Ritual 5
Occult Story
Black robes kneel around a stone altar. On it lies an emaciated man in a loincloth, arms bound and stretched in the shape of a cross. Standing beside him, I see myself—robed in black, machete in hand. The worshippers hunger, and it is the high priest’s duty, my duty, to provide.
The sacrifice flails. With a spear tipped with a sponge, my high-priest-self bathes the stump of the man’s severed arm. Black, foul fluid seeps over the wound and pools on the flagstone floor.
The high priest looks at me, looks at himself, here in the future, paralysed in body while lucidly dreaming the past. His face—my face—twisted into cruel mirth. His midnight eyes savour my terror as the black robes huddle around the severed arm, their feast finalising the ritual that summons Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.
And the flies buzz. Their inky bodies quickly form an impenetrable cloud—tangible filth. I cannot see—only feel the demons clinging, seeping, permeating. Filth caresses and takes shape in the dark until something physical strokes anus. Clenching sphincter, I try to keep it out. Beelzebub penetrates…
Wake up!
Eyes—my eyes—open wide. Fists clenched, muscles taut, I’m locked up hard, locked down tight as Beelzebub violates.
There are too many!
As voices whisper, I work hard to uncurl fingers—my fingers? Reaching down beside the couch, fingers find a Woodbine sticking from a cigarette packet. With a match, I light up.
Die.
Flesh—clenched, locked, wrapped around Beelzebub’s presence—hurts. The dream sticks like tar, ready for feathers plucked from a fallen angel’s wings.
It is time.
Smoke eases anus. Objects in the room, at first strange, become familiar. A candle’s flame gleams off a gramophone’s brass horn used to play records backwards. The shadow of an upturned tumbler stretches across an oak table, roughly engraved with the letters of the alphabet, numbers zero to nine, and the words YES, NO, and GOODBYE. The candle’s light glints off a crystal ball, misty and blind, which sits atop a bookshelf stacked with works that guide one’s spirit through hidden worlds to delve for the dark jewels of unholy awakening.
One minute past five? My eyes fix on the copper-faced mantel clock that rests above a fireplace caked with the sodden ashes of long-spent coal and burned books. Rain falls through the chimney of this dank squalor, so far removed from the stately rooms I once occupied. Where is my fortune? What pennies are left to buy coal and cigarettes?
One minute past five? I remember looking at the clock at that exact time last evening, yesterday morning, and perhaps every morn and evening of each empty day shrouded in the imagined past. Have I a past? Was there ever a man before the madness?
It is time.
One minute past five? Five? Inhaling smoke, I recall Gevurah, the fifth emanation of the kabbalist’s Tree of Life. Gevurah—Number 5—the Fire of God that punishes the wicked. And the number 1? Can it be that as the clock’s hour hand signifies Gevurah, the minute hand signifies one voice, one mind, one soul?
Die.
Die—the whisper stretches, spirals into the chaos inside as the clock’s minute hand moves on. When this voice speaks, Beelzebub speaks, or perhaps just one of his mocking servants inside—here, outside—there, nowhere, everywhere, in head and heart and anus. Time to still the voices, silence the demons, whisperers that whisper, Die.
⟐
Holding a length of hair—snip. I gather another length and cut near the scalp. Snip. Impatient, I gather a fistful and struggle to work rusty iron scissors through it.
It is time.
Among the mass of wavy hair sprout several tufts where I have cut off hair old and dead. To kill the past—cut it off. So I cleanse with scissors until a voice demands, The portal!
Putting down the scissors, I leave the mirror. The voices follow me into the kitchen, where I look through the window to the backyard and the pentagram painted with blood on an uneven brick floor. The mouth to Hell remains closed.
My gaze falls on a breadknife resting beside a mouldy loaf and an open pot of jam, where several dead flies stick. A bone-handled butter knife juts from the pot.
Check the portal!
“I’ve checked the portal,” I answer, looking back at the pentagram. Moonlight intensifies its shadowy lines.
You’ve checked the portal.
Then, once again, the breadknife’s serrated blade, an ocean wave made from carbon steel, carves into my attention. So clean, unlike the butter knife’s handle—sticky and red. Two brass rivets fix the tang to the wooden handle. Between them, embossed on a brass plaque, a red pig. I stare at the knives and know what sacrifice must be made.
Feed them.
Goodbye.
Feed them.
It is time.
Feed them.
The portal is opening!
The hubbub grows louder as I reach for the breadknife. A knife to saw and provide. But then, outside, an alley cat screeches. Distracted, the hand—my hand—pauses. From the breadknife, outstretched fingers withdraw. Anxious, I glance at the portal before heading back to the beech-framed mirror, propped on a chair. Within it, beyond its corroded, black-speckled surface, wait two souls in one reflected man. One has close-cropped tufts and a dilated eye. The other, a mass of tangled hair and eye—pinprick pupil.
It is time.
I pick up the scissors and resume the ritual. Snip—cleanse—snip—cleanse—snip—cleanse until two people stare from the mirror. Each now has cropped hair. Behind each eye lives a different soul. Who am I?
Beelzebub.
“I’m not Beelzebub.”
Aren’t you.
“Are you Beelzebub?”
No. You are Beelzebub.
I shake my head slowly. The man in the mirror does the same. “I’m not the Lord of the Flies. You are.”
I am Jesus.
“No, you are not Jesus.”
True. Lord of the Flies.
Who talks aloud? Who speaks inside—outside—my head? I forget so quickly who says what. Five voices, I think, though maybe less, maybe more. Who knows anymore?
Die.
Back in the kitchen, a metal pot caked with burned porridge made yesterday soaks in the sink. With fingernails I dig into the encrusted oats and scrape them into grey water. When mostly clean, I quarter-fill the pot with cold water from the grumbling tap.
Razor.
“Razor?”
From the bathroom I fetch a cutthroat razor. Back in the kitchen, I take the pot and carry it back to the mirror.
Die…
The razor purifies. Raw scalp bleeds. Blood rivulets meander down. But I am free. No hair, no poisons—not from mescaline, cocaine, or forbidden knowledge stored there, in hair I’ve cut and laid before the chair. Gevurah… 5… God’s Fire will burn hair.
I take a Woodbine and, after lighting it on a candle’s flame, inhale. Take smoke down—deep. Voices quieten. Nerves calm. Then my gaze rests on the bookshelf and the ritual proceeds. The books feel heavy as I exile them to the centre of the pentagram daubed in blood on the backyard. Latin, Greek, Arabic texts, and works in obscure, unidentified tongues. Spells, exorcisms, necromancy and demonology—esoteric lore often veiled in metaphor. Some promise everlasting life, enlightenment, and great riches. Others, how to curse one’s enemies. And one reveals the secret of subjugating Beelzebub, Belphegor, and the other Princes of Hell, and through them causing change to occur in conformity with WILL. Beneath its goatskin binding, through a labyrinth of theorems, I discovered the ritual performed long ago that summoned Beelzebub and his legions. Time to burn the labyrinth beneath cut hair, bloodied scalp, and bone—a maze etched across my brain through which the whispering demons wander and conjure vampiric emotions that drain WILL and echo madness. Yes. Time to burn madness.
Slowly, the bookshelf—evil—empties, and a pyre rises from the portal’s centre. From around the mirror, I gather cut hair and carry the greasy mass onto the backyard. Onto the books the hair falls. A struck match and a secret utterance summon Gevurah—the Tree of Life’s fifth emanation—God’s Fire…