There is nothing as dangerous as a beautiful woman. A pair of brown eyes and a set of full lips can capture a soul like a camera captures a moment. I should know; I was almost swallowed, soul and all, by one of God’s most ravishing creatures. She had help from forces that I never saw. 

She came into my life in the summer and left before the season was fully over. In truth, during the darkest points of the night, I sometimes think that she may have been in the background of my life for longer watching me, waiting for her moment to strike. Lord knows that I opened the door so many years ago when I began reading books bound in black. Eldritch tomes full of eidolons; each one more dangerous than the next. The occult suggestions were planted well before our fateful meeting. 

I entered the world of the occult because I was raised without religion. My parents are staid, middle-class Canadians who watch a lot of TV and smile even more. They are nice people. They raised me as well as they could. Although I was baptized in the Anglican church, I never attended. The few Bibles in our house went unopened. I was raised faithless because my parents were raised to believe in faith as a choice. Like picking out blue jeans, they were told that people can believe whatever they want. They chose to believe in nothing.

As a result, by the time I graduated high school, my natural curiosity caused me to explore different belief systems. I just could not stomach the idea of holding nothing dear, of holding nothing sacred. So, I began looking and practicing. I performed Buddhist chants, and I read about the Kabbalah. I swam in frozen lakes to find Odin, and I lit countless candles and incense. Eventually I settled on the idea of being a religious sampler—a dabbler in all faiths. In theory I expanded my consciousness. In practice, I pursued amoral actions because I believed that nothing was judging me so much as my own nature. “If it feels good then it is good,” I said to myself constantly. 

Years into my debauchery, I found her. Or maybe she found me. Either way, our paths crossed that summer in Florida when I moved into a new apartment. The apartment complex was on a hill and well outside of Tampa. I wanted peace and quiet, and my new apartment promised that in abundance. The only obvious headache was the awful road that stood as the only means of entry and exit to the apartment complex. The narrow, potholed road meant that only one vehicle could transverse safely at a time. Many mornings and afternoons, I was forced to wait at the bottom of the hill as one of my neighbors slowly crawled down. Some flew right by me without so much as a wave. The rare few would wave or honk their horns. Only one would roll down their window and talk.

[Florida’s Bigfoot: The Legend of the Skunk Ape]

She was clearly older than me. Her tanned and taught skin showed all the hallmarks of consistent exercise, and yet the crow’s feet near her eyes were the telltale sign that she was above forty. I did not care; I felt an immediate attraction to her warm eyes, white teeth, and soft Cuban accent. I lecherously wrapped my eyes around her large chest. I found myself imagining her naked lying on her bed with the windows open and the hot Florida air burning through. I imagined myself there, right next to her, equally nude. Believe it or not, but such thoughts were uncommon to me. I did not know what to do with them at first. 

Our first few exchanges were pleasant but short. A few hellos and that was that. Then we began having proper conversations: our windows down, both of us leaning slightly forward in our driver’s seats. I learned that she was new to the neighborhood too. I also learned that she was lonely—none of the neighbors seemed all that interested in talking to her. She found that particularly hard, as she defined herself as something of a social butterfly. To that end, she asked if I would be interested in sharing espresso some night. I did not hesitate to agree. 

I can still recall the first night. It was hot out and without a breeze. The night stuck close to my skin, which was already hot and sweaty. My heart pounded as I pressed the Ring security alarm connected to her large white door. Unlike my apartment, she lived in a proper house all to herself. The house had two floors, a garage, and a small porch with a table and a few chairs. A brief glimpse at one of the windows showed a well-tended inside, albeit a dark one. I had plenty of time to look and ponder, as she kept me waiting for almost an hour. I even had time to go back home, drink a cold one, and then return for one more attempt. Eventually, after several rings and knocks, she answered the door. 

There, in the doorway, was the image of pure sex appeal wrapped in white cotton. She wore a thin dress that hugged her body. Every curve and every angle stood out and demanded my full attention. She looked angelic, but not pure. Indeed, every swish of her hips was an invitation to come and take it. Still, nothing happened on that first night. She offered me strong Cuban coffee. I drank several cups of it while listening to her talk about her life. She admitted to being in semi-retirement after years of being an empresario. Her line and specialty was nightlife, specifically those clubs that catered to the Latin American crowd. She was a fixer, the woman responsible for booking musicians and DJs. She told me all about the backstage personas of famous people and their friends. She detailed the seamy side of clubland, from the live sex parties in the VIP lounges to the inescapable influence of organized crime. That first night was a real education. I, a somewhat sheltered man-child, got the straight skinny on sex and violence in the tropical style. After a brief peck on the cheek and a promise to do it all over again, I went home that night and fell into a safe slumber. 

Each night thereafter found me thinking about her. “Bewitched” is the only word that makes sense, as each dream took on her shape and form. I was not in love, but I was in lust. Deep, inescapable lust. I had to see her again. I did three nights later. This time we had more than coffee. She made me a full Cuban meal complete with rice, beans, beef, and a dozen spices. It was delicious. We shared glass after glass of chilled white wine. In this revelry, she shared more information about her background. I learned that she had a sister and a brother stateside, while most of her family remained on the island. She did not say it exactly, but I got the sense that they were some kind of political dissidents. Everything she said that night contained shadows—black, billowy corners hinting at much more than what was said. I got the sense that she was running from something too. 

After dinner, when I felt warm all over due to the alcohol as well as her suggestive eyes, I agreed to a tour of her house. The place was immaculate if not foreboding. The carpeting was cleaned and smelled fresh. The upstairs bedroom had a large, four-poster bed made up with white sheets. All seemed in order, and yet, without being able to describe it in concrete detail, I felt the first pangs of unease. Some of it had to do with the artwork. There were pictures in that house that contained a dark aura, even the ostensibly religious one featuring a dark-skinned Madonna holding the infant Jesus. Another, which hung about the unused fireplace, showed a surreal scene of animals and humans celebrating some kind of ceremony in a world made up of blues and greens. Small clutches of beads decorated the mantlepiece. Assuming them to be rosary beads, I asked if she was a practicing Roman Catholic. Her answer floored me. 

No, she said. She admitted that she practiced Santeria.

For those who do not know, Santeria is often called a “syncretic religion” because it combines the traditional pagan practices of the Yoruba people of West Africa with the Catholic trappings of the Spanish conquerors of the Caribbean. An easier description would be to call Santeria the Hispanic version of voodoo, which is predominately practiced by Francophone Haitians. Both faiths have their own pantheons, rituals, and initiation ceremonies. For Santeria believers, orishas, or deities, are meant to be cajoled in order to grant favors. Want a beautiful spouse? Offer your personal deity some rum and cigars. Want wealth? Donate cash to your orisha. This is a simplistic and reductive view of the religion. Still, Santeria has a dark edge. Palo Mayombe is frequently labeled as the “evil twin” of Santeria, and that faith is best known for its use of black magic. As shown by Stone Age Herbalist, human sacrifice is still alive and well in sub-Saharan Africa and other areas where religions like Palo Mayombe are practiced. It is not uncommon for worshippers to dig up animal and human bones for their rituals, and said rituals are often about covetousness, power, and other amoral desires. 

She told me that she had been initiated into the faith from before birth. Her mother and grandmother were both priests, and when her parents conceived her, they offered her spirit to one of their deities. She whispered this while kissing me. We kissed a lot. We kissed for a long time—so long that it did not fully register when she showed me her altar. It was a small box made of dark wood. On the outside was a strange symbol made of gold. Inside she revealed a set of small and blackened bones, plus an entire skull. The skull’s size made it appear like a child’s skull. 

“Is that real?” I asked. 

Rather than answer, she kept kissing me. It was an abrupt attack of eros. I could not fully comprehend the skull while she tempted me. She grabbed my crotch and said something unintelligible in Spanish. Then, just as my body surged towards a decision, she cut me off and told me to have a goodnight. 

I walked home in a mental fog that turned into a fever. I could not sleep that night. My thoughts were too troubled. My years of reading about the occult did not prepare me for the real thing. She, the priestess, was no mere mental theory, but rather a person of flesh and blood. She was involved in rituals that included what I believed to be a genuine human skull. She was, in a word, demonic. And I wanted to sleep with her badly.

Mere words fail to describe what I felt for a week. Every piece of me pulsated. Her religion naturally repulsed me, to say nothing of the other things she told me (transgender priesthood, pedophilic practices). And yet, my blood wanted to be intertwined with her. My lust grew so bad that I began pacing outside of her house at night, waiting to see if she would let me in unannounced. Instead, I saw strange cars in her driveway. She began having new visitors nightly. The house never shook with noise, and yet clearly something was going on inside. I hated it, for I knew that some of those strangers were men. I knew that she was sleeping with them while I waited for another invitation. It drove me mad. It made me jealous and angry. 

I knew logically and morally that she and I should remain as far apart as possible. This was inexplicable; I had no faith to tell me that what I was doing with the priestess was wrong. No priest or deacon or preacher had ever informed me that what I was attempting to do was sinful. Yet, there existed a strong voice that told me that to pursue would lead to damnation. The baptism of my birth, which had never washed off completely, winnowed into my previously closed ears and whispered, “Any person who worships the skull of a dead child is not to be trusted.” 

[Meet Paracelsus, the Based Alchemist & Populist Physician]

I tried to find solace in work. I took extra shifts, including overnight ones so that I could be away from my house at night. Eventually, the passage of time weakened what I interpreted as my infatuation. 60 hour-plus workweeks made me too tired to engage in dirty dreams. Whenever she reached out to me about dinner, I would turn her down due to my heavy work schedule. Without knowing it, capitalism had sort of saved me. 

I cannot remember the exact time, but one afternoon I began finding dead birds on my porch. They did not bear any obvious mark of murder or mutilation, but they were dead all the same. I chalked it up to the workings of the neighborhood’s many unclaimed cats, and yet the corpses began appearing with an uncomfortable regularity. At the same time, she stopped hosting her parties. The strangers no longer parked in her driveway. Her SUV remained in place for longer without moving. Eventually, she stopped leaving her house at all. I never saw her take out her trash, I never saw her driving, and I never saw her outside. Something had happened. 

By the end of the summer, my two uncomfortable nights with her had completely faded to the back of my mind. Then, like lightning striking from the sky, bad luck befouled me. I lost my job, I experienced an awful three-day sickness, and I lost my car to an accident. I faced the very real possibility of homelessness, and throughout it all, she bombarded me with texts. Most were paeans to self-pity. She chided me for never coming to her, for not being interested, and for being cold. She called me all sorts of names. I felt the spite in each sentence, and they felt all the worse while I shivered with a fever in my sick bed. There, in that place of wounding, it occurred to me: she had cursed me. She had covered me in lust, and without knowing it, I had rejected her. Then she punished me for it. Through it all–all the sickness and suffering–I never responded. 

I cannot prove any of this. That much is obvious. But my misfortunes seemed too planned to be random. Also, true to my native country, I am not a hot-blooded man. My temper is even. And yet, for that summer, I felt an infernal heat in my body that would have driven lesser men to crime. She was the source of all of it. Somewhere in the invisible world she had conjured up something. I felt under oppression; I felt attacked. I went to church for the first time to find healing. It did not matter which denomination; any house of Christ would do. 

I kept going back. Eventually, by that fall, I had converted and joined a church. Unsurprisingly, my health and fortunes improved. In the end, I made a series of decisions that saw me leave Florida for another state. On my last night in town, I stood outside and looked at her home. It was completely dark inside, as if it was no longer occupied. Her SUV stood still in the driveway. All was quiet. As far as I know, now that I am safely hundreds of miles away, she is still there. She is still waiting for a new and wide-eyed boy to come along. It could be you. 

Be careful and think about God, always. 

Read and buy Justin’s book, Full Moon Reaction, on Terror House Press’ website.