Chapter 21 - The Man of Wind and Moss

Part Four: Hudson Valley Ritual Abuse

Sasha had arranged a consultation in a town upstate called Sharpwood. Marco had been hoping to handle the business in Brooklyn, as, to his knowledge, it was a rare occurrence for a forest god to track someone down in the city. But alas, Sharpwood it was.

He was still uncertain of the relationship between him and Sasha, but it had occurred to Marco that the only thing he was good at was loving someone. And yes, while his track record wasn’t very encouraging, that actually proved his case. He extended himself to people and he got nothing in return. He got nothing when Monchito left, getting even less than zero, somehow, when his happy birthday voicemail finished, and he was banned from all of Puerto Rico. He got nothing from Pansy when she told him that his feelings were wrong and confused. And he got nothing from his dad outside in their backyard. But here was Sasha, right in front of him, ready to love him back, and he faltered. In his defense, though, the recent witch stuff was a put-off. You see, the problem is, you can forgive someone without trusting them again. But you can’t trust them again without forgiving them first.

So, do you forgive her?

I mean, she was desperate, and we were quite lost.

Does she seem remorseful?

I think so.

She knew Pansy was gonna reject you. Was this her plan all along?

 . . . Let’s not talk conspiracies here.

The bitter truth was that he still loved Pansy, as stupid as he felt, but he decided to call off the chase. He had to be smart about this. If whatever was at Sharpwood couldn’t help him and Sasha, and Pansy gave birth to something grafted, then he needed to be as far away as possible. Because that also meant Dean was around the corner.

There was a macabre humor to it though. Not quite a year ago he had mentally painted turning thirty as a threshold he had to step across. Well, this was him stepping across. He had fixated on all his friends “parting ways” and “choosing life paths” and here he was desperate to bring them all back, to undo it all and run out the clock in prolonged adolescence.

* * *

“I have a good feeling about this,” Sasha said. She turned off the Taconic and now drove through a series of small towns. It was August and the heat was brutal. It had been days without rain and the lush scenery of upstate threatened to burn. The consult she had found was a witch named Calvina whose specialty was one’s “relationship with nature.” When Sasha had first pitched him on it, Marco rolled his eyes.

“Isn’t all paganism about nature? Isn’t that the whole point?”

“Stop that right now,” Sasha said. “Any form of doubt will undermine the whole mission, and we can’t afford that.”

“Yeesh. Okay. Sorry.”

“And besides, you’re way off. You’re probably thinking of Wicca but even that is hardly relevant right now.”

“This thing isn’t Wiccan?”

“I’m not so sure. It feels a little too hateful.”

Marco’s stomach started to hurt. He shifted in the seat. She was right. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to undermine the mission. With the vomit coming up and threats of shit coming out, he didn’t have a lot of space to complain. Not to mention the first time forest shit did come out. It was in a Sunoco bathroom, messy and shock-and-awe painful but mercifully over as quickly as it started. Anyway. Yes. His relationship with nature, as broad a subject as that is, was fine. It was that of a typical boy who was raised on social media. A boy raised in the suburbs where the actual square footage of “nature” was diminishing with each new strip mall and corporate plaza. This wasn’t a complaint, really, it was just how it was. Some kids were born hopping turnstiles and eating chopped cheese. Some kids were raised in rural towns where tractor chicken was huge and dancing was illegal. But Marco was raised in a low-income cul-de-sac where cracked sidewalks were “nature” and going to Clearwater Beach to swig vodka from a Zephyr Hills was “connecting to the Earth.” Marco didn’t know shit about nature, and nature didn’t know shit about him. What else was there to say?

There was that thought, though, that annoying whirligig that took up too much space: nature was in Puerto Rico, and it ducked him. There was the ocean, yes. There was the heat. There were coquí frogs every night. There was the rising shadow of El Yunque, like a great beast on all fours. But now, inexplicably, Marco was banned from it. Monchito swallowed it all up, like an older brother that hogs all the toys. So, with that in mind, nature now meant upstate New York. Ew. Wet and cold and misty. Plants paler than they should be. The foam of polluted rivers fingering rotten soils. Or, in the summer, like now, hot and balmy. Worse in the city too: stagnant, where the wind and heat gets stuck between the buildings so it feels like you’re in a hot womb. Fucking Monchito, the spoiled brat. Remember what nature is for. Yeah, right, how could he have been so delusional?

“Apotropaic,” Sasha said, and Marco snapped out of it.

“What?”

“The type of magic Calvina does is apotropaic. It focuses on warding off evil spirits and protecting people.”

“Like a good witch.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“And what does that make you?”

Sasha was slow to answer and it set Marco on edge.

“It’s not lost on me that all of this happened because nobody wanted me in their coven. And to be honest, if you want to be granular about it, I’m not much of a witch. A witch implies some sort of belief system. I thought I had that. Or that I could find it. But I think that’s why I wasn’t let in anywhere. They smelled it on me. I was too eager to be a part of something; I didn’t have any convictions of my own. I didn’t have my own belief system. You know?”

Marco fell silent. The parallels were too painful to look at directly. She just wanted to belong.

“What’s your belief system now?” he asked.

“I believe that you’ll never forgive me for the choices I’ve made. And I believe that I’ll be fighting a long, uphill battle to prove to you that I’m still your friend. That’s what I believe.”

She looked back at the road, and he knew that if he looked at her too long his heart would break, and he’d say something he didn’t mean. Instead, he looked out the window.

Sharpwood had a Main Street, a church, an old bed-and-breakfast, and a series of vaguely rundown storefronts. At the end of the street, past the church, a large hill covered in trees reached up and sprawled westward back to the Hudson River. The town was nestled in a way that it was easier to commute by car to Albany than to take the train south to the city, and easiest of all was to not commute anywhere. As a result, it didn’t have that cutesy “ready for the weekend tourists” energy that more accessible towns might’ve had. Sharpwood seemed happily forgotten.

Sasha had found Calvina through a forum explicitly about Zaäper. Funny enough, the phrase was “necroposting,” where you post on a defunct message thread from years ago. Someone had posted, terrified of the Grafting and needing help. Calvina reached out, commanding them to “hurry before it’s too late.” The message thread being dead suggested either that OP was alive and well and stopped his witchy ways or that he went the way of the sunflower.

The book was wrapped in cloth in the back seat of the car and, for the whole ride over, even more than after Keith’s service, it felt like someone was in the car with them. Marco didn’t know where to look. Outside at the trees that wanted to kill him? Or in the mirrors where someone would look back at him? Or, God forbid, at Sasha, still stunning by the way, her scars now accessories, proud souvenirs from a shameful night.

He remembered saying goodbye to Pansy and walking away, and he realized he couldn’t ever do that with Sasha, not fully. Even if he never forgave her, he couldn’t just leave. They were too enmeshed. They cared about each other, they fought, they got into this mess, they had had sex (maybe not quite “making love,” but certainly a few degrees above “fucking”). He needed her; he wanted her; he hated her; he was upset, obsessed, annoyed, and everything in between. Then another question, suddenly, jumped to the front of his brain: would you rather be alone or have one person that took advantage of you? After all, being used is a form of love. Double after all, he was used to being taken advantage of. Pansy had done it frequently and without remorse. But what a racket it all was: choosing yourself suddenly meant rejecting others? Marco wasn’t sure if he had the stones. The trauma of abandonment still haunted.

* * *

Calvina had a flower shop called Gaiety, and it sat on a side road between a donut shop and a local tax service. The store was essentially a bungalow with a small greenhouse extending backwards. Sasha parked the car and Marco climbed out and the heat came down on him like a curtain. He grabbed the book from the back seat and Sasha came around the car, squinting in the sun. “You ready for this?” she asked. “How’s your stomach?”

“Yeah. Good.”

“Are you gonna have to shit in there?” she grinned.

“Don’t smile,” he said, “this is a nightmare.”

“I’m just trying to cut the tension,” she said. “And I want to make sure if you have to shit, she knows about it, I mean that’s probably primo fertilizer.”

“Yeah, big jokes when it’s not happening to you.”

“Hey, that’s a good title, though: Don’t Smile, This Is a Nightmare.”

“Essays about being your friend.”

“Now, now.”

She crossed the street to the bungalow. The veranda had a rusty sign that said GAIETY and depicted a fifties pin-up girl holding a fern. “Cute name,” Marco said.

“She’s being cheeky,” Sasha replied. “She’s saying goety.”

Before Marco could follow up, Sasha knocked on the screen door. Marco stayed a few steps behind. He fixed his shirt, fixed his hair, and licked at his braces. He didn’t know why, but a first impression seemed important. Like if he looked respectable, Calvina would take him seriously.

When the screen door opened, he heard, “Are you Sasha?” “Yes, you’re Calvina.” “Come in, come in, please,” and then Sasha turned to him and beckoned him over.

Inside, the bungalow was half store and half house. A small cash register and iPad sat on a credenza next to coats and hats. There was a big fridge with flowers that hugged the same wall that held photos of family members and landscapes. A small, carpeted living room displayed a cozy couch and armchair, and across from it a kitchenette was cluttered with even more fridges and bouquets. On the kitchen counter a tiny TV played daytime television and, nearby, a little calico putzed around lazily. When the cat looked at Marco, it hissed.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

Marco followed the two women further into the house and he couldn’t get a good look at Calvina leading the way, but she and Sasha talked in serious hushes and with the distinct pattern of question and answer. The cat brought up the rear, herding them along. After a second, the group cut through a small storage room and stepped outside into a greenhouse, shockingly large, that extended far back, but narrowly so like an alley. It was immediately stuffy and verdant beyond anything Marco had ever seen. There were three stretches of counter space, each running the length of the greenhouse. One on the left, a thin one down the middle, and one on the right. Woodruff, roses, thyme, basil, yarrow, little curly cues of oddball flowers showing yellow and pink. Unnatural azaleas pushed against gardenias, flanked by horehound spilling over the lip of its crate. Traveler’s palms stood tall, bending to the glass ceilings and looking down at their children. Lavender sat next to mugwort sat next to thick rods of vegetation that Marco couldn’t place. All of it hot and humid and with that thick, almost gamey smell that enough fiber and dirt gave off. He hated all of it.

Calvina finally came into view proper, and the voice Marco had been listening to didn’t match the image. She was a tiny lady, shorter than Sasha, and she had dishwater hair and beady little eyes, and her face was wrinkled and wine-stained and covered in moles. The voice Marco had heard was deep and masculine. The lady it belonged to was a gerbil.

“You must be Marco,” she said. She offered both hands and Marco shook them softly. They felt like pipe cleaners. “You must very scared.”

Marco swallowed. He looked over Calvina’s head to Sasha. Gone was the grin from outside. “Yeah,” Marco admitted. “I am.”

“Let me show you something,” she said. She released Marco’s hands and dug into her shirt and pulled out a long necklace full of amulets: blue eyes, crosses, Celtic knots, some of them icons Marco had seen in movies and shows and some of them from another planet. There had to be twenty of them, jangling together in the reflected sunlight of the greenhouse. She flipped through them like keys on a ring and pushed one forward.

“This is a vegvísir, a wayfinder,” she said. “This is the closest match for an amulet that can help you, but, my friends, it will not. Come over here and I’ll explain the trouble you’re in.”

“I think I have an idea,” Marco remarked.

“Oh, you do not,” Calvina corrected. “Come.”

The gerbil lady shuffled to the far end of the narrow greenhouse. Sasha moved behind her and Marco followed. He made sure to keep his hands at his sides. He didn’t like the idea of one of the plants touching him, reaching for him like that time they saw Doll. He had thought that being in the presence of Calvina would make him feel safer, but the opposite occurred. Seeing that vegvísir only reminded him of the compass on the man’s hand way back at the Black Arms show. How he bit into it so carelessly. And when he called Sasha that word.

But she is a witchy one, isn’t she?

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Calvina led them to a workbench with two potted plants on it. They were flowers he hadn’t seen before. They resembled stout blue daisies with tiny vines curling over the edge of the brown pot. The calico jumped from ledge to ledge, side-winding itself across sprawling birds of paradise and beneath the cables of dead heat lamps.

“What we have here is a problem of channels,” Calvina said. She pulled a blue Sharpie out of her back pocket and started to draw a diagram on the workbench as she talked. “Erether, as you’ve no doubt gleaned, has been around for eons. That’s no secret. They say when Lucifer fell from the sky, Erether broke his fall. Every culture is aware of him in some regard. Like this vegvísir here, we go to great ends to not be lost. Mayans prayed to Xaman Ek, Egyptians to Khonshu, even Jane Eyre feared the black Gytrash. Maybe they don’t fear Erether by name, but they fear what he does. He disorients you and reclaims you. If we’re all made of the same energy and the same stardust, then to him, we’re wasting it, hence the Grafting. But believe it or not, that is not why you’re in trouble.”

At this point, her drawing looked like a sunflower coming out of a flat ground. On the far right of the drawing, she drew a Z and from the Z, she drew a series of arrows to the head of the sunflower.

“All of these religions and subsects have the same language when it comes to Mother Earth. Harsh, beautiful, respect it, treat it right, it’ll take care of us, it’ll provide, so on and so forth. But Zaäper, specifically the author of Zaäper, Dr. Yosef Crumb, disagreed. He believed that, fundamentally, the earth was evil. Not the men on it. Not capitalism. Not government. That the earth itself was evil incarnate. To him and his followers, the earth is a living and breathing entity cast out into the furthest reaches of a black, empty space. We are living on a pariah, one that is evil to the core. It’s his notion that the only recourse humanity has is to pray to Erether to be Grafted quickly and painlessly, and to hope your torment is slightly less than your neighbor’s.”

The greenhouse was too hot for this. Marco began to feel lightheaded.

“It’s not bad enough that you appealed to Erether, my loves, and I don’t mean to alarm you, really, but I have to be honest. Your biggest trouble is that you used the language of his greatest supplicant.”

Marco saw the look on Sasha’s face. It was a firm mask of fear.

“It’s gonna be okay,” he said. He tried to keep self-doubt from coloring his voice but it was hard.

“I didn’t know, I swear to God,” she whispered.

“We’re gonna get through this, it’s gonna be okay,” he said again.

“There might be a way,” Calvina said.

Just then, the calico jumped onto the workbench and Marco nearly shat. “Jesus Fuck.”

“Sorry about Chichi here, go on, get over there,” she said and tossed the cat onto the ground. “I never met Dr. Crumb personally, but I was keenly aware of his acolytes when they were running rampant through our valley. When he killed himself and had his followers plant him along the forest, others followed suit just nearby in the Catskills too. It became clear that was the meat of the ritual. The planting of flesh and blood. With that in mind, we have to give Erether what he wants before he comes to collect.” She reached forward and moved the two potted flowers to the center. “If I’m brought up to speed, there are two remaining souls offered to Erether. Your friend and your other friend’s child.”

“Okay, yeah, I fucking ruined everything,” Sasha started, “but we were lost! Like really fucking lost!”

“I don’t doubt it, my love.”

“I didn’t just do it to do it! It wasn’t my big plan, you know?”

“What’s done is done,” Calvina said. “There’s no undoing it. You came here for a block. I’m giving you smoke and mirrors. Give me that here, I will handle it.” She pointed to the book and Marco realized that he had been holding it the whole time. It was dogeared and annotated and full of tabs. Sasha had been doing so much research, so much note-taking, and she still didn’t know shit. Well then what the fuck was she learning? He placed the book on the workbench. The cat hissed again and darted away. He wanted to reassure Sasha again but his head was too cloudy with accusations. Goddammit.

“You gave up the father and the child, well here they are,” Calvina said. She gestured to the potted flowers.

“What am I looking at?” Marco asked.

“It’s a decoy,” Sasha guessed.

“Essentially,” Calvina confirmed. “This one is your friend; this one is the child. Or vice versa, it doesn’t matter. We’ll make a hole, we’ll make a sacrifice, and then we’ll plant.”

“That’s it?” Marco asked.

“Well, that’s the easy part,” Calvina said. “The hard part is your job. This is your best friend who is being sacrificed to Erether. You need to talk to it and imbue your relationship into it. You need to convince Erether that this really is your friend. Otherwise, you won’t fool anybody.”

Marco studied the plant. It was blue and yellow and cattywampus. “You want me to talk to this thing like it’s Dean?”

“My boy, your life depends on it.”

* * *

Calvina left Sasha and Marco by the workbench and went back inside. With her absence, the greenhouse suddenly felt dangerous, like it was a big fly trap and its mouth was going to snap shut at any moment. The two looked at the wobbly plants. Overhead, blurry through the glass ceiling, the sun beat down. Marco had begun to sweat, and he tugged at his shirt.

“This is so fucked,” he mumbled.

“I can’t keep apologizing,” Sasha said, looking at the plants. She wiped sweat from her brow. “You don’t have to trust me, but at least trust Calvina.”

“Why, because she’s a professional?”

“What’s wrong with you? Don’t turn on me. I’m your best friend.”

Marco stammered. He wasn’t sure how to answer. He had been going in circles dissecting his own emotions, and he kept landing at the same conclusion: I need her. He looked back at the plants. As nightmarish as it was, everything up to this point had been real. The strange occurrences, the ominous visions, the vomiting, and, of course, Doll in the woods. There was no reason for his suspension of disbelief to run out right then, right before the cure.

And so, he leaned in.

“Hi, Dean. You should know I can’t stand you.”

Sasha shifted on her feet. Maybe she wasn’t expecting it, maybe she didn’t want to interrupt, but she took a tiny step away to give Marco the floor.

“You’re a sociopath, man,” Marco continued, “and no matter how hard people try to get vulnerable with you, you’re incapable of considering others.”

“I don’t know if you’re supposed to scold it,” Sasha said.

“I’m not scolding it, I’m just—” He looked back at the plant. He grabbed it and centered it on the table. “Every time I try to think about our friendship, I’m not sure what it means. I’m not sure what I get out of it. And I know that friendship isn’t necessarily transactional or whatever, but it kind of is. And—and—I mean, Jesus. We had laughs, we got along kinda, but you were a dick. And . . . and . . . I was jealous of you.”

Marco’s face reddened. He felt Sasha’s presence and could tell she was eager to hear more. With the plants and flowers everywhere, he felt extra watched, extra perceived, but he pushed forward. It felt like more and more, his lot in life was to be cut off, but in some strange mercy, this was his plant to kill. He at least wanted to be honest.

“You just kept winning,” Marco confessed. “I just wanted to beat you. Sometimes when Keith and I got drunk we’d imagine what it’d be like actually dating Pansy. It would be miserable. I’d be miserable trying to keep up with her and we’d probably break up anyway. You know what I mean? I liked her. Don’t get me wrong. But I was watching this beautiful and smart and lively person, one of my best friends, one of our best friends, get fucking put through the ringer for you. And for some reason it was like an open secret that we all agreed on. But why? Why were we so afraid to shake her out of it? Why were we so intimidated by you? And I don’t want this to sound incelly or shitty like I’m some nice guy that she never gave a chance, but we all disliked you, Dean. All of us! You were an asshole, and you treated her like shit. And the more she picked you, every time, picking you, you, you, the more I was forced to look inward and be like what the fuck is wrong and unlovable about me? Could I really be such an unsavory, unlikable option that I was losing to you? And she’d come over and give me these little smirks and she’d get in my bed, and she’d look at me like she knew all along. I didn’t need her to fuck me or anything, I just needed her to say it. Just to say it aloud and vindicate me and validate me so I could know I’m not crazy. So, I could know that her decision to be with you—a fucking prick—wasn’t about me at all, but entirely about her. I just needed her to give me that.”

The flower didn’t move.

“You didn’t deserve her!” Marco shouted. “And you didn’t deserve my obsession. And I’m fucking humiliated about it. That my jealousy of you ruined my life. And I’m pissed, and I’m mad, and in a fucked-up way it’s not even your fault. And I know that this is an insecure ramble, I know that. But I’m scared and confused and . . . I’m talking to a plant.”

He took a big breath. He was mad and sweaty and nervous, and his heart rate accelerated. For the flower’s part, it didn’t do anything. Marco tried to imagine Dean hearing this confession instead, but, in a way, the flower and him would probably share the reaction.

“Is that true?” Sasha asked.

“What part?”

“It was never really about her, was it?”

“I don’t know. Probably not. Your turn.”

Marco stepped away and wiped the sweat from his forehead. In the bungalow, Calvina made more busywork but at the far end of the greenhouse, the calico watched them, perched stoically on a pile of green and yellow bags of soil.

“I don’t know how to follow that,” Sasha remarked.

“Just be honest,” Marco said. “We have to do this right, or I’m fucked.”

Sasha stepped up to the plant and cleared her throat. “You were aggressive and macho and annoying. But for some reason Pansy felt empowered by you. I guess if I was forced to analyze that, then maybe the rest of us were letting her down in that regard. I’m not sure. I guess we were all pretty judgmental of her in a way that you weren’t. She didn’t tell me much about your secrets, but she told me that you were scared about the Army and nervous about being a father. She told me that you never had a relationship with your own dad and that it really fucked you up. I guess I wish I heard that from you, but you didn’t have to do that, and you shouldn’t have to really. I wish you let more people in. And I’m sorry for putting you into this. I’m going to make this right.”

Sasha pushed the Dean plant to the side and stepped back. “One down, one to go.”

“This is torture,” Marco remarked.

“We’re almost done.” Sasha said. She reached forward and pulled the other flower to the center. “Now the baby.”

Both of them stared at it.

“I don’t know what to say,” Sasha said. She looked at Marco, who replied with a shrug. “Your mom is my best friend. And I can’t wait to see you. This is your Uncle Marco.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

“Say hi.”

“Hi.”

“And you’re a few months along and everyone is really excited to see you. And you’re gonna be a beautiful girl. Or, well, that’s what your mom thinks. And you’re going to save her life. I know it. And your father is named Dean and that’s him right there,” Sasha pushed the flowers together, “and, wow, this is actually really weird.”

“I have a question,” Marco said. “We plant that one, we trick Erether, and Pansy gives birth to a normal, healthy baby. But we plant that one, we trick Erether, and . . . what happens?”

Sasha looked at the Dean plant. She shrugged. “The same curse that’s on you is on him. So, he’ll probably be cured and come back, and he’ll have a happy family with Pansy and their baby.”

“And nobody will have to know. Let’s tell Calvina we’re ready.”

* * *

Calvina was in the bungalow, sitting on the couch with her purse in her lap. When Marco and Sasha came in, she said they needed to drive out to her friend’s place a little out of town for the burial phase. She directed them to collect “their buddies” and then meet her on the street. She asked if Sasha was okay to drive and, incredulous, Sasha agreed.

The drive was long and anxiety-inducing, and Marco sat in the back seat with the two flowers on his lap. Calvina took passenger, and she directed Sasha left and right and oops, sorry, her other right, until they escaped Sharpwood and drove along a black road deep into the hills.

“The, uh, the magic isn’t gonna run out before we get there, is it?” Marco asked. He felt stupid strategizing with the lady, but the image of the sunflower she had drawn into the workbench lingered with him longer than he appreciated.

“Hm, I don’t know. Just pretend they’re in the car with us, sweetie.”

Marco sighed and studied the two pots on his lap. He pictured Dean nestling the baby in a car seat. “. . . Right.”

It was late afternoon when they arrived at the small farm, and the sun was still up. Marco held the flowerpots and followed Sasha who followed Calvina and the three of them crossed a large lawn to a farmhouse. Then they went around the back and came to a goat pen.

“Oh no,” Sasha mumbled. “Are we gonna . . . ?”

“Of course, my love. Don’t act so surprised. Pick two of them out. Since one of yours is a child, I think one of the goats should be a kid as well. Right? A kid for a kid, so to speak, oh my, that is macabre, I apologize for that, but it does make sense, doesn’t it?”

Sasha stood in front of the pen. There were three middle-­sized goats, a few babies, and a big black one that lumbered in the back. The babies bleated and walked around furtively but when Sasha placed her hands on the wooden railing, they got the zoomies. “Marco?” she asked, pleading for help.

“Don’t look at me,” Marco said, “I’m on flower duty.” He gestured by raising the two flowerpots. “Hey, what type of flower is this anyway?”

Calvina squinted. Her face wrinkled and the moles around her eyes bunched up and rubbed together. “Those are called pansies, my dear.”

“Hah!” Sasha laughed.

“Awesome.”

“You’ve never done a sacrifice before have you, dearest?”

Sasha looked embarrassed. “No. Still kinda new to the scene.”

“Very new. Very new and very ambitious picking up Zaäper. The phrase ‘more than you can chew’ comes to mind.”

“Yeah, I’m inclined to agree.”

“Not a bad title,” Marco said. “More Than You Can Chew.”

Sasha nodded, sighed, and then scaled the gate.

They ended up picking the kid second. For Dean, she picked out a shabby gray goat that didn’t seem to register what was going on until Sasha got within a foot of it, and then it took off. Ultimately, Marco had to give the flowers to Calvina and help Sasha corner the goat and throw a thick nylon lasso around it. Neither of them knew how to hog-tie anything so it ended up a wrestling match. Every time Dean got back on his feet, which was often, he threw his head into Marco’s stomach. It was exhausting and surreal and the sun started to set, but it had reached such a level of absurdity that it was hard to keep a straight face. At one point, Dean got Sasha in the butt so hard she nearly leapt over the railing. When she rolled along the dirt and got back on her feet, she was in pain, yeah, but she was laughing. No, cackling. Eventually, they dogpiled Dean and tied his legs and neck in such a sloppy, tangled way that he looked like a knot of fishing line. They dragged him out of the pen and flopped him on the ground. He was bleating and bucking and his eyes widened chaotically and his weird rectangular pupils spazzed left to right, begging for release. It was the bleating that must’ve activated the black one.

Marco was back in the pen chasing down a little kid. His ribs hurt, his clothes were filthy, and his finger was jammed. But nightfall was coming. The sky had gone purple, and the farmhouse lights turned on. The silhouette of a man, Calvina’s friend supposedly, watched from a yellow window. He seemed fine with the wrangling of the goats. Like that’s all his goats were ever for.

The kid Marco had picked was white and black and had skinny little legs. The plan was a bit smoother as Calvina had provided a large burlap sack that the first goat didn’t fit in. All Marco had to do was get the kid into the sack.

“You got this!” Sasha yelled. She sat on her butt with the other goat and tried her best to calm it, but it wouldn’t settle. It kept gyrating and bleating and Marco noticed that the big black one had stopped moving. Now it stared him down. “I think we’re pissing them off!” Marco shouted.

“Of course you are,” Calvina confirmed, at her safe distance, holding the pansies. “Be quick about this!”

“Thanks for the advice,” Marco grumbled. The little kid zipped between his legs, and Marco realized that was the move. If he could corner him again, he could drop the sack down and the little twerp would run himself into it. “Come on, baby, come to Uncle Marco,” he said.

All eyes watched him. Calvina, Sasha, the man in the window. He was performing for a very focused, very diverse audience.

When Marco cornered the kid again, the little thing panicked and backed up and hopped around and screamed for help. Marco made his legs big and wide to tempt the kid to dart forward and, when he did, Marco dropped the sack down fast. The kid beamed into it, the bag went taut and before he knew it—

“Marco! Watch out!”

He turned around and the big black goat was barreling down on him. Marco dropped the sack and dove into the dirt, and the goat rammed itself into the wooden gate. Wood chips splintered off. Now that the sun had set lower, the outline of the goat blurred. It snorted and grunted and rearranged itself. Its horns were a foot long each and curved in a way that seemed wicked.

“Get out of there!”

“I’m fucking trying!” Marco shouted.

The goat reared back and stamped the ground. The little kid thrashed in the burlap sack. Marco needed to move. The goat charged forward, and Marco scrambled for the sack. He scooped the kid off the ground, held the squirming thing to his chest, and sprinted for the edge of the pen. The goat behind him felt horrid. It felt malicious in a way that surpassed protective. He heard it stomping and grunting right on his heels and in two quick maneuvers Marco threw the sack over the rail and leapt after it. Again, the goat slammed into the wood. The sack with the kid landed with an ugly thud and Marco landed right after it with a heavier one.

The wind got knocked out of him and he tried to get his lungs back. He turned onto his side and watched the sack to make sure the kid was still alive in there. After a stunned silence, it started crying again. From his vantage on the ground, he looked at the black goat. It stood on its hind legs and rested its front hooves on the railing. It looked down on him, and its horns framed the yellow moon behind.

* * *

Calvina led them into the woods behind the farmhouse. She held both flowerpots in one sturdy arm and lit the way with a cheap, battery-powered lantern. Sasha held the kid, and Marco hefted Dean on his back. Fireflies blinked and hovered as they approached, and the night grew loud with the sounds of crickets, frogs, and the strange, liminal call of birds ready for bed.

Do you know what a flock call is?

Dean was a goat now. And a flower too. A flower called pansy no less. And Sasha held Pansy’s kid, squirming in a sack. And they followed Calvina into the woods and Marco was positive, knew in his soul, that they’d witness another Grafting tonight. Ideally, it’d be along the lines of Calvina’s plan, but it could just as well be Doll again. Or any other twisted, evil vision Erether had in store. Dr. Yosef Crumb was so certain that nature was inherently, intrinsically evil. At the moment, Marco was having a hard time disagreeing.

They came to a tiny clearing that, for a reason undisclosed, was covered in flowers. Different-colored species grew over each other, and Marco’s stomach turned to stone. A question formed in his head: Why are these here? Who are these here? But he didn’t want Calvina’s answer. Instead, he let Calvina place the lantern on a tree branch. A weak cone of light fell onto the ground, and Calvina kicked some loose vines and roots aside and gestured to a patch of dirt a few feet across.

“Let’s do it here.”

* * *

They dug at the soil with their hands, and Calvina watched from her position just outside the cone of light. Marco peered over his shoulder and saw the glimmer of her amulets and suddenly he was twelve again performing for his dad. The dirt from the forest had formed a crust on his forearms, and overhead, the moon shone through the trees and the night felt alive. There was the bizarre sensation, opposite to when they had gotten lost on the hike, that they belonged in this particular patch of forest, in this color swatch of night. Even the goats had settled into a depressing silence, as if resigning to routine, though every now and then Dean squirmed with vitality to remind Marco that the bloody part still hadn’t come.

“I think mine’s big enough,” Sasha said. She took off her glasses and wiped her forehead. Like Marco, she was sweaty and dirty and red-faced from exertion. Her hair had grass in it from the goat wrangling. “Let’s do the kid first.”

She reached forward and grabbed the burlap sack and pulled it along the dirt. The little kid started writhing inside the bag, but Sasha held it firm.

Calvina reached into her pocket and pulled out a knife and tossed it onto the ground between the two. It was a regular old folding knife, no bigger than a cellphone. “Cut the throat,” Calvina said, “and then cut him down the middle. Make sure to spill him into the hole. Then place him deep and place the flower inside his warmth. And then bury him. Erether will think these are the corpses of your friends, and he’ll grab at the roots.”

Sasha held the squirming kid in the sack. Marco reached for the folding knife. “There’s no ceremonial dagger for this?” he asked.

“It’s becoming one tonight,” Calvina said. “Now be quick about this. The longer we dally, the weaker the trick gets.”

Marco picked up the knife and unfolded it. It was crude, only partially serrated at the base. He nodded at Sasha, and Sasha took the sack off the kid. The poor thing was terrified. It tried to kick and squirm, but Sasha held it fast. Dean watched from the ground and started bleating again.

“Put his neck on the edge,” Marco said. He repositioned to his knees and Sasha held the kid down to the hole and its long neck squirmed and flapped over the edge. Marco struggled to get an angle. The knife handle was too small and awkward in his grip. Outside the cone of light, the darkness felt like black paint closing in.

“Get his throat and he’ll stop moving,” Sasha directed.

“Okay, okay,” Marco said. He took a deep breath. He should’ve dragged the knife across the kid’s throat, but the angle was too awkward so, instead, he had to plunge it forward and turn it around like he was starting a car. The goat screamed. It didn’t bleat or squeal. It screamed. Like a high-pitched tea kettle. The blood that came out was shockingly red and devoid of any shine. It came out like that pasty red sauce you got from halal carts.

“Fuck, it’s everywhere,” Marco said, gagging.

“Cut him open! Into the hole!” Calvina directed. Marco shot a quick glance at her location. The amulets on her necklace danced, but he couldn’t see her face. “Hurry, my son.”

Sasha flipped the kid around and held it upside down by the legs, its head dangling into the hole. Marco plunged the knife right before the goat’s genitals and dragged it downwards to the neck. Steamy guts slopped out like warm noodles. The little kid had stopped screaming at this point, right? Right? Surely it couldn’t still be going as its own hot mess slapped into the hole.

“Now the plant,” the witch said.

Sasha flopped the goat into the hole, and it landed on its back.

“Gimme the baby,” Sasha said, gesturing for the flower.

Marco looked at the two pansies. Identical. Impossible. “I don’t know which one it is. Does it matter?”

“Of course it does!”

“Just—here, it’s this one.”

“Are you sure?”

“No! I don’t know. Yes. Yes. It is.”

In a quick motion, she “repotted” the flower into the open body of the kid and then pushed all the soil back over until only the pansies stuck out. Then she patted down the soil with her bare hands.

“Holy shit,” she whispered, exhausted.

Marco was coated in blood. From the tips of his fingers to his elbows, blood and dirt formed a shellac. “I’m going to throw up,” he said. Quickly, he moved to the edge of the cone of light and vomited. Just as he feared, it was leaves and dirt and broken pieces of wood. It had burned coming up and scratched his throat. A piece of leaf got stuck in his braces and he pulled it out, slick with bile.

Calvina gasped.

Marco looked back at her, ashamed.

“I fear that I’m beginning to doubt the efficacy of this ceremony,” Calvina admitted.

“Don’t say that!” Marco shouted. He pointed a finger, wherever she was, outside the cone of light. He scanned for the shiny amulets. There. “You can’t doubt this! She can’t doubt this, right?” he asked Sasha.

Sasha nodded, scared.

“Erether knows who you are,” Calvina said.

“Well, he knows who Dean is too, and he’s getting grafted, tonight.”

Marco wiped his mouth on his shoulder, the only part of him not filthy. He knelt back at the other hole and kept digging, clawing at the soil and ripping skinny roots out of their wet, dank homes. “Help me out here,” he said to Sasha, and Sasha obliged. Her nails were cracked, and her fingers were raw, but she approached the hole from the other side of the rim. Marco used the folding knife to work loose hard, packed soil and to cut at more roots. The battery lantern above them shifted side to side but no breeze had come to move it.

“I think we’re ready,” Marco said after some moments. “Let’s do this thing.” He stood up and felt a twinge in his back. He grabbed the tangled goat and dragged it across the flowerbed to the hole. Because of the way it was knotted, it was actually easier to handle than the kid. It bleated and squirmed, but its legs couldn’t get any movement.

“I’m gonna cut the throat, cut the nylon, cut the stomach, okay?” Marco asked.

Sasha crawled forward and grabbed the other flower, ready for action.

“Be quick, my son.”

“Yeah, Dad! I got it!” Marco hissed. He spat more dirt onto the soil. The lantern’s cone, a sickly spotlight, made this all feel like some nightmare performance. Everyone was watching the magic trick. Everyone was looking for the sleight of hand.

Enough was enough. This had to end. With his left hand, Marco pushed the goat’s face upwards and with his right hand he slashed the throat, multiple times, where it moved from slashing into carving. Then he hacked at the nylon ropes that tangled the poor animal and then, like he was staring at Dean himself, realizing somehow, he was killing him and saving his life at the same time, he gutted him just like he had the baby.

The goat fell into the hole with a wet squish and Sasha was immediately there planting the flower. They both reset the soil and the two deformed, bloody, crippled little pansies stood out of their respective plots.

Marco fell back onto his butt. At some point, tears had come down his cheeks and the dirt and grime on his face started to run to his chin.

Calvina, the little gerbil, the useless thing, came to the edge of the light with her palms upward. Her amulets danced wildly, each one shining distinctly like they were upset, like they didn’t want their wearer to be doing this.

“Blood to root, root that’s laid, the Man of Wind and Moss is paid,” she sang. She fished around in her pocket and brought out a piece of metal Marco hadn’t seen before. It bore a confusing design of zigzags and curlicues. She held it up, the small lantern shining on it. “Erether! Come from Azoth and Zaah. Accept the payment and bother us no more. Let this sigil beckon thee to the place of transaction! Let this sigil beckon thee to the place of transaction!”

A wind blew through the trees and the boughs creaked overhead. The lantern started to shake back and forth from its branch. Marco pulled Sasha over and held her close. He tightened his grip on the knife. His stomach started roiling.

“Let this sigil beckon thee!” Calvina yelled. Far off, back at the farm, the goats started bleating loudly, just audible over the swell of the forest.

“Let this sigil beckon thee!”

A branch broke and smashed down onto the garden, feet away from Sasha. “Oh my god!” she yelled and Marco pulled her into his chest.

“God is not here,” Calvina corrected, “and he never was! Erether!! Let this sigil beckon thee!!”

Beneath the ground, impossibly, a great thumping started. The soil started moving. The patch of dirt where the goats were buried started swelling. They were kicking around down there. The tea-kettle scream came from below, muffled by the dirt and the gurgle of pasty blood.

“Let this sigil beckon thee!!! Take it!!”

Suddenly, Marco felt Sasha’s weight shift, and she screamed. He looked and saw it. It was a black arm. An impossibly long black arm had come from the base of the trees and a hand grabbed Sasha’s ankle.

And it pulled her.

“Marco!”

Marco lunged forward and held onto Sasha, awkwardly, wrapping his arm around her chest, beneath her armpits.

“Not her!” Calvina yelled. “Below! Below! The boy and his child have been laid below!”

“Marco! Help!”

The black arm was impossible. In the small circle of dim light, Marco saw its flesh swarm with bugs and worms. Pieces of black dirt fell from the folds of its saggy skin. Its nails resembled the rotting wood of fallen logs, and green moss coated its knuckles. At the very end of the black arm, from the trees, yellow eyes glared back with penny-slit pupils.

The rest happened rather quickly.

“Below! Below!” Calvina yelled. “Take the payment below!”

Marco stabbed the knife into the arm. A thunderous yell shot through the night. The black arm released Sasha and recoiled back through the trees. Then the goats underground blew outwards in a geyser of dirt and blood and bones, and the lantern exploded, dunking all of them in darkness.

* * *

Sasha was shaking out of her skin, and Marco pulled her in as close as he could. The knife was gone. Blood hung in the air. After a second, a lighter flicked on and Calvina stood with her face next to the dancing flame. “Erether has taken them.”

Sasha started openly crying, perhaps with relief. Calvina approached slowly and from the dim orange of her lighter, the garden was noticeably different. It was covered in bones and meat and blood and dirty goat fur.

“Listen to me closely,” Calvina said. She stood over Marco and Sasha. The amulets on her necklace had gone dim, but the sigil in her other hand warped and shined with a red patina. “I was informed that your third friend, the sister, was taken legitimately.”

Marco nodded.

“This means that Erether has had a taste of the real. Because of this, it’ll be harder to convince him, but there is a chance. Perhaps he’ll never discover that tonight’s offering was a sham, but we should still proceed with diligence.”

“What more can we do?” Marco asked. But it was rhetorical. He looked at the bloody garden and the chaos that had just occurred. He was delirious with exhaustion, and his sanity was beginning to fray. He’d pass out if he had to wrangle another animal or confess more feelings to a plant. And if he had to stab another black arm in the woods? He’d just as soon roll over and die.

“Forgive the blunt nature of my request but you do know that your friend here is a witch, correct?”

Marco was holding Sasha in a way that the side of her face was in his chest looking at his lap. He looked down at her. The top of her hair was coated in filth. She quaked softly. He ran his fingers through her hair and picked out a stringy piece of goat meat. He tossed it to the side. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

“Sex magic is the strongest form of magic,” Calvina said. “I urge you to consecrate the ground and bury this sigil when you’re finished.”

She tossed the red-hot sigil onto the dirt. “Leave without me. You should have no trouble finding your way home.”

With that, Calvina turned away and shambled back through the woods. The orange flame from her lighter flickered and wavered and then disappeared completely, but the sounds of her travel played a little longer, crunching through the trees.

Marco held Sasha in the moonlight for what seemed like eternity. The sounds of the forest came back slowly, but the smell of carrion and sulfur hung around just above the ground. The sigil Calvina used still throbbed red. A different red than the goat’s blood. A red from another plane, with whorls and shimmers, and from its red aura, the garden was a bit more illuminated. Now everything looked red.

Eventually, Sasha stopped trembling.

“Did you do all of this just to sleep with me again?” Marco asked.

Sasha laughed, but it could’ve been a sigh, but at that moment, probably, it didn’t make a difference. She looked up at Marco and fixed her glasses.

“Are you okay?” he asked her.

“No,” she said. “I’m definitely not.”

He rested his forehead against hers. The smell of the garden was rancid, and the blood of goat meat dripped down his shirt.

“That was really scary,” she said.

“I know. But you did great.”

“I feel like I didn’t do anything.”

“No, you did great. Really.”

She moved her hands to his face. With her thumb she wiped the grime of his cheeks. “You have mud in your braces.”

“It’s fertilizer.”

She laughed again, weakly.

“Let’s be diligent,” she whispered.

And then she kissed him.

In half a second, the question came back into Marco’s head: Did you do all of this to sleep with me again? The concept was no longer a joke though. It was suddenly a concern. The last time he and Sasha screwed around was the night in the steam room. Before they had gotten lost. She had been reading Zaäper all night and came down to . . .

She’s using you, you sucker.

But for what?

More witchy bullshit.

No, she’s helping me.

Is she? She got you into this mess. You don’t know what her and the gerbil were talking about before you arrived, you don’t know what any of this actually does. Do you?

She started kissing his neck.

The question bounced in his head again, but this time it was pulled apart a little more clearly. It’s not “you’re doing this to sleep with me” but rather “what does us having sex actually do.” Marco wanted the fine print. Never in his life did he anticipate the need to interrogate a girl throwing herself at him, but the devil, quite literally, was in the details.

The thoughts came out as a stammer: “. . . Do we have to do this?”

“The spell will work best if we do, I think, yeah,” Sasha said. Her face was red in the light of the glowing sigil. She was beautiful but scary but also his best friend. She also got them into this mess. But she was making it right.

But. But.

Okay.

Taking off their clothes was a relief. What wasn’t sopping with blood was crusted with mud, and while the sensation of touch changed, in the glow of the red sigil everything blended together. When Marco pressed a bloody hand to Sasha’s bare chest, his handprint only barely stood out against her own red hue. When she unbuckled his pants and put her hand around his dick and started stroking, everything was already slick—with mud or sweat or blood or spit, it didn’t matter—it was all red. When Marco went down between her legs, and put his messy braces on her pussy, he could tell that she felt the stab of twigs and the brush of leaves. When she put her hands in his hair she felt the pinch of splintered bones.

When she laid on her back, naked, he climbed on top of her. The sigil glowed brighter, and the eyes of a severed goat head shined back, red, tongue out, red, neck meat, red.

“Tell me you love me,” she said.

“What?”

“You don’t have to mean it.”

“I love you, Sasha. I love you. Of course I love you.”

He moved her legs up and went deeper into her.

“Say ‘I’m sorry Sasha it was always you.’”

“Sasha.”

“Just say it.”

“I’m sorry, Sasha, it was always you.”

“Say it again.”

“Why are we doing this?”

“It’s good for the magic.”

“You gotta promise me.”

“Marco, look at me.” She grabbed his face with her blood-red hands. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

They were next to upturned soil and entrails and fur and stomped flowers and shards of bone and broken lantern glass and everything smelled like sulfur and vomit and precum and spit.

Ten cuidado.

“I don’t know if this makes sense,” Marco said, out of breath. He felt his erection swelling. He felt the air in his stomach expand.

“You have to trust me,” Sasha implored.

She had saved him and Pansy because she wanted them to be together, but he got nothing from that. Did she know that was going to happen? So she could keep him to herself?

Oh, yeah right. Get over yourself, man. Pansy wasn’t going to be with you anyway! Sasha is your friend! She messed up, but now she’s making it right!

He tried to remember the steam room. When she sat on his lap. How his thoughts for her changed after that.

Yeah, that’s normal after friends hook up. Don’t overthink this!

But. But. But.

She started moving her hips up and down. She gripped his shoulder with one red hand and gripped the soil with another. He was swelling. Oh Christ, he was going to cum. He was the hardest he’d ever been, it felt unnatural, it was unnatural.

She’s my friend. I trust her.

She’s a witch, Marco.

She’s a good witch though.

You’re too afraid to try shrooms again. But you’re going to try this again?

I don’t know, I don’t know.

We. Do. Not. Fuck. Witches.

“I’m gonna cum,” she said.

“No!” Marco yelled, pulling out.

“What!” she yelped, looking around, looking all over like she expected something worse to be approaching. Like the horror wasn’t happening right there. Like it wasn’t her.

“I’m too scared,” Marco said. He fell onto his butt, still erect, scrambling away. He clutched his cock, trying not to cum, holding it in.

“Marco, this is for Dean! This is for Pansy!”

“No, no, I can’t do this, it doesn’t feel right!”

He got up and tripped over his pants and got up again. She was sitting up now, covering herself with her hands, and he turned away from her and ran loping through the woods, pulling his jeans up around his knees, up around his hard cock and his bloody thighs. The brightness of the red sigil behind him cut through the trees and illuminated his path ahead.

“Marco!” Sasha called after him. “You’re confused! Come back!”

But her voice started to fade.

Pansy and Dean would be fine, he decided. The switcheroo worked. The goats were taken. He saw it with his own eyes. Something else was going on. He knew it. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew it.

Pansy and Dean would be fine.

Right?

They had to be.

They had to be.

He kept running, huffing and puffing, the red light of that sex scene covering everything.