Chapter 15 #3
But that didn’t happen right away. After we made the bed, I was forced to haul dead flowers down to the garbage, so I sent Bethany away the first chance I got.
And by the time I got downstairs, Voss was coming inside.
I ducked out of sight and heard Hoffmann question Voss about how the rental collections had gone, but Filomena interrupted me before I could hear Voss’s reply.
Had he lied to the servants about where he was going today? I really didn’t know.
I didn’t see him again until my nightly vitals check, and he was too distracted to have a conversation. I gave him a dose of cough syrup and left him. Then I waited in my rooms, watching the master’s balcony while counting down the hours until midnight.
Until I couldn’t wait anymore.
“Let’s go get it,” I told Bethany around eleven.
Steeling myself, I slipped my wool shawl over my shoulders and led Bethany down the servants’ stairs.
The manor was dark and quiet, and when we stepped outside, the night air made me shiver.
I hadn’t brought my nursing lantern for fear that someone might notice it from the windows.
So we hiked the path around the manor in darkness.
But soon my eyes became accustomed to the lack of light, and when we got to the atrium, I glanced up at the master’s balcony. Still dark, thank goodness.
“Keep an eye out, okay?” I told Bethany as I headed around the bushes that sat below the balcony. At first, I got confused and began digging into the wrong bush. But when I realized my mistake and moved to the next one, I began to panic when I didn’t find it.
“It has to be there,” Bethany whispered in the dark.
Unless he’d seen me tossing the book and had retrieved it himself.
Anxious thoughts rushed through my mind about how I’d explain my actions if I were caught. Whether I’d seen Nin for the last time.
Then my numb fingers touched something smooth.
The book!
I yanked it out of the bushes with relief and held it up in victory.
“Woo-hoo!” Bethany whispered loudly. Then I tucked it under my shawl, and we raced back down the path and rushed to my room.
A candle still burned at my bedside, but I went ahead and lit my nursing lantern to see better. I closed the curtains of my window and sat up in my bed next to Bethany. Then I opened the book.
The pages crackled, and a musty scent floated up when I turned to the title page, which was set in very old, almost medieval type.
A Witch-Hunter’s Compendium of
Pagan Gods and Devils,
Containing these further severall particulars;
That there are Witches walking this world, practicing dark occult arts,
and what manner of deities these Witches worship,
who they pray to for assistance,
and make blood promises to,
and how they may bee knowne.
A true account, compiled March 1649
By John Stearne, Witch-Hunter,
now of Lawshall neere Burie Saint Edmonds in Suffolke, sometimes of Manningtree in Essex.
“Witch-hunter?” Bethany murmured as she read the page from my side. “Is this a book about the old witch trials? I don’t understand. And why is nothing spelled right? This book looks homemade.”
She wasn’t wrong about that last point. The book was printed, but the type wasn’t even and the pages weren’t trimmed.
Even the embossing on the front cover looked as if someone had done it by hand.
“Check out the date,” I told Bethany. “It looks like this was written in England during the witch trials.”
“Why would that boy in the basement want you to read a book about witches?”
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, trying to tamp down the anxiety that was warming my chest as I flipped the crackling parchment pages.
The type was difficult to read, but there were plenty of illustrations—crude woodcuts printed badly, over-inked and offset.
The woodcuts featured strange symbols and medieval monsters.
Family trees. A hierarchy of demons in hell.
And between all the strange illustrations were lots and lots of passages about the devil mixed with biblical quotes.
With growing unease, I flipped to page sixty-one. It contained several woodcuts and a short passage at the top:
Gods of the Netherworld
Also known as the Underworld,
or Land of the Dead, The Duat,
or The Nightlands,
Where souls of the dead travel on their way to
their final afterlife in Heaven or Hell.
Netherworld beings are worshipped by both Male and Female Witches who want to kill their enemies or crave mastery ov’r death. They may pray to the Lord of Death, or they may make offerings to his sons and daughters, who are sometimes called Psychopomps.
“What is this?” Bethany whispered. “Land of the Dead? Why did that boy tell you to read this? Are you sure you have the right page?”
I was sure. My finger trembled as I slid it across the parchment, skimming through a list of names and “symbols that Witches use to communicate with these beings.” The first two names on the list and their corresponding woodcut images gave me chills:
Lord of Death, “Ruller of the Netherworld”
Death, King of the Dead, Osiris, Hades,
Enn the Resurrected
Symbol: Scythe
Lady of Death, “Protector of the Netherworld”
Guardian, Pathfinder, Queen of the Dead, Isis, Persephone, Asa the Wailer
Symbol: Falcon
Their woodcuts portrayed these beings as a hooded skeleton with a scythe and a woman with the outspread wings of a bird. Beneath them was a single name:
Carrier of the Dead,
“Shadow of the Netherworld”
Guidance, Grim Reaper, Ferryman,
Thanatos, Rue the Silent
Symbol: Butterfly
Below that name was a list of “Psychopomp Offspring,” all royal princes. Princes of war, of pestilence, something called “felo de se,” and—
Prince of Murder,
“Killer of Mankind”
Murder, Slayer, Bloodguilt, Cain, Phonos,
Kesh the Knife
Symbol: Broken blade
The corresponding woodcut for this person was a crude four-legged beast, perhaps a dog or a donkey, I couldn’t tell. But it stood atop a broken blade.
“This is evil,” Bethany said. “Princes are supposed to be handsome and golden, and ruling over great countries—not beastly creatures ruling over murders. These ‘beings’ are just demons.”
“They aren’t demons,” I insisted, feeling as if my ribs were going to crack from all the panic that was filling up my chest.
“There’s a map of hell at the front of the book, Molly.”
Fair point. But I still didn’t agree. “I think they’re… like, underworld gods. Remember Hades from Greek mythology?” I said, pointing out his name on the page. “We learned about him in school.”
“Hades is a myth, and these things are demons, and, and… I don’t want to look at this anymore,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and turning her head away. “You shouldn’t look at it either. My father says women fall prey to evil more than men because they’re born bad.”
Born bad? Ridiculous. Mammy had always told me just the opposite. “No one’s born evil. You must go looking for it.”
“Then don’t look, Molly! For the love of God, don’t look!”
It was too late. I already had. And now, all I could do was stare in shock at the very last name on the list of death deities:
Prince of Mourning, “Lamenter of the Dead”
Grief, Tear Drinker, Melancholia, Horus the Younger, Harpocrates, Nin the Sorrowful
Symbol: Feather
The words seemed to shift and scatter on the page as my vision distorted. The corresponding woodcut was a young boy, depicted holding a finger to his lips with a tear running down one cheek.
I certainly wasn’t the kind of girl who jumped at shadows. Most of the wild things that people claimed about ghosts were not true, in my experience. And because of that experience, I’d learned over the years that it was always better to approach the unknown with curiosity, not fear.
That same logic might apply to other things that I didn’t understand. Like this.
So I tried my best to remain calm and logical as I stared at the parchment page.
Every conversation I’d had with Nin floated around in my head in a jumble—about how he’d been “summoned” here, how he was now “trapped.” Did that mean he was a…
god? A death god? A god of mourning. And he’d been called here by means of magic and spells by some kind of witch?
Would that be Voss, or Hoffmann?
With trembling fingers, I reached into my skirt pocket and pulled out the red feather that Nin had given me. It looked normal, as if I’d found it on the ground outside and picked it up myself. Not magical. Not something given to me by… a god of the underworld.
Did I believe what this book said about Nin?
I wasn’t sure. About anything, really.
“You should stay away from that boy. Hide like I’ve been hiding,” Bethany suggested gravely. “Otherwise he might cast an evil netherworld spell on you with his demon eyes.”
I seriously doubted that.
Because even after reading this entry, one question stuck in my head.
Did netherworld gods suffer mortal injuries?