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There is scarce knowledge to be found in Wendi and mine choice of studies, most learning comes from crude experimentation. Very few tomes survive to this day from antiquity concerning any serious research into the black arts. Most works, I am sure, have been destroyed by religious fanatics throughout history and burned as soon as they were discovered. This repulsive lack of knowledge lessens us all since this huge hole in our understanding has been superstitiously labeled as heresy and diabolic by adherents of religions that do not speak the true nature of our universe to its followers. Just as none can now deny that the world is indeed round, much to the sadness of those who have been tortured, persecuted and executed for going against the church’s teachings, so have those that are unwilling to admit that other worlds exist all around hounded us whenever we spoke of them.
By the time we were in high school, Wendi had concluded that her mother’s spirit had moved beyond the world of restless spirits to a place where she could not be reached. In Wendi’s cosmology, she has come to believe that our world is surrounded by the limitless nether of the spirit world and this is itself the true body of all creation. That our universe and multiple others float in that nether, like bubbles in Swiss cheese. Call this an example of quantum physics, if you will, that alternate worlds are real and separated only by the thin, yet infinite, layer of space that is composed of the single dimension where the dead are pulled into before moving on to their next destination.
If one is to believe that the universe is infinite, then one must also come to the conclusion that every possibility -no matter how outlandish or remote the possibility- is not only realized but has happened -and will happen- an infinite amount of times. To say there may be a million to one chance that life as we know it may be possible amongst the stars is to say that there are millions of planets with life. In an infinite universe, all things are not only possible, or probable, but do indeed exist in reality. We have simply not advanced our knowledge far enough to prove it.
Thaumaturgy, evocation and the art of summoning is a delicate and fickle science, one that demands exactness in all things. While the pentagram may be thought of as a spiritual base from which to start, all of the intricate symbols and designs that are contained within it are the language of the spell itself. The details of the symbols are akin to the pictograph characters in Chinese, with one small mistake in the drawing of the intricate words leading to opposite meanings. Unlike hieroglyphics, there is no body of research to fall back upon. The complete ‘alphabet’ itself is not yet known, unlike the Aztec or Mayan languages that have been pieced together through observation and long study of its many examples on temple walls and carved into stonework. Mistakes are bound to happen and with something as inherently dangerous as what Wendi is driven to attempt, the results can be fearful indeed.
Before you go and think my statements folly and the ravings of a mind beset by insanity, I can offer at least some physical proof with another ritual that did not go as expected.
You may remember a number of years back the reports of a severely misshaped and malformed being who was only recently discovered after committing an atrocious act of murder. I can understand the scientific community, with its closed minds, thinking that the creature is an unfortunate representative of the human race but this is not so. The thing, although rudimentarily resembling a humanoid form, with a head, torso, two arms and two legs is not the result of an incestuous relationship or a pitiful being wracked and ravaged by several unfavorable genetic mutations. The vile and crazed being was not forsaken and cast off by its parents, abandoned in the deep woods and supposedly brought up by wild animals or kept in chains secretly in some basement or back room until it made good its escape as rumors and suppositions claim. It is instead a thing that escaped into our world in one of Wendi’s last attempts to bring forth her mater’s ghost.
We were but fourteen at the time, in the first semester of ninth grade, and had moved our sorceries to an indoor location inside one of the long abandoned farmhouses that are sporadically located throughout both ours and the neighboring counties of our state.
Wendi is a studious and meticulous researcher, regardless of her grades in the mundane and near worthless education that modern public schools provide. Her failures never seem to disappoint her. Instead, her unfathomable craving for erudition in the forbidden arts leads her to glean a wealth of useful data from them, they are but learning experiences to her.
At some point in her investigations, Wendi realized that pentagrams cannot only be used as focuses for spell-craft or used as runes of protections, but they can also be used as the platforms for teleportation. When Wendi told me that since her quarry would not come to her, that she would attempt to physically take herself to her quarry and move mountains to do so if need be, I was astounded by the sheer audacity of her plan.
To hear what she intended made me anxious and terrified me, if something went wrong with that experiment not only could we have died but we could have ended up forever lost in a foreign and possibly hostile unknown world, trapped with no way back. I would not let my fear of what we were to attempt get in the way though. If Wendi could bravely endeavor to enter into the mysteries of the universe, I was resolved to steadfastly stand by her side and assist her however possible.
In the dilapidated ruins, Wendi made her detailed and meticulous occult symbols. The process took days of finicky and scrupulous work; no longer could she use chalk. Instead, she had to paint the floor in excruciating exactness and hope that her work was sufficient for what she dared.
This was also the first time I witnessed her using sacrifices to power her spell. While sage burned at the five points of the unholy star and I called out verses in the language of the dead, Wendi slit the throats of two roosters. Purposefully she let the thin gouts of the bloody arterial spray of her victims spurt beyond our pentagram as she called to the shades of the dead to accept her payment and transport us to the place where her mother’s wraith resides.
Then when the walls of the room, dark and completely obscured by the heavy smoke were no longer visible, Wendi invoked Charon and tossed a single copper coin into the thick mist.
Though the coin should have struck the weathered wall of the old farmhouse with a solid sound, incredulously there only came a long silence followed by a barely audible splash as if the offering had fallen into the river Styx itself.
A momentary dizzying rush overcame me then and fear boiled up within me. Vertigo and nausea struck me as I felt the distinct sensation of rapid movement and sudden displacement. The extreme discomfort I felt made me reach out to Wendi then, to steady myself lest I fell. Wendi smiled at me, in the mists, her face seemed to loom and her smile appeared twisted by an intelligent madness as a fierce light burned in her eyes that made me tremble.
Not once did she stop in her evocations and after another heartbeat passed, something presented itself just beyond the borders of our sight.
Another horror had come to us and as it came closer, it also parted the shroud of smoke and the once formless figure took on its repulsive details.
Whatever the awful thing was, it was not human except in its most basic form. It walked upright as men do and had arms and a head in the appropriate positions but that was where the similarities ended. The first thing I fearfully noted was its naked flesh was the pale grey color of ash. It wore no clothes and was hairless but for a few long and scattered clumps of hair that sprouted from its overly small skull. The disgusting abomination was quite obviously male and seemed unaware of any shame at its exposure. It was an abnormally emaciated horror with ribs, hips and every one of its bones protruding, as if it were on the blade edge of starvation. Its limbs were elongated with arms that ended in protracted fingers that dragged along the ground as it loped dreadfully towards us.
When it opened it mouth in a guttural and savage screech it showed rotted and black teeth in a mouth that was far too wide. It was obvious that there was no intelligence within the damned thing, as its misshapen cranium was no larger than a chimpanzee’s.
When the vile creature rushed us and smacked with a bone-jarring thud into the insubstantial shelter wall of the pentagram I reflexively screamed in terror, momentarily forgetting the safeguards Wendi had put in place.
Wendi wasn’t fazed by the thing that had appeared and kept calling for the wraith of her mater to appear before her. All that came forth were more of the hideous beings, both male and female and they clawed and tried to bite their way through the barrier like animals. Not one time did I hear an utterance that could have been a word; they were clearly a race of animals that only resembled us in basic form. The harsh sounds that did issue forth from their unnatural throats were but high pierced shrieks and howls that resembled no human voices. They slowly surrounded us in that murky world and my fear of them overwhelming our protective circle made me visibly tremble and sweat.
My normally implacable instructress herself started to become visibly upset, she tensely confided that she could not sense her mother’s presence at all on this foreign and alien plane of existence and I was relieved when she began casting the enchantment that would take us back to our own world.
Two more sacrifices and another coin tossed to Charon and the sense of speedily falling through the void struck us again.
As the smoke finally cleared and the familiar and reassuring rotting walls of the ramshackle house regained distinctness we were both startled to find that we weren’t alone. One of the repulsive horrors had somehow managed to travel the nether between the worlds with us, much to our shock and astonishment.
When the impure and polluted beast confusedly stumbled in its unsteadiness at being transported between its world and ours and stepped into the formerly protected radius both Wendi and I bolted towards the door and out of the neglected building without looking back. With the spell complete, the shield was no more, and nothing stood between it and us. The only redeeming quality that afforded us our escape from the monstrosity was the fact that it was lost and bewildered as to what had happened to it.
As we both made our way home, as speedily as the dark night allowed our feet to fly, we heard the distant but distinct and shrill screams of rage and disorientation that could only have issued from the vile beast that we had unknowingly brought forth.
It was that night that I finally realized that I loved her. She was a worker of dark miracles that could make me shiver with fear one moment and the next make me happy just to share her presence. I admired her intellectual capacity and understanding to the point of worship and empathetically sympathized with her for all the hardships her wondrous life brought her. I had never thought of myself as lesbian, as I was always desirous of the attentions of boys then and still am, but my true heart belonged to her forever since that night.
For two days afterwards, we heard nothing of the beast and we hoped to never hear of it again.
Wendi was pouring over what we must have done wrong in those two days and she had finally come to the conclusion that her mother’s spirit must have been reincarnated, which could be the only possible reason Wendi could not evoke her spirit. The sorcery didn’t fail because of any mistake she had made in her calculations but went chaotically awry due to a lack of a manifest target. With a great sigh that made me emphasize with her sorrow she finally gave up on the quest that had filled her every waking moment.
She didn’t quit on her research into the occult, far from it. Instead she simply moved on to her next dark obsession.
When word came to us from the local news station of a terrible death we immediately, and rightly, feared the worst. A child had been abducted and murdered, his discovered remains having been nauseatingly cannibalized. The culprit was easy to track and when the horrid criminal was found hiding in the nearby woods and captured, it caused a huge commotion.
From all descriptions, it could only have been the abhorrent thing that Wendi and I brought back through the void. Of course, none of the minds that study the thing can imagine it belonging to any other species besides mankind. Without knowledge of other worlds, dimensions or planes of existence, one may easily mistake the creature for a horribly mutated and insane human that could only have been the result of genetic damage and a biology gone terribly wrong.
That they have taken the demonic thing and locked it away in Eloise Psychiatric Hospital for further examination and safekeeping surprised me. That is still thrashes, howls mindlessly against the walls of its solitary confinement, and viciously attacks its keepers whenever the chance arises, according to those that work there, surprises me not. Instead of showing the murderous animal mercy and empathy, they should have euthanized it.
The odd thing is, even with this confession of the reality of the monster’s origin, I seriously doubt that any will believe me. I suspect that if I were to be ever apprehended again that I would share a padded cell adjoining the foul beast and shown much less benevolence. I will undoubtedly be labeled as one of the criminally insane and for this reason, I state my warning again. I will not hesitate to kill (and that is one of the least of the horrors I can inflict upon you) anyone that tries to stand in my way.