Prophesy: The Immortal Witch (1)

Night sounds permeate woods, a nocturnal topography spot-lit silver by a diaphanous moon. Cumulus clouds drift silently, pregnant with seasonal precipitation, unfolding gestation of an impending storm. Twigs snap, bushes rustle, foxes and deer dance a tarantella of death whilst hedgehogs snuffle and humbug-coloured badgers patrol, oblivious to the struggle.

A lone figure robed in black silk adorned with stars and symbols stands, eyes closed and cowl concealing identity. Arm aloft, a hand rigid ready to summon spirits from the elements: Earth, Fire, Water and Air. In the other, torchlight falls on a book opened at a page containing the spell to be chanted, words that were once repeated in Hebrew from the time the Nazarene walked the earth and Roman legions kept order. Incantations chanted in English, enunciation hushed as though a secret being shared in an asylum.

A pentagram is etched roughly on the ground in chalk. Candles cast a modicum of light from a makeshift altar, melting tallow dripping onto granite. Other strange objects lie unused, glinting in unison with shafts of moonlight: a dagger, a chalice, a wand made of ash and a pentacle. Branches arch overhead, sprawling bramble keeps the site concealed at the end of a garden looking out onto beatific woodland.

Conjuration is always difficult, calling on a vanguard of the nether world no easy thing. Persistence is key. Clutching a silver amulet, herbs are diligently mixed together with water using a mortar and pestle: Mugwort for amplification, Willow to harness lunar charms, Sweet Cicely to appease the Goddess of Death and Oregano to engender astral projection. A potion borne of the ages, a recipe forged from ancient knowledge, an amalgam to transmute the banal to the fantastical.

Raindrops spatter, a chill breeze sweeping in from the sea making the ritual more difficult. A cold wind dances, cavorts in the brazen inky murk, inciting its own natural chaos. Lines are uttered with increasing conviction compelling an outcome. Crimson plasma drips over the lip of a silver goblet. A head motions with exertion, a torrent of spoken text urging the onset of magic. Time slows, drags, stalls. Universal metrics are meaningless when invoking the Arts.

After minutes of effort, something imperceptible seems to finally displace the charged atmosphere; a subtle tear, a hole rented asunder for spirits to enter through. An invitation to enter this realm from another. The change in the fabric of existence is tangible to those with the ability to sense it; a confluence of time and space fused by the manipulation of matter. The enchanter has done this many times.

A few miles away, a boy sleeps in his bed. He is no stranger to night terrors. Fluttering eyelids indicate dreaming, rapid eye movement underneath tissue-thin veined skin. A shroud-enveloped reverie that flirts with darkness but remains in faint twilight on the border of sanity. Lost in distant fantasy, there’s a tap-tap-tapping noise penetrating his thoughts. It’s calling to him, consciousness beckoning. Eyes drift open to see a bedroom window emerging as though from water. The noise is coming from something rapping at the pane. There’s a dark shape that looks blurred in the half-light, curtains backlit by lunar radiance. Maybe it’s a bird in distress; maybe it’s a lucid nightmare, part dozing, half awake.  

Gently throwing a white cotton quilt to one side, he slips out, feet cushioned onto pile carpet. Should he investigate more or head towards his parent’s room and report the incident? They won’t welcome being woken at this hour. He heard them stumbling about downstairs earlier. No doubt there will be wine glasses with rubicund residue stained inside them left out on the coffee table. There was that time a sparrow flew into the patio door, wings splayed, body broken as it slid to the ground. It took a good while to come to terms with its premature end. Mother scooped it up in a black bin liner and secreted it in with the rubbish ready for the weekly collection. No explanation was ever offered as to what had happened – it simply died. Thoughts of mortality are a fragile thing for one so young.

Fumbling hands tug at drapes, drawing them open like the opening night of a theatre production. There’s no flashbulbs popping for a mundane child in an ordinary bed chamber. The boy unlatches locks expecting something to fly past, maybe another sparrow. Nothing happens. Whatever was making the sounds seems to have gone. There’s a crispness to the cold that’s been allowed in. With arms folded now leaning on the sill, he looks out at a black vista that’s broken by silhouetted trees and fields trying to hide from a moonlit sky. Turning to go back to bed, something catches the corner of his eye. Tendrils of grey smoke flank him on both sides, gently drifting through the open window. They are fluid, tunnels unravelling. He blinks, wiping eyes, wondering if he’s still asleep.

The strange funnelling is twisting around his reedy body, wrapping him in a perturbing coil; an ethereal boa constrictor. There should be no tangible contact but there it is; he can feel its touch. Panic rises through his chest, his neck, his face. He longs to cry out but the thing is covering his face, blotting out the light and rendering his vocal chords useless by winding down his throat. The terror is all consuming now, his slight frame taut, brain overloading with futile notions of breaking the stranglehold. His heart jackhammers, pounding against the inside of his pigeon chest. He can feel the beat, a thousand orchestras playing molto forte.

One second the silent confrontation pirouettes, diminutive ballet dancers in a doom-laden opera, the next the boy is ripped from the room as the mysterious entity hauls him head first through the fenestration and out beyond a boundless horizon leaving a noiseless vacuum behind. Someone stirs restlessly in the room next door. They shake their bedpartner mumbling about having heard something. A long dead bird rouses on the plane of another dominion.

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