“You must renounce God and Christ,” he said.
“I do.”
“You must renounce family—”
“I do.”
“And the sun, the moon and the stars.”
“I do, I do.”
“Thrice you renounce.” He folded her into his nakedness, pressing her against the hardness of him. Nuzzling her neck, he whispered, “You must repeat the words, ‘I renounce God and Christ. I renounce my family, and I renounce the sun, the moon and the stars. I renounce all forms of light and follow the Dark Lord with all my heart and soul.’”
She shouted the words into the air high above them, relishing the echo around the valley.
“Again!”
Three times she renounced everything she had ever known and believed in, laughing, exultant, her arms around his neck.
“And now, my bride, we will be together always, in this world and beyond, just as I promised. You must sever all ties with your family and come with me.”
“Oh, I definitely do. I never want to see my mother again. I hate my mother.”
He threw back his head and laughed, showing the curve of his Adam’s apple, the white of his teeth. “And you will slice the throat of the stolen calf, then drink its blood.”
“Yes.”
“All hail the Master!”
“All hail the Master!”
“All hail the Master!”
When she came out of the water, hand in hand with Oskar, she shook her long, wet hair in the balmy sunshine and triumphantly turned to face her new husband.
The smile died on her face.
The boy she loved was not there. Instead, a dark shadow chased along the deserted shore. And the trees no longer rustled gently but thrashed violently, the rippling water now rising in a froth of white horses.
“We meet again,” a deep and distorted voice said. “As promised.”
It was as if she had been slapped out of a trance. The chill night air bit into her skin. In the dark and the cold, she spun around. What the hell was this?
She looked down to find her hands splattered with blood, a spreading pool of it around her feet. She was standing in the centre of a circle marked out in the dirt, around the edge of which a masquerade of animal-headed heathens dressed in plain white gowns stood murmuring and swaying. The effect was hypnotic, the evening as black as the underworld, with no stars or moon to cast a single shadow. Within the circle a fire glowed, spitting with blood, fat, and bones.
She wiped a hand across her sticky mouth, noticing a discarded chalice on the ground. What trickery was this? How could her conscious mind have been stolen? How had time passed without her presence? It looked as if a rite had been carried out and blood tipped down her throat. All she had done was dream for a few seconds that she had bathed with a beautiful, handsome boy… who was dead…
Those around her began to chant more loudly now, the words gradually becoming distinguishable… Nema Olam a son arebil des menoitatnet ni sacundi son en te…
The words drilled into her head, cited over and over and over, numbing, monotonous, invasive.
Then ceased.
There was a lull. Into the silence a bell rang three times from the dark interior of the forest.
“All hail the Dark Lord!”
“All hail the Dark Lord!”
“All hail the Dark Lord!”
Out of the trees a form seemed to rise. She narrowed her eyes as the ring of worshippers fell to the floor facedown in silent homage, trying to work out who or what it was. The shape grew larger, drawing closer. Man or beast? This was a night terror, it had to be, not real, absolutely not real. But as he neared, her heart banged with a sickening lurch and fear consumed her. Her insides turned to liquid, and her mind repeatedly blanked out. She sank to her knees. Cloaked in furs, he was twice the size of the others, his face concealed by the head of a horned goat. And what he was carrying defied the last vestiges of her belief.
He placed the dead, naked body of her grandmother on the ground outside the circle. Standing over her, he then proceeded to remove the furs and lower himself onto the corpse before violating her. After which he severed her head with an axe.[1]
It happened so quickly, her mind had only just comprehended what had happened when he plunged a knife into the old woman’s heart and plucked it out like a plum from a pie.
At the sound of her gasp, his head turned. Then, still naked and masked, he walked over to where she stood, the heart held high on the tip of the blade.
“No! No!”
She fell backwards, shocked to find her ankles were tied, that the earth was rolling underneath in a tidal swell. I’ve been drugged, bound, am drunk…
Those who had fallen to the ground now woke and began to crawl behind him on their bellies, hissing like snakes, long bony fingers reaching out to grab her arms and legs, pinning her down as the goat-headed man stood over her and forcibly stuffed the heart into her mouth. Powerful hands held her jaw fast, making sure there was no choice but to chew and swallow.
A deep bass voice echoed from within the goat’s head mask. “Take and digest the magical power of blood from sorceress to sorceress.”
The man’s nakedness was appalling, the body scaly, the spike between his legs unnatural in shape and size.
He lowered himself onto her.
“No! No!”
She spat out the contents of her mouth, kicking and bucking. But dozens of pairs of wiry hands held her fast as, sitting astride her in a parody of the love she had made with Oskar, he tore off her clothing and slammed her body repeatedly into the dirt, grinding her into the stones. It scraped the skin off her back in sheets, and the pain ripping inside was that of a scorching iron straight from the fire. It was not normal, not normal, not normal at all… that was all she could think… as the light of her being began to eclipse and fade to grey. To nothing.
She surfaced to the sound of clapping. Blood poured out of her, streaming down her legs, the searing pain unbearable.
But the rape was over. One of the crones removed her sheep’s head and shook out long grey hair. “Welcome, Lenka,” she said, crouching beside her. She dipped a long, bony finger into the cup of Olga’s blood and drew a sign on Lenka’s forehead. “You are now a sorceress of the highest order. We will serve you always, until the end of your time.”
The others took off their masks.
One of them her mother.
Clara raised a chalice. “To you!”
“Hail Lord of the Dark Sun!” cried the ancients.
“Hail Lord of the Dark Sun!” said her mother.
“Hail Lord of the Dark Sun!”
She glared at her mother, with tears streaming down her face.
Cries of ‘All hail the Master!’ rang through the woods while the discarded and mutilated body of her grandmother lay a matter of feet away, the skull now staring sightlessly at the woods.
“I hate you with every fibre of my soul for what you have done. I will never forgive you, not now, not in all eternity.”
Clara shrugged. “Your grandmother knew what would happen. And I am sorry about the boy, about your poor heart. But it is what you will come to recognise as an opportunity presenting itself – the boy had died recently, and the element of him was easy to project into your mind. Don’t worry, his image was just a channel, a means to an end.”
“You did that?”
“I am sorry your heart was broken.”
“This is evil – it’s devil worship. And what they made me do and what the man in the goat’s head did to me—”
Clara laughed. “Hate, shame and anger are all good, excellent conduits for the demonic… You must have no ego, nothing left to take pride in, do you not see? Come now, we must call up your new servants. Baba Olga is free of torment, but she has to be buried before the sun is up so the power is properly transferred.”