Obsessively, Repeatedly: Bloody Mary

It was a slumber-party terror prank, nothing but verbal insinuation needling into the corner of the brain; but once there, impossible to get rid of: unforgettable like the name of a sister.

It was a rainy April evening when Cecelia and the inseparable gaggle of gosling girls she led very adolescently burst through the front door of her house with restrained ruckus. Soaked from the spring rain, she took off one shoe then then other, admonishing the others to follow her lead. Wouldn’t want wet shoe tracks all over the bloody house, even if mum and dad were away for the week. “So Bossy Saucy!” the girls intoned as they made their way up the staircase to Cecelia’s bedroom.

“So like what about this whole thing about invoking Bloody Mary?” Lizzy started in as they entered the room, settling in for their slumber-party. There were four of them: Cecelia, Jeanne, and Chloe were classmates, all three seventeen years of age, along with Cecelia’s little sister Lizzy, the proverbial tag-along at twelve years old. “How do you do it, why do you do it—“And WHY in the bloody hell is it supposed to be so scary?” Cecelia curtly interrupted her sibling, “Screw this, I need a smoke,” as she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from in between her breast and bra, opening it and finding only a mass of soggy tobacco and torn paper, chucked them across the room with a “screw that too then I guess. Sodden as my shoe. Let’s summon Bloody Fucking Mary then, since there’s bugger all else to do.”

“Oh bandersnatch it Cessy. Why are you so grumpy?” inquired Lizzy while Chloe narrowed her eyes at Cecelia. “Fine then," said she "let’s move on with your mad and barmy idea of summoning a banshee.” Jeanne, feeling eyes on her pressuring her to go on about Bloody Mary, made subdued nervous gestures with her hands (Jeanne never knew what to do with her hands), and began in her languid and drooping voice, with that same far-off look she always had:

“So, um, like don't have a strop girls someone just come and comb my hair, it’s such a mess...like, it’d really make my life better if you come and comb my hair out, Lizzy.” She smiled toward the junior of the group, who hopped over brightly with all her Lizzy aplomb, thrilled to be included, over to the vanity table with the mirror, and retrieved a plastic comb from the jumble of things there. She plopped down beside Jeanne, who was her idol ‘cause she knew all kinds of things about witches and fairies and how to cast spells, so she said, and other cool stuff and had told her many stories she didn’t understand before, but she understood them better now that she was getting older. “C’mon, tell us about how to call on Bloody Mary, just for bants!” as she began to run the comb through her hair.

So the four crowded ‘round to hear, and combing or brushing their rain-damped hair became the theme of their slumber party, before it turned to the Queen of Blood. Cecilia brushed her own hair with a boar’s hair brush, and Chloe grudgingly agreed to let Lizzy do her in turn, admitting that her beautician’s skills were beyond her age.

“I mean...” continued Jeanne, “It's not as bonkers as they say and I just get like really good vibes about this. Now wait. I know you’ll tell me either She’s just an urban legend, or else maybe She’s a historical tyrant and monster who killed like hundreds of people and thought she was some kinda holy psycho, but like I feel she’s really been misunderstood and Powers can’t be pigeon-holed into good and evil roosting nooks and she’s supposed to be able to grant wishes and—“

“And and and and,” went Cecelia “are you stoned or something?” Jeanne looked to the floor quizzically. “I’m always stoned...” While Chloe said nothing, fixing her eyes on a single point on the blank wall, feeling pretty disassociated herself.

“Besides I always talk like that. AAAAnywayz...Like I was saying SHE can grant wishes and if you walk all gingerly and backwards up a flight of stairs carrying a mirror in one hand and a candle in the other, and it’s said you will see EITHER the face of your future husband in the mirror or else a death’s head--meaning that you’ll die before ever finding a husband. But more often it’s just gonna be a simple ritual of standing alone or together in a dark room in front of a mirror and with a candle lit in between you and the mirror and you repeat the Name of Bloody Mary some number of times and like sometimes it’s three sometimes it’s seven sometimes it’s like even thirteen or just repeatedly, obsessively: BLOODY MARY: going from a whisper to a near scream...they say that a fog will begin to form like it was behind you but it’s really in the mirror itself and then when the mirror turns blood red some people say you hear a woman’s scream...” Jeanne began to brighten and accelerate the rhythm of her speech, “...and then you see Her Face or what was at first just the outline of the upper half of a woman...um...and if you smell whiffs of smoke you’re not supposed to take your eyes away from the mirror. Look directly into the flame of the candle the whole time and let all the other stuff I’ve said go on in the background and it'll be just ace...oh yeah, and a lot of the time she’s holding a dead baby in her arms so that's why people chant BLOODY MARY KILLED HER BABY...and...”

Chloe raised an eyebrow, questioning slowly “...and you get good vibes about this?” She dropped her glasses to the tip of the nose with a slide of her fingertip and pushed a corner of her bobbed dark hairdo out of her face. “Not to brag but I know a few things about this...Person. Mary Tudor, Mary I of England, was a blue-blood queen of first pedigree; she lived a tortured youth and childhood, rejected by her father, beaten up by her father’s new wife, deprived of her religion and titles, her wounds were festering for decades. But it gets worse than that. I read up a lot about her for paper I did in school and, not to toot my own horn, but I'm pretty chuffed. Close-up, her story is one of abdominal pains and menstrual discomfort stemming back to the first bleeds of her childhood, ovarian dysfunction, excessive loss of blood: it was no mistake to call her Bloody Mary. No wonder she was gagging for blood later. Eventually, it was only fire of her victims being burned alive that flickered in her eyes like a lantern that could quench the blood that flowed like a faucet. Sometimes, at the most humiliating times, she would have even her shoe soaked in the excess blood. That dead baby in her arms—she thought she was pregnant by the King of Spain, who, even though he was married to her, never loved her. When her belly was big, one of the ambassadors from Spain or somewhere greeted her with the words from the Catholic Annunciation: Hail Mary, Blessed among women, holy is the fruit of your womb or something like that. Real sick, huh? She was bonkers in every way. Well that lump in her belly was no baby, but an insanely huge tumorous growth feeding deep in her womb. She set herself up to give birth in the palace. Nine months came, ten, eleven: still no baby. Within a year, she died of her long complications. Ever since, they say her restless and vengeful spirit calls out to you and to me in the dark of a mirror, far behind the flicker of a candle’s flame: beware the ghost of Bloody Mary Tudor, with one hand she blesses, with the other she curses!”

Silence for a moment, when even the combing and the brushing had ceased. “AWESOME!” cried Lizzy, partially understanding, “Let’s do it, sounds so creepy cool. I thought Bloody Marys were a tomato drink mum has when she talks a lot.”

By now the sun had gone down and darkness had fully set-in. “What a fat load of bollocks with your bleedin' Bloody Mary,” chortled Cecelia, although she had grimaced when she heard of the dead infant the ghost was supposed to hold in Her arms. “ Nothing will happen, you’ll see. You have to do it once to prove it the load of dog-bullocks it really bags up to. Nothing but a psycho old Queen rotting in her grave. Not even rotting, turned into dust. So let’s call forth Bloody fucking Mary if we can. It’s perfect: we have the house to ourselves, night-time in a rain-storm. Who’s willing, eh?”

Thereupon, instead of readying themselves for their slumber-party and watching some dumb film, the four girls readied candle and mirror and prepared to play a joke on an urban legend: summon the spirit of Mary Tudor, Queen of Blood.

A box of candles stored in the basement for power-outages would suffice. Each girl took her own candle and, after shutting out all the lights in the house for optimum spookiness, all four stood in front of the large horizontally oblong mirror of Cecelia’s vanity table. Cecelia, after sifting through a jumble of combs, took a butane lighter from the drawer and lit all four candles, adopting a ceremonial air; at last, she turned off the table’s lamp, last of the lights, so that there was total darkness except the glow of the four candles’ unflickering flames. Stillness and darkness pressed like a mild insinuation, the girls assuming the statuesque grace of medieval stone maidens each bearing a precious lantern about her mid-parts in the portal of a cathedral’s doorway. Symbolizing something.

“Now what we do is we chant Her Name...and uh, keep looking straight at your candle and if you see the ghost, you hafta 'find the light source.' Pretty simple,” said Jeanne. Lizzy’s eyes were like saucers and she had goosebumps on her forearms; her sister Cecelia held back a bitter smirk, Jeanne slouched but held her focus, while Chloe (emotionally neutral) pinned the flame down to her gaze like a butterfly. They began by intoning Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary: three times. An instinctive pause followed. Nothing happened, of course. It was their own reflections they saw in the mirror. So they continued chanting: Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary: seven times. By now it seemed, just seemed, that things took on an abstract blur and lost somewhat their edges, but that could have been a trick of the dark; the world of the mirror also appeared to be gaining remoteness, as if the four candles were four bobbing lanterns in the distance on which the girls kept their vision riveted whilst they continued chanting: Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary Bloody Mary: Thirteen Times!—repeatedly, obsessively, BLOODY MARY.

At this point, it became clear to each of the girls in her own way that the reflection in the mirror was not her own. Maybe it was an illusion of fusion, that all four of their reflections melded into one, that each of the bobbing lanterns coalesced into a single dripping heart of flame--but it seemed to the four girls that they saw the upper half of a Woman, whose face was indiscernible. She was enthroned and very still, but filled with an awful kind of presence and life. Each of the girls kept their statuesque poise and vision still riveted upon that single lantern of blood. Suddenly Cecelia muttered mechanically and sadly, as if from afar: “Hail Mary Tudor, Queen of Blood, dejected soul, come hear our prayer and grant our desires.”

Suddenly, a thunderclap: and the overhead lights were on just as suddenly. Cecelia’s chuckle was the first thing heard. “Sounds spooky, huh. Bloody hell. You should’ve seen yourselves! Couldn’t have counted on the thunder though.” Her chuckle died off.

She wondered, however, how much they knew. That she was preoccupied, sure; not even that she had a secret? She was worried they did. Truth was, she had recently learnt she was pregnant by Felipe from school, her not-even-boyfriend, though she wished he were: she really did love him, he was perfectly peng, and those wonderful nights (but terrible in their consequences) could prove it. Despite the marathon of snog and shag, she wondered too if he loved her, but decided probably not in the way that she loved him. Anyway, he was not happy about this discovery, although he put on a show of strong support; a sudden long trip, however, with his parents to Spain to see relatives had come up, and he would be leaving next week. She did not feel prepared to be a mother, and Felipe’s absence filled her with bitter gall restrained with great difficulty.

“Did you see her clothes!” exclaimed Lizzy, “she was like, a REAL QUEEN!” making Chloe start. “Yeah, I saw her too...” hiding her impressions of the force she had felt, but resolute on mastering it. Jeanne looked around the room sheepishly. “Like, just think about it, She only has the power you give to her, and vice versa, um... I mean Her energy is not something you can judge...” (a thoughtful pause) “yeah I saw it too...pretty creepy...even though I have trouble with words.”

After a silence Cecilia said, almost angrily: “I did more than see it or try and put it into words, I felt it!”

It was now time for the blankets and that dumb film.

Later that week, thinking back on it, it seemed like nothing. Or something you wanted to laugh off. Lizzy continued on wishing to grow up, becoming skilled at piano and skateboarding whereas Cecelia had failed at the violin. Chloe, who wanted to be a writer, but as of yet had only taken notes, magnificent though they were, had been looking for material for a really good horror story. Ultimately, she wanted to write inter-dimensional poetry about flowers and trees, but to gain some distance and purge the soul, a well-wrought chiller was what she needed. The whole Bloody Mary thing seemed interesting. But just a bunch of girls thinking they saw a reflection in the mirror that was not their own during a slumber-party was not a proper Plot. What Jeanne wanted more than anything else was for Lizzy to come of age like she wanted, and for her sister not to be so hostile to her. She was constantly putting herself out as a buffer between the two sisters and their growing tensions.

Maybe they misunderstood Cecelia. She was certainly distracted, but the hostility they perceived could have been stemming from her mounting fear of discovery, knowing that the time when her secret would be physically obvious would soon come. Meanwhile, Felipe had gone, and although he sent her a brief but sweet text message with several heart emojis, she had terrible misgivings that she was abandoned. Sadness secretly increased the store of gall within while a leering hatred seemed to loom in her sarcasm; her words became more cutting by imperceptible degrees.

When Lizzy’s first menses struck soon thereafter, it was Jeanne who offered explanation and consolation, while Cecelia remained aloof, unaware of the blood-spotted cotton. It is in such things that wishes are granted. On the other hand, a silent barrage of text-messages (without heart emojis) were then finalizing her absolute separation from Felipe and paralyzing her mind, concretizing her fears and worries as she found herself completely ghosted.

Another rainy spring night one weekend finds the girls reassembled, blankets already out, in the midst of a copy of the same dumb film when Chloe, who had been in full lotus tuning the screen out, spoke up: “We still have candles; the mirror still stands—your folks are here all knackered-out and sleeping so that darkness reigns in the house. All we have to do is turn off the tube, and darkness would fall in this room as well. Then we chant her name obsessively and repeatedly, but I say we each chant it inside in the quiet of the mind. I’m ready.”

Jeanne stretched her arms and yawned, “Candlelight protects us but it draws her near like irresistibly-- it’s what makes it creepy and all-- but seriously candles act as summoner and guardian at once in the second circle of white magic protective props—“

“Candles,” Chloe cut in, “and using them in prayer and all were seen as a sign of Catholic fanaticism, and after all of the Protestants that Mary Tudor had tortured and burned at the stake, legend associated ceremonial candles with the tyrannical queen—"

“Like...uh, you keep calling her a tyrant and a murderer but s-she had her own kinda version of the story and you can’t always trust what they say... like I’ve seen her portrait and stared at it for hours and I don’t see her as evil...anyway she blesses or breaks you in the non-binary offload of a truly great power all of you like saw felt and tried to put into words struggling to keep focused...uh, besides, maybe it all was just a trick of the light...never know...”

“But I saw her dress and it was ace!” argued Lizzy “I swear I did--I saw her dress and jewelry in every detail and so did you all too.”

During this, Cecelia, all the while dead silent, had been going about readying the candles for the next seance. All banter ceased, and the remaining lights were extinguished. The four girls stepped linked into place before the mirror in grim reverence taking a moment to centralize the candle’s flame each in her midpoint.

Quivering quiet. The dead stillness roared with the internal recitation of their Bloody Mary mantra, each repeated at a different rate, shrouding the world behind them and before them with a mist forming and unlacing forms, quickly this time, palpable as wet ash, soon red and sticky with a flash: and then the horrific majesty of Her throne overshadowed them in the mirror. Gradually emergent, at first barely visible in a great dress of black velvet, there sat Bloody Mary neutrally expressionless, wide open collar windowed the white brocaded under-layer from which hung a pendant brooch set with a huge sapphire shaped like a fallen teardrop. In her right hand she held a rose, and in her left she held a rosary. Midway between her heart and her navel shone a light, not bright, as from a lantern. Her eyes too held the same eldritch glow, like she herself were looking into some source of burning illumination.

Cecelia’s attention, however, had been drawn away from the light to the red tip of a shoe visible beneath the dress of the phantom queen. Cecelia smiled bitterly as the mounting hatred embedded in her heart flowed freely through her bloodstream. Jeanne slipped a worried glance toward Lizzy, whose eyes never wavered from her candle in the mirror that clearly still existed for her. Chloe also looked the queen face to face, transcending the candle by taking cycles of deep breath in succession, gathered grounding through the soles of her feet and the tips of her toes. Until the vision lost all contour, becoming one melt of redness, and that redness rarefied into a mist, and that mist into darkness, and that darkness into candlelight and silence.

Cecelia didn’t even remember what had happened between then and now. When they were there with her, the other three girls, candle in hand, before the same mirror of the vanity table where she now sat, combing her hair. No wait, another night had passed. After that last seance, the other girls sat up whispering all night, while Cecelia had been so knackered she blacked right out. She remembered Lizzy playing the piano quietly in the other room the next day, Jeanne turning the pages for her. Lizzy was becoming more and more a young lady. Chloe had been in the other room scribbling away in her notebook as if in the heat of inspiration. Then they had parted. It is in this way wishes are granted and curses fulfilled.

Now she was alone in her room--another night of pain--staring at her reflection in the mirror, drawing the plastic comb from the scalp to the unfortunately splitting ends and back and forth again in repetitive incessant motions: hard, and pulling; removing the knots.

Cecelia ruminated bitterly. Mirror mirror see my fall. Sod-off girls, and shut your gobs at last! Bloody Hell I’m glad they’re not here, AT LAST!-- I have no idea why I hang out with them anyway, they’re such little kids even if they think they’re so smart and all Chloe and her facts and her know-it-all precision spewing nothing but bullocks despite her skill at yoga and meditation so detached--Oh give me a bleedin’ break! And Jeanne, who can barely get a sentence out without trailing off, with her barmy new-agey fantasms that Lizzy prefers her to me over! They don't fuckin' get it and it’s so easy for them to be happy whose lives are beginning when my life is fucking over! Felipe never loved me and I’ll get nothing from him after all that shagging, only this bleedin' parasite that will start to take over my insides and suck away all life from me through my breasts once it’s cut free: they don’t know what it’s like to have lost! Mirror mirror on the wall, I would have liked to be the prettiest...

And she continued combing the knots out of her hair wondering why on earth they were so tangled, and pulling some stray strands from the teeth of her comb. She examined her own face in the mirror, as if the reflection she saw were not her own: she thought she could see the face of Felipe in the shadows. But upon contemplating the visage for another moment, a death's head appeared as if leering at her through her own face, which indeed was her own but now horribly aged. She pulled her hair to one side and was not even surprised to find a clump of it fall out. And another. So, with an anguished sigh, she continued combing her hair.

And that's why I hate and despise them all from the bottom of my soul; there are no words for the misery I wish them to suffer: they just fill me with such rage! Hail Mary Tudor Queen of Blood grant me now my heartfelt wishes and make them pay with their lives who don’t deserve one minute of the happiness they have; may they drink their own blood; may they drown in their own blood--especially my sister! I wish her an agonizing death, and for each and all of them I pray for your curse!

She mechanically went on combing her hair as more strands and clumps pulled out or fell out, carefully studying her image as the teeth of the comb raked into the raw flesh of her scalp. She combed by lambent flicker of candlelight flush with holy horror saying,

Bloody Mary Once,

Bloody Mary Thrice,

Bloody Mary Sevenfold,

Bloody Mary Thirteenfold,

Bloody Mary Killed her Baby.

May a thousand candles be lit for Bloody Mary Tudor and her restless reflections most blessed of women, holy be the fruit of Her womb: Cecelia saw Her outline in the mirror, seeing past her balding and bloodied scalp, and stood up suddenly. It was the lantern that had fused their four beings into one, Mary’s appropriating gaze refracting the human torches of her heretics, blessing and cursing by the bloody beating heart of the ruddy queen of hell. As Her contours took shape one last time, Cecelia felt first a great pain in her breast that spread down deep within whilst a paroxysm of fear and terror seized her insides. The lantern of her spirit was ablaze in a supreme vision of the Sanguine Lady. An infinite horizon of Paranoia and Angst seized upon her innards, infused fully with the ghost's blind Rage and enthroned in golden darkness. The Queen held in her arms a dead infant—[BLOODY MARY KILLED HER BABY!]:

it was like a black lump of Hatred congealed in her uterus, the name of Bloody Mary, obsessively, repeatedly.

If you fail to find the light-source, they say you will die in a pool of your own gore. Cecelia felt it deep within her pressing like a fiery blade and upon spasms of anguish the last thing she felt before she dropped to the ground was her shoe filling with blood.

Author's note:

(In this story, written as my entry for the Word Hunt Challenge, I hope to have also done homage to the many wonderful and creepy tales written here on Vocal in response to the Broken Mirror Challenge. I joined after the challenge had ended, but I've greatly enjoyed reading the entries; the theme inspired me, and three words my eyes fell on in the crossword puzzle, SHOE/COMB/LANTERN. Thanks to all who entered! I gained great inspiration and hope you enjoyed this one.)

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