Link to Part Two : https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/x3t3gn/a_warning_part_two/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
High school was ever the crucible of teenage suffering and for Wendi and me, those four years became a never-ending persecution.
Our town is but a small community of farmers and rumors and gossip concerning my peculiar and enigmatic mistress abounds. It has always been known throughout the town that Wendi possesses ‘the sight’ and most openly profess a fear of her abilities, often to the accusations that she is a witch. That she has become one now isn’t relevant. At that time, she had never even seriously thought about witchcraft, her dabbling in necromancy and evoking taking all of her attention and concentration. It wasn’t until the eleventh grade that she attempted any sort of hexing or sorceries and those were attempts at revenge for the constant harassment and physical abuses flooded upon us. It was then that Wendi felt forced to fight back and she did it the only way she knew how. Wendi and I were never planning to use our arcane and forbidden skills upon the living. I contend that it is the sheer hatred shown towards us by the small minds in our rotten hometown that created us thusly.
With every passing school year the cruelty shown to us, and especially her, got progressively worse. In ninth grade, it was a complete ostracizing and public shunning coupled with nasty verbal insults. The following year, in tenth grade, the malice started to take a violent and degrading turn with tripping, shoving, hair pulling and minor fights becoming the norm.
It was then at the age of fifteen, that Wendi started digging deep into the occult world of Santeria. As I stated previously, her attraction to the forbidden and shunned disciplines grew seemingly exponentially. It started where she would spend hours searching the internet for any scrap of information that she could find on the subject. Pen and paper in hand she would excitedly jot down any of the Wiccan spells, charms or divinations that she could find for later experimentation. Many of those simple ‘white’ spells never properly satisfied her, but she was tenuous in her quest, refusing to let go of the subject until she could either prove or fully disprove the truth of her current obsession. She would relay to me her works and their results, lamenting the fact that she could accomplish very little indeed due to both her lack of materials and a proper formula for experimentation with.
Not all of her dabbling attempts while we were sophomores in high school were without results. There were a number of small successes that, to her percipient mind anyways, bore fruit and they were what kept her fanatically devoted to her nocturnal and secretive studies. Those trifling outcomes that she so desired kept her steadfast in the face of the vast majority of her dismal failures. It ostensibly appeared to me that the more she and I were hassled and ridiculed, simply for being whom we were, the deeper she delved onto those forbidden paths of knowledge.
By the eleventh grade, with the physical and verbal abuses continuing without pause, Wendi had finally worked on a formulaic approach to ‘blood magic’-i.e. sacrificial magic- that she was positive would work. Her scientific discoveries into the dreadful occult demanded a few components for assuring the sorcery would be successful. The first is a personal item from the curse’s chosen target, which could be anything large or small. The second component must be a piece of the victim’s body such as a lock of hair or fingernail clippings. The third, and hardest item to collect surreptitiously, is a few drops of blood or bodily fluid from the target of the hex. Lastly, the true and full name of the quarry is needed, but in this day that is easy as none hide their true names unless they become famous. All of these things are mandatory and must be ritualized within a two-dimensional geometric figure in the shape of a star with five points (otherwise known as a pentagram), and a sacrifice is essential to effect payment to the dark entities that would carry out her work.
It is Wendi’s dark theory that black magic is but a variation of necromancy and summoning that entices the more malicious of spirits to enter into a compact with the castor (or petitioner of spirits if you like). The blood and spilled life force of the sacrifice is but a fore payment to the wicked and malevolent wraiths, as they grow stronger when they have had a chance to feed off the soul that is released and trapped by the esoteric and arcane pentagram.
Once she had reached the point of testing her dread new knowledge she immediately, without any hesitation, began making preparations.
I watched mutely, experiencing a vicarious thrill and admiring her brazenness, as Wendi would produce a pair of trimming scissors and clandestinely cut locks of hair from those who tormented us whenever chance or fate seated them in front of her in class. Wendi even went so far as to gather disgusting used tissues from the trash cans when none were looking, adding them to the small but growing collection of discarded fingernail clippings, chewed upon pencils, discarded tubes of lipstick or anything else that contained traces of DNA for her forbidden forays into ‘blood magic’. Some items she collected were revolting to my eyes but Wendi stole them none-the-less. She would happily steal bloody and nasty soiled tampons and pads from the receptacles in the girl’s bathroom stalls, stating that they may fulfill two of the mandatory components, serving as both a former personal possession and a blood sample.
When she had at last collected what appeared to be nothing more than bits, pieces of disgusting trash, all meticulously kept in Ziploc bags, and labeled in perfect order, she began her tedious process of trial and error.
Wendi had already chosen her first target as it had then been but a few days past that Wendi had been assaulted and humiliated by a gang of thugs in lipstick. Even as but a young girl in elementary school, Deborah Hickson had shown the profound ability to shower profligately licentious insults at those she took any dislike towards, and Wendi was always a favorite target of her sharp tongue. Now older, bolder, and seeing Wendi and I as easy prey, she and her vile friends delighted in slandering us and taking the opportunity to knock us to the ground after delivering cruel slaps as they taunted and laughed at us. Deborah and her friends were at the top of Wendi’s list and they would all soon pay.
We conducted our clandestine endeavor in the abandoned farmstead we had previously claimed, making slight but imperative changes in the symbol’s exacting design. From her backpack, Wendi produced tallow fat candles, which produced thick and slightly disturbing scents when lit. Those strange candles were delicately placed in a circle around us at the very tip of each of the stars points. I watched, uncomprehending as Wendi wrote new ominous characters in chalk around a small bronze brazier placed in the star’s central body.
It took me many months of study to catch up to the level of knowledge she had concerning the demonic language back then and by the time I understood what she had done she had progressed even further down new paths of dark learnings. By the time she was dragged from the land of the living she was years ahead of my understandings.
She stopped then and instructed me in an incantation, a foreign string of words that I could hardly pronounce, so different and unnatural they felt to my tongue that it took me more than a few minutes before I could recite them to Wendi’s satisfaction. I know now that those Latin words which so confounded me at the time and their dreadful meanings, having later memorized the dead language for my own studies.
Once the spell was underway, with the lighting of a cloying and slightly nauseating stick of jasmine incense that added its odor to that produced by the candles, I was instructed to repetitiously chant. Wendi ordered me to not stop in my vocalizations until she had completed the spell, the look on her face compelling my compliance. As I started my mantra, Wendi directed me to keep a mental picture of Deborah, who was our spells target, firmly in the foremost of my mind, accompanied by the summoning of all the hatred that I had stored up towards the vicious adversary we jointly shared. Wendi’s dark eyes flashed with a fierce promise of retribution should I have failed in the duties set before me and I felt no small amount of fear into even my bowels under her stern gaze. As I spoke the difficult to pronounce words, she spoke words of her own.
Building a fire of dried twigs in the brazier, her words seemed to take on a life of their own -as if they were physical things and not mere utterances issuing forth from a human throat. To the small fire, she added powdered sulfur and ground coal, whose stench mixed with the odiferous aromas already present and threatened to make me gag reflexively.
From the depths of her worn pack, she brought forth hair, nail clippings and crumpled-up used tissues, all former parts of the soon to be cursed Miss Hickson’s body, to which she added to the fire that eagerly devoured them.
With a slight conspiratory smile towards my worried brow, she removed the next component from her overly worn pack. A pair of sunflower yellow panties, heavily stained with the unmistakable signs of dried blood, was ceremoniously added to the bright flames of the brazier. I knew that every woman has had such a thing happen to them, ruining many sets of undergarments and pants, even when protection was already in place. This repulsive item, surely stolen from the trash, would serve for two components and Wendi thought them a prize.
From a black velvet wrapping, a wickedly sharp ceremonial knife was removed and my breath momentarily caught in my throat. Wendi gave me a hard look and the light of the flames danced along the steel of the blade, reminding me of my duty. My eyes widened in supernatural fear as she held the sacrificial rooster, bound and gagged, up to the pitch-black sky, offering it to the spirits. Wendi had used animal sacrifices to empower her spells before but those spells were never meant to cause another person harm. This seemed very terribly different to me, as if we were crossing an unseen moral line that would mean our eternal damnation. Without hesitation, she drew the well-honed blade across the vainly struggling bird’s neck with such force that the head was nearly decapitated from its body. Even though I suspected such a heinous act was forthcoming, I was startled with the coldness Wendi displayed.
Bright red blood spurted and sprayed, sending a disgusting line of hot viscous liquid across our faces and clothes. Holding the limp body of the doomed animal over the intensely burning fire of the brazier, a torrent of lifeblood pulsed itself from the mortal wound and soon overwhelmed the blaze. As a thick miasma of smoke billowed from the red-hot bowl, a sudden chill breeze arose from the still night and snuffed out the flames of the candles without warning. Just as suddenly as the cold wind arose, it dissipated, leaving us in complete and utter darkness.
The following school day, tired, anxious and nervous, I half expected to be accosted and accused of the previous night’s immoral crime. Wendi, however, seemed to be of excellent spirits and was slightly annoyed at my less than enthusiastic attitude.
When the final period of that school day arrived, I was completely despondent of any result occurring due to our seemingly worthless hexing. I did not doubt in Wendi’s powers, I doubted that we had come up with the proper ritual. Wendi was a true Thaumaturgist; she had already shown me she could work true miracles with her repeated dread summonings. Wendi was fanatical in her belief the spell would work, almost insanely so, constantly reminding me that the spell would not activate until opportunity presented an appropriate condition to manifest itself.
Shortly after the last tardy bell rang, the algebra class settled down. Minutes passed as the teacher started to routinely take roll call when I felt Wendi’s black painted nails dig into my arm from her desk behind me, alerting me without words to what I would have otherwise missed, having been concentrating on hurriedly finishing the homework I had neglected.
Many students, in their boredom, made a game of flicking sharpened pencils upwards into the yielding ceiling tiles above them, scoring imaginary points whenever the impromptu missiles stuck and stayed. They often hung there until either gravity or the custodians removed them and they were present on that day, fatefully located directly above Deborah’s unknowing head.
I watched unbelievably, with eyes wide and mouth agape as one lone, yellow, number two pencil almost visibly vibrated as it hung directly over Deborah’s seat. I blinked, refreshing my focus, trying to find an explanation as to what was occurring, as none but Wendi and I seemed to notice. A draft possibly, maybe the cool breeze created by a nearby air conditioning unit caused the pencil to wriggle, I thought to myself.
As I watched, wondering and with my heart and breath caught up in my throat, the math teacher informed the gathered students of a pop-quiz. A communal groan went up from the class and Deborah’s response was to roll her green eyes and disdainfully look up to the ceiling, showing her exasperation at the unannounced test that was to be forced upon her.
In that exact moment, the needle sharp point of the pencil released itself from the tile and plummeted downwards, tumbling as it fell. With an unnatural speed and force, when the falling projectile was mere inches from Deborah, just as she was finishing her admonishing head motion and her eyes were looking straight up, it happened. Deborah didn’t have the time to blink. The only reaction she could make was an instinctive widening of her pupils as the wooden projectile, sharpened to a fine point, drove itself squarely and deeply into the center of her right iris.
A soft and revolting sound issued as the pencil ruptured and penetrated the orb of her eye, followed immediately by one of the most terrible screams of pain and horror that I had ever before heard in my then young life. Chaos ensued after that as the whole class turned towards the target of our revenge and witnessed her still screaming, with pencil speared and half buried into her ruined eye. Blood mixed with the thin watery contents of her now deflating sclera, dripped, and ran between fingers held tightly over the pierced and offended orb. Gasps and screams of the dismayed witnesses rang out, adding to the sheer pandemonium of the scene.
I was in too much shock at what had transpired, not a sound issued from me. I looked behind me at Wendi then and saw an expression of silent pleasure on her face, which reminded me of the expression of how ‘The cat that ate the canary’ must have proverbially looked.
I remember the math teacher standing transfixed, rooted in place with such a pained look upon his features that made one think he was about to have a heart attack right then and there. The first person to break free from the spell of shock and incredulity to rush to Deborah’s aid was one of the football ‘jocks’ whose size and strength massively outweighed his intelligence.
Amid cries of fright, the senior year linebacker did what his base instincts told him. He grabbed the quivering eraser end of the impaling item sticking from between gore-covered fingers and yanked it free. Too late the elderly teacher broke from his lethargy and shouted a stern warning for the lettered jacket-wearing athlete to touch not the wooden skewer, but the deed had already been done.
Deborah let loose another anguished cry as red tinged liquid squirted thickly with the hasty removal and she promptly passed out. As she found solace in unconsciousness and her body slumped heavily back into her desk, her hands slid away from the offended socket, releasing the pressure that was holding the now devastated orb in place. The ruined eyeball slid out, still dripping fouled and bloody fluids, coming to rest on her cheekbone and hanging tenuously at the end of optic nerves that should never see the light of day themselves. New cries of revulsion echoed throughout the enclosed room while a few of the more weak stomached students promptly vomited at the sight.
Wendi grabbed me and helped me gather my things before leading me out the door. People were in a mad rush to escape the room and even then the hall was filled with cries for help as curious staff and students were quickly filling the doorway and nearby hallway, crowding to see what all of the commotion was about.
Once we were well away from class, Wendi could no longer suppress the hateful laughter that was bottled up inside of her and I inwardly winced as she rejoiced.
By the end of our junior year, students started to fall ill with odd and rare maladies or suffered accidents, which resulted in large and small harms. All the while we, silently and covertly, laughed at their misfortunes.
Wendi had, by the twelfth and final grade of our public education, refined her formulaic approach to ‘blood magic’ to such a point that my iniquitous friend could do away with some of the materiel components and if need be, even use pictures cut from yearbooks to target our prey.
It took time for our oppressors to discover the connection between harming us in any way to the calamities that started befalling them. It was halfway through our final year of schooling that our subjugation and persecutions ceased, and that only happened after Wendi had become so proficient at the casting of curses that a handful had died horrible screaming deaths.
Fires of unknown causes broke out and burned a few to death, others had their lives snuffed out in terrible auto accidents that saw them beheaded or mutilated beyond recognition and a few simply sickened and then quickly perished. Once it became public knowledge that all of the horrific deaths and tribulations came within twenty-four hours of the victims assaulting us, people angrily called for police investigations into us.
We were never silly enough to work our dark voodoos in our own homes, there are no cryptic symbols drawn onto our bedroom floors and no sacrificial blood stains them. The clueless police force that relies solely upon modern theories of the world could find no evidence that we were in any way responsible, however coincidental the tragedies appeared. Besides, I suspect that even if they had discovered our dark secrets, that they could never have put us to trial us in a contemporary court. If they did so, they would quickly find themselves the laughing stock of the civilized world. None of the academic or professionals of today believe or hold any stock whatsoever in supernatural deviltries. Since sorcery is blatantly false, it is laughable to even attempt to charge someone with witchcraft. How little they know.
However, there lies a deep-rooted fear in many people’s hearts that lingers yet from our past. The truth of magic, voodoo and witchcraft is found in some form in every tribe, race and religion. Incontestably there must be some fact within all of those stories, fables and legends or how could a thing that never existed be so universally feared. I tell you now that black magic is real and I am not insane.
The town’s people knew what we were then, especially our classmates, despite the fact that they had no proof and could find none in the scientific community to listen to their fears. While they hate us for what we are capable of, they also fear us and never again did they dare to harass or interfere with us in any way.
It was only after everyone began to give us a wide berth and fearfully ignored us that we, for the first time in our lives, were able to do what we pleased. It was then that our relationship started turning sinfully amorous. At first it was just for show, for Wendi anyhow, it was simply for the shock value of kissing each other in public and openly and wantonly flaunting familiarity with each other’s bodies just to watch the confused mix of reactions in the boys that shared our classes.
We found it fun to dress as brazenly as we desired, as brazenly as we found we could, and finally show off our always previously hidden assets. Wendi found that their fear of us made them practically impotent and she greatly enjoyed seeing just how far she could push the boundaries before someone worked up enough courage to ask us to politely refrain from exploring each other’s bodies in our classes. What would have once gotten us suspended now only earned us a sheepish and apologetic request to stop, but only after we had reached getting to ‘third base’ with each other.
That we made all the boys, students and teachers alike, and even some of the girls jealous that they could now only watch us with no chance of sexually having us was a sweet revenge all its own.
Neither of us is ugly, not by far, and never were. Once we started using makeup as all the other girls our age had been doing for years, rumors started flying that we must have sold our souls to the devil himself for such a change to occur. Nothing could be further than the truth. Never before had Wendi and I had the confidence or sense of self-worth to wear anything but black and extremely unflattering and conservative clothing that did nothing to show our bodies. Neither had we ever engaged in going about in mascara or even lipstick, there was no point to it. We were shunned and forbidden young women who never had boyfriends and who had been completely ostracized since childhood. It was simply a case of us making over our appearances, going from plain and unexpressive girls who only wanted to be forgotten and left alone to the sensual women we really were.
It was with a delicious merciless teasing that saw all those young men that had only shown us aversion before suddenly transfixed by our displays. Those boys that had once openly mocked us now lewdly leered at us with lust-filled eyes and their faces revolved from hate to desire, only turning away shamefully when their female peers caught them openly ogling us.
We made a game of seeing how many male members of our classes we could made hard, laughing at them when they had to leave class with books over their groins or slightly bent over in an effort to hide their lust.
Once the novelty of it wore off after a few weeks, Wendi grew bored with the free shows, much to my secret dismay. I must admit, I never told Wendi to stop. By that time, I was deeply in love with her and relished the touch of her lips and hands upon my body. In fact, I instigated much of it hoping Wendi would fall in love, or at least to tempt her into making love, with me.
So great was our teachers trepidation of us that though we completely stopped doing homework of any sort and never did any of our assignments that every single one of our teachers gave us good grades and passed us. The school administrators and even the superintendent himself wanted to be free of us so badly that they quickly realized that to fail us would mean that we would have to repeat the twelfth grade and they would then have to suffer with our disruptive presence for another year.
Wendi enjoyed their fears and simultaneous desire. I enjoyed that they left us alone and granted us complete privacy even when we were in a room filled with thirty other students.
Even our parents have come to view us with dread angst. It was with a fearful respect that they began addressing us. Timid and terrified while speaking to us of their immense desire for us to be out from under their roof upon the day of our eighteenth birthdays. Nothing else mattered to them concerning us. Not once did they mention Wendi and mine’s burgeoning sinful relationship that they, and the whole of the town, were quite aware of. Our abashed parents had clearly decided that it would be better if they did and said nothing that would potentially upset us -just as the rest of the village had.