Doctor Dee Is Dead

Copyright Oggbashan October 2012

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

This is a work of fiction. The events described here are imaginary; the settings and characters are fictitious and are not intended to represent specific places or living persons.

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My life was a boring routine. I was trying to finish my PhD, financing myself with part-time work as a tutor and senior library assistant at our local university. I worked long hours for little pay and had no social life at all. I had no time or money for evenings out with women even though I would have liked a partner.

Would that change once I had my PhD? I doubted it. Research into some of the odder aspects of life at Henry VIII's court is not very marketable.

The only excitement I had recently had come from my work as a library assistant. I had been cataloguing and transcribing some of the university's large collection of manuscripts and had found a whole box full of them from Henry VIII's time. They might have helped with my studies and if they were as interesting as they seemed and hitherto unknown, might have made my name in academic life.

One section of them appeared to be notes made by that erudite and mysterious man Doctor John Dee. I thought they were a collection he made of magical spells together with his comments on them. Some remarks were quite blunt such as "absolute rubbish", "a farrago of lies" and "credulous knaves' bluster".

Yet one was much more intriguing. It was much older than Dee's time, perhaps centuries older on a creased piece of vellum. Dee apparently wrote a covering note that was included in the acid-free folder:

'This receipt works but is very dangerous. I have seen it tried but the once. My assistant Jonathan saw it used too often. Did it kill him? I don't know but I will not ask anyone to assay it again. The pleasure is deceptive. The similitude is persuasive but whence comes it? I suspect evil motivation. Should I destroy the receipt? I hate to erase any knowledge however foul. I must consider this further."

I took a picture of Dee's covering remarks and the 'receipt' on my digital camera. The receipt was in miniscule cursive Latin and very faint. I needed to process the image to produce anything readable.

Back home in my tiny flat I uploaded the pictures to my computer. Dee's remarks were easy to read. The receipt? I tried several modifications to the contrast, size and attempted to sharpen the image. As far as I could tell it was a spell to raise the dead, or if Dee was correct, to simulate raising the dead. I would have to take another picture next time I was in the library, perhaps using a light box. I just couldn't get enough clarity from the current image to get more than a hint of the outline of what the spell was intended to do.

I started to write this account to remind myself that I should record and report any discovery as important as writings by Doctor Dee. As a scholar, I ought to mention what I have found, and what I am doing, to the library management. I'll wait until I know more. I shouldn't. These notes might help salve my academic conscience. Or am I deluding myself?

***

The next time I was in the library I set up the light box and took several pictures of the receipt. I had just finished when Margaret, one of the other library assistants, walked past.

"What are you doing, Tony?" she asked.

"Trying to decipher a faded manuscript," I answered, showing her the receipt.

Margaret is much older than I, a widow who has been working in the library for several years supplementing her pension from her husband's employer. She must have been an attractive woman when my age. Now she is a friend who seems interested in my work and has been trying to learn about Latin manuscripts. She has helped me sometimes with the manuscripts in English. Her understanding of the English ones is nearly as good as mine. Although she studied Latin she says that she cannot read miniscule or cursive Latin.

"Looks like gibberish to me," she said.

"It isn't, Margaret, but it is very difficult to read..."

"Even for you? Surely you can read any manuscript, Tony?"

"I might be able to read this one, once I can get the faint writing more visible, but I can't decipher everything. Some manuscripts are too damaged, or too obscure. I do what I can but some I'll have to leave for others to try."

"What is it about?"

I lied. I shouldn't have lied, even to Margaret whose opinion doesn't carry any academic weight.

"I don't know yet," I said.

But I did know. It was a spell to raise the dead. I shuddered inwardly. Perhaps Margaret would want to raise her husband's shade? I began to appreciate the danger. If you could raise the dead, would you cease to appreciate the living?

***

I worked late that night. By the early hours I had transcribed most of the receipt to a Word document in expanded Latin. I was beginning to understand the text of the first few paragraphs, most of which seemed to be warnings about the danger of using the spell.

A summary of those paragraphs was simple. It was an introduction and explanation with warnings.

The spell could produce a physical being that resembled the dead person. The purpose of the spell, and its only purpose, was to provide a willing and active sexual partner. The author described the being as either an incubus or a succubus and give dire warnings about producing one of the same sex as the invoker of the spell.

The age of the person at death didn't matter. If used in the normal form, the spell produced a mature adult apparently in their mid twenties. If desired, the being could be made to seem older or younger, but never younger than eighteen years old. Whatever the appearance, the actual age would remain mid twenties. There were hints that the spell could be modified to produce actual varying ages but any attempt to produce an age below eighteen would 'immediately open the doors of Hell to the transgressor'. The introduction added that such modifications had been wholly expunged from the following text.

That was as far as I had got. I saved this account, the transcribed Latin, and my free translation of the start, to Word documents and copied them to a CD and Flash Drive.

I went to bed and dreamed of being visited by an attractive succubus. I woke drenched in sweat and took a long shower before breakfast. Today I would be tutoring until late in the evening. Doctor Dee's receipt would have to wait for another day.

***

It took longer than I had thought. It was more than a week before I could be certain that I had recorded and translated the spell accurately. My lies to Margaret had been more frequent. She seemed very interested in what I was doing, and concerned that the manuscript was affecting my normal work. She was right, of course. I had to break off from my attempts to translate and spend a couple of long days catching up with urgent library work I had neglected. Tomorrow is Saturday. I intend to try the spell, or make the assay, as Doctor Dee would have said. It shouldn't take me long to assemble the ingredients of a drink to take before saying the incantation or conjuration. The main one I have already. It is tiny scrapings from the gravestone of the woman I want to resurrect.

The spell is very specific. I must be sure that the grave has a single female occupant. A joint grave such as husband and wife might raise the husband when the wife is intended. Producing a simulacrum of the wrong sex as the conjurer could be painful or deadly. Two or more women in a grave could produce a demonic being formed from an amalgam of them. That could be instantly fatal.

I have chosen the grave of a woman, Phyllis, who died of diphtheria in the 1930s when she was 34. I have checked the records of the graveyard. She was buried well apart from other graves, in an extension of the original graveyard. Her grave is isolated because an access path built a few weeks after her burial separated it from both the old cemetery and all the other graves in the new area.

***

On Saturday morning, after breakfast, I sat at the kitchen table with the ingredients before me. I measured carefully, using modern equivalents of the very small medieval weights. The drink was mainly water and a couple of teaspoonfuls of anything alcoholic. I used Vodka. The other items including the scrapings from Phyllis' grave seemed like a tiny pinch of greyish salt. They were barely noticeable once stirred into the liquid.

The spell insisted that I should be in a darkened room, naked on a bed when I drank and said the incantation. The woman should appear 'within several heartbeats' of the end of the last word.

I threw the drink down my throat and said the incantation in the original expanded Latin. The spell worked. A woman thudded onto the bed beside me as if she had fallen from a couple of feet above it. She grabbed me, rolled herself over and hitched up her skirt. Her desire was obvious. Her hands guided my erection inside her and we began to thrust. Which of us was more active? I don't know. As I thrust down, her hips bucked up to meet me. I had never penetrated so far into any woman before. I seemed longer, thicker, more erect than I had thought possible.

I could see her face dimly. She seemed to be in her twenties, but there was a disturbing likeness to what Margaret might have been at that age. Were they related? I didn't know. Was it because Margaret had been the last woman I'd had any association with in the last few days? I didn't know. Phyllis, if it was Phyllis, never spoke a word.

I stopped thinking. This woman was claiming all my attention, all my energy, and ridding me of any desire except to reach a climax. My endurance seemed endless. She writhed and groaned under me apparently reaching orgasm again and again as she clutched me with her entwining arms and legs. I wanted to reach a climax too. I couldn't.

After what seemed like an incredible time of frantic coupling she rolled us over and rode me. She was more insistent now. I felt that I couldn't last any longer yet her grasp tightened, squeezing her legs around me. At last I came. By that time she had seemed to control me totally. She had grown larger and stronger, or was it just that I had become weaker from over-exertion? Her face, with an even greater resemblance to a younger Margaret's, loomed over me as I slumped into unconsciousness.

When I woke up it was Saturday evening, twelve hours after I had said the incantation. I forced myself to eat something before I collapsed in front of the television before crawling into bed.

Was that a succubus I had raised? Was it Phyllis? Why did Phyllis look like Margaret? Could I survive another assay?

I was foolish. I raised Phyllis again on Sunday evening and every night that week. Each time she became more demanding. Each time she became larger, stronger and I smaller and weaker. When she rode me her body swamped mine. She was always clothed. When she was above me she pulled the hem of her skirt up my body. By Wednesday her face which had been below my chin, was covering mine. On Friday evening my head was below her chin. The hem of her skirt was nearly over my mouth. I noticed that my body was thinner compared with hers.

On Saturday I decided that Phyllis was too much for me but I couldn't stop using the spell. I knew that there was a disused Nuns' cemetery a few miles away and I went there.

I chose Sister Helena's grave and Saturday evening I prepared the drink with scrapings from Helena's gravestone. I was startled when Sister Helena appeared in an antique Nun's full habit with her face wrapped in a wimple that seemed like blinkers either side of her head. When I mounted Helena she had hauled up layers of black clothing to give me access. When she rolled me over I was swamped by her habit, swathed in yards of heavy black material.

By the time she rode me, Helena had already become much larger than Phyllis had ever been. My head was almost smothered between her heavy breasts yet I enjoyed the encounter. My mouth was already covered by the lower part of her habit. Sunday night Helena's enthusiastic love making was almost too much for me. I tried to protest. Her hands held her habit tightly across my mouth so I could only grunt. I tried to move the cloth away.

"Shh!" Helena hissed. "I'm from a silent order. I'm not supposed to speak. Neither are you."

She pushed a fold of her habit between my teeth, stuffing my mouth, while she rode me even more fiercely. I'm not sure whether I was unconscious before she had finished or immediately afterwards.

I found it very difficult to get up on Monday morning. I was tired, so tired that Margaret was concerned. She brought me several cups of coffee during that day. That evening I decided I couldn't face Sister Helena. I didn't make the drink. I didn't say the incantation.

Yet Helena appeared as if I had. Unlike all the other encounters with her and Phyllis, this time she rode me from the start. I was her plaything, her toy, even her victim. Instead of appearing beside me, she arrived on top of me, instantly impaling herself on my erection. I was flattened and smothered, gagged into silence before I could object. Her body hammered me on to the bed.

On Tuesday evening Helena's sudden appearance was even more alarming. I was inside her habit against her bare skin. Every time I tried to escape from the stifling enclosure she waited until I was close to escape before her hands dragged me back inside for yet another session of insistent sex.

Margaret was becoming really worried about me. She continued to ply me with coffee and suggested that I was working too hard and needed a break. I couldn't afford a holiday and I was too tired even to think about one. Even if I went away, would I get away from Helena? I hadn't summoned her since Sunday, yet she came unbidden.

At the end of a week of Sister Helena I was losing myself in her body. I had flashes of an illusion that I was her, mounting me. I could see out from her eyes, framed by the sides of her wimple, looking down at Helena's habit bulged by the top of my own head as Helena lifted up to thrust down on me again. Was I losing myself completely? Even Helena seemed to be familiar, to be yet another version of a younger Margaret.

After work on Friday Margaret acted.

"You are coming home with me," she announced bluntly. "I don't know what you are doing to yourself but you are fading away. I'll cook you dinner and put you to bed. You can sleep all weekend if you want to. You might need to."

I was too tired to reject Margaret's offer. I hoped that Helena wouldn't come if Margaret was there. A weekend to recover might help.

I forced myself to eat the dinner, almost too exhausted to lift the knife and fork. Shortly afterwards, dressed in a pair of Margaret's deceased husband's pyjamas, I was in bed in the spare room. I went to sleep almost immediately.

I woke up suddenly. I was Sister Helena, dressed in her habit, my face looking out between the blinkers of her deep-sided wimple. My mouth was stuffed with cloth and clamped shut with a scarf tightly wound around my head inside the wimple. My ankles and knees were tied together. My wrists and elbows were tied behind my back. Except for the gag, those restraints were hidden inside my nun's habit.

In front of me was an older nun. Instinctively I knew this was the Mother Superior. I was being held by a nun either side of me. I could only see part of their habits. The rest of them was hidden by the sides of my wimple.

"Sister Helena," the Mother Superior said coldly, "you have broken our rule of silence. Of course you have nothing to say in your defence. You are not allowed to. You know the punishment. It will be carried out within the hour. Until then you are allowed a time for silent prayer."

She turned and walked past me, out of sight. I was dragged forwards to a heavy prie-dieu, my head forced downwards and I was lashed to it with yards of rope.

I wondered what the punishment might be. Sister Helena's voice spoke in my head.

"I'm sorry, Tony," she seemed to say, "the sentence is to be walled up alive. That is how I died. Perhaps you should have done some more research before summoning me. Our love-making has overwhelmed you. You have become part of me and will die with me."

"But you are only a similitude, a replica produced by the spell..."

"That spell is not what you thought it was. You animate the similitude. To the extent that Phyllis or I was alive to make love to you, that much has been taken from you. You are dying. Now. We will be taken from here to be walled up. Both of us will die in darkness."

"But, but, is there no way I, or we, can escape, Helena? You have died already."

"That is my sorrow. Your interference means that I must die again, unless we are claimed by another living person using another of Doctor Dee's spells. If we are claimed, we will be that person's sexual slave, their plaything, for life."

"And I do claim you!" It was Margaret's voice, speaking to my ears, not in my head. "You are my slave. You will be my plaything."

"How? Why?" I tried to say but my mouth was still tightly gagged.

"You underestimated me, Tony. I read Doctor Dee's papers years ago. I can read cursive Latin. My husband died from the same spell that is killing you because I didn't then know I could claim him as I have claimed you now."

"But the spell, Margaret? I stopped using it."

"It was too late. I switched Doctor Dee's comments from the spell I used to the one you found. It is my spell that is so dangerous, my spell that produced your enslavement to Sister Helena with the potion I have been putting in your coffee for weeks. Your spell was the trigger that set in motion the spell I used. Now you will live on my terms. Helena! Let him free and you can go in peace."

I shuddered as a shiver shook my body. I was no longer in the body of a cruelly bound nun. I was lying on Margaret's double bed, naked, unbound, ungagged, yet unable to move. Margaret's face, framed in Sister Helena's wimple, loomed above me.

"I was Phyllis. I was Sister Helena," Margaret said. "I animated those replicas with Doctor Dee's knowledge using your energy. Sleep now. Tomorrow you will prove what a useful sexual slave you can be."

As I drifted into an unencumbered sleep I wondered how demanding Margaret would be. Surely not as overwhelming as the shade of Sister Helena? But if Margaret had been Helena, then she might be...