Dizziness filled me, and I felt as if I would fall. But I no longer felt the ground beneath my feet. I groped outward, but I could not feel any shelves, my flailing arms disturbed no glass jars. An immense pressure filled my ears, as annihilation filled my eyes.
Suddenly, I saw flames. Soundless vision filled my brain. Flames leapt, and stars glimmered beyond them in a black sky. Murky faces stared at me through the flames. I looked down and found that my body was not my own. I was naked, and a woman. Ropes of strong hemp bound me to the tall pole at my back. The flames licked at my flesh, and I watched it curl and blacken. I was screaming in agony, but I could not hear myself, and I felt no pain. I knew then that it was not me who burned, but the poor woman whose eyes through which I now looked.
The faces beyond the dancing flames spat at me. I saw them clearer now. Garbed in the black and white garments of a Puritan society, they stared at me with hate-filled eyes that mirrored the color of the flames. I looked out from behind the eyes of a witch as they burned her living body into ash. I gazed on, deaf and mute, until the eyes through which I saw burst and melted. Then I plunged back into darkness.
Another flash of light and I was a man again. Or at least I looked through the eyes of a man. He wore the uniform of a colonial soldier, and carried a long-barreled musket. Again, there was no sound, only vision. I imagined the man to be a glass jar, myself a bodiless pair of eyes trapped inside, looking out helplessly. I trudged through the snow, feeling neither the frostbite of my hands and feet, or the bloody wound in my right arm. Ahead, through a curtain of falling snow, I saw the wall of a wooden fort, with comfortable smoke rising from the peaked roofs beyond. I paused to wipe the cold sweat from my brow, almost home.
A black shape leapt from the snow. Its fangs ripped into me, painlessly, soundlessly. It was a lean, dark wolf, ravenous and desperate. But I recognized its smoldering orange eyes that glared into mine as it ripped my body apart. Those were the eyes…the ones that had stared at me from the ultimate darkness. The wolf tore out my own eyes then, whosever they were.
Once again I floated in the infinite dark, panicking. Then a flash and I looked through the eyes of yet another person. I was a woman again, or a girl. I walked along a deserted road, far from the lights of the city. Looking down at my own body, I saw a plaid skirt and high heels. Turning my head, I saw the smoking wreckage of a crashed car, its front end wrapped around a huge oak tree. I stumbled along the road, light-headed, until headlights came into view. Flagging down the car, a red Chevy Nova, I spoke a few words to the lone driver, who beckoned me inside. As I sat down, the man smiled at me, and turned his head. His eyes were those of a slavering beast, and he smiled. Before I could fumble the passenger door open, he pressed a gleaming blade against my throat. He whispered something I could not hear as he drew the knife across my flesh. And darkness came again.
I spun, tossed by invisible winds out of some primal void. I knew nothing else to do, so I called out my grandmother’s name. This time I heard my own voice, echoing through the nothingness.
I looked then at my own six-year-old self. I wrapped my arms around the little boy, smothering him with my genuine love. I realized that I now looked out from behind my Granny Armaya’s eyes, when she had still lived. My arms were hers, thin and spotted, my dress was an old, threadbare green, the one I always remembered her wearing. I watched the little boy that used to be me wander about the attic, prying into chests full of old junk. And I turned back to my cauldron, where I dropped in a batch of herbs. I saw the sigils scrawled across the attic floor and somehow, now, I understood their meaning. There was one particular symbol that sat within a crude pentagram, studded by lit candles. It drew my attention powerfully.
Vingaal.
I knew that word. I knew it meant “enemy.” I knew it meant “devil,” or “evil thing.” And I knew it represented everything I stood against. It was the murderous owner of the eyes.
Time passed, and I saw my grandmother work many strange spells. Only then, suspended behind her aged eyes, did I come to accept that she was a witch. But that wasn’t the correct word, for she battled the evil that was the Vingaal. To defy it was her purpose in life. It had claimed the life of her husband since it could not claim her own. It also took her children one by one, my father among them.
I learned that the name “Armaya” means “cursed” in the old tongue. I learned that Granny Armaya had come here far earlier than the thirties, and was far older than anyone would dare to guess, her life sustained by her arcane potions. I learned that the thing called Vingaal roamed the world feeding on the suffering and blood of innocents. If it could not murder directly, it seduced other innocents into murdering for it (like the Puritans who burned alive the innocent girl accused of witchcraft). I also learned what my grandmother was really doing all the time she spent weaving magic in her attic.
She followed the Vingaal, anticipating its victims, climbing behind their eyes and alerting them to its danger. She saved the lives of thousands in this way, spoiling the creature’s blood-play. For this it would never forgive her. It longed for her blood now more than any other.
I watched through my grandmother’s eyes as she entered her alcove of darkness yet again, sending her mind through the void, settling into the brains of those the Vingaal was stalking. Urging them to avoid the dark path after midnight, or to sidestep that particular alley where doom waited with an eager knife. Sometimes she even took control of the person’s body, physically driving the victim away from the Vingaal.
She wasn’t always successful. The Vingaal was clever, and determined. But she saved those she could. In the end, she even saved herself. But her potions could only hold off a natural death for so long, as her body continued to grow frail. It was a heart attack that finally took her life. I saw it strike her, in the middle of a conjuring, saw through her eyes as she staggered down the attic stairs to die on the living room floor.
Then I was alone in the darkness again.
I felt empowered by this knowledge of my grandmother’s sorcery. On impulse, I concentrated on my own body, willing myself to return. I had to get back to my living self, or be trapped in the void forever. There was a rush, a fresh falling sensation. Then I looked upon my adult body, standing in the dark alcove among the jar-lined shelves. I knew instantly that something was wrong.
How could I see my own body if I had re-entered it?
As I watched my own head turn to look straight at me, I realized I was looking out from inside one of the jars. I looked through a pair of those dried, preserved eyes kept in my grandmother’s alcove. And the smiling face that stared back at me was me, yet it was not me.
It had my face, but its eyes were blazing orange like hungry flames; narrow, bestial things that I recognized at once. I had none of my grandmother’s powers, and I had left my body standing defenseless in the alcove.
I had left it empty, and the Vingaal had filled it.
The wicked thing stared at me from behind my own eyes, grinned at me with my own mouth.
It reached out for the jar in which I lay, and instinctively I jerked backward, into the void once more. I was a bodiless, homeless soul adrift in an ocean of starless night.
I thought of the city, the thousands of people living there. Maybe there was someone who could help me. It was the only chance I had. I willed myself toward them.
I emerged from the dark behind the eyes of a cab driver, looking out his windshield at the rushing lights of traffic. I don’t know how long I looked helplessly upon those rain-soaked streets while he picked up one fare after another. Still I could hear nothing, say nothing, do nothing. How had my grandmother managed to take control of another’s body? If I could only do that, maybe there would be hope. Somehow, maybe I could reclaim my own body. But she had practiced her hidden craft for centuries…how could I hope to duplicate her mastery?