Out_of_the_Devil_39_s_Cauldron

their identity for one night, and those who claimed to be witches and warlocks because they danced
around in front of open fires set in a field or forest beneath a full moon. To me they were fools, like
little kids playing with matches, not realizing the thing they played with had the power to kill. I knew
the real meaning of this black holiday: Halloween is the night to have the most demonic powers
available to use to kill and destroy those you hate.
The week before Halloween, I prepared for a special assignment to do just that—inflict
suffering and death on three people I was contracted to destroy. That Wednesday night, St. Ilia, the
demon spirit that owns the gates of the cemetery, instructed me to visit the tombs of those who had
died recently so I could capture their spirits.
My second godmother in the religion, a one-of-a-kind witch, met up with me and we walked
the fifteen blocks to the walled cemetery. No one lurked about as we approached the wrought-iron
gates of the cemetery. As usual, the gates were locked after sundown, so my godmother waited by the
gates while I paid my respect with twenty-one pennies, then climbed the wall to leap over. As I stood
on the wall, I gazed into a sea of concrete tombstones and was in awe. The statues of different saints
distinguished different parts of the cemetery—even the place of the dead was beautiful.
I roamed the tombs. It was fresh graves I sought, not old ones—graves only weeks old.
Directed by St. Ilia, I visited three graves that night—two that had committed suicide and one that was
shot to death. My assignment was to take those spirits home to use them against my enemies, and those
people would die the same way the ones in the graves had died. It was cold. The ground of those
tombs felt like ice as I knelt before each one and carried out the contract, using the pieces of white
candles, a cigar, and white rum I had brought.
“John, is everything okay?” my godmother croaked in a hoarse voice from the cemetery gates.
“Yeah, yeah, everything’s okay. Just leave me alone . . . I’m doing my thing,” I said, irritated
that she might raise a disturbance.
“I just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she replied.
“What a stubborn person I brought with me tonight,” I muttered under my breath. But my
irritation soon gave way to excitement as the demon spirit led me from grave to grave. I shivered. I
didn’t know whether I was cold because of the weather or because I was surrounded by the dead that
night. My veins pumped with adrenaline as I realized that in just a few days Halloween would be at
my door; I was going to go out and have a good time with my boys—my enemies long forgotten.
Halloween Rendezvous
That weekend, on Halloween night, I catered to the demons at my home, set up all my
witchcraft spells against those I hated, and then got dressed up and went to meet my two friends at the
neighborhood club in Parkchester.
We were too cool to be dressed in costumes. Instead I wore a nice pair of jeans, a white shirt,
and had my hair slicked back to perfection. We could hear the music pumping loudly as we
approached the club on foot.
“Hey, John, you gonna meet some cuties tonight?” my buddy Jose said, nudging me with his
elbow. “I can feel it, bro. I can feel the vibes.”
“Oh yeah?” I grinned back at him. “Maybe I will—I’ll try to find one for both of you’s too.”
We laughed as we paid the cover charge and stepped past the bouncer into the darkened club. Inside