She Walks in Shadows (6 page)

Illustration/Decoration:

1. Title page: encased in border depicting moon phases.
   
   1. Phases of moon include black circles that transition from black crescents into black, outlined crescents, representing shifting of new moon to full moon.
      
   2. Out of the corner of my eye, while I typed those observations on my laptop, the moons appeared to be actively shifting, as if animated.
      
      1. Possible that arrangement of the moon gradations are an optical illusion.
         
2. Page 51: single full-page woodcut featuring sextet of lesser outer goddesses.
   
   1. Above woodcut reads:
      Supplication of the Unfathomable Ones
      , beneath which the woodcut is printed.
      
      1. When I looked at this page to double-check the heading, the printed text was no longer in English, but what I can only presume is a cuneiform of Latin and Sumerian.
         
   2. Woodcut features worm-like Idh-yaa; sylvan Lythalia; Vhuzompha covered in multiple sets of eyes, mouths, as well as male and female genitalia; horned goat goddess Shub-Niggurath suckling infant devil at breast; many-tentacled Yaghni; and beautiful dream-witch Yidhra.
      
   3. Under woodcut, the following is handwritten:
      Ungerent hoc in meo sanguine
      . (Anoint this text in my blood.)
      
      1. Whenever I look at the book, the pages flicker and flash, like the popping lights of a camera.
         
         1. I do not remember falling asleep, but I must have passed out from the headache because the next thing I know, I was lifting my head from my desk and it was after midnight. I’m so close to being done analyzing this book, I’m just going to power through.
            
3. Portrait of Septimia Prinn: aristocratic woman with square neckline, intricate Elder Sign necklace, long sleeves with embroidered cuffs. In one hand, she holds a “winged eye” symbol; in the other, a human heart, with her eyes fixed upon it. Vines are coiling around the edges of her illustration as she sits at a writing desk cluttered with miniature cauldrons and apothecary bottles.
   
   1. Both woodcuts are extraordinary for their level of detail and uniqueness.
      
      1. These woodcuts are contrary to McKerrow’s supposition that Early Modern printers preferred woodcuts out of which they could “get their money’s worth” from repeated use.
         
      2. These decorations are too specific to be commonly used in other printmaking projects.
         
      3. Septimia Prinn’s eyes are no longer fixed upon the human heart but are staring straight ahead, engaging with the gaze of the reader.
         
         1. I specifically recorded that her eyes were fixed on the human heart in her hand and I have verified that there are no other reproductions of her portrait in this edition. Despite my headache, I maintain that her eyes have shifted position.
            
         1. Must research Early Modern optical illusion printing techniques.
            
   2. While there are no records of an Early Modern printer by the name of Elizabeth Breedlove, there are records of Septimia Prinn.
      
      1. Septimia Prinn was the alleged daughter of Ludwig Prinn, a notorious medieval sorcerer and “doctor” of nature, although he did not practice medicine in the traditional sense. He sought to apply his chemical skills to preparing concoctions in “the manner recommended by Paracelsus.” Ludwig Prinn is reported to have lived among the wizards and alchemists of England, Germany and Syria, studying everything from divination and rituals of necromancy to blood rites for “the worm that sought to devour the world.” He allegedly recorded this forbidden knowledge in a single blasphemous text, establishing his magico-mystical reputation with
         De Vermis Mysteriis
         (Mysteries of the Worm).
         
         1. There are rumors that Prinn was a shapeshifter, that Ludwig and Septimia are, in fact, the same person. It is postulated that, after
            De Vermis Mysteriis
            gained popularity, Ludwig’s life was endangered by rival cultist factions, so he shifted sexes and identities, and became Septimia, who claimed to be Ludwig’s daughter so she could continue to draw upon the influence her previous incarnation had acquired.
            
         1. I feel like I’m being watched.
            
      2. As Ludwig before her, Septimia Prinn is said to have lived for hundreds of years, moving around Europe, eventually emigrating to the New World, where she is reputed to have given birth to Abigail Prinn, later executed in Salem for witchcraft.
         
      3. Septimia is responsible for hundreds of occult texts found in arcane libraries across the world, although scholars postulate that cultists assumed the name of Septimia Prinn as part of an initiation rite and published under her name; no such postulations are ascribed to Ludwig’s writings.
         
         1. Someone just whispered in my ear.
            
         1. I have been silent for fifteen minutes, my hands off the keyboard, straining my ears to hear anything that could be construed as whispering, but there have been no more whispers.
            
      4. Could E.B. (Elizabeth Breedlove) and Septimia Prinn be the same person?
         
         1. Who is H. Vondrak?
            
      5. This text was an economic printing; using octavo format, only a few full pages of vellum are needed to produce a single copy. But the woodcuts would’ve been extravagantly priced for the period. This was printed during the English Civil War, during the trial and execution of Charles I and exile of Charles II. It stands to reason that it would have been sacrilegious to investigate occultism at this time. The small size of this book also indicates a secretive printing. Did Breedlove adopt the pseudonym of Septimia Prinn to absolve herself of responsibility should her press come under investigation for printing pagan texts?
         
         1. Further study into provenance necessary.
            

Conclusions Regarding
De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae:

1. I had what I can only call a lucid dream of a tree woman caressing my hair with vines, while a quivering octopoid mass communicated with me by means I do not understand. We spoke, though neither of us used verbal language. I understood that I was being asked to give my consent — for what I do not rightly know. Having suffered from sleep paralysis in dreams past, I know I did not feel frozen, but rather, felt an active symbiosis of worship and supplication as I suckled at the teat of a goat mother and allowed a dream witch to kiss the essence of my soul out through my open lips. I understood I was being coronated and, in so doing, willfully shed my human skin. Underneath, I was a giant worm — although a worm is much too generous a phrase. A maggot is more appropriate, or perhaps a grub, although I was so much more majestic. I was craven with a hunger so sharp and bright that I knew if I were to devour the universe, not even then would I be sated.
   
   1. When I opened my eyes, my limbs felt foreign to me and echoes of chants in unknown languages reverberated in my brain.
      
   2. Took the bus downtown to campus. I lost a couple of fingers along the way. At first, the hum of the bus matched the vibration I felt reverberating from inside my body. I felt so centered spiritually that, when my pinky finger on my left hand fell off and rolled away under a seat, losing it didn’t bother me. Even the pungent musk of rot that emanated from its place did not bother me, although it was clear that it bothered the other passengers as they covered their faces and moved closer to the doors.
      
   3. My ring finger fell off sometime between getting off the bus and the library. I only noticed it wasn’t there when I lifted my hand to buzz the Special Collections room.
      
      1. I had this vague notion that this was troublesome, but invocations to the Lesser Outer Goddesses are the only things that truly matter to me now.
         
   4. When Carlo buzzed me into Special Collections, I was suddenly overcome with the sharpest, brightest hunger — so close to the kind of hunger I knew in my dream. Remembering as much, I asked Carlo if he would be so kind as to give me permission to devour him. He said yes. While he offered up his body in humble obsecration, his voice joined the incantations that churned in my mind.
      
      1. I said I was hungry, but not hungry enough for khakis, so Carlo undressed, revealing an Elder Sign on his chest. It was the sweetest part of him of all.
         
      2. I am still so hungry. The deadened husk of my once-arm has fallen off as I type with what remains of my right as a record of my glorious and dreadful evolution.
         
      3. In between the breaks in my skin, I can see a bulbous, purple luminescence pulsing inside.
         
2. I am ready to loose myself from this form, but am I ready to devour the world?
   
   1. My appetite will serve us well: The suffering for you and yours shall end once and for all, and the festering, protoplasmic ache wracking my grub organs will be satisfied. Conflicts the world over will be quieted as we become one. You will experience the exquisite, sepulchral stillness of oblivion; Humanity united together for the first, and final, time deep within my bowels as the omnipotent waste of the world.
      
   2. And my hunger will be alleviated.
      
   3. I will only proceed with your consent. And know that, as punishment for my appetite, the Lesser Outer Goddesses shall suck the soul marrow from what remains of my diabolical folly — and the world shall be made yet again.
      
   4. If you deny me this indulgence, I will move on to the next world, for there are many. But know that, given a choice, this is the world I would remake; for I am not divorced entirely from my humanity. Although I no longer have need for it in my soon-form, I want to be one with the most fabulous and most profane embodiment of the beautiful chaos of the cosmos.
      
   5. What say you?
      
      1. May I have your permission to devour the world?
         

LAVINIA’S WOOD

Angela Slatter

“
YOU CAN’T READ,
can you?”

The undecayed Whatleys were possessed of an impressive fortune and a strict sense of philanthropy, which was how Lavinia Whatley, either afflicted or blessed — depending upon to whom one spoke — with albinism, came to be invited to the large house located on the correct fork of the junction of the Aylesbury Pike just beyond Dean’s Corners.

Despite fine intentions and enthusiastically mouthed better sentiments, all the older members of the Sound branch had, at some point, used phrases such as ‘Witch Whatleys,’ ‘Lesser Whatleys,’ and, perhaps worst of all, ‘Queer Whatleys.’ And they’d used them in their children’s hearing; children who stored spite in a more concentrated form, having not been exposed to the world and its doings, to learning things that sometimes diluted the acid of their malice.

Lavinia wasn’t hard to look at, although she was different. Bleached of skin and hair, pink of eye, with a weak chin, she’d nevertheless inherited some of her mother’s finer features: high cheekbones, pert nose, wide eyes, pouting mouth. At 34, her pallor kept age at bay, and in her tresses no trace of silver or gray showed. She was tall with good posture and a figure designed to draw attention.

With brows and lashes unpigmented, she looked constantly surprised, but she took care with her appearance. The frayed cuffs and hem of her dress were neatly mended and her floss of hair brushed into a thick, tight bun.

What she couldn’t help was the smell, though she’d bathed and bathed beneath the pump before setting off. The cloying scent of home never could be washed off, merely made faint, so it didn’t matter how she looked, really. Most of the family refrained from nose-wrinkling, but the youngsters, full of their superiority, their advantages and airs, did not bother with the good manners their parents had sought to inculcate in them. In the back parlor, where Aunty Abigail had directed her saying she was too young for the company of
dusty folk
, Lavinia had to deal with cousins Putnam and Wilmot, George and Rist. Sarah and Bealia, Mary and Alice, sat in a corner ignoring her.

“You can’t read, can you?” repeated Putnam, louder, as if she were hard of hearing.

Rist shook his handsome head. “Don’t, Put.”

“I can read.” Lavinia gritted her teeth, reminding herself why she’d come. Wilmot and George guffawed, flanking her. Rist stepped closer, trying to pull tow-headed George away, but the beefy youngster shook him off.

“But you didn’t go to school,” Putnam insisted. “How can you read? Old Wizard Whatley couldn’t have taught you. He’s mad as a cat in a sack.”

Lavinia grabbed a leather-bound book from the nearest shelf and opened it.

“
Wonders of the Invisible World
by Cotton Mather,” she read, realizing too late how badly she’d chosen.

The cousins shouted with laughter. “Oh, priceless! Witch Whatley, indeed!”

Pale cheeks burning all the brighter, Lavinia dropped the volume and pushed past Putnam. She tried for the front rooms, where the elders guaranteed safety from teasing, but the youths blocked her path — all but Rist — and herded her to the back door, sitting ajar and leading onto the wide rear porch. Lavinia didn’t care. If she could get out, then she could leave.

The bucket balanced above the door tipped as Lavinia pushed through. It was only water, not piss like Wilmot had suggested, but it was cold and drenching, and the pail itself hit her head, so she saw stars. She stumbled, caught in damp-heavy skirts.

“That’ll wash the sulphur stink off you!” Putman, George and Wilmot held each other momentarily before collapsing in a heap of snorting, farting hilarity. Rist stood frozen, face twisted; she thought he might cry. Beyond him, crowding around the doorframe were the girls, expressions horrified.

Rist knelt to help her. As soon as she was upright, she shook him off and glared at him, at them all.

“Lavinny,” began Rist, mistakenly using the back-country nickname her father did.

She hiked her skirts and ran down the stairs, stopping only to turn and lift one hand, folding the two middle fingers under the thumb, leaving pointer and pinky free. She shook the gesture at them, stopping even Putnam’s laughter. Satisfied, she spun away towards the tree line, towards where the woods closed in, brambles and vines grew wild, where animals darted and hid, where she knew her way better than anyone. Surefooted, she bolted, retreating to where the hills shivered and shuddered, and where
whip-poor-wills
perched and sang, waiting for souls to come within reach.