The library would be the best place to perform the ritual, I decided, in part because I didn’t want to risk Lottie walking in on me mid-flow, and also because it justfeltright, with its arched windows and distant orchestra. It was a much more spiritual place than a dorm room filled with hockey sticks and half-empty bottles of lukewarm wine.
I was a firm believer that it mattered where these things took place. A big part of the moon manifestation rituals I used to do was the cleansing of the space with salt and herbs, reiki and smudge sticks. During my ‘do I even believe in God?’ phase, there was a decent chance I was never able to summon the Holy Spirit because I was hiding in a bathroom with my older brother Max pounding down the door. The unrelenting soundtrack of ‘I need a shit!’ was perhaps not conducive to a sacred religious experience.
When I returned to the main building just after eleven, the air inside the almost deserted convent was cold and still. The central corridor – with its scuffed parquet flooring and faded green carpet runner – was lined with busts of famous alumni who stared at me as I passed. My fingertips grazed the cryptcold wall, the texture rough against my skin. I thought of the stone wall at the end of Chris’s street, where I used to perch as I waited for him to come and meet me. At the memory of him, my stomach churned with unspent anger.
There were only a few students in the library, hunched over roll-top writing desks lit with the little green bankers’ lamps, textbooks and flasks of hot drinks scattered on neighbouring tables. I recognised one girl, Amanda, from my philosophy course, poring over Nietzsche and looking thoroughly miserable. In a quiet corner near the fine art section, Hafsah Al-Hadi from my ethics seminar was in a huddled conversation with a pretty ginger-haired girl, who was clutching her notebook like a weapon.
Other than that, the library was almost wholly deserted; most students were more likely dancing in the Refectory at this hour. I climbed the spiral staircases to the second floor where the philosophy section was housed.
Taking a seat in one of the velvet armchairs, I unclasped my briefcase and retrieved the tincture. Notched into the elasticated pen slots were three other vials of simple cordial, haemolymph and ground florals, but I hadn’t retrieved anywhere near enough blood to make another full dose of the tincture. It might not even be necessary; perhaps one dose would be enough to round off all my sharp edges.
Still, there were several reservations. I had swilled the tip of the drawing pin in the elderflower cordial until the lemon stripped the blood away from the metal, but it was a tiny amount, not even enough to colour the liquid pink. I was sure I’d prepared the tincture correctly, but would there be enough of Harris’s blood for it to work? I was also unsure whether the elderflower cordial would be made in the same way it was in the 1800s. Would the sugar have a diminishing effect? Did it used to be served sharp and tangy? And the quantities had been so vague in terms of the florals and herbs. A pinch of this, several heads of that. As a majorly Type-A person, I liked to know I’d done things properly, by the book. But in this case, the book was old and vague and missing several pages.
There was only one way to find out.
Before I drank, I took a few moments to centre myself. I always did this before a ritual; meditated for as long as it took to clear my head, then visualised what I wanted to happen with as much clarity and specificity as possible.
I imagined a calm, logical mind, free from flint-like anger, free from violent twitches and desires; a mind I could devote to thinking and learning without fear of what it might tell me to do next. A mind fit to be a judge someday.
I imagined joyful relationships without the fraught tension, without constantly pushing the other person away with my impulsive barbs. I imagined the freedom to love softly.
Unstoppering the vial, I lifted it to my lips and drank in one deep gulp.
For a moment, nothing happened. There was just a sweet, floral aftertaste with the slightest metallic burn. The gentle turn of pages somewhere nearby. A cleared throat. A vague sense of foolishness.
Then, with a sudden roar of internal thunder, I convulsed with pain.
Searing-hot pain that began in the depths of my chest and spread outward, as though every muscle in my body was being shredded by a fork of lightning. I bent over at the waist, trying not to scream at the racking pangs, the grinding in the bones, the deadly nausea. An absolute horror of the spirit.
Time slid, losing form. As the world narrowed and deepened, the violent urges dancing at the back of my mind came to the forefront, larger and larger until they obscured everything, until there was nothing but the colour of blood, the urge to hurt, to kill, to exact revenge. To level the whole world.
And then a gaping maw of darkness opened and swallowed me whole.