Pure Black, No Stars
By Catlyn Ladd
I could bring her back. Nerezza sat up in bed, heart pounding. Nyx made a sleepy sound of protest and glared, arching into a Halloween cat stretch before jumping off the bed and stalking away, tail in the air.
“I could bring her back.” She said it aloud this time, to feel the words. Death doesn’t have to be the end. She wiped tears from her face; she’d been weeping in her sleep again.
She pulled on her robe and let herself out into the dark hall. Padding on bare feet she almost tripped over Nyx, black on black. “Sorry, friend,” she said and the cat rubbed against her leg, walking with her to the end of the hall and into the chapel.
The room had a huge stained-glass window overlooking the town; the other walls floor to ceiling shelves packed with books, cauldrons, candles, chalks, herbs, scrolls, feathers; all manner of spell craft interspersed with effigies of deities from across the world.
Nyx jumped up on the table in the middle of the room and laid down, flipping onto her back, rolling in the dust of enchantments. A photo of Arien stood on an easel in the middle of the table. It used to rest on Nerezza’s bedside table, but she’d moved it here after the memorial, unable to bear looking at it. She eyed the candle on the table next to Arien’s photo and ignited the wick with her thought, filling the room with a soft glow. She had kept the door closed during the wake, but a few dirty wine glasses littered the table, dark scrim dried in the bottoms. Which of their friends had felt comfortable enough to invade this sanctum? Nerezza felt a twist of anger flush her cheeks.
From the photo, Arien’s dark eyes bored into hers. “I’m going to try,” Nerezza said, stroking a fingertip along Arien’s jaw. The glass felt cool beneath her fingertip. Lifeless. So unlike Arien’s skin. The universe had stolen her; they were meant to be together forever. Nerezza’s hands clenched into fists. It was obscenity that needed to be undone.
But first, she had to get her thoughts in order. She gathered up the glasses to take to the kitchen. On the way, she picked up other detritus left from the wake: more glasses and cups, plates with smears of icing, crumpled napkins. Sofia had tried to stay the night, promising to help clean up, but Nerezza had shoved her out the door with everyone else. Just go. Go away. Now, with this new idea hot in her breast, Nerezza was glad she’d been so insistent.
Scraping plates to pile in the sink, she turned her mind to the actuality. What did she know about raising the dead?
Voodoo had a spell for making a zombi, and plenty of cultures had ways of communicating with those passed. But Nerezza wanted Arien back as though it had never happened. Icelandic witchcraft was the only tradition to have a spell to bring the dead physically back into the world of the living. Viking magic was the place to start.
Nerezza paused, plate in hand, and stared into the shadowed backyard. There was one belief where the magics agreed: a life for a life. Could she do what must be done? Resolve heated her chest. I will bring her back.
She pulled her phone from her robe pocket and opened the lunar app. Thirty-four hours to the dark moon.
Perfect. Dark night for dark magic.
Nyx curled between her legs, wanting food. “What do you think, kitten?” Nerezza asked her. The cat looked skeptical. “I have to do it. I have to try.” She dropped the plate in the sink with a clatter. Back in the chapel, kerosene lamps in sconces around the room lit at her glance. Ancient light for ancient ways. Nerezza scanned the room. The grimoire she sought stood in a long row on a top shelf. She pulled the ladder affixed to a rail on the ceiling to the proper position and tied her robe more firmly before ascending. The book felt leathery and dry in her hand; it had been bound in human skin. It was one of the seven original copies of the infamous Sorcerer’s Screed, and it included a stave designed to raise the dead.
Next to the grimoire was a thin notebook: the English translation. She’d undertaken it years ago with the help of a Norse scholar. Every grimoire in her possession included a translation with extensive notes. But the spells were often incomplete, the traditions lost in time. The Sorcerer’s Screed only gave her a place to begin. She’d have to rely on intuition and educated guesswork to figure out the rest. But the blood of a hundred generations of witches flowed in her veins. She drew on the wisdom of ages.
Back at the table, she set the two books on the corner and put Arien’s photo on top of the stack. Working quickly, she began to clear off the debris [AN1] that always managed to accumulate: cauldrons left to dry on a rack, drips of wax, a dusting of herbs, jars of spell ingredients she’d neglected to put away. Magic needed a clean workspace.
She hadn’t been at the table since Arien’s disappearance eight days ago. The whole house had become cluttered, cobwebs collecting in the corners, wine glasses and coffee cups left gathering dead bugs, all overlaid with dust. The wake last night had left even more accumulated clutter. She’d managed to clean Nyx’s litter box and dump a can of cat food in her bowl, but that was about it.
Now purpose filled her. She moved quickly, wiping down the table, running a feather duster along the shelves, straightening books and supplies, setting everything to rights. Nyx watched from her place next to Arien’s photo, golden eyes glowing.
Nerezza collected statues of Hecate, Kali, Mictecacihuatl, and Hel from their places on the shelves and moved them to the four corners of the square table, oriented to the cardinal directions. An image of Osiris went underneath on the floor to represent the underworld. She set a large cauldron on the table directly above the mummified god, not thinking about what it would have to contain.
By far, this spell would be the most difficult she had ever tried. Lighting candles telekinetically came easily, as did glamours and charms. Raising the dead was much more difficult, dark magic beyond anything she’d imagined attempting.
She’d met Arien just after college when she’d taken a job at a coffee shop for the summer as she tried to figure out what to do with the rest of her life. Arien worked as the shop manager, setting schedules, placing orders, hiring and occasionally firing. At first, Nerezza had only admired the other woman aesthetically, the wonderfully curling hair falling to the middle of her back, glowing dark skin, eyes so black the pupil didn’t show, curvy dancer’s body. She’d never seen anyone so beautiful in person.
Then she’d come to love Arien’s sense of humor, sarcastic and optimistic at the same time, the way her upper lip curled when she laughed, exposing tiny, white teeth. The woman laughed with her whole body, chest heaving, toes curling in open-toed sandals.
Then had come the night when only the two of them were left in the shop, Nerezza cleaning up after closing, Arien working to submit payroll. Nerezza had gone into the office to empty the bin and had been trapped, unable to look away from the long fingers, dark on the top and pink around the nails, twirling a long curl.
Arien had looked up and seen her frozen, had immediately recognized the look on her face for what it was, had stood up and walked to her around the big desk in the middle of the small room, placed a palm on either side of her face and kissed her, lips soft and tasting of honey.
Two years later, Arien quit the coffee shop, and they had opened The Magic Box, a shop of spell craft for the thriving pagan community in their mountain town. They had done well selling herbs, crystals, powered snake skins, coyote claws, and esoteric books. Arien read palms and tea leaves; Nerezza scried in a black mirror and threw tarot for the tourists. They had built a life, a perfect life. Then it shattered and blew away on a cold north wind.
The room prepared, Nerezza’s attention turned to herself. She hadn’t eaten or bathed in days. She’d been sustaining on coffee and wine, Xanax and Tylenol. She needed to be focused and purified for the magic she planned to work.
Leaving the lamps lit, she made her way down the hall to the bath. The electric lights assaulted her eyes even though the bulbs in the sconces were dim. She squinted as she rinsed out the tub, poured in rose petals and lavender, cranking up the hot water. As the tub filled, she went to the kitchen for a can of coconut milk to make a white bath. Grief coated her like oil. She needed to clean it all away. Conjuring the most unnatural magic that disrupted the laws of nature required her to be as fresh as she could make herself.
She poured the can into the hot water and slipped in, heat stinging her skin. She submerged herself completely, holding her breath, surrounded by the sound of the water gushing to fill the tub.
She held her breath until her lungs burned and light flashed behind her eyelids. Then she surfaced enough to expose her nose and mouth, pulling in blessedly cool air. With her foot she cranked off the water and lay in the warmth, remembering the last time she had seen Arien eight days ago, how she hadn’t had even the slightest premonition.
“Be back in a bit!” Arien had called, a breeze wafting through the front door. The front yard had been filled with sunset light.
Nerezza hadn’t looked up from her book, sending a distracted wave toward the door as it closed. She started awake sometime later, sitting straight up in the chair where she’d fallen asleep over her book, disoriented, sensing only that something had changed. Outside, night arrived on whispering feet. Inside, her mind screamed.
She had gone running out the door and down the road barefoot, having no idea where she was going, only that she had to get there fast. Less than a mile away she’d found the car. It had not braked, no skid marks, straight into a tree. But Arien had not been in the car, just a smear of blood on the steering wheel.
Nerezza had dashed into the forest, shrieking into the phone, telling the 911 operator to send someone, to come now. She’d torn through the underbrush; her feet were lacerated and bleeding when the police arrived, but she’d never felt a thing. They’d pulled her from the woods while she frantically called Arien’s name, over and over.
There couldn’t be an official ruling without a body, but the police theorized that Arien had stumbled from the car and fallen into the creek below where the car had crashed, had been swept away by the swollen waters. The search for a body was ongoing.
All Nerezza knew was that Arien had vanished off the face of the world as though she had never been. She’d waited days before calling the wake, but she knew: Arien was gone.
Nerezza sat up in the cooling tub. “I can bring you back,” she whispered.
Clad only in a soft, black robe, she sat on a cushion in the chapel. She let the grief wash over her, but took it and transformed it, adding to the hot ball burning in her chest. She had to be angry to do this enormous thing. Her mind tried to leap and clutch, but she focused on the way her breath rose in her chest.
Nyx came and curled up in her lap, vibrating softly. The candle flames stood still and straight. Her mind emptied of all but rage. Tears dried on her cheeks.
In what had to be a dream, Arien came to her, walking out of the mist in her mind. Nerezza could see her take each step, dark toes against black sand. She wore her white night gown, the one that made her look like a witch bride, curls tumbling over her shoulders and down her back.
“Where have you been?” Nerezza asked.
“I got lost from you.” Arien stepped close enough to touch, and she lifted one palm to cup Nerezza’s cheek. Nerezza could not feel her fingers.
“Where are you?”
Arien looked around. She wasn’t in the chapel with the warm light and the purring cat. “It’s dark here.”
As she spoke, the sound of static filled Nerezza’s ears. At first, she didn’t understand what was happening, but then the white noise got louder. Arien began to fade.
“No!” Nerezza reached for her, and Arien thrust out her hand. For a moment Nerezza felt coolness against her fingers and then nothing. She jerked awake on the chapel floor. Nyx startled and glared at her reprovingly before settling back against her leg.
“I’m coming,” she whispered, refocusing her eyes on Osiris. She turned her mind to the enormous thing she’d been avoiding: a life for the life of her beautiful Arien. But the universe had to bend to her will if she wanted to find what she needed. She took a deep breath, not quite steady as her mind quailed. She drew the next breath smoothly.
Only when night fell again did she move. The ball of heat in her chest diffused through her whole body. She felt ready to combust, but she held the anger tight. She’d need it.
She dressed quickly in loose pants and a shift, pulling her hair through a baseball cap. She wasn’t worried about anyone seeing; she could disrupt surveillance and make people forget. She just hoped that she would be able to find what she needed.
She drove fast but sensibly, her route taking her to the big shopping center in town. She carefully didn’t think about Arien’s car swerving, the tires leaving the pavement, the tree looming. She parked in the rear of the lot, pulling a glamour over herself as she stepped into halogen light, masking herself from cameras and the eyes of others. She carefully shut down her mind. Best not to think about what she needed.
A life for a life. Animal wouldn’t do.
She walked quickly though the shops, scanning, keeping her gaze hidden under the brim of the cap. Please. She tugged lightly on the fabric of the universe, asking it to adjust, to give her what she sought.
Ten minutes later, just as she began to panic, there it was. The child slept in a stroller, with mommy, or caregiver, or nanny, or whomever she was, just around the end cap leafing through folded tee shirts. Nerezza blocked her ears, turned her eyes away: don’t see. It took her only seconds to unstrap the toddler. She pulled the long edge of her coat around the baby, turned, and was gone.
She walked through the mall quickly, the weight of the child warm in her arms. She sent soothing thoughts into him, keeping him asleep, unaware.
Through the doors and back into the dark, she broke into a run. His head bounced against her shoulder, but he didn’t wake. He never woke again.
She laid the little boy on the altar, keeping her mind lightly on his. He wore tiny blue jeans and a red tee with “Gramma’s Little Rascal” in yellow script. He made a soft sound in his sleep, little hands drawing up under his chin as he adjusted to the hard surface. Nerezza paused over the way his sooty lashes lay against his cheek, flushed with sleeping. Nyx jumped up and gave him a cursory sniff before turning away, disinterested.
Nerezza leaned down to put her face into his soft curls. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. Somewhere, part of her mind shouted. She reached deep, casting a blur across his face so she wouldn’t have to see his rosebud lips, the stray curl on his forehead. I can bring her back.
She opened the lunar app on her phone. The dark moon zenith occurred at 3:01AM, in six hours and fifty-six minutes. She set a countdown. Time to get to work.
Keeping her mind a clear blank she went to the large safe nestled between two of the bookcases and spun the dial. It was where they kept the arcane spell materials they had collected over the years. She had never used anything from the safe before. It had been more of a hobby, collecting the most powerful spells and their components. Now she wondered if, on some deep and intuitive level, she’d always been planning for the worst. She started removing wrapped packets, reading each label carefully. What she wanted had been shoved to the back.
The horse scalp smelled faintly musty, and she laid it open on the table, smoothing the long hairs of the mane down when they wanted to rise static in the air. She ignored the gaping eye sockets, and set a clean cauldron on the snout to hold it flat.
Arien had labeled the vials of blood and placed them in alphabetical order on a teak curio stand wedged into a bookshelf. Nerezza took the vials labeled “fox” and “seal” to the table, grabbing an athame along the way.
She emptied the vials into the cauldron and took a deep breath before cutting her hand; she hated bloodletting. It hurt. But losing Arien hurt more and she drew the blade sharply across the pad of her ring finger without flinching, letting the drops fall into the cauldron. It wasn’t the worst part of the ritual.
Taking the athame in her uncut hand, she gently pulled the boy up into a sitting position, heat against her hand where it wrapped in his shirt to hold him upright. His blurred face disturbed her, and she turned him to face away, focused on keeping him deeply asleep. She took a deep breath. As she let it out slowly through her nose, she pulled the sharp blade smoothly across his throat.
Blood gushed out, hot on her hand. It ran across the wood and dripped onto the floor with soft plops that she pushed grimly from her mind. She tilted him forward so that the flow spurted into the cauldron. She waited until it slowed to a trickle and then laid him gently back. His skin had turned ashy. The chest beneath her hand fell still.
Taking a thick woolen blanket, she wrapped the small corpse into a tidy bundle that she shoved beneath the table under the watchful eye of Osiris. Now that the thing was done, she pushed it from her mind and turned to the complicated next step.
The cauldron was nearly full. The runes were to be written on the horse scalp in the mix of blood but there was no indication of what they should be written with. A feather? A pen? A finger? The claw of a phoenix? She looked around the chapel.
When the idea surfaced there was no doubt. She walked to the end of the room and selected a tall reed from a vase holding an assortment of grasses and feathers and twigs. These had been plucked from the grave of another murdered child.
Life for life. Everyone agreed.
She propped the grimoire open. Working quickly but carefully, she copied the runes onto the stiff leather of the horse. The reed wanted to catch on the rough hide and the blood ran and dripped, necessitating large letters. When finished, Nerezza carefully checked each figure for accuracy. She had no idea what could happen if this went wrong and didn’t want to find out. Stories like the monkey’s paw were cautionary for a reason.
The grimoire didn’t offer guidance on what to do with the prepared hide. Should she recite the words? Bury the child beneath the stave? Was it even right to do this ritual on the dark moon?
She collected a new cauldron, white chalk, and wormwood. Setting the hide aside to dry, she began to pulverize the chalk using the femur of a wolf. When possible, she fashioned implements from the dead: leather, bone, blood. Grave things.
The chalk turned to fine powder, and Nerezza mixed in the dried wormwood, working carefully to get everything the same texture. Taking time to do every step correctly mattered.
Next, she added grave dirt that she and Arien collected during a dark moon from a hundred-year-old grave. The soil clumped around tiny roots and she had to work hard to get it all ground down and mixed. As the final step, she selected a long hair from Arien’s hairbrush and burned it so that the ash fell into the powder. The smell of singe filled the chapel.
Nerezza checked the time: three hours to go. She gathered the hide, now dry, the cauldron with the powered chalk and dirt, and several oil lanterns. The breeze shivered her arms as she stepped out the door into the garden.
Shortly after purchasing the house, she and Arien had constructed a ritual circle in the grass between beds of herbs. The family room, which they’d converted into the chapel, opened directly into the garden, creating convenient proximity between the ritual spaces. Made of river rock and quartz, the circle had been paved with stones to create a nice, flat surface.
First, she had to prepare the space. She lit the lamps and set them at the eight points of the compass to light her work. Everything else piled in the middle of the circle. Taking up a spade, she went to the westernmost edge and began to dig, cutting into the cultivated soil with deep, sure strokes. Careful to keep the edges of the grave neat, she focused on getting it deep enough. She needed at least four feet. Sweat began to coat her body, chilly in the late November breeze.
The grave prepared, she returned one final time to the chapel. The sad baby bundle was the last thing she needed. The child lay heavy in her arms, cooling. She carried him out, unwrapped him, and laid the small body in the grave, turning the head away so she didn’t have to see the blurred face. The wind ruffled his dark brown hair, the grave yawning shadows in the leaping lantern light.
Filling the earth back in went faster, even though she stopped every foot to pack the dirt down. The final step was to replace the sod over the grave. In the darkness, she could barely make out a mound in the lawn.
At 2:50AM, Nerezza prepared to call the circle to contain her magic. She stood facing west and felt her power gather. The scalp of the horse and the cauldron of chalk lay before her. She closed her eyes and reached deep into the well of her being, centering and focusing her will. All other thoughts fell away.
She called the corners one by one and closed the circle with the cauldron of chalk mixture. Across the disturbed sod of the grave it gleamed white in the flickering light. She placed the scalp over the line, bisecting it. Focusing, she imagined the chalk powder as a door, a barrier separating realms. Closing her eyes she envisioned a great gate. It was powerful, dangerous, impossible magic.
At exactly 3:01AM she opened her eyes. The gate loomed before her. Made of dark metal, she could see between the braces. What lay beyond was not the gentle slope of her yard, the herb garden and flowers. Only shadow lay there.
Nerezza reached out and grasped the center bar. The cold of the metal burned into her palm. She pushed, and the bars swung soundlessly open, pulling the scalp along the ground. Nerezza picked up a lantern and shined it into the gloom.
Before her lay a desolate vista. Overhead the sky was pure black, no stars, though a gray swathe rimmed the horizon, as though some dim sun had recently set. In the far distance she saw tall, jagged peaks. No trees or vegetation of any kind, only small boulders here and there on the rocky plain.
“Arien?” she called.
Her words fell flat, as though she called into a closet full of clothes, all soft edges to catch the sound. Nothing moved within. A warm breeze puffed against her cheeks. It smelled of nothing.
Steeling herself, she stepped across the edge where the blurred line of chalk separated the green of the grass from the dust beyond worlds. The lamplight died. She stopped, considering whether to return for a match.
“Get it together, Nerezza,” she whispered. She could see well enough. She turned in a circle, ignoring the impossible door in the middle of the plane. A small flicker in the distance caught her eye, and she followed it.
She walked a long time. The air seemed thin, burning in her lungs, making her breathless. Every few minutes she looked back, checking the doorway into her own world. It comforted her to see it, the lanterns glowing warmly from her garden.
She turned from the light and kept walking. A movement caught in the corner of her eye. Quickly, she spun toward it, the powdery grey sand sliding beneath her shoes. Off to her left, a direction she thought of as east only because it lay opposite the mountains with their scrim of light, a shadow stood a hundred or so meters away. She froze, her heart pounding, unable to call Arien’s name again. Taking a deep breath, she moved toward it.
As she drew closer, she made out a figure in tattered trousers and a long garment resembling a tunic. Tangles of hair, a grey no-color, tumbled down, obscuring any profile. “Hello?” she whispered. It didn’t move. Circling wide, she stepped around the figure, and then stopped, hands flying to her mouth.
It had no face. Just an oval of skin, also grey in the dim. Impossible to discern a mouth, nose, or what kind of figure hid beneath the loose clothing. Nerezza backed away, unwilling to turn her back. She thought the pale oval turned to follow her, but she couldn’t be sure in the gloom.
Nerezza turned to run and tripped over another figure that had crept up behind her.
This time she did yelp, too startled to prevent the sound. Her cry died in the dim.
The small figure wore tiny jeans and a red shirt, both dusted with filth. It, too, had no face, but the oval of flesh tilted up toward her as though it could see. It reached for her with dirty starfish hands. She made out words on the shirt: Gramma’s Little Rascal.
Nerezza tripped backward over a rock and fell hard, scraping a ribbon of flesh from her palm. She scrambled back as the tiny figure tottered forward. Its toddler Nike left no track in the dust.
Nerezza scrambled to her feet, bringing her hand to her mouth to suck on the hand she’d scraped. The taste of pennies filled her mouth.
The little being paused, its weird no-face looking down. She saw a smear of her blood on the ground where she’d pulled herself back. It tilted its head and then dropped to all fours, seeming to sniff at the droplets, though she couldn’t understand how. It had no nose.
From behind her she heard a shuffle and suddenly remembered the first figure she’d seen. She spun around and it was right there, right behind her, its faceless head cocked as though listening.
She stepped aside, careful of rocks this time. The larger figure bent forward at the waist, and she again had the sense of sniffing. So fast she had no time to understand its intention, it grabbed the smaller figure, the one she refused to recognize as the child she’d killed, and flung it aside. The small body flew several feet and crashed to the ground. It made a mewling sound – Nerezza had no idea how – and wriggled weakly. She took another quick step away.
The larger figure turned toward her and its head tilted, toward where her hand hung at her side. A drop of blood trembled from her forefinger and then then fell. She heard a soft plop as it hit the dust.
The thing’s skin split horizontally along the bottom half of its face, a lipless mouth opening where there had been only smooth skin. A tongue, hideously long and mottled deep red, licked along its chin. Nerezza spun and ran. Her feet puffed up dust, air tearing at her throat. Black spots began to dance before her eyes. She pressed on as long as she could, but finally had to stop, her sides heaving.
She looked behind her.
In the shadows: movement. Dozens of figures, identical to the first, swarmed out of the dark.
Nerezza searched frantically in the distance for the door back to her world, the flickering light of lanterns in the sanity of her back yard. She couldn’t find it.
Panicked, she spun in a circle. Figures poured from the gloom. Dozens, then dozens more, their pale no-faces all turned toward her.
“Arien, please help me,” she whispered.
No answer but the warm wind that seemed to have no oxygen. They closed in, cutting off escape. How long could the living survive the land of the dead?
A life for a life. Everyone agreed.