Marisha Pessl - Night Film

“What were they?”

“Probably snakeskins. If they were filled with graveyard dirt, she combined all of this with a killing curse.”

“And that’s …”

“Like it sounds. It’ll kill you.”

“The surgeon general says the same thing about cigarettes.”

She only stared at me. “With cigarettes death takes decades. With this you could be dead within weeks.”

Nora looked stricken.

“Anyone ever told you your witchside manner was a little harsh?” I asked.

“There’s no point sugarcoating black magic.”

I tried smiling at Nora for reassurance, but she ignored me, staring at the curse-riddled sole of her shoe as if it were a cluster of malignant tumors.

“Graveyard dirt,” I said. “That means our friend collected dirt from a graveyard?”

“Yeah. And it’s not easy to get. You have to do it at a certain time of night. Under a certain moon. You have to know whose grave you’re taking it from. How the person died. Some witches believe the best dirt to use comes from either a murderer, a baby less than six months old, or someone who loved you beyond all reason. You also have to know where you’re digging in relation to the body, if it’s above the head, heart, or feet. You have to leave something behind, too, as a token of appreciation. Money or whiskey usually works. You mix the dirt into the snake sheds and goofer dust.”

“What’s goofer dust?” asked Nora.

“The H-bomb of spell materials. When you goofer someone, you’re spiritually poisoning them. It comes from the Congo, the word kufwa, which means to die. The powder’s usually a yellowish color, but you mix in the graveyard dirt so it’s dark and can’t be spotted. It’s really powerful because it eats away at your mind without you even realizing it, poisoning your reasoning and your love. It pulls apart the closest friends, isolates you, pits you against the world so you’re driven to the margins, the periphery of life. It’ll drive you mad, which in some ways is worse than death.”

“So our friend had something like a PhD in witchcraft,” I said.

“She had a major proficiency in dark magic. Absolutely.”

“And what is dark magic? Voodoo? Hoodoo?”

“It can mean any number of things. It’s a blanket term for all magic that’s used for evil purposes. I’m not an expert. My training is in Earth goddess, fertility spells, spiritual cleansing, that kind of thing. A lot of the black stuff’s underground. Passed down through generations. Secret meetings in the middle of the night. Old leather-bound journals filled with spells written backward. Attics stockpiled with the really obscure ingredients, like deer fetuses, lizard feces, baby blood. This stuff is not for people with queasy stomachs. But it works. Does your friend come from a family of occultists?”

“It’s possible,” I said.

“Well, she thought she was cursed. She tried hard to stop it, reverse it back onto the executioner. She wanted to kill him. That’s what it looks like to me. So maybe she didn’t expect you to walk through it, but someone else, maybe someone who put the curse on her. I suggest tracking your friend down and asking her.”

Nora shot me a wary look.

“Here’s what I can tell you,” Cleo went on, clearing her throat. “Scrape the trick off with a knife or razor blade. Make sure it doesn’t touch your skin. Wrap it in newspaper and throw the materials away at a crossroads or a freshwater river.”

“Guess that rules out the Hudson.”

“I’ll also give you some reversing candles.” She headed to the back again, crouching beside a cabinet, digging through shelves. “Again, I really don’t have experience with this. You should consult a witch doctor with a specialty in black magic.”

“Where do we find one of those? Disney World?”

“Google it. Some names will come up. But all the really legit ones are in the Louisiana bayou.” Cleo returned to the table, handing Nora two candles, black by the wick, white at the base.

“How much are those setting us back? A couple hundred bucks?”

“No charge. It’s unethical to charge people who come in suffering from dark magic, kind of like someone coming into the emergency room with a fatal gunshot wound. You do what you can to save their life. Money’s irrelevant.”

Thoughtfully rolling her tiger’s-tooth pendant between her fingers, Cleo watched us pull on our shoes. Nora, collecting the candles, explained that it had actually been three of us who’d been inside the room, so Cleo dug out a third reversing candle and then escorted us back through the store.

It was even more crowded. A dapper elderly couple inspected the skull candles. Four teenage girls browsed incense. A young man with the desperately preppy look of an unemployed Wall Street analyst perused a pamphlet: Enchantments ’ Fall Class Schedule.

Magic was all fun and games until you had the H-bomb of spell materials on the bottom of your shoes.

Dexter must have given the orange-haired kid at the register the lowdown, because they stared in fascination as we filed past them.

Cleo opened the door for us, shooing away the Persian cat.

“Good luck,” she said.

“Thanks,” said Nora bleakly, stepping outside. I paused.

“What if I don’t buy any of this? I was raised Catholic.”

Cleo stared at me blankly, though for a moment, I swore I caught an amused gleam in her black eyes.

“Then I guess you have nothing to worry about.”

She slammed the door closed with a preoccupied expression and darted through the milling crowd, doubtless racing to her red-light lair at the back of the shop.

“You think we’re going to die?” asked Nora nervously as we moved up the Enchantments steps.

“Everyone tends to.”

“In the next few days. That goofer stuff she was talking about. She said it can kill you without you even realizing.”

“Ex-wives do the exact same thing. The most interesting thing she said was the knowledge of dark magic passed from generation to generation.”

“You think that’s what the Cordovas are hiding? That they’re all witches or something?”

I said nothing, the notion sounding absurd. But then —Cordova was a creative eccentric holed up in an isolated estate, basically a petri dish for cultivating the weird and outlandish. Cleo had testified that Ashley was quite proficient in spells. She’d learned how to assemble those materials from someone.

But for whom had she intended this Black Bone killing curse— me ? Had she laid it knowing I’d investigate her death and eventually show up at Henry Street? What about Hopper? He’d been sent that stuffed monkey and had somehow known she’d frequented Klavierhaus. Or did she intend it for someone else entirely ? Iona, if she could be believed, claimed she’d seen two men outside Ashley’s door. One might have been Theo Cordova. Maybe it was her family Ashley considered the enemy and she’d put down the killing curse for them. Hopper’s inclination was to hold them accountable. Maybe they’d been chasing her, trying to find her, fearing she was on the verge of exposing them. She had, after all, been following me —which doubtless would have made the family quite nervous.

Nora was thinking it over, nibbling her thumbnail. “It could be why Ashley took her life. She couldn’t handle the guilt of what the family had done for years, practicing black magic.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe that’s what the housekeeper at the Waldorf noticed when she saw that mark in her eye. Maybe she could tell Ashley practiced black magic.”