The Necromancer (13 page)

She fl oated and separated, then all at once sprang out of herself. She rose up higher and higher until her breasts, nose, and knees bumped into something that prevented her from going any farther. She opened her eyes and found herself facing the ceiling. She pushed off it, her hands sinking slightly into the wood, and turned around. Beneath her, she saw her body, still as in death, fl anked by Ambrose’s and Jessica’s bodies. Below, they were also separating from their bodies.

They were transparent and radiant in the dark but otherwise every bit the image of their corporeal selves. As they rose up toward Susanna, she noticed a thin silver cord running from Ambrose and Jessica’s material bodies to the bellies of their subtle ones; the same kind of cord running up to Susanna from her own body.

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She panicked and at once plunged headlong back

toward her body. Ambrose was quick to react and seized her by the wrist before she could complete her descent.

“Fear not, Susanna,” he said. “All is well. We are away to the Sabbat.”

Susanna was too dumbfounded to reply. Ambrose

held onto her wrist tightly, and the three of them soared through the roof and into the sky. The terrain rushed beneath them as they fl ew eastward. Trees, hills, and houses gave way to the ocean; the ocean soon gave way to beaches, trees, and mountains. The whole journey could have taken no longer than a few minutes, and now they were at the top of some mountain range somewhere in what Susanna supposed might be Europe.

They were still in the material world, but now the mountains were changing. They looked different somehow. Vegetation, earth, and rock were subtly taking on other characteristics, becoming darker yet more radiant, more vibrant.

Susanna suddenly realized that, although the three of them didn’t appear to be, they were rising. She couldn’t see it, but she felt it. They were rising, but the mountains weren’t any farther below them than they had been when they arrived here just seconds ago. It wasn’t farther away, but they weren’t the same mountains anymore, either. Strange animals and vegetation replaced their counterparts; the mountains’

confi gurations were no longer the same.

They began to slow down. A lambent light began

to fl icker on the far side of one of the valleys. They fl oated toward it. The rising stopped. The light grew larger and brighter as they approached it. As they fl ew closer, they could hear the growing din of cacophonous music, revelry, and suffering. Trumpets blared; horns squealed; men, women, and children laughed, moaned, giggled, and cried. And there were beastly sounds: animals cavorting, squawking and howling in the wilderness.

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They set foot in the woods just outside the perimeter of the revelry and bore witness to all the wondrous horrors and hideous delights which awaited them within.

Witches and warlocks of all ages, races, and sizes—all naked—danced frenetically around a large, blazing pyre.

Everywhere there was bare fl esh. Those who weren’t engaged in the dance were partaking of much less innocuous acts, acts of debauchery, perversion, and sin. All conceivable deeds of depravity took place amongst the frantic pushing throng of revelers. The fattest witches took to fl ight with several of the demons and created revelries of their own. The marriage of pain and delight was testifi ed to by the groans, whimpers, and laughter of the celebrants. Men, beasts, and demons raped, sodomized, and punished women and each other. Women pleasured themselves, their attackers, and each other with glee.

Excrement was smeared over the buttocks and bodies of all and eaten as a foul and sensual sacrament.

Jessica couldn’t contain herself. She had to join in.

She looked up at Ambrose anxiously as if for permission.

He nodded, a small smirk peering out from behind his beard, and she sprinted toward the midst of all those bodies. It wasn’t long before she was pounced on and violated. First, by a swooping demon whose web-like body was devoid of all extremities except a large erect penis in its center; then, two women and an elderly man. The demon, seeking the vilest orifi ce, attacked her buttocks and impaled her with force enough to knock her down. As it undulated violently, wrapping the whole of its body around her ass like a suction-cup, the two women dove on her with probing tongues and groping hands. The old man found Jessica’s head, knelt down above it, and emptied his bladder into her mouth as she swallowed willingly.

One of the demons—a foul-smelling creature with a conic mouth protruding from its ribbed throat—dismounted 115

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from a lascivious young slut, turned her over on her back, and inserted a claw in the folds of her cunt. In one fl uid motion he unzipped her fl esh to the sternum and spread back the skin of her belly as if ripping open a bodice. It seized a section of intestine and pulled it out of her.

“Oh,” she gasped, as if achieving orgasm.

The demon squeezed the intestine tightly above the writhing woman. She moaned again. It cut the organ open with a stroke of its claw and greedily stuffed one end of it in its maw and sucked and chewed the contents. The woman shuddered and groaned a masochist’s song. When the intestine was emptied, the demon stuck its huge thorny cock inside and masturbated into it.

Susanna gaped at this and the other scenes of

wickedness her eyes drank up as they panned from body to body, appalled yet compelled to look on.

Then, those eyes fell on a couple familiar to them, and Susanna’s gaze intensifi ed as she anticipated a chance to see their faces. After a few moments, that chance presented itself.

As the fi gures wrestled in the fi relight, the woman, who was on top, raised her head from the person with whom she was copulating. She tossed her tresses back away from her face and moaned. It was Katherine Martin, a midwife she knew from Salem Town, and the person she was riding was no one other than Bernard, her son. Susanna once admired Bernard.

Susanna screamed as this vision roused her from

her trance. Until now, it all seemed as a dream—a terrible nightmare which she had trouble waking from—but her scream and her consciousness of that scream and its loudness confi rmed its reality. The realization stunned her back to open-mouthed stupidity and silence.

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Hearing the scream, mother and son turned to the source and laughed lustily, then Katherine rose her gyrating hips from Bernard’s lap and turned around. She straddled his head and sat on his face, grinding her genitals into her son’s eager mouth as she defecated on his face. She seized his member, wetting her lips, and went down on him.

“What is this place?” Susanna asked Ambrose timidly, fi nding her voice again. “Why have you brought me here?”

“For you, my dearest. So that we may wed.”

Dread washed over her.

Wed?
The thought was the furthest from her mind now. This was all some sort of trap, she thought. A ruse to trick her into sin, into perdition. There was no way she would marry Ambrose now. He only wanted to soil her, defl ower her for his own perverted pleasures. He didn’t love her. How could he? How could he possibly love her if he was capable of deceiving her into coming to this horrid place?

The betrayal was what stung the most, but there

was also fear. She was surrounded by demons, witches, and sinners; she was surrounded by the damned. Was she in Hell?

If she was, she would probably never be allowed to leave.

But after thinking better of it, she decided that she probably wasn’t in Hell. She had left her body back in New England, and the strange and comforting fact was that she could still feel it, everything down to her heartbeat. She was alive in New England, not dead and damned in Hell.

But she didn’t know how to get away from here and back home, and she needed desperately to do so. All she had the wit to do was wait and hope they left soon and unscathed.

“Come,” Ambrose said, taking her hand. “It is time for us to marry.”

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Those words and their fullest implications now struck a profound terror into Susanna’s heart. Her jaw slackened. Her mouth opened. Her eyes widened.

“No,” she murmured, shaking her head and pulling away from him.

“No!” she screamed. “DEAR GOD! NO!”

But Ambrose dragged her along effortlessly through the crowd of unconcerned revelers as she struggled and screamed.

“Susanna,” a raspy voice called out. She turned to see who it was and was confronted with the charred and mutilated corpse of Robert Eames imprisoned in heavy shackles, his eyes festering blackly in their orbits.

“Susanna,” he croaked again, reaching for her blindly, but somehow knowing where she was.

His decaying hand found her free wrist and clasped it hard.

“Susanna. Stop. Do not go with him. Think

profoundly of your material self. Will yourself back. You have the means.”

Ambrose responded to this interruption of his plans by reaching across Susanna’s body and jabbing the corpse in the face, sending it straight to the ground.

Susanna gasped. The body crumbled to the ground, releasing its hold on her.

Ambrose hauled her through the crowd of celebrants to an altar. It was little more than a huge block of granite that held goblets, victuals, and instruments of torture. Behind it was enthroned a burly he-goat with a third eye in the center of its forehead. It was crowned with a silver diadem and was 118

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fastened to a great throne, sitting in an upright position like a king. It wrestled feebly against its bindings.

Ambrose stepped over trembling arms, legs, heads, and torsos, Susanna stumbling unwillingly behind him, trying to pull away. Drum beats boomed through the valley. Demons sounded cornets. Lovers and tormented souls clamored and shrieked. A man stood on a ridge by the bonfi re, the amber light fl ickering on him. He wore tattered rags from head to toe, loose strips of them fl apping in the hot, arid wind. His face was wrapped in the strips, leaving only pits for eyes and a slit for a mouth. He thrust a long staff in the air and shrieked.

A large seething cauldron stood on the opposite side of the fi re. A woman brought a squealing baby to it, holding the infant above her head with both hands. She stopped, then hurled it into the boiling liquid. The child let out one last cry, then cried no more. An obese bald man tended to the cauldron. He dipped a large pair of tongs into the liquid and hauled the baby out by an ankle. The tender fl esh fell away from the bones as he shook it. The woman peeled some of the skin off and stuffed it in her mouth.

Susanna screamed. The whole episode seemed so

surreal; she thought it had to be a nightmare. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening to her.

But she knew it was.

The sea of bodies ended abruptly around the altar in a large circle, giving it a wide berth. In the center of that circle stood a three-breasted woman and her two hermaphroditic attendants. They were naked like everyone else, but the woman wore a red cape that fell just above her buttocks. She held a large wooden phallus in her hands. It had two heads, one of which she continued to prod herself with. Her attendants were similarly occupied.

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The woman scrutinized Susanna with an approving

eye, then pursed her lips slightly and lidded her eyes as she rolled her head away and cried out in the throes of an orgasm.

Susanna shrank away but couldn’t free herself from Ambrose’s grip. It was all she could do to keep herself from going mad.

She remembered what Robert Eames had told her.

“Think profoundly of your material self,” he had said. “Will yourself back.”

I must will myself back.

She turned her attention inward, fi rst to her subtle self, then to her material self.
I must return, she willed. I must return.

She concentrated on her corporeal body, greased, naked, and sleeping back in the house in New England while she chanted her mantra inwardly
. I must. I must return. I have the means. I must
return.

It was beginning to work.

She could feel herself becoming more aware of her physical body. She could feel herself becoming denser. The mountain was changing again. She sensed she was descending.

She opened her eyes, and the interior of the drawing room where they had made their departure to the Sabbat appeared. She tried to move, but that was impossible. The ointment still had her. She was still paralyzed.

A smack assaulted her face, forcing her eyes shut, and when she opened them she was back in the Spirit World.

“No!” she yelled. “No!”

“It would be best that you not attempt that again, love,” Ambrose threatened.

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Susanna’s face palsied with sorrow as she broke down and wept.

“Continue,” Ambrose commanded the caped woman.

She complied more than willingly.

She kneeled before Susanna, and her attendants took hold of her legs.

“Blessed be thy loins,” she said. “They and their products shall belong to our Master.”

She nuzzled her face into Susanna’s bushy pubic hair and kissed her there, inserting her tongue between the folds of pink fl esh that lay behind. Susanna writhed away.

The woman rose to her feet and said, “Blessed be thy breasts, that their beauty shall be celebrated throughout our Dark Prince’s Kingdom in His name.” She kissed each of Susanna’s breasts, suckling each nipple tenderly with lip and tongue.

“And blessed be thy lips, that they may sing a song of homage to our Dark Lord.”

She kissed Susanna deeply, forcefully. Susanna

responded by clamping her teeth down on the tongue, severing it in two. The woman pulled away holding her mouth but not voicing her pain. Susanna, disgusted, spat out the hunk of meat she just bit off. The woman took her hand away from her mouth and smiled a grisly grin, then parted her lips and fl icked her tongue out at Susanna. Not only was the tongue healed, but it was growing longer. It whipped Susanna’s breasts, wetting them with saliva, then sought the more intimate parts of her body.