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The Expedition of the Spiritless Ruby

Introduction

What claim I make of truth upon this tale that I am about to reveal, to make notice of my adventure to the civilized world, here within there is no need for embellishment since it is the God's honest truth. There are no nice illustrations of the botanical kind, nor any accounts of far off mythical lands. But what I have included is the experiences I encountered while on my trip through dangerous jungles, amid heathen cultures, observations of demonic rites while in pursuit of what was mine.

Among those great historians whose works lie in libraries of renowned I, Michael Guerin, make no claims upon them. I am simply relaying my story, as I lived this last year. Whatever facts a historian may gleam from these pages to prove theories or point to cultural anomalies that I leave to your judgment for interpretation.

My quest was for the Spiritless Ruby, hidden for centuries. Yes to those skeptics it does exist, for I have held it in my hands. I looked into the depth of the red soul, seen the dreams of man, heard the stories that have been a washed in a sea of mystery, some truth, some false lies, some just pretense.

For the moral that this adventure did teach me and that must be learned by us all that must be sought in the reader's eyes.

Michael Guerin October 19, 1903

I lay the truth into God's Hand and my soul, for releasing the Spiritless Ruby upon the earth

thanks ginger... the next part is a little long , I am just cleaning it up now, hope t post by Sunday at the latest depending on Halloween

The Expedition of the Spiritless Ruby

Prologue

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The funeral for each was held on a cold day, the winds brewed up more than the damp sea air, but rumors of a demon on the plantation, a demon who sought revenge. Wingate was incense by his wife's death, he sought comfort in the bottle night and day, and when the second child died he grew angry, his temper grew out of control. Thus when he heard the voices of stories, he sought out these rumors, tortured men until one talked, saying it was a slave called Wetlena brought from the shores of Africa herself.

Apparently as the story goes that good old Wingate in one of his drunken sex frenzy beat the daughter of Wetlena so severely as to kill her and abort her child, in actuality the fetus of my great-grandfather's heritage. So the pompous ass, pardon my crude speech but no other word fits for his actions, not only kill the girl but his own bastard son. I am sure he did much worse in his life, but this act was the beginning of the downfall of our family.

Wetlena was the daughter of a shaman, a powerful African priest who dealt in the dark arts of witchcraft and demonology. She learned the sacred words and rituals for bringing forth misery, to cast an evil do great it would damn one soul and drive them to madness. This is the fate she cast against Wingate Guerin that day so long ago.

The sugar cane fields still quake from the memory of those foul rites that were performed that dark moonless night. Weltena used all her skill and wits in procuring the elements need for the ghastly brew, one that would rival the concoction the witches of Macbeth were known far and wide for. Here though there was no eye of newt or toe of frog, but the heart from a recent corpse and the hair of a rabid dog. She sent acquaintances to scour the woods and ships that came in to locate henbane, foxglove, cinquefoil, wild celery, and thornapple.

Weltena thought out her actions well, this was not done in haste but in a slow methodical revenge, it took time to get all the ingredients. She debated for hours and selected each of the words to be cast carefully the words so that one after the other would inflict the greatest amount of damage. She selected the ingredients that would give the maximum effect for their potency, those that were well known to her, there could be no mistakes. The final part was the actual blood from Wingate Guerin himself for while the plants would take the soul and life of Rose, it was his blood that would end the life of the unborn child.

Thus the wait began: time lapsed, weeks, then months, then year. The hour glass of sand was turned many times between the death of her only daughter and the enacting her revenge. She watched, she studied, she saw no remorse in his heart or soul, in fact he knew not that this action caused the death, nor that the fetus was his own. And if he had known, I also doubt that he would have given the thought a second glance.

That delay in time is the only reason my grandfather was left alive and that I exist.

One day on a bright late October morn the doctor was called and soon the rumor had spread Rose was with child and she would bring forth a child in the full birth of spring. That night while Wingate drank excessively to celebrate his virility, Weltena waited, watching him till finally he passed out in a haystack, a bottle of good Irish whiskey by his side. With no one else around, using an obsidian blade, sharp as any broken glass silver, she sliced open his thumb and let the blood drain into a pewter cup, mixing with the ground cinquefoil and foxglove waiting as the color turned a black, hissing and spitting as the fumes rose, multiplied and sought out their victim.

Those that witness this act passed on the legend, from person to person. I am sure reality was changed and imagination added. But I tell you the story was told to me, a hundred years after the even happened, fact or fantasy, you be the judge in the end of this journal.

Weltena walked deep into the sugar cane fields that night where she had cleared large rectangular area for the ceremony. The earth had been blessed and fire had taken away all sins from the air and soil encasing the rectangle. The hot burning coals were all around as she walked through and amid them with bare feet and no expression of pain on her stern face. The embers did nothing to deter her mission of death that night. They only added to the pleasure she felt in having her revenge enacted.

The sky was open that night, you could look right through the heavens, clear as crystals the stars shone forth, the full blood red moon rose high, smug in its defense of the ritual. Wetlena threw herbs and dried plants onto those embers, they crackled with an evil hiss, colors sparked and played. Then a dense thick white smoke rose covering the ground. The smell was putrid, as if the pits of hell were opened and demons had escaped to embrace the earth.

In the middle of the rectangular, protected by a circle of ashes, a flat aged black rock was so positioned. Upon the surface laid pieces of parchment, waiting for her to write down the names of those to be damned. Using a quill taken from the back of a red tail hawk she dipped the tip into the ink, not black ink of coal but the ink of that before mentioned blood mixture. There on each piece she scrawled in a barely legible hand the names of Wingate and his wife Rose. These she took and roiled up, using a seal of a skull sealed the parchment with red, blood red wax.

Next to that stone there was a large black wooden bowl, inside a clod of wheat paste sat sticky, a ghastly pale color. She removed that and using the stone's surfaced kneaded the dough, blending with it the blood of Wingate and shaped it into a doll. Form her belt she removed four handmade nails, rusted, blunt no use for wood but for causing pain. She drove them into the doll: one ion the abdomen and spoke the name of Rose in the deliverance, one in the genital area and spoke the name of Wingate, one in the head and again cried out the name of Rose and her unborn, and finally one in the heart that she dedicated to my great-grandfather.

Stoking the fire in the center of the embers, the flame drew upward, curling and swirling with images of imagined or real depending on who memory you use, with images of demonic creatures as they played and dance mimicking those acts of debauchery that are forbidden by scripture.

Taking the doll by hand, and tucking the scrolls of parchment into her belt, she threw her head back twirling in a wild mad dance, her throat glistened in the light, her bare feet kicked up embers here and there, as was evident by the sparks that flew out. The stars began to circled with her, the heavens themselves were soon caught her whirling dervish like behavior.

Her eyes were glazed over as more smoke arose about her body. Her mouth opened as she began to chant in an endless run on of words, strange foreign words that had no base in the English language, words of destruction, words of hate, words of evil, words of revenge. The speed of her chanting grew exponentially, building up the climax.

Upon culminating in a frenzied pitch of arousal she collapsed onto the ground, tossing the doll into the flames followed by the scrolls. As the first ray of dawn came, the shriek of a banshee could be heard coming forth from the manor house. Her spell was working and now she had one last rite to perform to damn the generations of those to come forth from my grandfather Jeremiah.

She took a knife out of her belt, the same one used to draw forth the blood of Wingate. She then took the bowl of the blood, the blood used for the doll and as ink, adding henbane and foxglove to improve the potency; she drank the positioned mixture then slit her wrists offering her blood to the good of hatred, to the demons of evil, offering up her life to condemn the murderer of her flesh.