“Ye mustn’t be playing with little boys,” Bonnie’s grandmother had told her on several occasions.  “Little boys and little girls have nothing in common.  They should be kept strict apart.  Little boys only want one thing.”

“What, Granmaw?”

“They want yer secret treasure,” she whispered.  “They want to take the spoils and leave ye ruined.”

Mrs. MacGregor had grown up in County Carlow, Ireland.  She’d suffered at the hands of an uncle, a second cousin really, when she was very young.  It had left its scars.

As a senior citizen, Mrs. MacGregor was relatively harmless.  She had some very strong opinions about life and she took every opportunity to express them to her only granddaughter.

“Come along, child.  Let us say our prayers before bedtime, lest we die in our sleep.”

“But I don’t wanna die, Granmaw.”

“Wishing it not won’t make it so, child.  If Jesus wants to recall one o’ his little lambs, He’s gawna do it.  The best ye can pray for is to be in the state o’ Sanctifying Grace when he comes doan from hivven,” Mrs. MacGregor explained to the four-year old girl.  “If ye’re not, the divil himself will come right up and take ye straight to yer perdition, little girl.”

“I don’t wanna go to yer-bur-di-shen, Granmaw,” Bonnie pleaded.

“Well, then, say yer prayers and I’ll tell ye a bedtime story about a little boy by the name o’ Kevin O’Reilly.”

“OK, Granmaw.”  She put her tiny hands together and knelt by her bed.  “Now I lamie down to sleep, I praytha Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I praytha Lord my soul to take.  Amen.”  The same prayer hung loosely on her bedroom wall, framed in pink ceramic.

“That’s a good girl.  Now let’s do our benediction together.  In the name o’ the Father, and o’ the Son, and o’ the Holy Ghost.  Amen.  Now, here.  Take yer rosary and kiss the baby Jesus.”

She handed her the pink crystal rosary from the bedstand and presented the silver crucifix to Bonnie.  “Give sweet baby Jesus a kiss, little girl.”

The figure of Christ, crucified, was so expertly carved that the thorns in his crown were sharp as pins.  The silversmith had paid very close attention to the artist’s rendition of Christ’s agonized dying.  The face was contorted in pain, emphasizing the extreme suffering required to atone for the sins of mankind.  The eyes were focused upward, bulging to the heavens in supplication; begging to be spared this unbelievable cruelty.  The mouth was twisted open in gaping disbelief at the hideousness of having actually been nailed to a tree; of having had “railroad spikes” driven into his feet and hands.  The silversmith had paid particular attention to detailing how forcibly the heavy spikes had been wedged between the metatarsals and the metacarpals.  Even the droplets of blood were painstakingly detailed on this lifelike figure of a tiny man dying such an excruciating death.  This barbaric and viciously pornographic figure was, after all, much more than a piece of religious jewelry.  It was the most basic representation of their Catholic God.

“Let’s put ‘im under yer pillow so ye can have sweet dreams,” Mrs. MacGregor instructed.  “Let’s tuck ye in now, and Granmaw will tell ye all about little Kevin O’Reilly.”

Bonnie looked at her grandmother’s luminous and wrinkled face.  The small lamp beside the bed cast a soft orange glow that made her seem kind and wise.  Beyond her, Bonnie could see the tiny blue cornflowers in neat, tight rows that covered her bedroom walls.  She loved her grandmother very much, but she missed her mother terribly.  She was too young to understand that her mother would never be coming back to tuck her in so cozy and warm.  The cornflowers reminded her of her mother again, but his time she kept silent while her grandmother recited the bedtime story.

“Once upon a time there was a little boy by the name o’ Kevin who lived with his mother and father in a grreeeat big house on the hill.  He was a good Catholic boy who went to Mass on Sundays and said his prayers by night…”

The boy was small, innocent, and frail; too frail to participate in the kinds of games the other boys played.  At six months old he contracted rheumatic fever, which had left him with a permanent limp.  His father loved him from a distance.  But he had no time for a male child who was permanently disabled; unable to compete like a normal boy.  Though his father never expressed his true feelings, the boy somehow knew that his place was at his mother’s side.

His mother was protective and overbearing.  She coddled and doted over him, feeling very much responsible for his condition.  She had been afraid to trouble her husband with a request to take her child to the doctor when the fever first set in.  Her husband was a hard working man who had struggled to make ends meet.  She had been afraid to ask him to spend the little money they had saved until it was apparent that her infant son was in real trouble.

By the time Kevin was five, the meticulous sensibilities his mother had instilled in him were beginning to show.  His vocabulary was already that of a ten-year old and he had a strong aversion to dirt and rough play.  His mother had kept him so close to her that the child showed more of an interest in articles of her clothing than in the trucks, tanks and little plastic soldiers his father had filled his closet with.  Neither parent had ever uttered a word about it, but there was some concern that Kevin might be undergoing a sexual identity crisis.  His father coped by ignoring it.  His mother prayed.  God would make everything right.

By age seven, the difficult experiences of his first year at St. Lucy’s grade school had readjusted his behavior.  He was still too small and frail to protect himself physically from the ravages of the other boys, but he was a fast learner.  He tried very hard to stay out of their way.  Whenever he needed to escape, he sought the quiet of the redwoods by the San Lorenzo river.  In early summer, he liked to sun himself in a clearing by the river and listen to the sleepy sounds of the forest.  The smell of honeysuckle soothed the pain.

“You run like a girl!” one of the boys had taunted him.

Kevin turned beet red and didn’t say a word.  He was self-conscious about his leg, and he didn’t know how to respond.

“Hey! Another boy recriminated.  “Maybe he can’t help it.”

“Yeah?  That’s maybe cuz he is a girl!” another boy said.

“He’s a pussy!  Charlie yelled with a menacing look on his face as he pushed his way through the bunch.  “I think we should teach him how to run!”  He walked over to Kevin and planted the palm of his large hand on Kevin’s face.  Kevin didn’t move.  Charlie had failed a couple of grades.  He stood a full six inches taller than the rest of the boys; about a foot taller than Kevin.  He started to squeeze, then he shoved him backwards.  Kevin struck his head on the hard, dry ground and started to cry.

“Cry-baby wants his mommy to protect him.”

“Girly boy’s a puss.  Why don’t you run home to your mommy, you little saint.”

“He’s Sister Boner’s holy little pet,” another one remarked.  “I bet he’s one of those St. Lucy martyrs who bleeds for Christ.”

“And pisses holy water!”

“He’s a pussy!  Let’s kick his ass,” Charlie insisted, looking at the other boys for support.

“Naw, man.  You’ll make Saint Pussywillow cry and tattle to his mommy.  Then she’ll tell Sister Boner again and we won’t get to play martyr with him next time,” another one reasoned.  They laughed in unison.

The boys discussed the situation for a few minutes and wandered off to plot some childish prank.  Kevin picked himself up and limped away.  He headed home through the woods holding his head.  He heard their voices fade in the distance.  He limped along slowly, singing to himself quietly.  When he reached the river he sat on the bank and continued to sing to himself and cry.  About an hour later, he heard the thunder of running feet on the dry ground.  Without looking back he started to run.  An angry voice was upon him before he knew it.  He felt a sudden blow to the top of his skull, then fell to the ground screaming from the stings of a thousand hornets.  He slapped at his head to stop the pain, but pierced his hands and drove the pain deeper into his scalp.

The boys had fashioned a crown for him out of some thorny vines they found growing in the woods.  One of the boys had carried it in the palm of his baseball glove and smashed it onto Kevin’s head.

“Here’s your crown of thorns, you martyr!” he yelled with a vicious slap on the head.  “You’ll need this for your crucifixion.”

Kevin struggled desperately to remove the twisted vines that had become tangled in his hair.  The boys jeered and began pelting him with stones.  They howled with laughter when Kevin started crawling away like a wounded poodle, crying and bleeding.

“Look!” one of them screamed, “he pissed his pants!  He pissed holy water!”

“He took a big ole shit!” another one shouted.

When they saw the large wet spot on Kevin’s wiggling ass they burst into a fresh chorus of laughter.  Charlie laughed so hard he couldn’t control his bladder either.  Urine streamed down the back of his leg as he fell on his back kicking and pounding his fists on the ground.  His actions stirred up a cloud of dust.  The other boys were holding their stomachs and falling to their knees, pointing at Charlie and laughing.  Charlie continued to laugh uncontrollably.  He had become hysterical.  His voice cracked and his eyes watered as he tried to stand up.  His laughter grew louder and louder; so loud it sounded insane.  The other boys took notice.  Something strange was happening.  When Charlie stood erect, the boys fell silent.  They knew that something was wrong.  Charlie had his hand on his crotch and a look on his face that frightened them enough to scatter through the woods.  No one stayed around to see the end of it.  They figured that Charlie just couldn’t deal with the humiliation.

The incident had left Kevin terrified to go into the woods.  It drove him deep into himself.  Telling his mother the truth was impossible.  Even though he knew that lying was wrong, he preferred to risk suffering the fires of hell to having his mother cause a scene at St. Lucy’s.  She’d done it before, and he was still paying for it.  He made up a story about falling down a hillside and getting tangled in some briars.

He spent the rest of that summer in his backyard reading C.S. Lewis.  When August rolled around he started having night terror attacks.  The dreams always started out the same; in the woods at night.  And they ended with him running from something hideous and powerful; something unholy.  He would wake up standing in the middle of his room hysterical and disoriented.  He grew fearful of the night and afraid of sleep.

The new school year turned out to be a good one.  Things had miraculously settled down.  There was no tension in the air.  Charlie’s parents had moved to Santa Cruz that summer and transferred him to one of the public schools there.  His absence made life bearable for Kevin.  He stopped having nightmares.  Tyman Tee and Jerry Garcia actually talked to Kevin and asked him to play marbles with them.  Later that year an older boy, Rick, transferred in from San Jose and took Kevin under his wing.  Kevin experienced a sense of security he’d never known before.  Finally he met someone who liked him.

“You ever think about girls?” Rick asked him one night as they camped out in Rick’s parents’ backyard gazing at the moon.

“What do you mean?” Kevin asked naively.

“I mean, do you ever think about girls,” he clarified.

“I don’t know. Maybe, I guess.  Sometimes I think they act stupid.”

“No.  I mean do you ever think about what it’s like to kiss one in the lips?”

“No way!”  Kevin protested.  “Germs!  Do you?”

“Of course,” he answered and paused.  “I guess maybe you’re a little too young.  You’re nine, right?”

“Uh uh.  I’m eight,” Kevin perked up proudly.

“Well, when I was your age I used to think about girls all the time.  I used to even think about what it would be like to do it with one.”

Kevin wasn’t sure why he said it that way.  He wasn’t sure why Rick used such a round-about way to describe kissing.

“’Do it?’  Kissing?”  Kevin asked.

“No, stupid.  I’m talking about doing it.  You know.  Fucking!”.

Kevin gasped, “God’s gonna punish you.  You’re not supposed to say that word.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!  I can say it as many times as I want.  You prob’ly don’t even know what it means, do you?”

“It means something bad.”

“Something bad?  Hah!  You don’t know what it means, do you?”

“Well not exactly,” he answered precociously.  “But we shouldn’t be talking about it anyway.  Sister Bonaventure says it’s a moral sin to have impure thoughts.”

“Impure thoughts?  Oh, Sister Boner…”

“You’re gonna go to hell if you talk about a nun like that,” Kevin interrupted him and sat up quickly.

“Fuck Boner.  Fuck, boner, shit, piss, cocksucker, asshole!”  Rick let out a string of childish epithets.

Kevin covered his ears with his hands quickly.  “We’re gonna get struck by lightning,” he yelled, pulling away from Rick cautiously.

“No we’re not.  God doesn’t care if you say words.  Words aren’t dirty, thoughts are.”

Kevin had to think about that for a while.  “But when you think, you think words, don’t you?”

“Yeah.  But the thoughts aren’t the words.  Thoughts are bigger than words.  Words just bunch up together to make thoughts.”

Kevin was fascinated by Rick’s observation.  In fact, Kevin was impressed.  It was his first lesson in philosophy.  He settled back down and they continued their conversation.

“So,” Rick started.  “You don’t know what fuck means.”

“It means putting germs in a girls’ mouth so she can have a baby,” he explained quickly.

“Where did you hear that crap?”

“I heard some boys talking behind the school the other day.”

“Did you get a boner?”  Rick asked grinning.

“I don’t know.  What’s that?”

“Ah, hah hah hah hah hah!”  Rick laughed and gave Kevin a friendly shove.  “A boner’s when your dick stands up,” he said, still laughing at Kevin’s ignorance.  “You never got a boner?”

“No.” Kevin was curt.  He was annoyed by Rick’s laughter and at his own ignorance.

“You are a baby,” Rick taunted.  “I’ll show you a boner.”  Rick opened his pants and pulled his tiny penis out of his underwear.  Kevin watched.  Rick shook it back and forth a couple of times until it became erect. Kevin’s eyes opened wide.  He’d never seen another penis before.  It did just what Rick had said.  It stood right up and pointed to the moon.

Kevin didn’t say a word.  He knew there was something wrong about this, but he didn’t know what.  He felt funny inside; all shaky and nervous; he had butterflies in his stomach.

“Touch it,” Rick said.

That was wrong.  Kevin knew that without even thinking about it.  “No!” he snapped.

“Come on, touch it.  It feels good.”

“No.  I don’t want to.”

“OK, then don’t,” Rick said, pulling his pants back up.  “You prob’ly wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.”

Kevin kept still.  He didn’t understand.

“Lemme tell you the facts of life,” Rick began.  “When you see a girl you like, it gets you all hot and bothered; I mean, it will when you get older anyway.  I think you’re too little to get a boner yet.”

“I don’t want one,” Kevin said petulantly.

“Well it don’t matter if you want it or not.  It just happens and you can’t stop it.”

“Can you make it go away?”  Kevin asked with a worried look on his face.

“Sometimes it goes away by itself.  But if you rub it up and down it starts feeling real good.  Then you shoot your wad.”

“Why do that?”

“’Cause it feels great, man.  It’s the best feeling in the whole world.”

“You shoot your wad?”

“I shoot it every night,” he bragged.  “’Cept tonight, a course.”

“What’s it look like?”

“White.  Sticky stuff that smells like starch.  It shoots out real far, like a Roman candle.  When it comes out it makes your guts feel good inside.  You just wanna keep doin’ it over and over ‘til you can’t anymore.”

“You mean the white stuff shoots out from inside like piss?”

“Yeah.  Sorta.  But it kinda squirts out like this,” Rick made a squirting sound with his mouth.  “It’s like making your dick spit.”

“That’s weird,” Kevin responded.

“If you tried it, nothin’ prob’ly wouldn’t happen.  You don’t shoot ‘til you reach puberty,” Rick explained.

“Puberty?  What’s that?”

“Jesus!  You really are dumb.  Puberty’s when you get hair on your balls and your voice gets deep.  It means you’re a man, so you can fuck girls.”

“That’s stupid.”  Kevin dismissed the whole mystifying subject.  “I don’t wanna shoot my wad at a girl.  She’d look at my testicles.”

“Testicles?  You know that word but you don’t know what fuck means?”  Rick asked surprised.  “Anyway.  You don’t shoot your wad at girls, you shoot it in ‘em,” he explained.

“What!”  Kevin asked in disbelief.  “Where?  How do you get it in ‘em?”

“You stick your dick in their butt and move it up and down.”

“No way!  That’s a lie!  Nobody does that,” Kevin protested loudly.

“They do so.  I can prove it.  That’s what your dad did to your mom so you’d get borned.”

Kevin was aghast at everything he’d heard.  He couldn’t believe any of it was true.  “No way my ma would let my dad do that!  That’s stupid!”

“Everybody’s mom and dad has to do it to get a baby.  I can show you my dad’s movie.  Then you’ll see.  But we gotta stay up real late and sneak in the house after they’re sleepin’.”

Kevin was skeptical.  But it was worth a check.  They stayed up talking for what seemed half the night, and then they went into the house and shut themselves up in Rick’s father’s study.  Rick took an 8mm reel off the shelf and threaded it through the projector.

“Gaaawd!”  Kevin exclaimed when he saw the woman’s large breasts.  He was equally amazed at the amount of hair on her genitals.  When he saw how big the guy’s penis was, he couldn’t believe it.  It was twice as big as Rick’s, and Rick’s’ was the biggest dick he’d ever seen in his life.  This was incredible.  “Gaaawd!”  Rick was right.  The woman was begging the guy to stick his big dick in her butt.  “Gaaawd!”  It was unreal.  She was begging for it and groaning like crazy.

Kevin was so dumbfounded by the cheap movie he lost track of his surroundings.  During the fourth penetration scene, the groaning got loud.  It was in the room.  It was Rick.

“Uuuuuh.  Uuuuuh.  Ooooh.  Jeeesus!”

Kevin turned in time to see Rick squeezing his dick and shooting his wad straight up in the air.  Rick was in ecstasy.  It didn’t faze him that his semen was flying onto the coffee table behind him.  Kevin jumped to his knees and gawked.

“Gaaawd damn!” he blasphemed.  “You weren’t kidding.  That stuff shot out like a rocket to Mars!”  Kevin had blasphemed unwittingly.

Rick looked down at himself and let the back of his head fall to the carpet.  He was embarrassed.  After a long while he looked over at Kevin, who was still gawking at him.

“Rocket to Mars?”  Rick’s response was delayed.

They smiled at each other and then started laughing at Kevin’s hilarious remark.  When they heard footsteps upstairs, they dashed around cleaning up and turning out the lights.  They returned to their campsite in the backyard.  They had grown a little closer.  They had shared an experience that neither of them would forget.

“I still think it’s stupid,” Kevin said smiling in the dark.

“Eh, go to sleep.  Tomorrow you can help me shoot my rocket off to Venus.  Heh, heh, heh.”

Mrs. MacGregor stopped for a minute to place a small pill under her tongue.  Then she sighed heavily with her hand on her heart and continued her recitation.

“From that day forward, little girl, the boy was filled with impure thoughts.  He’d fallen into the company of an older boy who would put him straight on the path to his perdition.  He’d fallen from the state o’ Sanctifying Grace, and he would have to pay dearly for his sins.  The divil himself, his skin black as coal-dust, would be comin’ up from the foiers of the pit to drag the screamin’ boy to his eternal damnation and sufferin’.  The boy would cry for his mummy, but the divil would be plantin’ a blackened claw through his chest and tearing out his little heart.”

“I’m scared, Granmaw.”

“Hush child.  Ye have nothin’ to fear.  Ye keep in the state o’ Sanctifying Grace and the black-skinned divil will leave ye be.  Now let me get on with me story, child”

“But I’m scared of the black skin divil,” Bonnie insisted.

Mrs. MacGregor pulled the rosary from under Bonnie’s pillow and placed it between her tiny hands.  “There now.  Baby Jesus will keep ye safe from harm.  Give Him a kiss and hold Him in yer hands.  I’ll be finishing me story shortly.  It has a very important moral for little girls.”

“What’s a moral, Granmaw?”

“It’s a lesson.  A lesson we should all be followin’.  Even when you’ve grown to be a woman; married, with children of yer very own, ye should remember the story of little Kevin O’Reilly.  That way ye’ll keep safe from the clutches of the divil.  Give Sweet Baby Jesus a kiss, now, and listen to what yer Granmaw has to say…”

Mrs. O’Reilly knew her son very well.  There was something he was hiding about the cuts and bruises he’d received the day he came running home from the woods.  A mother always seems to know when something isn’t right.  She was pretty sure she could get to the bottom of this without letting her son know what she was up to.  She called Sister Bonaventure who made a few phone calls of her own.  A few days later Mrs. O'Reilly received a call from Jerry Garcia’s mother.  She apologized for her son’s participation in the incident in the woods.  Jerry told his mother that he and the other boys had been coerced by Charlie.  He had bullied them with threats of a beating.  Jerry failed to tell his mother how much fun it was to watch Kevin crawl away.

Sister Bonaventure talked Mrs. O’Reilly out of calling the police.  She promised her that she would speak with Charlie’s parents immediately.  His parents were frantic.  They sent Charlie to Central, a special school where he could receive routine counseling.  The school was very expensive; luckily Charlie’s parents were quite wealthy.

Central had a full-time boarding policy.  The all-male student body spent the entire year studying academic subjects and learning about acceptable social behavior.  The student-to-teacher ratio was 5 to 1.  It was one of the best of its kind on the West Coast.  The curriculum emphasized three things: physical, intellectual, and social responsibility.

Central housed an enormous library where the students were encouraged to spend their free time.  Charlie was reluctant at first, but when he discovered an entire collection of texts on necromancy, it sparked his interest.  He spent all of his afternoons poring over books filled with mysterious notions about life and death.  Many of the texts were written in Latin, so he elected to take Latin for his foreign language requirement.  His academic counselor was impressed.

In his readings, Charlie learned about the hidden power of oils and candles.  This religion made much more sense to him than traditional Roman Catholicism.  He embraced it fanatically.  By mid-year, he knew exactly which oils and candles he wanted for trying out his new knowledge.  He listed them carefully on a sheet of notebook paper:

Oils

Black Arts

Bat’s Blood

Bottom #20

Conjure

Devil’s

Dragon’s Blood Ink

Wormwood

Zula Zula

Candles

Satan

Male Gender (red)

13 black

13 red

There was no way for Charlie to acquire the tools he needed on his own.  He had read about a shop in Watsonville that sold items used in the practice of brujeria, Mexican witchcraft.  He remembered that Emilio Lopez, the groundskeeper, lived in Watsonville.  One day he offered Emilio a hundred-dollar bill to bring him the things he wanted.

“Whatchoo wanna play aroun’ with thece kina things for?  Huh?” Emilio had asked.  “Thece are not toys for little vatos; thece are very bat things.  You gotta know whatta do with thece things.  They hurchoo, cabron.  They make bat things happen to you.”

When Charlie told him he could keep the change, Emilio took the money quickly.  He shook his head and remarked, “hijo de la chingada!”

“Don’ you tell nobody where you get thece, you hear?” Emilio admonished the next day, handing him a brown paper bag.

“Don’t sweat it, man.  Nobody’ll find out,” Charlie assured him.

“Here’s a tip for your trouble,” Charlie said smiling.  He handed him a fat, aromatic joint.

Emilio flashed a wide grin, exposing a row of teeth framed in shiny gold.  “I think aboutchoo when I burn thece, pendejo.”  The gold glinted in the sunlight.

“Yea?  Well, tu madre,” Charlie smiled back at him.

“But I don’ wanyoo thinkin’ about me when you burn them candles, man,” he said, still grinning.

“I got better things to think about than your ugly face, dude,” Charlie responded, pulling at the loose crotch of his jeans suggestively.

“Awright, joto.  Butchoo be careful you don’ burn your ass.”

“No prob.  See ya.”

Charlie secured the other items he needed for his first attempt at necromancy.  He had stolen some parchment and matches from the art lab.  He cleared the floor of his walk-in closet and traced a large black pentagram in Dragon’s Blood Ink.  He let it dry.  Then he covered it with a throw rug to keep his roommate from seeing it.  In the meantime, he continued to read about the oils and candles.  He would have to work fast.  The moon would be full on the 6^th.  It was March.  Easter vacation was coming up soon and he would be going home for a visit.

On the night of the 6^th, Charlie waited until his roommate was asleep.  He went into the closet and shut the door behind him.  He rolled up the throw rug and placed it at the foot of the door to prevent the light from disturbing the other boy.  He positioned one black candle on each of the five points of the pentagram.  In the center he placed the red male gender candle which was the image of an erect penis.  He removed the oils from the bag and put them aside.

Charlie stripped himself naked and applied the Black Arts oil generously all over his body.  He knelt and removed the Devil’s candle from the bag.  With a blunted pencil, he inscribed the name, Kevin, across the front of the candle.  Then he placed it in the center, next to the red one.  On a piece of parchment he wrote:

Great One, Satan, Prince of Darkness

Hear me.

Damn the one whose name you bear.

Curse, destroy, rip out the eyes,

Confound, and let the back be bare.

He sprinkled a few drops of Devil’s oil on the parchment and placed it under the candle where he could read it by candlelight.  He placed one drop of Conjure oil on the Satan candle and checked his watch to see how much time was left before midnight.  He had 10 minutes.  His plan was to perform three separate rituals simultaneously.  He was eager to try his hand at this new game, and he approached it like a greedy child.

On another piece of parchment, he wrote the following curse:

The pain that was mine shall now be thine,

To thee the trouble you sent to me,

The torture I suffer goes back to thee,

Powers of darkness return to me.

He had chosen a red Male Gender candle to secure his sexual prowess; first things first.  Part of his ritual was supposed to be a conjuring.  He didn’t have much faith in that one, but he figured it couldn’t hurt.  His main objective was to put a curse on Kevin for having tattled to his mother.

To increase his sexual potential he lit the red candle.  That was simple enough.  He sat back and watched it burn.  It convinced him of its power; it gave him a hard-on.  He carefully opened the Bottom #20 oil and used a cotton swab to avoid touching it.  This was a powerful hexing oil used to destroy enemies.  A few drops on the written curse would do the trick.  He wasn’t aware that a tiny drop of the oil had fallen on his penis.  He was in too much of a hurry to notice.  He glanced at his watch again.  It was 11:59.  He had to light the rest of the candles.  He moved inside the large pentagram, squatting before the center candles.  He read the conjuration first.  At the stroke of midnight, he read it nine times.  He was sure he had felt the power surge inside him.  He remained squatting with a full erection.

He glanced at the curse.  When he tried to read it, he found he had trouble pronouncing the words at first.  He was breathing heavily.  His teenage hormones raged inside him like a pyromaniac’s, and he was losing his concentration.  He’d have to masturbate when this was done.  When he finished the third recitation of the curse, he couldn’t wait.  He wrapped both fists around his penis and stroked himself vigorously.  Charlie entered a trance of fantastic proportions.  A rainbow of colors exploded before his eyes and his heart beat audibly.  The contractions of his prostate gland kept pace with his heartbeat.  He thought he was about to burst.  He doused the center candles with his explosive eruption, then he collapsed from exhaustion.  He’d never experienced such a satisfying orgasm.

A few hours later he awoke from a dream he couldn’t remember.  He was freezing and his knees were killing him.  The five black candles had burned to the floor, and he found himself lying on his back in the dark with his legs folded under him.  It hurt to sit up, but he had to get into bed and out of the cold.  The smell of paraffin, burnt semen, and heavy oils was nauseating.  He cleaned up as best he could and got dressed.  Then he made a beeline to the lavatory to vomit.

The next day he had a fever.  The nurse allowed him to miss his classes and remain in bed the rest of the day.  He’d caught a chill in that cold closet and ended up paying for his childish behavior with a case of the flu.  The medication he received gave him terrible nightmares.  After three days of tossing and turning, he started feeling better.  It was time for Easter vacation.  He was anxious to get home.

On Easter Sunday Kevin went to the woods to join Jerry and Steve for an Easter egg hunt.  Rick was spending the day in San Jose with his grandmother, so Kevin accepted Jerry’s invitation.  When Kevin arrived at his usual spot, Jerry and Steve were waiting behind the trees for him.  They spontaneously decided to fake stealing his Easter basket.  They meant no real harm, they just wanted to play a game.

They startled Kevin at first, but then he laughed when he saw it was Steve running away with his basket.  Jerry was ready to hold Kevin down.

“Go ‘head.  Take it,” Kevin yelled, “I got another one at home.  Take anything you want.  I brought it for you guys anyway.  I don’t care.”

“You mean we can take anything we want and you won’t get sore?” Jerry said.  Steve stopped running and came walking back.  “This guy says we can take anything we want.”

“Yeah?” Steve said.  “What about his clothes!”  All three laughed at the silliness of the remark, then Jerry grabbed Kevin’s foot and pulled off a shoe.

“I got a shoe, man! He yelled, holding it up for Steve to see.  He pulled Kevin’s other leg out from under him and got the other shoe.  Kevin fell on his ass laughing.  Steve pulled off his socks while Jerry pulled Kevin’s sweatshirt over his head.  Kevin liked the attention.  He pretended to struggle when Jerry sat on him to undo his pants.  Steve had no trouble pulling them off him.  Then Jerry ordered Steve to hold him down while he made off with Kevin’s jockey shorts.

Kevin was still pretending to be angry, but he couldn’t keep himself from laughing.  Steve and Jerry gathered all his clothes and ran off into the woods.  Kevin ran behind them and fell down, pretending to be hurt.  The boys knew it was a ruse.

“Thanks for the Easter presents,” Jerry hollered as he ran, waving Kevin’s underwear.

“Yeah, man, thanks!”  Steve added.

Their voices disappeared in the distance ahead.  Kevin wasn’t worried.  This spot was secluded and he knew they’d eventually return with his clothes.  He knew they were just having a good time and he was actually enjoying himself.  He knelt down in a clearing and took a deep breath.  It felt wonderful to be naked in the sunlight.  He only wished that Rick could be there to enjoy the moment with him.  The woods were filled with sounds of birds and the fragrance of honeysuckle and redwood.  He could hear the river babbling a few feet away as he lay down in the cool grass.  It felt delicious against his young body.  He had butterflies in his stomach again; he wanted something, but he didn’t know what.  They’d be back soon.  He’d wait for them quietly.

Charlie had been watching Kevin’s house from down the street.  He was curious to see Kevin’s face before he punched him out.  When Kevin headed toward the river, Charlie knew exactly where to find him.  He hadn’t anticipated seeing Steve and Jerry, though.  He was surprised that they were all hanging out together and having so much fun.  He watched them strip Kevin naked.  It was clear they were all enjoying themselves.

Charlie still had a score to settle with the little wimp.  Besides, what was he doing with Steve and Jerry, they used to be Charlie’s friends.  He was determined to make him pay.  When he saw that Steve and Jerry were gone, he approached Kevin from behind, very quietly.  It would be easy to humiliate a naked kid.  First he’d scare him by sneaking up on him.   Then he’d slap him around a little and threaten to drag him up to the main road.  That would convince Kevin to keep his mouth shut later.

Charlie took a few steps forward, careful not to snap any dry branches.  Kevin listened.  Jerry and Steve had come around to sneak up on him.  He pretended to sleep and waited for them to get closer so he could jump up and surprise them.  The footsteps stopped.  Kevin kept still.

Charlie had stopped dead in his tracks, doubled over from an excruciating pain in his lower abdomen.  The pain was so sudden and so intense he couldn’t breathe.  He knew it was appendicitis and convinced himself that he was dying.  He dropped to his knees as the pain crept down to his groin.  He still couldn’t breathe.  The pain moved down to his testicles, causing him to get a painful erection.  He could feel his underwear rip from the strain.  He opened his fly to relieve the pressure and felt a hot flash of nausea overcome him.  He was losing consciousness.

His sight narrowed to tunnel vision.  A high pitched wheeze rang in his ears.  His whole body hummed like a gigantic tuning fork.  In the distance (only a few feet ahead) he saw Kevin lying prone.  He watched his naked body for along time, lingering for a moment on the buttocks.  Beneath the high pitched ringing in his ears was the guttural sound of husky breathing.  It grew wild with insatiable panting.

He tried to look away, but something was controlling his movements.  It had made the pain in his groin vanish as suddenly as it had started.  The lower half of his body came into his view as he lifted a log from the ground.  His hand appeared huge and black with long thick claws.  It was like nothing he’d ever seen.  Between his massive thighs he saw an enormous protrusion; black and pointed with woody barbs hooked backwards.  Its fleshy skin palpitated rhythmically.  It was covered with minute cracks that oozed thick yellow pus.  The protrusion grew slowly to a foot and a half in length before his eyes.  He reeled with horror and disbelief.  Something had happened.  This wasn’t his body.  It was something he was inside of, observing the events helplessly.

As he walked forward, he grasped the log like a baseball bat in both fists and struck a glancing blow to the back of Kevin’s head.  A large chunk of scalp curled up like a divot, exposing a patch of crimson.  He felt the hideous strength of his hands and forearms.  Every muscle in his body had become taut and rigid as steel.

The humming in his body grew loud and deafening.  A metal button on the fly of his jeans began to glow like a miniature sun.  He looked down and held it between two blackened fingers.  With the piercing tintinnabulating of a crystal wine goblet, the button came to life.  From inside it came a low metallic grating sound.  Something was scratching its way out.  It made a chirping sound; avian and primeval.

“Chthouchth.  Chthouchth.  Chthoumn.  Chthouchthrrr.  Chrhomniporrr.  Ominpotente!”  The words made no sense. “OMNIPOTENTE!” it commanded in a booming voice.  “The power of words compels you.  We are words.  You are flesh.  We are one!  Grrarrh!  GrrraARRHRR!”  It growled with a rumbling and terrifying roar.

Charlie felt the enormous upsurge of a presence.  It made his flesh crawl with horror as his life and consciousness shrank to a single point of vision.  Somehow he knew what was coming next.  His eyes were forced to watch, but his brain refused to believe it.  He had meant to get even with Kevin, but he never intended to commit an unnatural act.  He struggled with all his strength against this pounding force.  He tried to halt its forward motion for an instant.  But the struggle rekindled the pain in his groin.  The more he fought, the more profoundly he suffered.  He couldn’t stand it.  The pain was too intense.  It was burning him to death.

Kevin started to moan.  He was regaining consciousness.  The blow to his head had damaged his occipital lobes and blinded him.  As he awoke he struggled against his increasing pain.  With a mouthful of dirt and grass he found himself choking.  Instinctively he tried to crawl away, desperately trying to catch his breath and ease the pain in his head.

Charlie couldn’t stand the fire in his groin.  He lost the battle against this brute and vicious force.  He felt his knees plow into the backs of Kevin’s thighs and his powerful fists crush Kevin’s wrists.  He was powerless against the unutterable urge to plunge his swollen penis into Kevin’s tender rectum.  The urge was irresistible.  He plunged long and hard, while Kevin screamed from the tearing pain.  He pulled out completely and then thrust violently inside him again and again, over and over; until Kevin was a convulsing mass of hemorrhaging flesh.

When he finished, he wrapped one large hand around Kevin’s skinny neck, and the other around his right thigh.  He raised him high above his head and flung him down the side of the hill with incredible force.  Kevin’s arm shattered loudly against a large boulder as he rolled end over end down the steep embankment, plunging deep into the San Lorenzo river below.

The thunder of rushing waters filled his head.  The growling voice began to howl like a wounded animal.  He was spinning out of control, feeling himself rise from the ground in a swiftly ascending spiral.  Lightning and clouds swirled around him at fantastic speeds.  In an instant the air was clear; he was looking down at the area between the Monterey and San Francisco bays.  The San Andreas faultline was unmistakable.

The descent was even faster.  As he watched this vast area shrink toward a spot on the faultline, Charlie prepared for the impact.  Instead, he saw himself enter the ground, plunging through the earth’s mantle for several miles.  He reached a place, far beneath the surface, where he could witness the source of the power he had invoked.  A great angular chunk of rock was forcing its way into the side of a gigantic, monolithic mass.  The mass was showing signs of strain at the point of contact.  He was witnessing the formation of a newly developing transcurrent fault.  It had the potential to rock the entire West Coast with the force of a 10.2 magnitude earthquake.  The voice instructed him to observe.  As he watched, the pointed rock slipped by half a meter.  The shock waves rumbled through the earth above him, losing strength as they reached the surface.  He found himself riding to the surface with the waves; with the demonic sound of laughter pounding in his head.

“The divil!  The divil!” Bonnie screamed as a small tremor passed through the house knocking the pink-framed prayer off the wall.  “I’m scared, Granmaw!” she yelled, as another minor jolt pushed her forward.

Mrs. MacGregor stood from the bed clutching at her chest.  She turned to face Bonnie with an ashen look on her face that Bonnie would never forget.  She was fighting to catch her breath.  The quake passed, but Mrs. MacGregor was still groaning terribly from pain that was shooting through her neck and down her arms.  Her eyes widened, as Bonnie screamed at her to stop, “Granmaw, Granmaw!  Stop it!  I’m scared of the divil!”  Bonnie thought the “divil” had entered her grandmother and was making her growl and bare her teeth like a monster.

Mrs. MacGregor tried to support herself with one hand against the bedstand.  Bonnie thought she was going to bite her when she bent forward and vomited on the side of the bed.  Bonnie screamed and crawled off the bed, crouching in the far corner of her room.  Mrs. MacGregor let out one final groan and collapsed heavily on her back, cracking the plaster wall with the back of her head.  Her eyes remained opened and fixed on Bonnie.

Bonnie shivered in the corner the rest of the night clutching her rosary and hiding her face from her grandmother’s terrible stare.  “Sweet Baby Jesus.  Sweet Baby Jesus,” she repeated, crouched and trembling in mortal fear.  The black-skinned “divil” had come for her grandmother tonight, and she knew he would be coming for her another day.