Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle. Carlos Allende
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document was a pact of allegiance between her, the nameless little girl from the adobe house at the end of the only road in Rancho La Ballona, in Los Angeles County; the seven princes of Hell: Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Elimi, Astaroth, Belphegor and Leviathan; and at least sixty other demons, plus witnesses. The terms were the usual: her soul and the promise of a sacrifice of blood every year to her new masters in exchange for a series of banalities: honors, pleasures and riches. Very standard.
A small wingless fiend with the face of a cat, the body of a squirrel, and the limbs of a lizard, slipped from under the three-faced demon’s cassock holding a long pin. He took the biscuits from the little girl and gave them back to her mother. Then, he used the pin to prick the little girl in her right palm. He then extended the pin to the little girl and asked her to sign the document with her blood, “right at the bottom.”
The little girl took the pin, but still made no attempt to grab the document. Instead she kept staring at it.
“She can’t understand what it says,” said one of the caged children.
The little girl didn’t know how to read yet, and even if she did, she would have not been able to understand it. The document was inscribed in mirror writing and in Latin, using only consonants and no vowels.
“That’s all right, she don’t need to know what it says,” said the small wingless demon.
“She doesn’t know how to sign, either,” said a vampire.
“Then just an X, sweetie,” said the small wingless demon.
“Right here,” said Beelzebub, through the mouth of the lion, extending a long finger to the document to indicate where the little girl was supposed to sign
The little girl did as the demon told her.
“What is important is that it is your blood.”
“Now—” another demon, this one all black and gangly, like a match that’s been blown out, appeared from nowhere and grabbed the parchment, “—let us fill the date and place in here, and sign it here and here, and…that’s it. You do understand that your soul belongs to us now, don’t you?”
The little girl nodded.
The vampires stepped aside. Now there were almost two dozen demons surrounding her, each presenting the most diverse physiognomy: dogs and lizard heads, goose feet, vampire wings, serpent tails, wolf-like torsos and dragons.
“And that you are bound to us for all eternity?”
The little girl nodded again, unaware of what the words “bound” or “eternity” meant.
“Now, you have to kiss it,” laughed the boy that had asked before all those questions about seeing the Devil. “You have to kiss the Devil’s butt!”
That was the last step. She was supposed to give the Little Master the osculum infame, the kiss of shame.
The little girl pursed her lips and raised her neck trying to give a little peck to Beelzebub’s haunches, but the demon moved back with a frightened expression on his three faces.
“Not to me!” he said, covering himself with three arms and drawing a five point star in mid-air with the other.
The girl turned then to the small wingless demon that had pricked her hand to sign the contract, but the aberration rapidly hid under Beelzebub’s cassock. Before she attempted to kiss another demon, all of them moved aside to reveal what stood behind them. It was his Malign Majesty, the Devil himself, the Little Master, the Prince of the Damned, the Perverted and the Ruined, Emperor of Hell and King of All Things Rotten, an even more horrendous creature than any of the other four thousand six hundred sixty-two demons in the party, seated atop a wooden stool, thirteen feet above ground, presiding over the banquet.
He was a foot taller than Beelzebub. He had the body and the legs of a goat, the tail of a cat, enormous bat wings and the face of a Babylonian warrior, with dark, rough skin, bony cheeks, a black beard and eyelashes so long you could feel a soft warm breeze whenever he closed his eyelids. Thick curls of dark hair framed his forehead. On the top of his head, he had a set of antlers, like a deer, and he was totally naked. He too spent his time devouring naughty children, but he seemed to be sucking them, rather than chewing, as Beelzebub did. The lips closed around the little children heads as if he was about to kiss them; then, he slurped them in, like oysters.
His nakedness became the more apparent as he descended from the stool and turned his posterior to the girl. His nubby sack hung as low as one foot below his buttocks.
The small wingless demon came out of Beelzebub’s cassock and gently pushed the little girl towards Satan. Her lips remained pursed but her expression changed from one that intended to please to one of profound terror. The smell of blood and sulfur that permeated the air inside the cemetery was nothing compared to the horrific stench that came from the Devil’s posterior. The sight revolted her more than anything else she had seen that night; you could tell that the Little Master didn’t change his bedclothes often. The little girl tried to escape, but the small wingless demon kept pushing her face firmly towards the Devil’s second mouth.
“It ain’t but a kiss my dear,” the small demon insisted.
The little girl closed her eyes as a cluster of flies flapped over her face. When she opened them again, one inch away from the malign orifice, she could see tiny black roaches coming in and out of the hole, greeting each other, having conversations, welcoming her to an underground lair.
“One tiny kiss,” the small demon grunted, “then it’ll be over.”
“One kiss is all it takes,” the roaches caroled. “One sign of willing heart, one sign of duty…”
If she could sing, it would have been the time for the little girl to sing, too. What were her favorite things? Fishing for tadpoles and black necked stilts; water with sugar; milk with her tea; feeling the wet sand sink under her feet… She took one last breath and pressed her tongue between her teeth and then her lips to reach the Devil’s buttocks, unwittingly pushing the little piece of consecrated host trapped between her incisors to the rear end of the enemy of all things holy…WHAM! The Emperor of Hell kicked the little girl in her forehead. He knocked the stool down and rubbed his buttocks against the grass as if trying to put out an invisible fire. With the kick, the little girl, together with half a dozen demons and a few witches that were just behind her, flew up in the sky, like weightless rag-dolls thrown by a wretched child at her nanny. The demons landed graciously; most witches were courteously assisted by fellow enchantresses who ran to catch them, but our little girl fell on top of the pile of wooden crates with such a crash that she broke a few dozen, letting the children escape, which only added more fire to the demon’s rage. On top of all that, she became trapped inside one.
And there she remained, covered in her own blood and tears inside a wooden cage, for the rest of the Sabbath, for the rest of the week and the following two years, so embarrassed was her poor mother by her clumsiness and lack of grace before Satan, Emperor of Hell and King of All Things Rotten.
5
In which the mother finishes her confession
The priest seemed to have aged a decade.
“Two years?”
“She deserved twenty. She remained in that cage until she grew too big to fit in it and she merely broke the crate from the inside.”
“But—” The priest stole another quick look at the young girl. She had brought a plate of soup for the witch and patiently held it by her side waiting for the woman to finish. “How did she—?”
“She could still perform some ordinary chores, sticking her limbs out through the bars and walking on all fours, like a spider,” the witch responded, between slurps. “She didn’t become totally useless. She could still mop the floor with a rag, or feed the chickens. Not that her industry would bring her forgiveness, but at least it guaranteed that she wouldn’t be left to starve in a house that may have been