57 - Hex-for-Hire

As Anya fetched the next candle the smartphone in her pocket briefly buzzed, before it went silent.

"Magic," she said, as she returned to her spot with the dripping candle. "Has always followed the syntax of the era. Once, we thought witches lived in huts, deep in the forest; or were old women, bent and toothless. Yet the witches of today are different. Younger, more accessible. Why, you only have to search online to find a witch who promises to cast a spell, if you meet their price. I knew such a witch, and this is her story. I call it...

HEX-FOR-HIRE

Magda had known she had the second sight since she was young. She would stand out in the fields, bend down and look between her legs, and sometimes she would see them. The things that slunk amid the tall grasses, or blinked in the shadows of trees and rocks, the colors of the wind. It was something her grandmother had taught her, along with how to make teas and cookies, after her mother had gone away.

The hex-for-hire gig had started when she arrived at university. The internet was wonderful for that. She had her account for her services, which had a little photo of the altar she'd made, descriptions of the candles and texts she would use. Most of that was just for show. In her piles of notebooks, Magda had copied out every spell and procedure she'd found in Dagon's Hollow's two libraries. Hers was a religion of one, a personal path of occult self-discovery with a spiral-bound grimoire written in three colors of ballpoint pen.

Her clients came from all over the world. People who needed things. A love spell, to attract that certain someone or make a relationship work. A little curse for an enemy. Luck spells, to find money or success. To win a court case, be it a traffic ticket or vehicular manslaughter. It all added up, a few dollars here or there. Magda tried to give them their money's worth. Sometimes she shot videos, showing her rituals, her process. The sex magick videos were saved for her private, adults-only accounts, but brought in another trickle of income.

She was in class when her phone beeped. She resisted the urge to glance down at it, keeping her eyes focused on Prof. MacGregor, who was talking about the differences between theistic and non-theistic Satanism. Dutifully, Magda copied down her notes. She had tried working with some material from LaVey's books before. A lot of it didn't work for her, but the imagery was attractive.

After class, in the bathroom, Magda checked her messages.

New client. The amount offered was...substantial. Enough to cover two semesters at university. Far more than anything she had charged before. The only catch was that they wanted her to cast a specific spell. Something she'd never tried before.

Magda messaged back. Carefully casual. Interested, but needing details.

The details were forthcoming. A high-quality scan of an old journal page, written in archaic English. There was a diagram there, something like a pentagram but the lines were wrong. An incantation with names that Magda didn't know. It was, according to the client, a love charm. The target was the Lady of the brothel by the railroad tracks.

At the name of the target, Magda almost said no. The kids in Dagon's Hollow told stories about the Lady, the owner of the brothel by the tracks. No one knew how old she was, or how many there had been. Some said that every Walpurgisnacht, she fucked the devil and was given another year of life. Others said she drank the cum from the pussies of her own whores, or bathed in their blood. Being a kid in a town like this meant you could believe almost any kind of story.

But...it was just a love charm. Nothing bad. A little strange, a little intense, and based on the instructions definitely one of her sex magick videos. For the money the client was offering?

Magda replied back: yes.

There were preparations. The spell would be cast during the **** of the moon, and it demanded blood and bone, salt and stone. Some of that the butcher could provide, others she got from the little Chinese medicine store over on the Westside; the salt she had herself, and the stone she chipped from a century-old grave at midnight. Magda knew, as a witch, that all these props were just that. Real magick, she agreed with the chaos magicians, was about acts of will. Yet the client was paying for this, had already fronted the money, and Magda would give them what they asked for.

She ran through every one of her spiral-bound notebooks, to build out the spare directions of the spell. There were symbols to be added, a particular way to draw the lines of the diagram. It had to be done somewhere private, in the open air, and Magda found herself on the flat roof of the dorm, her webcam set up on a tripod, naked. By the light of the stars and candles, I drew the sign, using the piece of gravestone as the stylus. On my body I painted the signs from the old document, and laid down, staring up at the night. There were bloody sigils that cooled on the skin of my breasts and bunny, and the camera was set up to give a good shot of my slit.

"I call out," Magda said, loud enough for the microphone to pick up, "to She Who Must Not Be Named! By thy secret names, I ask, I beg, I implore. Agh-nagh-sek, nu-mash-ta-sek, ash-nagh-amash..."

The barbarous nonsense names Magda had memorized came easily, with the deep, sonorous voice that had won me some small acclaim when she played Rocky Horror at the school theater. Her heart hammered, nipples stiff with more than just the cold. Every spell she cast, she tried to put her will into, to really believe that it was happening, if only for a second. It wasn't that different from acting, in that sense; for good actors experience the emotions they portray, inhabit the person they become.

So too, as Magda's hands fell down to her slit, she fell into her role. She rubbed her pussy, and chanted the words. Over and over. The wind died, and the whole world seemed still, holding its breath. The sense of the moment impressed itself upon Magda, and her voice grew louder, more frantic. Excitement ran through her, and her fingers moved faster. That same sense of dizziness that had assailed Magda when she looked between her legs assailed her, and the stars in the dark sky above seemed to spin.

As the ritual continued, Magda forgot about the camera. She stared up at the waiting dark, and as her fingers flew on her clit, she seemed to see something press down on her. Fear, sudden and intense, seized her body, yet her mouth couldn't stop, her arm moved with almost frantic movement. In her terrified motion of utter belief, all rationality cast aside as she fully embraced the spell, Magda saw, for just a moment, the impress of the sky as a massive feminine form, and a tiny tendril of darkness spiraled down, dwindling from the vastness of that impossible womanly cosmic body, to touch her.

Ice flooded her veins. Magda couldn't even scream. Her whole body seized, every muscle tensed with painful intensity.

Yet something in her body moved. Something scuttled and slithered. Pushed its way out of her, into the night. Magda felt it with perfect detail, unable even to breathe until the last of it had flowed out of her, and escaped off into the night, in the direction of the House by the railroad tracks, and the lady.

After that, Magda felt...hollowed. Her customer must have been happy; the payment was never rescinded. Her hex-for-hire business continued, though Magda admitted she was just going through the motions. Most of the time, she didn't even bother to cast a spell, only took their money. Her spiral-bound notebooks gathered dust.

Once, she invited me over, and we watched the video. Her face was oddly blank, as she saw her vaginal lips open. There was a brief moment when I could see into the depths of her, and there was a darkness sprinkled with stars. Then it was gone.

"I hope it didn't work," she said at last. "I hope the Lady had protections. Or that it was just the power of my imagination."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

She shivered. "Because of the rule of three. Every time you use magic against someone, it comes back at you threefold. One of those Wiccan rules, but..."

I understood, of course. Whether or not it made sense to me, Magda believed it. Magda, who had put so much into this spell that what was left felt like a hollow shell of the young woman I knew.

"But what would that look like? It was a love spell, wasn't it?" I asked.

"Was it?" Magda said. "Because I don't think...I'm not sure whatever that was, knows what love is. Not like you or I do. I don't think it understands that term. So I don't know what will happen to me."

"What happened to her?" Asenath asked, when it was clear Anya was done.

"She dropped out of school. The last anyone saw her, she walked into the House. I don't know what happened to her after that. Perhaps she's still there," Anya said, and blew out the candle.