He finished the pipe and dropped it on the floor. It was getting dark outside, the season making darkness reach further and further into the day. The only light came from his oil lamp. The shadows were like ink around the lamplight when the moss hit him hard, like a blast of sound crashing over him. The high merged oddly with the dregs of the mushroom trip. He could hear the scratching again, but now it was as if something was trying to claw its way inside, break through the floor, walls, roof. He knew he was hallucinating, but not in the sense that he was imagining it. He was sensing things too clearly.
There was no sense in procrastinating. It could possibly be his only chance. He was ready.
The page was next to him, folded. It looked as if it was absorbing the darkness around it, swallowing it hungrily and growing fatter, more bloated. He picked up the page, saturated with darkness, and felt how his fingers went numb – as if it was leeching the life out of him. Carefully he unfolded the page and spread it out on the floor. He pored over the page thoroughly. Again and again he traced the spiral in his mind, etching its form into his memory. It wasn’t enough that the invocation circle was made perfectly; it also had to exist within Sæmundur in the same perfect form, creating an unbreakable barrier both within and without. When he felt it was complete he had the feeling that he had sometimes been unconsciously closing his eyes, while still seeing the symbols and letters in front of him, floating in the dark. But he was so stoned that he couldn’t be sure.
He wandered around the dim apartment until he finally found the antique jewellery box, and fetched a stick of chalk from it. Underneath dirty trousers and socks he found an old dagger that was starting to rust. He kicked the clothes and the junk cluttering his room into the corner and made enough floor space free for the ceremony.
The spiral was simple enough, although it was elliptical in shape, which was unusual. Despite that, he didn’t find it hard to draw it with the chalk. It was as if his hands already knew what they were doing. As if he’d done this before, in another time, another place. Over the spiral Sæmundur drew perfectly straight lines that intersected in key locations, the sharp corners located inside or outside the spiral. The lines made up a chaotic-looking star, which at a glance looked like a toddler’s drawing, but a closer look showed that it was made with a certain elusive order in mind. An alien purpose. Sæmundur drew with extreme precision the galdrastafir on their designated spots within the spiral. The ritual circle was complete. It just had to be sealed off and the ritual could commence.
He compared the circle with the drawing on the page. Everything matched, it seemed like. Blissful waves of pleasure buzzed through his body and he rocked slightly on his feet. The moss was preparing him. Syncing him to the rhythm, the beat of the incantation to come. He read Gottskálk’s instructions again:
Rísta skal þennan karakter og skal hann eigi sólu líta. Vek blóð úr vinstri hönd og dreif um stafinn frá ystu mörkum að innstu með offrið í miðju. Gakk þrisvar rangsælis og les þessa særingu. Consummatum est.
Carve this character and shall it not see the sun. Draw blood from the left hand and spread from the outer limits to the innermost with the offering centred. Walk three times widdershins and read this invocation. Consummatum est.
Flesh. Bones would not suffice for this galdur. No, it had to be flesh as well. But Sæmundur didn’t know if it should be dead or alive, or if that even mattered. If the demon possessed dead flesh, could it spark back to life? Or was the entity more like a parasite that needed a healthy host to live? His thoughts zeroed back in to Edda and Almía in Svartiskóli. It felt as if a claw was squeezing his heart, robbing him of his breath. Murderer. He was a murderer.
No, no. Not this, not now.
Sæmundur rummaged through the piles of manuscripts while trying to recall everything he knew about transmundane beings, especially those that were called demons. The first one he had trapped was in a skull for Garún. As soon as the entity was bound to the skull the bone had taken on a blueish hue. At the time, he had been trying to trace the source of the power that fed galdur and made it manifest. Why did it alone attract transmundanes, and not seiður? It was dangerous to open yourself to other realities. Something else might bleed through with whatever you were calling. Every single galdramaður was always at risk of becoming prey to unseen forces. Sæmundur wondered if his bones had started to turn a faint blue without him knowing. If he was unknowingly infected with them already.
There was no time to go to a butcher’s and get a piece of meat or a carcass. Everything could fall apart around him at any moment. Anything should suffice – a half-butchered ram or the head off an old workhorse. He could go out and look for a stray animal. Sæmundur looked at his own hands and considered whether the being could manifest in one of them should he chop it off. Unlikely.
Why was he considering this? Bad vibes, bad vibes. The scratching intensified. He sat on the mattress, rubbed his temples. The moss was leading him down a dark path.
He could let the entity manifest in his own body. It wasn’t so hard to believe that Gottskálk had done exactly
