The 5th Witch Read online

The man continued to grin, as if he were mad. “I come with a message, mesyé.”

  “Message? What message?”

  “I come to give you a warning that some of the people close to you, they are not what they seem to be.”

  The man was dressed in a shabby gray double-breasted suit, a funeral suit, although he was wearing no shirt underneath it, only a detached collar that was so dirty it was a waxy yellow color. Dan sniffed, and he picked up the faintest aroma of dried herbs and the smell of something else, too, something vinegary, like a very old jar of pickled cucumbers with mold on top of it.

  “How come I can see you in the mirror but you’re not really here?”

  “There are doors everywhere, mesyé. In front of mirrors, and behind them. All you have to do is to walk through them.”

  “Did Michelange DuPriz send you?”

  “Of course. She says that you must beware, mesyé. You will think that some of the people close to you are your friends. You will believe that they can help you. But all the time they are ready to betray you. One in particular to watch out for special.”

  “Who? Who are you talking about?”

  “Can’t say more, mesyé. All things pass.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Who’s going to betray me?”

  Dan reached toward the mirror, but as he did, the man’s face suddenly appeared to shudder, as if he were having a fit. He was still grinning, but brownish maggots began to drop out of his nostrils, and then he opened his mouth and inside it was seething with maggots, all over his tongue.

  He opened his eyes wide, and maggots wriggled out of his eye sockets and dropped down his cheeks. Right in front of Dan, his entire head burst open and maggots poured out like a fountain.

  He collapsed onto the floor and promptly disappeared from Dan’s view. Dan gripped the sides of the sink and pressed his forehead as close to the mirror as he could, but all he could see on the floor of the reflected bathroom was the frayed cuff of a pair of worn-out pants with a foot protruding from it, but a foot that was made out of nothing but seething maggots.

  Dan took two or three steps back. His teeth were chattering, as if he had the flu, and he couldn’t stop them. The black man had been there, clearly visible in the mirror, yet he hadn’t been there at all, and then he had exploded into a mess of maggots. Dan felt that he was close to the very brink of going crazy.

  He was still trying to calm himself down when he heard Annie let out a low, loud moan. “Oh, God! Oh, God, no!”

  “Annie? Annie!” He wrenched open the bathroom door and hurried along the passage that led to the living room.

  When he pushed open the living-room door, he couldn’t understand at first what he was looking at. The carpet was no longer crimson but a pale whitish color, and it appeared to be rippling, as if a draft were blowing underneath it. The walls were rippling, too, and now and again it looked as if small crumbs of plaster were dropping off the walls onto the floor.

  Annie was standing in the middle of the room, her shoulders hunched, her hands pressed over her mouth. She was making a soft whimpering sound, like an injured animal.

  It was only when he took a step forward that Dan realized the entire room was thickly carpeted with maggots, thousands and thousands of maggots, and that the walls were crawling with maggots, too, which occasionally dropped off onto the floor. Their convulsive rippling movement made the whole room look as if it were alive.

  Some of the maggots were already hatching into blowflies and droning around the room or clinging to the drapes. The smell was appalling—sweet and thick—and Dan had taken only two or three breaths before his stomach knotted up like a twisted rubber band, and his mouth filled with a sour rush of half-chewed eggplant.

  He spat. He had to. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and then he called, “Annie! Annie, just get the hell out of there!”

  “I can’t— I can’t— I can’t bear maggots! I can’t bear maggots!”

  “It’s okay! They won’t hurt you. Just look me in the eyes, and walk straight toward the door. Don’t look down!”

  “I can’t, Dan! I can’t bear them! Oh God, they’re crawling up my ankles!”

  Dan hesitated for a moment, then said, “Wait! Don’t move! I’m coming to get you!”

  He stepped into the room and negotiated his way toward her, trying to avoid the deepest heaps. The maggots squashed softly as he walked on them, and some of them wriggled onto his shoes, so that he had to shake them off. He was used to the maggots that infested decomposing bodies, but he had never come across them in such overwhelming numbers, blindly crawling over one another and piling up in the corners of the room. Even the tables and chairs and bookcases looked as if they were made of maggots.

  Dan reached Annie and lifted her into his arms. She weighed hardly anything, like a child. She squeezed her eyes shut and clung tightly to his neck. He carried her out of the living room and into the kitchen, then set her down. Malkin was sleeping under the kitchen counter, but when Dan and Annie came in, they woke her up. She jumped out of her basket and circled anxiously around them, mewing.

  “Hey, are you feeling okay now?” Dan asked Annie.

  She nodded. “Still sick. Those maggots—I can almost taste them.”

  Dan brushed the last few maggots from Annie’s calves and ankles, and Malkin playfully patted them as they twisted and writhed on the floor. Dan picked them up with a paper towel, pinched them hard, and dropped them into the trash.

  He said, “When I went to the bathroom, I saw somebody in the mirror. He turned into maggots, too. He literally fell to pieces, right in front of my eyes.”

  “You saw somebody in the mirror?”

  “It was only a reflection. A black guy with ash on his face, like a zombie. I could see him standing right behind me, and he even talked to me, for Christ’s sake. But when I turned around he wasn’t there at all.”

  “Mirror walking,” said Annie. She took a deep breath, beginning to recover. “That’s not voodoo. That’s more like Eastern European magic. Vampire stuff.”

  “Krylov’s witch, maybe.”

  “The maggots, though—they’re definitely voodoo. It looks like these witches are all working together, combining their different kinds of magic. This is going to be a nightmare.”

  “Come on,” said Dan. “Let’s get the hell out of here. I know a guy who can clear up all these maggots for you—Vernon Johnson. He’s an exterminator.”

  Annie shuddered. “I’m not squeamish about anything at all except maggots. I don’t mind spiders, and I don’t mind snakes. I don’t even mind slugs. But maggots!”

  “Personally, they don’t worry me, maggots. But I really have this thing about centipedes. Whenever I see a centipede in my bedroom, I’m always afraid that it’s going to crawl across my pillow in the middle of the night and sneak into one of my ears.”

  Annie picked up Malkin and stroked her. “I guess the thing is, I had a dog when I was seven years old, Biffo. He was only a mongrel, but I loved him. He got caught in a barbed-wire fence, and he must have died of starvation. When I found him, I didn’t realize he was dead. I picked him up and all of these maggots poured out of his stomach.”

  Dan put his arm around her. “Come on, you’re going to be okay now. I think we could both use a drink.”

  “No, I think it’s better if I deal with these maggots first. They were brought here by magic, so they can be sent back by magic. I don’t know much about voodoo, but there have to be other ways—other kinds of magic. If those witches can do it, so can I.”

  “I told you—Vernon will clean them up for you. He owes me a couple of favors.”

  “Dan, we can’t let these witches win. The more we allow them to win, the stronger they’ll become. They feed on people’s fear of them. We have to fight magic with magic.”

  “So what are you planning to do?”

  “There’s a book on the third shelf of the bookcase by the window, on the right-hand side. It’s a thin boo
k, bound in very dark leather. Can you get it for me?”

  “You mean it’s in there—where all the maggots are?”

  Annie nodded. “It has The Book of Flies embossed on the front.”

  “The Book of Flies?”

  “Maggots are fly larvae, aren’t they? And flies are witches’ familiars, as well as being messengers from Satan. The Book of Flies tells you how to dismiss them.”

  “And it’s in there—where all the maggots are?”

  “You said you didn’t mind maggots.”

  “In moderation, no. But good old Vernon could be here in less than twenty minutes, and good old Vernon has a vacuum cleaner that could suck up a full-grown elephant.”

  “Dan, you don’t understand. If we let those witches get away with this, what they do next could be so much worse.”

  Dan looked dubiously at the living-room door. “Third shelf, on the right-hand side?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  He came out of the living room, his lips tightly pursed to prevent the blowflies from buzzing into his mouth, one hand flapping to keep them away from his eyes. He used the side of his shoe to push back the maggots that were spilling into the kitchen and pulled the door shut.

  “Yuck,” he said, handing Annie the book. “I hope that was worth it.”

  “Thanks. I never could have done that—not in a million years.”

  Dan bent down to smack at the cuffs of his pants in case any maggots had crawled onto them. Malkin was gleefully pouncing on the maggots that were wriggling on the kitchen floor.

  Annie laid the book on the kitchen table and opened it. It had been handwritten in purplish-black ink, and its pages were water stained and discolored, so that some of them were almost illegible.

  “This was originally written by Fray Angélico Benavides in the seventeenth century. Fray Benavides was a Franciscan missionary among the Pueblo tribes in New Mexico, and he was one of the first Spaniards to learn the language of the Nahbah-tóo-too-ee.”

  “The Nahbah-tóo-too-ee? You’re not putting me on, are you?”

  “That’s their Indian name. They used to be well-known for practicing witchcraft and especially for changing themselves into other creatures, like hawks or coyotes or antelope or owls. There are scores of legends and stories about them.”

  “I never heard of them.”

  “Well, these days they’re almost extinct. But up until the end of the seventeenth century, when the Spanish really settled New Mexico in force, the Nahbah-tóo-too-ee’s council of witches was the most powerful in the Southwest. Nobody dared speak out against them or disobey them. If you challenged them, they would send swarms of flies out looking for you, all clustered together in the shape of human figures. They would come to your house, and then the figure would burst apart into thousands of separate flies, and they would crawl into your nose and your mouth, and into your lungs, and choke you.”

  “Thanks for telling me. As if I didn’t feel nauseous enough already.”

  “Witches all over the world use flies in every culture—Christian or Muslim or pagan. But the Nahbah-tóo-too-ee witches were notorious for it. They killed scores of their traditional enemies with flies, mostly Zuni and Acoma, fourteen Franciscan friars, too—all of them choked. But when Fray Benavides taught himself the Nahbah-tóo-too-ee language, he was able to translate some of the magical rituals the witches used to perform in their kivas, their underground chambers. He found out that the swarms of flies could be sent away, as well as summoned, so long as you knew the right incantation for it.”

  Annie turned to a page of several pen-and-ink drawings of maggots and flies and densely written text.

  “I need blood,” she said.

  “Blood? What kind of blood?”

  “Human blood. Mine. Don’t worry—I don’t need very much.”

  She opened one of the kitchen drawers and took out a sharp paring knife. Dan watched her and winced as she sliced open the ball of her thumb. Dark red blood slid out, and she held it toward him.

  “Here, paint it on my eyelids.”

  Dan hesitated, but Annie closed her eyes and said, “Hurry up—before it congeals. The flies will obey you only if you look like a devil or a demon, with blood for eyes. It’s the same in every religion.”

  Dan rubbed blood onto the tip of his finger and carefully smeared it on Annie’s eyelids. She looked horrific, as if she had lost both eyes in a serious accident. She waited for a moment until her eyelids had dried, and then she opened them.

  She found the place she wanted on the page in front of her. “This is the only English-language translation I’ve ever seen. My mother gave it to me on my eighteenth birthday.”

  “Really? My mom gave me a lime-green T-shirt and a John Denver CD, God bless her.”

  “Well…my mother always wanted me to have the craft. Just like my grandmother and my great-grandmother. She said that the craft is the only thing that gives women total superiority over men.”

  “That’s funny. I always thought it was, like, sex did that.”

  “No, even if they’ve studied magic all their lives, men don’t have the same natural power as women. They’re not rooted to the earth in the same way that women are.”

  “So, some upbringing you must have had. Didn’t you ever want to go to discos, stuff like that?”

  Annie looked up at him and smiled. He suddenly realized how attractive she was and how much he liked her. Maybe it was the way the light fell across the kitchen, giving her face a soft Renaissance shine. Maybe it was the crisis that had suddenly confronted them, bringing them together.

  “You mean dance clubs?” she said. “Of course I did. As a matter of fact, I still do. I went to The Vanguard last Saturday night, for Giant.”

  “The Vanguard? Really?” He pulled a face to show that he was impressed.

  “We should get started,” she said, “before all of those maggots hatch into flies.”

  “Do you want me to open the door?”

  “In a minute…I have to call on the katcinas first. The katcinas are the spirits of Nahbah-tóo-too-ee ancestors who protect their witches and invest them with their magical understanding.”

  “Oh. I see. Sure.”

  Annie raised her hands and described a fluttering pattern in the air, like a bird’s wings. She began to chant the words from the book in a high, expressionless voice.

  “I call on you, ghosts from the empty pueblos. I call on you, the hokomah, the vanished ones. I call on you to bring me your strength. I call on you to make the foul ones shrink away and the corrupt ones to shrivel.”

  She was silent for more than twenty seconds, with her blood-colored eyelids closed.

  Dan cleared his throat. “Now should I open the door?”

  “No, Dan—wait! I can’t feel the katcinas yet.”

  “Okay. Sorry.”

  Annie made the bird’s-wing gesture again. Then she said, “I call on the spirit of Oqwa Pi, the Red Bird. I also call on the spirit of Tse Ye Mu, Falling in Winter. I call, too, on the spirit of Pan Yo Pin, the Summer Mountain. I call on you to drive away the messengers of darkness, to chill their bodies and to slow their wings. I call on you to overwhelm them with your dazzling brightness and to sweep them away.”

  Annie paused for another twenty seconds. Dan kept a tight grip on the doorknob, waiting for her to give him a signal.

  “Dismiss these minions of wickedness. Let them be dispersed by the winds. In the name of all katcinas, scatter them forever!”

  Dan heard an extraordinary grating noise, like tons of cinderblocks being crushed; and then he felt a deep shudder go right through the foundations of the entire apartment building. At first he thought it had to be an earthquake, but it seemed to move across the floor, from one side of the kitchen to the other, as if some huge creature were slowly swimming through the solid concrete beneath their feet.

  This was followed almost immediately by a sharp, complicated crackling. He looked at Anni
e and saw that she was surrounded by dancing blue sparks. When he had touched her earlier, he felt that she was carrying a high charge of static, but now her hair was rising vertically above her head, in elaborate black curls. Epileptic worms of electricity were crawling all over her shoulders and down her arms, and sparks were showering from the tips of her fingers. She looked like a human firework.

  Her eyes were closed, but she said, “Now, Dan—open the door!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Open the door, Dan! Just open the door!”

  Dan pushed the door open wide. He was almost deafened by the minor-key droning of thousands of newly hatched blowflies. Inside the living room, the light was flickering, and the entire carpet was in turmoil. The maggots were crawling painfully toward the far side of the room, and they were heaping themselves up higher and higher, into a swaying pillar that was almost as tall as Dan. At the same time, the blowflies were settling on them, glittering and green, until the pillar of maggots was almost entirely covered.

  Annie groped her way through the open door with her eyes still closed and her eyelids black with dried blood. Now she spoke in a high-pitched, singsong scream.

  “In the name of all the katcinas, scatter! In the name of Oqwa Pi, the Red Bird, who will devour you in your hundreds of thousands! In the name of Tse Ye Mu, Falling in Winter, who will freeze you so that you fall helpless to the earth! In the name of Pan Yo Pin, the Summer Mountain, over whose summit the blinding sun rises!”

  To Dan’s fascination and horror, the blowflies swarmed all over the pillar of maggots like a black billowing cloak. They left only an oval area of whitish maggots near the top. The pillar looked like a human figure with a featureless face. Like a hooded woman, standing in an unfelt wind. Like a witch.

  Annie still hadn’t opened her eyes, but Dan could see that the maggots that made up the witch’s face were wriggling together to form the shape of a nose and a mouth and eye sockets. Six or seven blowflies crawled into each eye socket, to give the impression of glistening green eyes. Even the maggoty lips began to move, although no words came out.