An Exorcism in Roanoke

"Non est mourta, quod potest mendacium aeternum. Mirumque aeos, mors quoque peread."

The words vibrated within the sacred circle, deepening with each reverberation like the knelling of a distant bell. Beyond the circle of salt, behind the eight women standing around it, inky shadows swelled from the earthen floor. Swirling they rose, defying the golden radiance of fat candles lining the room, encroaching into their domain where only moments before no shadow dare intrude. With airy fingers, the shadows pressed upon the backs of the eight; caressing bare flesh like the memory of former lovers.

In the center of the circle stood the Priestess. Even in the fruit cellar of her husband's home, with the surrounding candlelight eclipsed by the swirling shadows, her flesh glowed silver as though bathed in incandescent moonlight. Her power was undaunted by the dirt and wood that separated her from the night sky; the magic that was hers lived in her flesh, in her soul. Where she walked, the Goddess was with her.

The Priestess beckoned and the shadows answered, slithering between the eight, crossing the boundary of blessed salt, reaching for her.

As one, the coven chanted the words again:

"Non est mourta, quod potest mendacium aeternum. Mirumque aeos, mors quoque peread."

The words touched the shadows and they fragmented into gossamer strands, shivering with ecstasy. The eight reached out and drew the strands of smoky darkness into their hands. With sure, practiced movements they wove the strands between their fingers, each woman imbuing the shadow with her intent before passing it to the woman on her left in an intricate game of Cat's Cradle.

When the eight were done, the shadow had been woven into a taut skein of lacy darkness that coiled around the wrists and fingers of each woman. They were bound, each to the other, inseparable.

The Priestess reached out and plucked a single strand from each of the eight. Deftly as any spider, she wove the gathered darkness into a web of shadow that stretched across the circle, binding her to the eight as surely as they were to her. Their will was One.

The Priestess raised her hands, lifting the web high. The coven mirrored her movements.

For the third time, they chanted the words:

"Non est mourta, quod potest mendacium aeternum. Mirumque aeos, mors quoque peread."

The intricate designs woven into the web of shadows cast even blacker shadows upon the ground, tracing an eldritch sigil across the whole of the circle. Within the lines of those black shadows cast by shadows, the Priestess saw the infinite depths of the sea, the fathomless reaches of space. She saw eternity, infinity, and absolute nothing.

With a cry, she clenched her fist around the center of the web and drove it into the ground between her feet. The eight followed suit, driving their fists into the rich soil and unleashing cries of their own.

The web vanished into the soil, taking the sigil with it. In her mind's eye, the Priestess watched the sigil unfurl in the ground beneath her feet, spreading outward in all directions until it encompassed the whole of the tiny island and the meager community that crouched upon it.

A wind roared out of nowhere, snuffing the candles and plunging the cellar into pitch darkness. Even the Priestess's silver glow vanished.

In the wake of the rushing gale, the coven felt the stark touch of the void that existed between the stars, the cold oblivion beneath the ocean. Their breath froze in the dark while every inch of their unclothed flesh shivered violently. Only their years of experience with such strange manifestations allowed them to maintain their composure.

From the darkness, the Priestess spoke:

"It has been called." she said, forcing the words through chattering teeth, "In two days, on Hallows -- when the Veil is at its thinnest -- Roanoke will be no more."

October 30th, 1587

Eight year old Tabitha Clancy, daughter of Jonathan and Sarah Clancy, had a nightmare so frightening that the girl woke up screaming. Her father rushed to her room to find her feverish and ranting incoherently.

Whether young Tabitha's fever was brought on by the nightmare she'd had, or if it was the fever that spawned the nightmare, was never determined. It didn't matter to her father: upon hearing his beloved daughter's ravings, he did what any righteous, God-fearing man would do: he went to fetch a priest.

The Priestess and her husband, Richard -- the colony's primary physician -- had just sat down to their breakfast when someone began hammering at their front door.

"What in the world?" Richard muttered, getting up and going to the door. A visit that early could only mean trouble.

Throwing open the door, Richard was met with the towering presence of Caleb Knight, pastor of the colony's sole church. The man was just lifting a mallet-sized fist to strike the door again.

"Pastor Knight? What in God's name is the matter, man?"

Pastor Knight took his role as shepherd of God's flock seriously. He did not bear the slight build of most priests, who spent their time cloistered away with books; he was built like a warrior, solid and thickly muscled. Nobody in the colony worked harder than he, nobody was more willing to roll up their sleeves and engage in the difficult task of sustaining a small settlement in an unforgiving wilderness.

His piercing green eyes were tired but resolute as he looked down at Richard, a man of no small size himself.

"Mr. Covington, there is something wrong with the Clancy girl." Knight's bassy voice was a hot cloud of vapor in the frosty air. "You need to come with me."

Richard wasted no time on questions, turning instead to retrieve his bag. He was not surprised to find his wife standing behind him with it already in hand.

"Thank you, Cassandra," he said. He accepted the bag from her and gestured for her to follow him.

Pastor Knight pierced Cassandra with his heavy gaze and shook his head. "Stay here," he said, his tone forbidding. "There is no place for women in our business today."

"My wife always accompanies me on matters involving children and womenfolk," Richard protested. He put a protective arm around Cassandra's shoulders. "She has midwifed stillborns and treated grievous injury and never once faltered. She is a credit to her gender."

"The woman stays." insisted Knight, his countenance darkening. He grabbed Richard's arm and marched him down the street, leaving Cassandra alone on the porch.

Though her face was a carefully arranged mask of neutrality, she fumed inside. The arrogance of men! To think females such frail creatures as to shatter at the slightest touch! Men knew nothing of strength. But by tomorrow night, she reminded herself, it would no longer matter.

Once the men were safely out of sight, Cassandra latched the door and went into the kitchen. Bright morning light poured in through the eastern window. She needed no man's permission to go where she wished. There were other ways to travel.

With her back to the window, Cassandra's shadow stretched across the floor. Kneeling, she drew her athame from a concealed sheath in her bodice. With a quick sweeping gesture, she sliced the slender double-edged blade across her shadow, separating it from her.

"Go to the Clancy farm," she said. "See what is happening there."

No longer tethered to her body, the shadow flitted away. In the early morning hour, there were more than enough shadows to blend into; nobody would notice the fleet spectre slipping stealthily from one shadow to the next. It would easily outpace the two men and arrive at the Clancy farmhouse well before they.

While the shadow traveled, Cassandra retrieved a wooden bowl from the cupboard and set it upon the table. She filled the bowl with water and added to it three drops of black ink from her brother's stationary. The ink spread like a bloodstain, billowed like a liquid cloud.

Using the sharp point of her athame, she pricked her index finger and touched the water. The tiny, bleeding wound created a conduit for her magic that connected her to the water, shaping its contents to her will.

With her bleeding fingertip, she stirred the bowl three times clockwise; the stain spread until the entirety of the water had turned deepest black, like oil. A dark shadow of her own face watched her from the glistening surface. The black mirror was ready.

Staring deeply into the bowl, Cassandra called upon her connection to her shadow. The surface of the mirror rippled, and then resolved into a moving image: the perspective of her creeping shadow, low to the ground. The sounds of the colony slowly coming awake trickled through the scrying device, distant and tinny.

It had just reached the farmhouse. Silently it slipped under the door and into the kitchen. It paused to observe a woman sitting silently at the kitchen table, her pale blue eyes fixed on nothing.

It was Sarah Clancy, Tabitha's mother. The woman was clearly in a state of shock, one so severe it bordered on catatonia. Her slack face was white as snow, as blank as paper. Only the occasional twitch beneath one eye gave proof that the woman lived.

Urging the shadow deeper into the house, Cassandra found the daughter's room. Lying upon a tiny straw bed was an even tinier wisp of a girl, virtually buried in blankets. She was shivering violently, despite the blankets and the bright sheen of sweat glistening in the sunlight pouring through her bedroom window.

Cassandra placed the tip of her first two fingers upon the surface of the black mirror and concentrated.

In the mirror, her shadow reached out and touched Tabitha's brow with the tips of its first two fingers. The image in the bowl rippled away, replaced with the dream that the farmer's daughter had had in the night.

Tabitha was swimming through a vast oceanic trench. She seemed utterly infinitesimal in the endless waters, a speck of a speck in the vastness.

Carved into the walls of the trench were buildings, but such buildings! Cassandra had never imagined scale such as what was carved there. The giants described in the Bible would be dwarfed, rendered mere infants compared to the colossi that inhabited those buildings. Cassandra's home could have easily fit in the cracks between the stones that composed the titanic structures.

A tremor passed through the trench. Tabitha looked down, into the black depths stretching beneath her. Deep below her, a pair of enormous, luminescent peridot eyes cracked opened. If the buildings carved into the walls of the trench were the homes of Titans, then the being staring up at Tabitha with such malevolence could only be their God.

The eyes glared at Tabitha. For a moment Cassandra imagined the eyes were glaring past Tabitha; glaring at her, but that was impossible. Wasn't it?

The glowing eyes began to rise, a pair of dying suns ascending from the depths. Cassandra felt the terror that Tabitha felt in her dream -- terror pure and unmitigated. The entity she beheld was a God of ancient provenance and unspeakable malevolence: what protection could be offered by a Martyr or His Father Who had let Him die? This thing existed in an entirely different order of magnitude from anything depicted in her father's Bible. If this was Leviathan, then the promises of Heaven, of Paradise, of an all-powerful and loving God, were lies.

The eyes rose, bringing the vast, impenetrable darkness with them. They filled Tabitha's vision and --

The image shattered unexpectedly, the shadow breaking contact with Tabitha and retreating. Jonathan and Pastor Knight entered the room. Behind them appeared the bereaved countenance of Tabitha's father. His distress had twisted his features so as to render him nearly unrecognizable.

The large minister stopped in the doorway and surveyed the room; Cassandra was certain he'd caught a glimpse of her shadow, but his eyes swept over it without pausing.

Richard knelt at Tabitha's side, placing a hand upon her brow. "She's burning up," he announced. "Jonathan, fetch me a wet towel. We need to -- urk!"

Tabitha's tiny hand closed around the doctor's windpipe with the speed of a lightning strike. Her eyes snapped open; from her shadow's vantage, Cassandra saw the baleful fury in their peridot glow. Through her glared the god from Tabitha's nightmare.

Knight was the first to react. He leapt forward and grabbed the snarling girl by the arm. He tried to pry her hand from Richard's throat, but he may as well have been a child himself for all the effect he had.

Richard's eyes bulged, fear and disbelief warring for control of his expression. Tabitha's glowing eyes were all he could see.

With an inhuman roar, Tabitha flung him across the room where he crashed into her toy chest, breaking it to pieces.

Knight and Jonathan tried to wrestle the tiny girl down, but she thrashed violently. From her throat issued the most primal sounds Cassandra had ever heard, sounds no human should have been capable of making.

Across the room, Richard finally extricated himself from the wreckage of the toy chest. He threw himself into the fray, adding his strength to that of the minister and the farmer; it was only with the combined strengths of three men that the thrashing, howling girl was finally subdued. Richard managed to administer a sedative and sent her -- finally, mercifully -- into a fitful sleep.

Once the girl was sedated, Cassandra's shadow withdrew from the scene. Cassandra waved her hand over the black mirror, rippling its surface once more.

The sigil appeared in the mirror. Cassandra touched it and spoke:

"Hear me, sisters! Johnathan Clancy's daughter is in the grip of fever and she has seen it -- it is coming! Prepare yourselves!"

Across the colony, the eight heard the Priestess's words, whispered from the nearest shadow into their ears. Nobody else heard the susurration, or if they did they mistook it for the rustling of dry leaves or the whisper of clothing rubbing together and dismissed it without another thought.

October 31, 1587

Overnight, Cassandra tasked Rachel -- the youngest member of the coven -- to watch the girl through her black mirror and alert her if her condition changed. The sleeping girl was their barometer for the impending storm.

As the coven expected, Pastor Knight promptly pronounced Tabitha's condition to be the work of witchcraft. He forbid her father from permitting anyone to see her until he returned. Then he went to the church to begin the necessary preparations for exorcizing the fell influence from the girl.

Tabitha Clancy slept through the night.

The crisp October morning dawned overcast, the clouds pregnant with storm.

A pillar of black smoke rose from the Clancy farm.

The Clancy's neighbors, siblings Luke and Christina Thatcher, were the first to notice the smoke and went to investigate. Though they were concerned to find the front door to the farmhouse had been left open, it was a relief to see that the smoke came from behind the house rather than from within it.

"Go in and check on Mrs. Clancy," Luke told his sister. "I'll look around back."

On the far side of the house, Luke found Jonathan Clancy standing nude before a roaring bonfire, a bloody ax hanging loosely in one hand.

"J-Jonathan?" Luke stammered warily, slowing his pace so as to keep a healthy distance from his neighbor.

Jonathan turned toward the sound of Luke's voice, smiling pleasantly, as though there were nothing strange about standing nude before a bonfire...

... covered in blood.

Luke stopped dead in his tracks. "What happened, Jonathan?" he asked, suddenly very aware of how alone he was with the farmer. "Whose blood is that?"

Jonathan furrowed his brow, the way one does when posed a question whose answer should be obvious.

"Theirs," he said pointing at the bonfire. Luke looked, and the earth lurched beneath him.

Stacked in an uncannily precise pyramid were the burning corpses of Jonathan's livestock. The care with which they'd been dismembered and subsequently arranged was clear, the macabre edifice eerily beautiful in its artistic ruin.

"Why did you... Jonathan, why?" Luke couldn't formulate a coherent question in the face of what he was seeing.

"Abel made a burning sacrifice of his first-year lambs," replied Jonathan placidly, smiling through his crimson mask. "The smoke rose to heaven and smelled sweet to the Lord. I -- Ia! -- will smell as sweet; and as smoke, I will reach Heaven long before the rest of you."

Jonathan Clancy dropped the axe with which he'd slaughtered his entire livestock and calmly walked into the fire. If he felt the flames licking his flesh, he gave no sign. He climbed to the top of his sacrificial pyramid and stood upright in the inferno, raising his fire-blackened arms to the sky, a blistering smile crackling on his lips. His eyes burst like runny eggs and streamed down his burning cheeks.

His smile never wavered.

Luke took a step back. Then another. Another. Before he was aware that he was running, he had reached the church and was beating on the door, screaming Pastor Knight's name.

The copper scent of blood filled Christina's nostrils immediately upon entering the Clancy farmhouse. The kitchen was in order, but there was a thick sense of dread pervading the air.

Christina moved into the hallway, where the smell of blood was stronger; and with it came another scent, sharp and biting at her nostrils. She inhaled deeply, held the scent, concentrating.

That was it: it was the scent of salt water, the scent of the ocean.

Through the girl's bedroom door Christina heard the sound of whispering coming. What she saw when she entered the room made her heart leap like a frightened rabbit.

The bedroom had been decorated with a fantastic mural that wrapped around the room's four walls. It was an underwater landscape, complete with fish and seaweed and coral reefs. But the image wasn't static; Christina started when one of the fish turned an rolling eye toward her and darted beneath the bed where Tabitha still slept.

Rachel's shadow emerged from a dark corner and drew Christina's attention, pointing toward the corner farthest from the door.

Sarah Clancy stood there with her back to the room. She was painting, a pair of knitting needles clasped between her fingers serving as brushes, furiously rendering a jellyfish in dark crimson.

As she painted, Sarah whispered to herself, words Christina could only just make out:

"Dreams..." she was murmuring, "She said she'd had such dreams... I've dreamt, too... such dreams... Ia..."

Her needles having run dry, Sarah dipped them into her eye sockets and continued to paint her living mural.

Christina screamed. She fell to her knees and touched the shadow, reaching through it into the shadowy web and sent a psychic scream to her sisters:

It's coming! Hurry!

A bright pain exploded in the back of her skull, the impact sending her tumbling into the wall next to Sarah. The woman took no notice, continuing her painting while whispering to herself, "I've seen such beauty... Ia..."

The shadow of Pastor Knight eclipsed Christina, his eyes dark. Stunned, Christina was unable to muster the words she needed for a spell of protection .

Knight reached down, snatched the young woman up by her throat, and lifted her effortlessly into the air. He gazed dispassionately into her frightened eyes as he drew back his arm, clenching his hand into a fist that served the justice of the Lord.

"An thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." he intoned before his fist hurtled into Christina's face, shattering delicate bones and breaking teeth. Once, twice, three times Knight drew back his deadly fist and hammered her face. After the third, he clasped her ruined face and gave it a sharp twist.

The sound of Christina's neck snapping was heard by every member of the coven, each of whom had been connected to her by her psychic cry. Each of them felt the blows Knight delivered, felt the sharp lighting stroke down their spines when he broke neck.

The web shuddered with the severance. Cassandra collapsed to her kitchen floor, weeping. But there was no time for grief, only action. She forced herself to her feet and cast her black mirror. She had to ensure the integrity of the sigil. Each of the coven had imbued their intent into it, and Christina's death could destroy it, all their work unraveled.

It was thankfully still intact. She sighed in relief, then cast her hand over the mirror, calling upon the coven.

"Sisters! The time is now -- get to your places!"

"Cassandra?"

She turned see Richard standing there, confusion written across his face. She didn't have time to explain; she stepped up to him and kissed him. She felt him stiffen against her, the smell of fear tickling her nostrils. Then he relaxed, giving in to the kiss.

When she pulled away, she looked deeply into his eyes, smiling for him the way she did the first time they met.

"You are a fine man, Richard Covington," she whispered. "Finer than most. But all things come to an end, especially good, fine things. All I can give you is the assurance that it was real, that our love was not a dream. Hold on to that, if you can."

Richard started to reply, but she kissed him again. She did not want him to ruin the moment with words. As their lips fused once more, she whispered into his mouth.

Richard Covington slumped to the floor. He would be asleep when it all ended.

Outside, the sky rumbled, as if nature itself was aware of what was to come.

Pastor Caleb Knight, shepherd of God's flock of Roanoke, knew that the dead girl at his feet was not the only witch in their colony. He'd seen the shadow fleeing as he smote her with his God-given strength. Clancy's wife was beyond Knight's help, but he could still rob the brides of Satan their victory by purifying the daughter. Whatever their designs were, he could still thwart them.

He straddled the girl's frail chest. Her eyes opened, the demon within her regarding him with hateful eyes. But she did not resist him.

"Worry you not, my young lamb," he said gently, "For though you suffer now, the power of Almighty God shall soon see you at ease."

From his coat he pulled a metal device. In his ecclesiastical training, he had been taught the art of trepanning: cutting a window into the skull to evict demons from their hosts. It was a painful process, and many did not survive, but even those who perished did so in the grace of God and were therefore purified before His sight.

The device resembled an eggbeater, except that in place of whisking arms was a circular toothed disk, reminiscent of a lamprey's mouth.

Knight pinned Tabitha's head between his trunk like thighs and fitted the toothed disk to the top of the girl's skull just above her hairline. He bore down and cranked, watching the hungry mouth rip into her flesh, chewing into the bone. The grinding teeth sent vibrations up his muscular arms.

Blood streamed from the wound, pouring down Tabitha's face. Still, her expression didn't change; the demon within her simply glared at Knight as he drilled into her skull, hateful of his righteous endeavour but helpless to resist the might of the Lord.

With a sickening crunch, the treppaner broke through Tabitha's skullcap. She didn't so much as twitch.

Knight pulled the tool free, extracting the excised section of bone from the wound with a sucking sound that made even his iron constitution quiver.

Thunder exploded overhead, shaking the house to its foundation. God had voiced His approval! Knight made the sign of the cross over Tabitha, shouting, "Hear me demon! Ia! In the name of the Father, Son and -- Ia! -- Holy Ghost, I command you to flee this servant of God!"

Tabitha's expression softened into a beatific smile.

Sarah Clancy, completing her painting with a final flourish, turned toward Knight with an ecstatic smile.

"Can you hear it, Pastor Knight? Can you _hear_ it?" she cried, falling to her knees.

Pastor Knight looked down at the woman, rivulets of blood flowing from her ruined eye sockets, then saw for the first time -- truly saw-- her mural. The seascape was more than a bloody sketch rendered by a woman driven mad by witchcraft. It moved right before his eyes. The seaweed undulated in unseen currents, brushing the fins of massive creatures swimming by that had not been there when he entered the room. The walls dripped seawater, it rained from the ceiling; first a trickle, now a torrent.

And he could hear it. A call. A song. It sang like a whale he'd seen on his voyage to Roanoke. It sang like a choir of angels.

It sang from the hole in Tabitha's skull.

A flash of lighting illuminated something outside the window. A figure rushing through the rain, a woman's figure.

Cassandra Covington. Knight's lip curled into a sneer. Now he understood. Her.

The storm had broken over the Roanoke colony, the last they would ever see. On the north end of the island, Rachel and Ophelia clasped their hands together and chanted:

"Mei possim molestiae adversarium in, agam omnesque constituto vim cu. Eam ad offendit oporteat ocurreret, in alii habeo sed, usu ea ridens eripuit."

On the other side of the island, directly opposite their sisters in the north, Angeline and Theresa were performing the same rite. So, too, were Opal and Annabelle in the west, and Nadine in the east. The storm was approaching from the east -- it was coming from the east -- so Nadine, second in power only to Cassandra, stood alone on the beach with her arms upraised to the oncoming storm.

The colony was at an end, the coven was conducting it to oblivion.

Not far from Nadine, Cassandra reached the point she had chosen to tie the spell they were casting, an old tree. She drew her athame and paused. The spell would need fuel to sustain it. The door needed a lock, and a lock needed to have a key or it wasn't a lock.

The answer came to her in a flash of lightning. Smiling, she carved the key into the bark of the tree. A key whose meaning only she knew.

The curiosity of men is never satiated; and when presented a mystery they never stop seeking an answer, never stop hoping to find meaning in the words written by madmen and prophets. Men would spend their lives examining eldritch stories for ciphers and hidden meanings, looking to unlock mysteries never meant to be unlocked. Their curiosity, the energy they put into discovering the meaning of her key would fuel the spell forever.

She could only hope that her key would never be deciphered and thus could never be used.

"Why?"

Cassandra spun around. Pastor Knight stood ten paces away, the storm having concealed his approach.

"Because the patriarchy has pulled the Wheel out of balance," she had to shout to be heard over the storm. "What my sisters and I do, we do for all mankind. The Old Ways have always served the balance, but your new religion serves only itself. You fled persecution only to persecute those not like you. Those you call 'savages' and 'heathens,' 'pagans' and 'witches.' As a result of your madness, the Wheel careens toward places it was never meant to go. To right the Wheel, sacrifices must be made."

Pastor Knight raised his crossbow. "You think to sacrifice good Christian souls to your blasphemous false god?" he demanded.

Cassandra shook her head sadly. "Your mistake is in your need to separate one life from another, to divide when you should unite. All life is sacred, and that," She pointed to the east, "is not my god!"

A towering wave careened toward the island. Within it a monstrous shape could be seen.

"That is merely a dream of its true form, for he lays slumbering deep in the ocean," Cassandra explained. "We called his dream here to make sure he stays asleep. Our sacrifice ensures it.

"One hundred twenty souls to safeguard all mankind. Blessed Be!"

She thrust the athame into her throat and twisted. At the four cardinal points of the island, the coven did the same, giving themselves in the name of Life Itself. The sigil, empowered by their freely spilt blood gave the monstrous dream the bodies and souls of the Roanoke colonists, but deepened the Dreamer's slumber ever further, restoring the tenuous balance once more.

November 1st 1857

The storm passed and the sun rose on an empty colony. Buildings remained intact, possessions untouched. Only a single word left mysterious clue to their fate. It would become rumour, conjecture, fearful mystery. Hopefully, no answer would ever be found, but its allure would be irresistible:

CROATOAN