Featured Writer: Dan Manning

Bewail The Spent Soul

[Exhibit #127:Transcript of cassette recording found at crime scene.Annotations by Officer Parker.Tape stored in evidence locker 1115.]

I’ve done something terrible.If I live through tonight, I’ll erase this.

The wind chimes in the back yard sing in an unnatural breeze.The thing I conjured up is on its way.Demons and devils conjure storms to accompany them on their travels.They like drama.Narcissists, every one of them, but that’s the least of their evils.This one will visit because I called it.Big mistake.

I can smell the sulfur.

There’s nothing I can do to stop this relentless hellion, so I might as well take in the evening while I can.It’s a summer night, with all the summer night sounds.The patio door is open and I can hear the bugs singing.Distant traffic hums out on the highway.A boom box thumps somewhere in the neighborhood across the lake.But far off, way out there, thunder rumbles.I should have enjoyed more evenings like this, but I was too busy.Yep, I was a busy little beaver.

Tonight’s storm is on me.My fault.My bad.

The night keeps getting later and later doesn’t it?Nights always keep getting darker and later.Time is a relentless bitch.[1][1]

As much as I need the world to stop, it won’t.Right now it’s early.It’s not even midnight.Elevenish.I suppose the bars are getting rowdier.Children are sleeping.Teenagers are restless.If I still had a television I could watch Letterman or some other talk show.

My favorite time of night is just before morning.I’ve watched hundreds of nights turn death-pale before sunrise.I like it four, five, six in the morning, when simple people in their simple houses snooze the simple sleep of the innocent, while I am free to roam.

I’ve seen the weirdest things during these hours, with my eyes itching and my bones aching for sleep.The secret is staying up as one day turns into the next.I’m not talking about midnight. Midnight is for amateurs; midnight is the arbitrary boundary between one day and the next, marked by nothing more than the hands of a clock.I mean the early morning hour, the true turning of day; that's my favorite hour.That’s when the real magic happens.The powers that move the world dance in the early morning.

The bad news is, I’m not going to see tomorrow morning.I’m afraid I’m never going to see mist hang over deserted streets again.

I mumbled millions of lines of incantations in the wee hours, and my work has served me well.I’ve seen hallucinations that aren’t hallucinations at all, but real horrors from underground places.

Tonight, I’ve gone too far.I’ve conjured minor things before, but I’ve never done anything like what I’ve done tonight.I've never done anything this terrible.I’ve never uttered a name like the one I’ve uttered tonight, but I’m desperate.

Janet, the woman I love, is in down in the basement, dead.I tried to make a deal to get her back, but I screwed up.

I have a book of spells.I turned to the last page in that infernal book.The man I purchased it from told me to never cast the last spell in the book, but tonight, in my panic, I cast it anyway.During the cast, I uttered the name of a dark thing from a level of hell that is, how can I say it, way out of my league.

The wind is picking up.Howling.The water in the toilet has turned to blood, the goldfish is belly up, and my phone has stopped working.

I got involved with magic because of beer, of all things. I was drunk.Me and a buddy from work[2][2] were coming back from a Waterside bar in Norfolk, Virginia.While we were stopped at a red light, I saw the words TIDEWATER MAGIC SUPPLIES painted on a dusty storefront window.All I could see behind the glass was a wooden head wearing some weird headdress made of brown feathers, and a small table with red felt on it with some glass sculpture on top.

“What kind of shit is that?”I say.“Is that legal?”

“I dunno,” my buddy says.“Let’s go find out.”

He was driving, or we never would have stopped.He turns right at the light and parks in the alley.This is downtown, and traffic cops are combing the place for illegal parking.I tell him we should get the hell out of here, but he’s already stepping up the wooden steps through the ratty old screen door and into the dark of the place.I follow him in.

When we get inside, we start goofing on everything: crystal balls; and magic wands that have wire flowers stuffed inside them; those rings you can take apart and put back together, but one of them has the gap in them; you know, fake stuff.

But they also had tarot cards and ceremonial candles and these books.I was drawn to the books.They were in black binders, every one of them, except for a couple of red ones.They were set aside from the books with card tricks or instructions on how to make props, like how to make one of those boxes for the saw-the-lady-in-half trick.

No, these black books on the left side of the shelf, in a corner of the store behind the rack of false-bottom felt hats and fake thumbs and silk scarves, these were special.

It was like they were set in the corner so no one would find them, and it seemed to work.There were a few other people in the store, four geeks around a card table playing some role-playing game with little cards and pewter figures and dice and all that dumb stuff.

I peek into the last book, a thin one with gold-edged pages, and a silk ribbon for a bookmark.It was like a little bible.But the pictures of goat-headed men and weird, hand-written scribbled pages had me hooked.I bought it on the spot, after opening only one page.

It changed my life.

The first time I did a real spell was in the supermarket about two months later.It was just after rush hour.I had a real job back then, before I learned the Money spells.I was going to pick something up, probably a TV dinner or something, because back then I was living alone.This was before Janet.

You know how the produce section is right there when you first walk into a grocery store?I walk in behind this woman who is wearing this severe black business suit, with one of those tight black skirts.She was well built, with fantastic legs.She had bleached blonde hair tied up business-like, with a few wisps falling out.She was probably in her thirties, I don’t know, big ring on her finger.I was watching her when I came in, and she was looking over the bananas.

Well they’re all green.You know when they just get the bananas in at the grocery store and they’re all green?Well I had just picked up this spell, a spell for aging small objects.I had been practicing for about two weeks, and I could turn a grape into a raisin in seconds.

The blonde gives this little frustrated sigh and grabs her cart to move on, but I said to her:

“I can find you a ripe one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“They’re all green right?Too green to eat.I can ripen one up for you.”

“I don’t have time for this.”She’s a complete snob.She pushes her cart over to the lettuce or rutabaga or whatever.I grab a bunch of bananas and mutter my new incantation, and I go over to the lady.

“Please leave me alone,” she says.“I’m not interested.”

“I found a ripe bunch.”I say, holding the bananas in front of her cart, so she has to look at them.I was dumb as a dog fetching a stick.What did I expect?She wouldn't even make eye contact with me.

I thought she’d take them, maybe thank me, but all she did was mutter something about “weirdoes” and “getting the manager” and she clattered away in her lousy high-heals and I felt like an asshole.

But I did it.A whole bunch of bananas (I counted them, there were five) turned from lime green to lemon yellow in about two seconds.Like that time-laps photography you see on those nature shows.There I was, with a miracle in my hand and a stupid grin on my face in the produce section of some store, and they call over the loudspeaker about a spill on isle five and I realize the entire world doesn’t give a shit.

It took me years to realize the magic was hurting me, because I eased into it by doing little magic at first: I curdled milk, I made people's hair fall out, stuff like that.It was fun.It was a hobby that no one else had.I could impress girls with it.It got me laid.That’s seductive, when something can get you laid.I used it all the time.I was just messing around.

I was just learning back then, Gods, what was it, six years ago?

You get hooked on the simple stuff.

But it’s like drugs or something.I bought every book in that magic store.I borrowed money from my mom[3][3] to do it.It happened so fast after that, I just got sucked in.I went days without sleep.I was studying, experimenting, and casting. [4][4]

I didn't even realize when I'd crossed the line.Next thing I knew, I was saying stinking, foul, evil names.While I was sinking deeper into it I told myself I was just "experimenting", and that I'd never hurt anybody.After a couple of months I swore over and over again: this is the last time I do this shit.

I had this naive idea that I would help people.Use it for good, you know, all that heroic stuff.Like Dr. Strange or something.That dream didn’t last long.

At first I controlled it.It was cool.I felt powerful and special, but it was an illusion.I felt like I was smarter than the rest of the fools out there.I thought I was tapping into some cosmic power, but really things were the other way around.

Magic hurts.

I'm in constant pain.I don't get any sleep anymore, and back when I did, I had nightmares.There were no faces in my nightmares, nothing, just dark shapes telling me I was going to hurt somebody, like my parents or the neighbor kid[5][5] or my boss.[6][6] Sometimes it was the same dark figure, with a fiery red glow behind it, just a silhouette chanting in perfect Latin.I understood every word of it in my dream.When the dreams started, I didn’t know any Latin, except Carpe Diem, and that’s only because of that movie with Robin Williams in it.Other than that, I didn’t know any Latin.

Now I think in Latin most of the time.Never cracked a book.Never had a lesson.

It’s not just the lack of sleep.There’s sharp pain in my joints and I’m always dehydrated, no matter how much water I drink.My cuticles hurt all the time.My cuticles for Christ’s sake.I didn’t even know those could hurt.

I think this is some kind of training for Hell, since I’m guaranteed to end up there when I die.

I guess that’s going to happen tonight, unless I can pull a serious spell out of my ass.Ha ha.

Jesus, listen to that wind.[7][7]

My eyes are shot.I stare at the night sky for hours consulting star charts.The lighting is poor; I don't know why you have to do everything by candlelight, but magic doesn't work under electric light; my eyes are bleary and red from squinting at tiny, scribbled spells penned in Latin by some long-dead witch who had terrible handwriting.Now I have to wear thick glasses.I've searched in vain for a spell that will correct my vision.Oh no, a spell that corrects poor vision makes too much sense.The only spells I've been able to find are the kind that hurt people.

I want to take it all back.Not just because of my pain, but the pain I’ve caused all these other people.The pain I’ve caused—

Hold on a minute.What is this, a last-minute confession by the condemned?I don’t take it back.I meant every word of every spell I ever cast.Screw it.If I'm gonna have to go, I’m not going out begging for mercy.

I stopped believing in white magic a long time ago.White magic is a pipe dream.It's all bad, even the little stuff.It's all just evil as Hell.

It was a lonely existence before Janet.You can't look up "covens" in the phone book and expect to find a group of like-minded individuals with interests similar to your own (and I’m sorry, but I never got into that whole Internet thing).It just doesn't happen like that.I was the loneliest man on earth for a long time.I’d go days without speaking to anyone except at work, and that was never pleasant because my coworkers[8][8] all hated me and thought I was a freak, which I was.I was a shut-in.The next-door neighbors on either side hated me.[9][9]

But one day I met someone.

Janet and I were star-crossed lovers.I ran into her at the city pound one afternoon with a thunderstorm raging outside.We were both there to adopt black cats.

We took one look at each other and we immediately knew what the other was up to.It was like looking into a mirror or something.Black clothes, eyeliner, tall, thin, pale-white.Pierced all over the place; my God she was pierced.She had a shock of red hair; Shirley-Temple curls with these big obnoxious black hair clips.I was in love.

We just kind of stared at each other while the dogs barked in their stinky cages and the cats looked at us like we were stupid.We were reading each other's minds or something.I asked her if she wanted to get some coffee somewhere.A thunderclap shook the building, the power went out, and in the pitch darkness, she said yes.Her voice was a silver bell.

A week later we were living together.She had been looking for a way to move out from under her old boyfriend.[10][10]Now that was an abusive relationship, but that’s another story altogether.

We started practicing black magic together; it was like our own little two-person coven.I told her we had to do everything naked.The rituals didn't actually require us to be naked, but Janet couldn't read Latin so I lied to her about it.I think she knew but she didn't care.She had a fabulous body to go with her fabulous mind.[11][11]

Listen to that wind.It smells like somebody’s burning something out there.Listen to it![12][12]

Anyway, we'd get all naked and chant and wiggle and grind around and half the time the spell wouldn't work but we didn’t care because we ended up screwing like monkeys anyway.

The first thing I hurt on purpose was a dog (except for the cats, but I’ll get to that later).

My neighbor had this German Shepherd that was always barking and keeping us up at night.One night the dog was really barking like crazy, so I cast a spell I had been tempted to cast a hundred times, but back then I still had this idea that I shouldn’t hurt anyone or anything.So I cast this spell (Janet practically begged me to do it), it was a clean spell, with just a few ingredients, all of them from my dry stock.

A minute later the dog yelped once and quit barking.I never saw the dog again.The neighbors have a privacy fence.They hated me and they were looking for an excuse to call the cops on me, so I wasn't about to risk looking over the fence to see what happened to the dog, and I couldn't ask them.They thought I was some kind of freak, and I suppose they were right.They’re dead now, so screw ‘em.So I never found out what had really happened to the dog.It didn’t solve the problem; they got one of those Scotty dogs a week later and it was worse than the first one.Couldn’t do the same trick twice, too risky.

And then came the first time I killed somebody.

About a month after the dog died, I had some trouble with my boss, Vince.He was a complete prick: he constantly belittled people.I could handle it, (I had an “attitude”) but there was this older lady at work Vince picked on all the time.He pointed out her faults and harassed her until she couldn't take it.I hated watching him do that to her.

I hated him.I mean I really hated him.Do you know what that feels like?Of course you do, whether you admit it or not.

One night I was at the house stewing after a particularly bad day with this asshole.I was so pissed I found the spell that I'd used on the dog, lit some candles and cast the spell on Vince (I was out of nutmeg, but I used some crushed match heads instead).

The next day he didn't show up for work.

We didn't hear anything that day, or the day after.Everybody (except yours truly) figured he was calling in sick.Finally, the department manager comes down and asks us if we know why Vince isn't showing up for work, and we all said we didn't know.

The next morning, the department manager called us all into the conference room for a meeting, and he tells us that they found Vince's body in his house.He'd shot himself.

After that, killing people easy.It came in handy sometimes.Like the time the cop showed up at the house.

Janet and I had adopted over twenty black cats from the pound.They usually ended up boiled in one potion or another.It's amazing how many spells call for black cats.We kept "adopting" them from the pound until the Humane Society realized we had adopted so many cats and they got suspicious.One morning a fat police officer showed up on our front doorstep with a search warrant.I don’t know why he came alone.They must have been short-handed down at the station.Anyway, he was only investigating cats.

Unfortunately he suffered an aneurysm while he was snooping around in the basement and died next to the hot water heater.Imagine that.

If he had made it all the way through the basement, he would have found a lot of illegal stuff, a room painted red, and a black alter.He might have become really alarmed when he found the body parts from the county cemetery.

We disposed of the body the hard way.That guy was tough, let me tell you.We dumped his squad car in a mall parking lot and we were never connected with the crime.Just the same, I felt horrible.

In the paper they reported that he'd mysteriously disappeared.They also reported that he'd left behind a wife and three kids, and they went on and on about how great he was and how he was a wonderful father and husband.I felt like crap for months after that.Because of me three kids would never see their father again.Just because I practice black magic doesn’t mean I’m completely heartless.The guy was just doing his job.

After that we went overboard.I had finally learned the Money spell and I didn’t have to work anymore.Just wall-to-wall heathenism, twenty-four-seven.

By then Janet and I were nothing but ghouls who stayed indoors all day and crept around in woods at night, sulking around run-down country graveyards, digging up coffins and sneaking into homes and stealing babies.

Oh yes, sometimes the spells call for babies.

You know that spell from Shakespeare's Macbeth?

Scale of dragon, tooth of wolf,

Politically incorrect as it is, that is a list of ingredients for a real spell.I kid you not.Do you know how hard it is to find some of the stuff this spell calls for?That’s just an example, and not the most difficult list of things to find.It takes a lot of funds and a lot of searching.

This is what happened to Janet:

Janet and I were really into necromancy.We loved raising the dead: dead cats, dead dogs, everything.Everything except people.We never could pull it off, through no lack of trying.We must have exhumed twenty people in the dead of night, and then we had to get rid of them when the spells didn’t work.The newspapers were all over it, and the cops were searching the county and staking out all the local cemeteries.We had to drive further and further to obtain our subjects and we kept having close scrapes with getting caught until finally we gave up.

It drove me crazy.I just wanted to do it once.(Come on Lazarus, you can do it!)

I was convinced (so Janet was convinced) I had the kinks worked out of the problem of raising a human from the dead.It had to do with the human soul traveling much further from the body than the soul of an animal.Anyway, I was convinced I had it.

Three nights ago it got really crazy and I tied Janet to the alter in the basement.She was blindfolded and gagged, naked.Her white body was beautiful against dark granite.It was a truly remarkable sight.

I had been up for six days studying these infernal books, strung out, and I was in some kind of a blind frenzy, like a trance.I wouldn't say I was possessed, but I defiantly wasn't myself.We weren’t alone down there either.There were some major league demons in that room.They were loving it, whipping us up, whispering, taunting.

Janet struggled right before-I think she had changed her mind.I should have stopped then but I was so sure of myself, so full of my own self-glory, so ready to impress those invisible watchers that surrounded us.God, if I had stopped she'd still be alive.I was frothing by the time I buried a ten-inch ceremonial dagger into her chest again and again, howling like an unholy, rabid wolf.There was blood everywhere.

The next night I tried to raise her back but it didn’t work.I tried again last night, but I can't bring her back.She's still down there, tied to the same spot, ruined.That's what I was working on tonight.That's why this crazy demon is coming to get me.I cast the last spell in the book.

Damn I miss her.Damn it to hell.

I've said one too many incantations, and tonight is a night of reckoning.I'm going to pay for all this magic I've been using all these years.I've become very rich by reading the future in chicken guts and tarot cards and using the Money spell.

There's a price for all this; every spell cast is a favor asked of something from the netherworld.Even the little stuff counts against you.Nothing is free.But by the time you realize you're going to pay in the afterlife, it's too late.You've mortgaged your soul, and eventually the devil will be paid.

I'm just a conduit for some hell-spawned evil. I'm some devil's ticket to this unsuspecting world of daylight and relatively innocent people.I went way over the line tonight and unleashed something very very bad.[13][13]

A huge winged demon just landed in my backyard.

All this time I thought I had tapped into some terrible power.Instead, some terrible power had tapped into me.

That’s okay.I got a few more tricks up my sleeve.Maybe I can pull this off.Maybe I have a chance. [14][14]

Guess I’ll go out there and see what he wants.

[End of Recording]

[1][1] Long pause in audiocassette.

[2][2] Deceased: mauled by dogs

[3][3] Deceased: single car accident

[4][4] Long pause.Sound of patio screen door opening, then closing

[5][5] Deceased: struck by car

[6][6] Deceased: details below

[7][7] Long pause in audiotape

[8][8] Six deceased: aneurysm; fall from roof; electrocuted; drowned in pool; choked on steak Quesadilla; West Nile virus

[9][9] Deceased: head-on collision, both families same accident

[10][10] Deceased: choked on vomit while drinking

[11][11] Long pause in audiotape

[12][12] Long pause, rattling sound, wind, sound of patio door closing

[13][13] Long pause in audio tape

[14][14] pause. sound of screen door opening

Dan Manning lives in Grand Rapids, MI with his wife and kids. He writes fantasy and science fiction and sends them out to magazines all the time. His last book, "The Adventures on The Sheherazad" had a chrome robot in it.

Email: Dan Manning

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