The Hungry Dead (20 page)

Aunt Edna had turned to the kitchen cabinet and opened the doors so she could reach to the highest shelf. She brought out a large flat tray and held it so Cynthia and the boys could have a look. The tray contained four gingerbread bunnies with white button eyes and frosted whiskers, and each bunny had a hard-boiled egg for a stomach. The children eyed their pregnant rabbits with amusement, then squinted at each other and laughed and giggled.

“Thank you, Aunt Edna! Thank you, Uncle Sal!”

Cyrus was the only one who forgot to say thank you. His mouth hanging open, he kept ogling the pregnant rabbits as if he half-expected them to get up and run away.

“
I
don't want any thanks, kids!” Uncle Sal exclaimed. “I don't do any of the baking around here; I just bring home the dough.” He winked and all the adults laughed, but the children didn't get it.

Aunt Edna's holiday meal was lavish and delicious. As on all holidays and special occasions, each of the children was permitted to have a shotglass of home made wine as an appetizer. Cynthia sipped hers cautiously, but, even so, her eyes watered and her throat burned, but she continued to sip it a little at a time till she got sort of used to it, and when it was gone her cheeks glowed and her belly felt warm and good. Luke and Abraham were able to drink theirs faster, almost like grown-ups. Then Aunt Edna served mashed potatoes and gravy and thick slabs of juicy turkey; pickles, celery, olives, and radishes; hot buttered cornbread, green beans, cole slaw, and root beer. And the grand finale—cherry pie topped with vanilla ice cream.

Cynthia and her brothers, all sitting on one side of the large dining table, leaned back and compared bellies. “Look at all of you!” said Uncle Sal. “Swelled up like four little basketballs! I think I'll take you outside and dribble you. You first, Cynthia!”

“I bet you couldn't dribble Cyrus,” Cynthia said. The grown-ups thought this was cute and got a laugh out of it. Cyrus smiled lopsidedly, aware somehow that he had become an object of attention.

“This one's going to be the brains of the family,” Uncle Sal pronounced, meaning Cynthia, and she glowed inwardly, embarrassed yet pleased by the compliment.

“Now, Uncle Sal and I have got more surprises for you,” announced Aunt Edna. She trotted up the stairs and stayed away for a few minutes, which seemed, to Cynthia and the boys, like an excruciatingly long time. But at last her high heels clicked into the room and she was laden with packages, one for each child.

Cyrus opened his first, and his present turned out to be a big toy shovel with a long wooden handle and shiny steel blade: a good shovel, one you could actually dig with, not one that would bend or break easily. Cyrus smiled his lopsided smile.

The boxes given to Abraham and Luke were quite large, and when opened were found to contain three steel traps for each boy, given to them by Uncle Sal, who had not forgotten his last year's promise to teach them how to set bait and trap wild animals like rabbits, raccoons, and possums. “Maybe you'll even catch the Easter bunny—who knows!”

Cynthia laughed. Luke and Abraham were thrilled, even though at first they may have been a trifle disappointed that they were considered too young to be given BB guns. Luke was ten and Abraham was eight.

Cynthia opened her package and found a shovel just like Cyrus'. She liked to get toys instead of dresses all the time and loved her Aunt Edna and Uncle Sal for understanding this. Immediately, her head was filled with visions of using her new shovel to dig a pirate cave such as the one she had seen in her first-grade reading book. Or, better yet—if Mama would teach her some magic, maybe she could find some buried treasure, like Grandpa Barnes, the Cunning Man.

“Is there such a thing as a Cunning Girl?” Cynthia asked. “Because I'd like to be one when I grow up.”

Everybody laughed except Papa.

“It would be called a Cunning Woman,” Mama told Cynthia. “And you can't just simply decide to become one—you have to be born with the magic in you. It would have to come to you through me and Grandpa.”

Papa began shouting. “Damn it, Meredith! If you keep on filling the kids' heads with that garbage, you're going to turn them into a tribe of lunatics!” He slammed his fist on the table so hard that the cups and saucers jumped and rattled.

Everybody was momentarily stunned to silence, even Mama, because Papa seldom showed such a violent outburst of temper.

The children couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. They couldn't help being thrilled and excited, even a little pleased, that they had had a man like Grandpa Barnes, so famous and powerful, and even possibly evil, in their very own family. It made them feel special, in a way. It gave them something to share and be proud of. And in their secret dreams they entertained obscure but enticing visions of worldly delights, fame, and riches that might lie in store for them someday, if they could truly inherit the powers of the Cunning Man and have a congregation of their own.

 

When Cynthia was nine years old, Papa went away on business and did oot come back. For a long time Mama would talk about his letters, making lighthearted small talk about what was supposedly in them, even though no letters actually came.

Mama began spending more and more time in the back room of her shop, poring over rare and expensive grimoires, books of magic, covering subjects such as divination, conjuration, and necromancy—the art of communicating with the dead. Something bad had happened to Papa, and the family knew it.

There was very little money coming in. People no longer wanted to come to Mama's shop after finding out that they had to wait impatiently at the counter or browse through the place unserved while Mama stayed in the back room, totally absorbed in her books. She began to hoard herbs, potions, occult works and ritualistic paraphernalia that might have been sold at a good profit. Papa had insurance, but it could not be collected until he was proven deceased or legally declared so at the end of seven years.

Sometimes when the children came home from school, or when they got up in the morning, the house would be full of the heavy, yet sweet, smell of incense mixed with candle smoke. Mama paid less attention to their meals, their grooming, and her own housekeeping. They had few friends at school or in the neighborhood. Other kids started picking on Cyrus with increased frequency, intensity, and nastiness. His sister or one of his brothers had to walk him to the bus stop each morning to see that he got off safely to his special school, and he had to be met again at the bus stop in the afternoon.

Desperate to help their mother in some way, Cynthia, Luke, and Abraham began working in the store after school and on weekends. This was partly because they didn't know what else to do with themselves; they felt like outcasts, rejected by the community. Many people referred to them as “the witch's kids” and either secretly feared them or openly made fun of them.

Working in the store, Cynthia began to read books on sorcery, spell-casting, and magic. She learned that a Cunning Man, like Grandpa Barnes had been, was in reality a white witch, with the ability to combat the power of Satan. But in the end, Grandpa Barnes had been overcome by a witch practicing black magic, as opposed to his own kind. According to Mama, in his old age he succumbed to a stroke, the product of an evil spell cast on him by a rival witch who had gotten a lock of his hair. He knew it was no use to struggle, for the rival witch had stronger magic, and he predicted the time of his own death down to the very hour and minute. Did this not mean, Cynthia pondered, that black magic must be stronger than the other kind?

She hated her father for leaving Mama. But she loved him, too, and wished he would return. Many a night she cried herself to sleep, hoping to see him bending over her in the morning, laden with the usual armloads of presents. Not having been raised in the ways of the church, Cynthia found herself “praying” to Grandpa Barnes to bring Papa back to her. The Cunning Man appeared to her once in a dream, but when she tried to talk to him he vanished and she awakened. Repeatedly dwelling upon the meaning of this, turning it over and over in her young mind, she was struck by a realization of what Grandpa must be trying to tell her—that he was not strong enough to help her and her own spiritual resources were not sufficiently developed to stay in communication with him.

Every time she had the opportunity, Cynthia studied her mother's library of modern and ancient witch's lore, much of it seeming weird and incomprehensible to her at first. But it began to flesh itself out with meaning, to become more meaningful and real to her than her daily chores. Because she herself was distracted, Mama did not notice her daughter's intense absorption in matters that did not concern the average nine-year-old. In the shop Meredith would hobble past Cynthia, eyes straight ahead, as if her mind was far off somewhere, her arms laden with tomes she was taking to the back room to study alone, while Cynthia engaged in her own studies behind the counter.

Neither mother nor daughter paid much attention to customers anymore, or seemingly to each other, as their lives went on amid an array of herbs, potions, amulets, Tarot cards, altar cloths, grimoires, and other such equipment. Luke or Abraham waited on the few people who came into the place, and played gin rummy, pinochle or double solitaire between customers. Cyrus was easy to handle; he could remain busy for hours, doing the same things with the same objects, over and over. His favorite playthings were such items as voodoo charms and witches' bottles from the merchandise in the store.

Late one evening at about midnight Cynthia was awakened by the odor of incense and flickering shadows cast by candlelight spilling into her room. Propping herself up on her elbows, she heard Mama's voice coming from somewhere in the house but could not make out the words. She tiptoed down the hall and saw what Mama was doing. Then she went to the boys' room and awakened them, her forefinger touched to her lips.

The children gathered around Mama at the dining table. She looked up at them but said not a word. To them she seemed uncannily serene, preoccupied, yet intense and commanding; her demeanor filled them with an unfamiliar solemnity and awe. She was wearing a black robe cinched at the waist with a gold cord, and around her forehead was a wide black ribbon with a name inscribed upon it in shimmering gold letters: TETRAGRAMMATON. From her reading, Cynthia knew this was the usually unspoken name of the Spirit of the Universe.

The dining table was a large round one, and over it, centered, Mama had draped a black cloth with a magic circle printed on it in gold, inscribed with mystical symbols and formulae. Inside the magic circle next to an ornamental copper incense burner there was an iron retort, or witch's bottle, supported on a ringstand over a lit candle, so that the substance being heated bubbled and seethed, transmitting its vapors throughout the semi-darkened dining room. The stench of urine, or something like it, was recognizable despite the efforts to overwhelm it with incense.

Cynthia realized that the words Mama was reciting came from
Lemegeton,
a medieval grimoire, the text of which lay open before Meredith at the dining table, which was now an altar.

“I conjure thee, Sheldon, my husband, the father of my children, that thou forthright appear and show thyself unto me before this circle, without delay.

“I conjure thee by Him to all creatures are obedient, whether alive or dead, and by this ineffable Name, Tetragrammaton Jehovah, which being heard the elements are overturned, the air is shaken, the sea runs black, the fire is quenched, and the earth trembles.

“I invoke and command thee, O Spirit, to come from whichever place in the world thou art. And give answer to my questions, answers that shall be true and reasonable. Come, then, in visible form, and speak that I may understand thy words!

“Come, visibly, before this circle, obedient in every way to my desires! By these holy rites, I conjure and exorcise thee, distressed Spirit, to present thyself here and reveal unto me the cause of thy calamity, where thou art now in being, and where thou wilt hereafter be.

“If thou dost not come, or disobey in any way, I will curse thee, and will cause thee to be stripped of all blessings and powers, and consigned to the bottomless Pit, where thou wilt remain until the Day of Judgment!

“I will cause thee to be bound to the Waters of Everlasting Flame, Fire, and Brimstone!

“Come, then, Sheldon, spirit of my husband, and appear before this circle, to obey me utterly!”

The children kept their heads bowed, afraid of what might happen—and yet desirous of seeing it. They wanted their magic to succeed in bringing a spirit into their midst. From time to time the smoke and the candlelight played tricks on their eyes so that something seemed about to happen. They thought they saw forms moving in the shadows. Cynthia was sure for a moment that her mother's magic was working. But eventually for the boys the excitement of anticipation wore off, their eyes began to go shut, their heads to nod. Cynthia, however, remained wide awake long after her brothers had crept away to bed, their mother not venturing to stop them.

“Why didn't it work?” Cynthia inquired at last.

Mama replied somberly, in a soft, persuasive timbre. “It may not work the way we would like it to. Magic does not always succeed completely, because there are sometimes strong forces to overcome. But if we have succeeded partially, if Papa's spirit is trying to reach us, we may get a sign. He might be trying to break through sinister, evil forces that are surrounding this family.”

“Why would they pick on
us?
” Cynthia asked, frightened.

“I don't know,” Mama replied. “Perhaps it has something to do with Grandpa Barnes. Perhaps the witch who killed him put a curse on him and his descendants.”