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| Saint Augustine |
I don't write a
lot of horror, and I've explained why elsewhere, though I can give a capsulized
version of why here. I don't believe evil is ultimate. The old teachings of
theologians like Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, which I encountered in
younger days, proposed that evil has no ontology; that is, it has no real
standing in the universe but is a twisting and perverting of something else,
something that has a legitimate place in the scheme of things. The
Seventeenth-Century poet Robert Herrick put it this way: "Evil no nature hath; the loss of good /
Is that which gives to sin its livelihood." Evil is not a thing to itself
but rather another thing modified and stripped of its good, used for a purpose
other than its original purpose.
Most horror
writing sees evil as ultimate. My story "Leviticus" combined these
ideas.
Marcie has been
dumped by her boyfriend. The girl he left her for, Eloise, taunts and mocks
her. She wants revenge but is not so foolish as to try to harm the girl. Her
sister tells her "Maybe you ought to talk to Leviticus." Leviticus was
a girl in her school who practiced magic. Marcie remembers that some people who claimed to practice magic or be in league with evil power, but Leviticus was a
legitimate, bona fide practitioner.
Her lifestyle made people either scornful or afraid of her. Marcie befriended her, though she never asked, in all their years in school together, for Leviticus
(whose real name is Carol-Lynn) to do magic for her. She arranges to meet her old high school
friend.
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| Leviticus |
She is surprised
to see that Leviticus no longer dresses in black, like in the old days. She
also runs a boutique Marcie has shopped at. But she does do magic. When Marcie
tells her what she wants, Leviticus begins to question her motivations. Not liking
her moralistic tone, Marcie stomps out of their meeting and goes to the
library. Leviticus appears there and warns her against getting a book of spells
and trying to do magic herself. "Not a good idea—kind of like trying to
teach yourself to use a nuclear reactor," her old friend tells her.
Leviticus agrees to help her.
The plan involves
sending a monster to kill Eloise—though Leviticus makes it clear that she
cannot kill anyone. Marcie remembers a time when a football player who
circulated rumors that Leviticus had gone down for the whole team suddenly died. She
clarifies: “I didn’t kill him. I simply opened the door to
justice. Through his desire to hurt, he had weakened his resistance to the
forces of evil who always want to destroy us but are held back by certain
forces from doing so. He was vulnerable. When I do that kind of magic, I only
weaken the protection people like him have. The results can vary.” She promises to send a
monster after Eloise. But Marcie will have to participate in the project.
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| rakshasha |
Leviticus says she
will send a rakshasha, a demon from
Hindu lore. Marcie must stand in a magic circle and be careful because the rakshasha is violent and will try to kill
her if it can. She successfully sends the creature to get Eloise, but then
complications set in. Two hours pass. She must relieve herself. Finally, when
things get unbearable, she reaches outside the circle, retrieves a decorative jar she has filled with marbles, pours them on the floor, and uses the it as
a receptacle. When the rakshasa returns,
however, it attacks, choking and biting her. The creatures are venomous.
Marcie sees that the marbles from the container have rolled to a low spot on the
floor and covered up part of the magic circle. The poison from the rakshasha begins to work. She kicks the
marbles away, reforming the magical protection and driving off the demonic
creature. But the damage is done. Darkness closes over Marcie's eyes and she
reflects on the irony that last thing she sees is a container sitting on the
stairs full of her own urine.
She wakes up in the hospital. Leviticus is there with her. She was able to rescue Marcie and counteract the poison. Leviticus also informs her the creature debilitated Eloise and then slowly tortured her death. Marcie feels satisfaction that she has her revenge. But she also realizes that she should have made the focus of it her boyfriend, not Eloise. Leviticus asks if she wants to learn magic—a thing she had offered to Marcie in their school days but Marcie had declined. Now she agrees. She wants to learn to magic to get back at her boyfriend. She will become an apprentice. Leviticus will be her teacher.
The story appeared in the UK publication Sanitarium. You can get a copy of it here.
For additional titles, see my Writer's Page.
I would love to hear your comments.
Happy reading.
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