. She’ll burn you out. She needs to go to hell and take up permanent residence there. That is her rightful place. A part of her wants to be there with her companions, so we will help her with that.”

  “Do you have a spell like that?” I asked.

  “Spells have the same basis,” Trish said. “Most magic can be worked with the same formula: ‘That which is above is the same as that which is below…. Macrocosmos is the same as microcosmos. The universe is the same as God, God is the same as man, man is the same as the cell, the cell is the same as the atom, and so on, ad infinitum.’”

  I was curious as to what was smaller than an atom, so I asked the question.

  “Oh, lots of things. Quarks, electrons, neutrinos. And then there is, of course, the Higgs boson particle which was fairly recently discovered.”

  “Of course,” I echoed, clueless.

  “Also known as the God particle. That’s its nickname. The God particle gives mass to matter. Some particles are responsible for giving matter different properties. The God particle fails to explain gravity, and there are gaps, but nevertheless, its discovery is remarkable. Not surprising if you recall what Christ said: ‘For by Him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible … all things were created by Him and for Him.’ That’s from Colossians chapter one, verse sixteen.”

  “You believe in God and Christ?” I was surprised by this, and she was equally surprised by my astonishment.

  “Of course I do. God, Jesus, the Universe, Buddha, Allah. They are all one and the same. They are all water. They are all us and we are them.”

  “And Nancy is a demon,” I added, wanting to realign her with the urgent matter at hand. “And I want to get rid of her.”

  “Not that easy to do,” Trish said. “If you recall the power of your anger when you opened the door to her, you will know the sheer force of energy that you felt at that moment. That kind of energy is hard to reawaken by whim or will.”

  She was right, and I felt dismayed. I’d been consume
d by a fury the likes of which I had never felt before. I had no idea how I could match that.

  “I see.” I was exhausted and couldn’t do anymore. “Trish, Graham, I think I need to go home, to my hostel, to rest. Is that okay? I don’t think waiting one more day will hurt anyone, do you? I can’t tackle this any further today. I’m spent.”

  “No worries,” Trish said, and it was funny, hearing the pukka Aussie saying coming from an actual Australian. “It will give me time to do more research. I’d like to suggest that we go to the Garry Owen House tomorrow night and conduct a spell there. We will need to be there for midnight. It’s a new moon, which augurs well.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Whatever you guys think is best. I’m beyond tired.”

  “We’ll chat about the specifics later,” Graham said to Trish as she helped me up. Even my legs were weak, and I felt rude rushing our meeting to a close, but I was shattered. All I wanted was have a shower, take a Xanax, and go to sleep. I didn’t want to have to think about any of this. Of course, a part of me just hoped it would all go away.

  Trish saw us out. I could hardly keep my eyes open on the way home. I remembered that Lyndon was on his way to Sydney, but I didn’t care. It had been a long two days, starting with the tarot card reading with Janet the previous morning, then meeting Nancy Junior, and staying overnight with her in the hospital.

  “You’ve been amazing,” I said, thanking Graham. She looked sheepish and uncomfortable, and I stared at her.

  “What’s going on?”

  “It fascinating,” she admitted. “I’d like to work it into a book, if you don’t mind? But if you do mind, I won’t.”

  “That’s all?” I laughed. “I really don’t mind. Knock yourself out. Let’s just try to get a happy ending for me, okay? No Exorcist or Poltergeist sequels!”

  She smiled and nodded before driving away. I walked into the hostel and remembered that Tim wasn’t there, and I missed him. He had texted me to say he was on his way home, and that he was following Lyndon and his crew. Lyndon was travelling in a rare and expensive BMW, along with the ex-punk rocker. The BMW was owned by a kid named Sean with too much money for his own good and a tall woman with steel-grey hair was travelling with them. Apparently, she and Lyndon were at loggerheads with one another, a conclusion reached by Tim via binoculars, and apparently by the manner in which the two backseat passengers put as much distance between them as they could, and hardly spoke. This made me smile. Good—someone who could challenge him. God knows, I had tried.