Authors: Angela Alsaleem
She ran her fingers through her scraggly, gray hair and winced at the bald patches. Too young to look like this. Her green eyes stared out through wrinkled flesh. Liver spots covered her face and hands. At age thirteen, they made her look like this, cast her away like a filthy piece of garbage, forbade her to return.
Well, she’d show them. She knew their plans. As the two women came closer, she smiled and laughed to herself, the sound dusty and clotted with cobwebs. What a day this would turn out to be.
The one with the dog knocked on the door.
“Rory has come at last,” the crone whispered and let them in.
* * *
Cerberus slept in the corner near the small fire, breathing easily, looking happy for the first time in days. Libitina’s backpack and recorder were next to the sleeping dog. She and Camilla sat next to each other on the dirt floor. They both drank tea brewed from some of the flowers growing outside the crone’s house. The old woman didn’t seem to notice Camilla’s face. Libitina suspected she might be blind, but she didn’t act blind. How could anyone look at that face without turning away? Not only did she not turn away, but she invited them in as if they were expected guests.
Trinkets hung from the makeshift ceiling, shiny prizes a crow might forage: a candy wrapper, a bit of wire, a glass bead, a razor, a fishing hook, and other things that glittered.
Camilla twitched, grimaced.
“I know what you see, child.” The old woman put a comforting hand on Camilla’s head. Camilla leaned into the touch and sighed.
Libitina eyed the woman, not trusting her yet. Something wasn’t right. Why didn’t Camilla’s face bother her? Why didn’t the woman shy away from her nakedness?
“You do?” Camilla asked. “What do I see?” A hint of skepticism crept into her voice. Libitina smiled. Good for her.
“You see women in pain, women dying. You see what they saw in their last moments of torture.” Her voice rasped and grated. Libitina winced at the sound of it.
“How did you…”
“I know more than that, child.” When the old woman smiled again, Libitina thought she saw the face of a demon lurking beneath the wrinkles. The sight made her stomach clench and her breath stop.
I should’ve trusted my bad luck,
Libitina thought.
I should’ve trusted that things would turn foul. We’re going to get our answers all right, but this woman is crazy. I don’t know how she knows so damn much but something is wrong here. I’m such a fuck-up.
She clenched her fist and banged her knee with it, scowling at the floor.
“Tell me. Do you know what’s happening to me?” Camilla asked. Despite the tattered mess of her face, the lack of eyes for expression, Libitina saw hope imprinted there.
“I will tell you what I know.” The old crone made her slow descent to the floor, her body creaking and popping on its agonized way. Her arthritic hands curled at her chest, her filthy rags tied and hanging from her body, she looked at the two of them, green eyes glowing in the landscape of wrinkles like two gems shining through desert hardpan.
Libitina listened to the story, incredulous. Camilla didn’t move, her torn eye sockets fixed in the crone’s direction.
“There are spirits in this world, some stronger than others. You, child, harbor one such spirit. Its name is Rory.” The light in the room dimmed as the woman talked. “Rory is unique. It is split into two halves. One female, one male. You possess the female half. You live, though you are dead. You find yourself drawn to certain people, craving something that exists only on their breath.”
Camilla made a slight movement with her head, maybe a nod. This part was at least true. Libitina had seen what Camilla did, had seen the results. She remembered the first man sitting in his bathtub, crying and screaming; the man in the house going mad before she got to him; the man in the road cringing as Camilla sealed her mouth over his and inhaled.
“What is it I crave? What is it on the breath?”
“The intangible spirit, child. Rory draws it out from the breath.”
“But why am I drawn to these people? Why not everyone?”
The room darkened further. Cerberus whimpered and twitched in his sleep, then settled down.
“Because Rory has a mission. Rory split itself into two halves for a reason. Your half is here to get revenge for women who were wronged before they died, women whose spirits still harbor a grudge. The images you see… these are the spirits telling you their story, showing you what they feel every day, what they can’t get over until they’ve had their revenge. You see, they can’t move on in the spirit world until their wrong has been righted. Rory is trying to help these spirits gain peace. So Rory takes revenge in the best way a spirit can, by stealing its victim’s spirit, leaving them without a way to live forever in the other world.”
Camilla leaned forward. Her voice just as raspy as the old woman’s, she asked, “So, what happened to my spirit then? If I’m dead, where is my spirit? Did Rory take it, too?”
“No. That’s the tricky part. Rory is only half a spirit right now which means it needs to join with another to be whole. You were already whole, so now you are more than one spirit, therefore, more powerful. This is how Rory can do what it does. This is how it is able to take the spirits from others.”
Like a parasite,
Libitina thought.
In a whisper, Camilla asked, “And what does Rory do with the spirits it takes?”
“That I’m afraid, I don’t know. They are simply gone. Rory doesn’t absorb them or you would have their personalities as well. It just takes and takes and takes. But it is only drawn to those people who have angry, haunting secrets.”
“So, if I have Rory’s female half, then where is the male half?”
“In a man, of course. He avenges angry male spirits. Every spirit must move on, otherwise they stay in a place much like Hell. They are tortured, angry, malicious, only wishing to harm those who harmed them. Once Rory helps them, they move on, free of their anger. This release makes Hell smaller each day.”
The air grew stale. Libitina shifted. What the woman said seemed to make sense, but she still couldn’t trust her. She shifted backwards a bit. The woman smelled like garbage and sweat. Libitina wondered when she’d last bathed.
“So, how do I make it stop?” Camilla twitched and grimaced, as more visions danced through her mind. “They’re getting worse. I can’t keep living like this.”
“The visions won’t stop until you take care of their source.” The old woman snickered, a dry and brittle sound. “The longer you wait, the more intense they become, the angrier they become that you, Rory, aren’t doing something about their problems.”
“No. I just don’t want visions anymore. I don’t want to help these spirits. If I’m supposed to be dead, then just let me die. How do I get rid of Rory? How can I rest?”
“Oh, that. Well, there are two ways.”
The entire house hushed around them. Birds stopped singing. Even Cerberus’s breathing seemed to slow.
Camilla leaned forward even more, bloody hands splayed on the dirt floor in front of her. Libitina noticed with a grimace that the red seeping from between Camilla’s legs formed a dark puddle where she sat. She scooted away about an inch. She looked at the old woman, crinkled her nose at the rotten smell that seemed to grow stronger with each breath and listened, growing more and more agitated the longer they stayed in this place.
“The first way is to let the spirit run its course. Rory will use up your body. Slowly, slower than normal, your body will decay. I see your neck is broken but this will not speed up the process. You’ve torn out your eyes but this will also not speed up the process.”
How does she know this?
Libitina wondered. Who’s to say someone or something else hadn’t torn out her eyes?
“The more your body decays, the less inhabitable it becomes. Eventually, Rory will no longer be able to use your body or your spirit as both will grow weak. It will leave when another body becomes available. Your body will simply vanish. I don’t know why or how, but it does. It will vanish and your spirit will be released.”
“And how long does that take?”
“It depends on how long your body and spirit last. Sometimes only a few years. Sometimes a few hundred.”
“I can’t even wait a few days. I’m done now. I need to end this now.” Her voice rose in a raspy growl sounding like it was tearing her throat to speak.
Libitina looked from the haggard crone to the torn corpse and back again. She shuddered. How the hell had she gotten herself mixed up in this mess?
“There is an alternative. I happen to know a ritual that will thrust Rory, at least this half of Rory, back into the spirit world.”
“Will I die?”
“Of course you will die. Your spirit will be at rest. And Rory will be forced to find another host.”
Camilla sat back and placed her hands on her knees. After a moment’s thought, she said, “Okay. The ritual then.”
* * *
Camilla lay on the floor. The smoky aroma of burning herbs helped her relax. She was ready to accept her proper fate. The old woman chanted something indistinct. Another language, perhaps? Must have been. She couldn’t understand any of it. A rattle shook in rhythm. The crone tickled her face, belly, groin, with a bouquet of feathers.
Libitina gasped from beyond her feet. Cerberus growled next to her head. She wanted to laugh with the soaring hope that this might work.
The woman said something more pronounced than anything else she’d been muttering and stomped her foot. That was when the pain started. It twisted through her body. Her back arched, the muscles contracting as her torso lifted off the ground. She screamed, hating the grating sound of her voice.
Fire. She was on fire, had to be.
“Stop it, stop, stop, stop,” Libitina yelled.
Cerberus barked and whined and growled.
The woman chanted louder. Screaming echoed in her head, a voice she knew to be Rory’s, the feeling of otherness beginning to leave. Rory’s spirit clung to every part of her like a spider’s web over its meal. It pulled from her core, from the eyes she no longer had. Every part of her burned, pulled, fought for release while Rory fought to stay.
She screamed again and felt her entire body lift from the floor. Rory screamed in her head, louder than the sound of her thoughts, her voice. The scream was more agonized than anything she’d ever heard.
* * *
Libitina sat at Camilla’s feet, fascinated by the ritual. The old woman danced around Camilla’s prostrate body. The incense smoke filled the room, cloying; the herbs were bound by some type of fiber.
This is stupid,
she thought.
A spirit ritual. Right. A bunch of mumbo jumbo is all this is.
But it fascinated her nonetheless. She loved everything about the occult for its theatrical value. It didn’t matter if she believed the witch woman or not.
The crone took out a knife. Libitina gasped and sat back, unsure of what the woman planned on doing with it. She wanted to grab Cerberus and gain comfort from his tiny warmth, but she didn’t dare interrupt the ritual. Looking at the knife, she thought,
great; I’ve led us to the house of some woman who likes to hack people up.
The ritual intensified. She didn’t intervene, though she wanted to. It was all too weird.
Camilla screamed, her body arching off the ground.
The sudden change in Camilla startled her into action, her paranoia taking over. She stood up and screamed, “Stop it,” repeating the words, trying to force her will over the dancing woman. Her dog barked next to the fire, backed up, tripped over the strap of Libitina’s backpack, and almost backed into the flames. Camilla’s screams became intermingled with another voice, another scream. The two screams filled the room, filled Libitina’s senses, almost breaking her sanity.
Then the crone raised her blade in a high arc over her head. Camilla’s body rose, suspended in the air. When the woman moved to plunge the knife into Camilla’s body, Libitina lunged without thinking, throwing herself on top of Camilla. The stench of rot wafted up her nose from Camilla’s mouth as she forced Camilla’s body back to the ground with her own weight, knocking the air out of her. Libitina gagged and turned her head away from the horror of Camilla’s face. She felt the knife graze her arm then the world changed.
* * *
Still clutching the blade hilt, the crone stared at the empty floor, at her knife buried in the dirt where the body used to be. From the depths of her core, for all the years she’d spent waiting, she screamed her rage, head thrust back, hands clawing at her balding head.
“That idiot girl! She ruined everything!”
Cerberus barked and lunged at the space from which his keeper had just disappeared. He bit at the air and hopped in little circles, then sat and whined, tail tucked between his legs.
The crone looked at the dog and said in a softer tone, “But they can’t get Rory there, can they? No, not where they’ve gone to.” She petted the dog then picked him up. “What am I going to do with you, now?” She took the dog into the room in the back, dim lighting slanting in through the windows.
“I’ve never had a friend.” She sighed and smiled at the tiny black dog. “If you like, you can stay.”
* * *
Libitina clung to Camilla as they swirled into darkness. She opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. The darkness roiled around them like tar, but alive and hungry. The spinning made her dizzy, disoriented. She clutched Camilla, pressed her face into the tattered flesh.
The air wrapped them like a wet blanket, suffocating her. Voices whispered in the dark. She couldn’t understand the words but could understand the tone: mocking. The whispers pushed into her ears, her head, her mouth, drawing out the life in her body, making her numb. She almost lost her grip on Camilla who screamed in the dark. When would the spinning end?
“What’s happening?” Libitina yelled, her voice drowned out by Camilla’s howls of pain, fear, loathing. “Make it stop.”
Just as she said the words, their passage ended. All became quiet.