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| David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson |
Television
shows sometimes center around an individual's encounter with the supernatural.
I remember a show from my teenage days called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It was about a private investigator who
pursued occult cases. He tracked down ghosts, zombies, shaman, and all manner
of creatures from the realm of the occult and always tried to get evidence to
prove their existence (though he never succeeded in doing so). The most
successful of these programs was, undoubtedly, The X-Files, which had a ten-year run and basically followed the
same dramatic set-up as Kolchak,
except its main players were two FBI agent, Dana Scully and Fox Mulder. (Darrin McGavin,
who played Kolchak, was a regular guest star on The X-Files.)
I think I got the idea for the story "The
Sorceress Contract" from my love for Chris Carter's show, The X-Files (I also loved his other
production, Millennium, which only
ran for three years but was a great program). When law enforcement faces the
occult, what happens? Or, in my story when organized
crime meets the occult, what might happen.
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| Coven of pretty witches from the film The Craft |
"The Sorceress Contract" is about a coven
of witches that is being attacked by a powerful sorceress who has left their
coven and is actively fighting against it by interfering with their spells—particularly,
she is blocking the spell that gives the members of the group continual life.
They are dying. In fact, the hundreds of years some of them have lived are
catching up to them and will soon render them decrepit and dead. They know
where the witch lives but are not strong enough to stop or destroy her. The
solution: hire a hit man to kill her.
The hit man is named Mallinson. He is independent
and is also, as far as one can be in his line of work, ethical. He will not
take a hit unless he thinks there is a moral reason for eliminating the person.
The reader learns how he became a professional killer and about his divorce. When
he is contacted by the figure that arranges his jobs and told it is for a coven
of witches, he scoffs, calling them "a bunch of looneys." They offer
him $100,000.00 to take the job, and he consents.
Meeting with the witches, he learns their story.
They convince him their magical power is real by a demonstration and also take
him to witness the last moments of a young woman in the coven who suffered from
anorexia and had gone back in time to escape her condition. With the renegade
sorceress interfering with their magic, she has come back into real time and
dies from her starved condition. Mallinson agrees to take the case. He begins
his investigation. Soon after, he meets a woman in a coffee bar. This is the
Sorceress Maireen, whose name is Helena Adamson.
She tells him she knows of his plot to kill her and
explains why she is interfering with the coven's magic. She replies that she doesn’t
think magic is right, no one has a right to live forever, and she thinks the
amorality of the coven is wrong. She herself plans to exit the world of
sorcery, but she has to eliminate the coven before she can do so, since she has
pledged her soul to it.
They talk. She tells him she has cast a spell so the people in the coffee bar can see and hear them, but their speech and presence
will not register with them—as if they are not there. He asks where she got her
magical power. She tells him you can learn magic or you can gain it through
ascetic practices, like gurus or shamans:
“For two solid years I lived in a cave. I
went naked all that time and did not bathe or cut my hair or nails. I stood
vigil in the snow and mediated at night in the desert cold. I fasted. When I
did eat, it was roots and plants, and when I drank, it was spring water. Two
years I suffered and denied myself. But in that time I accumulated a store of
power—power I could use without the kind of amorality I depended on before
that.”
Maireen
says she won't harm Mallinson with her magic if he agrees to drop the contract.
When he tells her the money has been paid to him, she says she will match it
and then makes a trip to the ladies room. When she returns and sips her
flavored milk, he says if she had offered to double the payment, he would have
left her alone. She is puzzled, but then begins to feel the effect of the
fast-acting poison he has put in her drink. As she dies, he tells her she had
no right to impose her ideas of good and bad on the coven—and that is sickened
him to see Donna, the girl with anorexia, die because of Maireen's whims.
She
dies. People see her but take no notice. Mallinson leaves. Because of the
lingering power of her magic, no one notices her body slumped over the table
until late that night. The coven of witches is pleased. He receives an offer from
one of their leaders, Donna Cuba, now young again, and quite beautiful in her
youth, to go out for a drink.
Exploring
the human side of people deemed evil is intriguing. Witches for whom you feel
compassion; a self-righteous sorceress who claims to be doing good with her
magic; a hit man who is, like all of us, human, with scruples and reasons for
what he does. I can't sort out all the morality, but it's intriguing to
explore.
Sex and Murder has ceased
publication, but you can read The Sorceress Contract in the archives.
In perhaps the same vein is Le Cafe de la Mort . The Angel of Death is beautiful; and she makes a great cup of coffee too.
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