Familiar Spirit

I dreamed of Walter last night. He had come home. I heard his voice in the parlor, heard his footsteps on the floorboards. He called my name, but when I woke and rushed from my bed to find him there was no one there but the little black dog, curled up in Walter’s favorite chair, watching me.

April 3

I told Yolanda about the dog. She was not surprised. She told me that Jade had had other “familiar spirits” in the past—chiefly, a lizard and a cat, which he sent out to spy for him.

I asked her if these “familiar spirits” were not rather animals who had been taken over by Jade, possessed by him; creatures which housed some fragment of his will and personality and were extensions of himself. She seemed surprised, and somewhat suspicious, that I should know this, but she did not deny it. When I asked her how many such beings Jade could control at one time, she seemed agitated. She asked me how I knew such things, and I quoted Crowley to her.

“I thought you didn’t understand his books,” she said, rather peevishly. Could it be that I am smarter and stronger than Yolanda—and Jade—expected? I think I make Yolanda uneasy now, and I wonder if it is because she realizes that I am not the simple, unwitting victim she must have thought I would be. I don’t know enough, but I know too much—more than I was expected to know.

“Has Jade ever managed to possess another human being without losing consciousness in his own body?” I asked. “Can he split his soul and be in two places at once?”

Not such an unusual question, I thought. We used to discuss such things, back when she confided in me, before I was truly drawn into the web. That Jade could leave his body and take on other forms was something she had boasted of to me.

“I don’t know,” she said nervously. “What a strange idea.”

“Not so strange,” I said. “When Jade is watching me through the eyes of that dog, he is not fully here. He is also somewhere else, in his own body, doing something else. You told me once he could take on other forms. Did you mean only animals? Or can he possess other human bodies—perhaps survive his own bodily death that way?”

My questioning shook her badly, and she soon made an excuse and left, telling me nothing except what I might deduce from her nervousness.

April 6

Walter is in town, so I have heard. He has not tried to contact me, but he will come to me soon, I am certain. I know why he is here. He has come in response to my will. I have drawn him back to town, and soon I will draw him back to my arms.

April 9

They came for me in the middle of the night. Jade and Yolanda both wore long black gowns, and had me dress in one. Jade would not let me wake my children, nor even leave them a note of explanation.

We drove through the blackness in Jade’s saloon car, heading south out of the city, then west on the Bee Caves road. Yolanda was tense and silent. Jade was as relaxed and powerful as ever. I fancied that he gave off a kind of glow, there in the coolness and dark of the closed car.

“Don’t worry and don’t think,” he said to me. “Simply feel. I will tell you what to do. You must trust me.”

But I knew that was the last thing I could do. I would not trust him, even though I might obey him. I would do what I had to do. I reminded myself that although no man but Walter had ever held me in his arms, although I loved only Walter, I was no virgin. I have borne children and known suffering and pain, and I could bear what Jade would do. I would not be his blood sacrifice, but I would be his altar, his ritual tool, the focus of his will, his sexual receptacle. I would survive, and return home, and Walter would respond to my will.

Outside the city we travelled narrow, rutted farm roads. At last, Jade pulled the car to the side and announced that we would walk. Branches whipped my face and high weeds slowed my progress, and as I stumbled through the darkness I prayed I would not tread on a snake or twist my ankle. Out here, away from the city, anything might happen. I did not want to be made any more helpless than I already was. The sky had lightened to grey by the time we reached our destination, and the approaching dawn was some relief. In the pale morning light I saw that Jade had led us to the mouth of a small cave.

I knew there were many caves in the region, most of them unexplored and likely to remain that way. The entrance to one had been boarded up after two children met their deaths playing there.

To my relief, Jade showed no interest in entering the cave. He set Yolanda and myself to work clearing away brush and sweeping at the ground to clear a limestone arena. On the stone surface of the ground he drew a figure in colored chalk—a star within a circle.

Yolanda had been carrying a small, wooden chest which Jade now took from her. He took out three things: something I could not see, which he put in his mouth and chewed; a small leather bag; and a small, silk-wrapped package which I knew must be the stone figure. Then Jade looked at me. “Come,” he said.