Chapter 23: The Black Mass

     They followed him over bridges and through halls and corridors, down through jails, smashed through a brick wall, and out into a rainswept courtyard and into a profane chapel where the Red Devils and Her Dark Revenge turned to meet them and the fighting began all at once. A line of scrimmage was established between the parties and there dark magic crackled and burst, and the bodies on either side twisted and mutated with its intense manipulations, some sloughing their skin yet pushing onward into their foe, sending the curse back upon them. Seated in the back of the room was Vermilla, with the Canary, wrapped in cotton bands, nestled in her arms, and at her feet they had nailed to an inverted cross Heathcliff, and the front of the congregation and she had been beat and whipped and dripped in spit, her hair torn out of her head and mons pubis, and they had put things in her so her genitals were pin-cushioned. Vermilla raised up and called out to them all, “Welcome to the Black Mass at the end of the world, survivors and sisters! Why fight? Why fight? Only love remains,” and her face was wide with benevolence.
     Kate and brought a bead up on Vermilla and demanded the return of the Canary.
     “Of course,” Vermilla answered, “You are the law, after all. But where were you when I asked for the return of mine, Kate Hex? Where was the law then?”
     “Vermilla, We will take this whole damn thing down around us if you don’t hand her over.”
     “Unfortunately, there’s very little left to return.” Vermilla pressed into the cotton around the face, drawing up pools of blood, “merely a vessel now - for the mass. As am I. As are we all. It’s all coming down around us anyhow,” she handed down the Canary gently and it exchanged hands over the crowd to Kate who took it in her arms and set it down, pulling away the confining bandages.
     Vermilla carried on speaking to her assembly, “The world is gone. You do not have to come along. You may stay. But there is nothing left for you here. What will you do? Where will you go? Return to the waters? Dwell in them as nothing, in darkness, for eternity? This world was weak. It begged for death. It gave us everything we needed to put it down. There is no reason to be attached to something that is suicidal in its very nature. It gave us everything we needed and more. Now we take our profit with us. I will be your ark, sisters. I have fashioned myself for this journey, and the next world awaits.”
     Endor saw the barrier between the world and Vermilla begin to mingle, and blossom, rearticulating into a psychic body, the threads of energy and sigil patterns expanding outward from her spirit, threading into the walls of the chapel, out beyond. The ugliness and meaninglessness of the old world was merging with this beauty and order of the new, everything it touched was accorded some greater meaning, a plan, a higher mode of being.
     A broken sob prevailed over the congregation as Kate finished working at the wraps, and her back shook as she hugged the Canary up into her bosom.
     Emerging from either side of Vermilla extended the two sparkling black velvet hands, and they set down with their palms up, waiting in quiet expectation, “you have already chosen to be witches,” Vermilla said, “now consign yourselves, in finality, to the hands of satan.”
     The assembly faltered, but one by one, those inclined by evil entered by the hand to the left and those inclined by good entered by the right, including the bereaved Kate Hex who left the Canary at Vermilla’s feet.
     Endor was last to arrive.
     “Hello, my love,” Vermilla smiled down upon her.
     “I’d like to bring Heathcliff with me.”
     Vermilla approached and cupped Endor’s face in her hands, “Heathcliff will always be yours. She is a piece of me, by which I might know you while my plans prevail me.”
     Endor saw now she was looking into the face of her beloved, and the pain of Heathcliff was shared between the two.
     “I debase myself in so many ways for you,” Vermilla swept away, to a corner with an old broom and took it up in her hands and returned with it. “There’s one final thing I need from you,” and she handed it to her along with the dagger from her waist, “take up the broom. Be my herald. Guide us through the waters, to the next world,” and, with a gentle touch, lifted and let fall from Endor’s belly a glowing, silver cord, a tether to her soul, lost somewhere in the distant realms of Astaroth.
     Endor looked to Vermilla, and to Heathcliff, and to the Canary, and to the broom, and to the dagger.
     She looked out over the wrecked bodies in the ruined chapel, to the quiet halls and the flagging torches. She heard and felt the storm’s ceaseless pounding from without the heavy stone walls.
     She felt Vermilla’s long hands around her shoulders. And there was no fight left in her. Just a bleak and insubstantial horror. A laughter bubbled up. It was not hers. She took up the blade. She took the life of the little bird, its wraps pulled away on either side in two ragged bloody wings, and she brought the soul into the broom. Vermilla reticulated around her gathering more into the psychic ark, and she waved farewell, languidly, reminding Endor that their love was an eternal one. Endor took up upon the broom, up the tower, through its trap door, up into the air, the cascading falls all around, up into the final lake of the whelkin, pushing past it, bursting it, into the waters beyond. As Lith collapsed below, it disgorged its final breath, and that final breath bubbled up around her, taking her up into it, and the mind of Vermilla closed over the dead world, shaping its mass into herself, turning mind and matter over onto itself, pulling them both into a new form, and the eyes of the witch Goddess came into being and flashed with delight. Endor flew on, a broken and battered body tethered to some uncertain shore, as the air around her gradually became uniform in shape, a golden almond of air, its shimmering surface repeating ini its rising motions, the surveillance of her dark Goddess her only company as it watched, in love and desire, from the dark waters.
The End

  
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