The Wiccan Diaries

The Wiccan Diaries By T. D. McMichael

The Wiccan Diaries, Volume 1



Chapter 1 – Halsey




It’s me, Halsey. I don’t know why I’m writing this down... except... Rome. It’s a little after two, the sun is shining––I see flashes of monuments, countryside. We’re getting ready to pull into Termini Station.

I have everything I need.

My bag is so well-worn and frayed; like an old friend. I know every pocket, and secret, hidden nook. It doesn’t keep secrets from me. In fact, it keeps secrets for me.

I am in Rome––and I am seventeen––and it’s July––and I feel... something....

It’s an odd feeling.

It’s like the words: hopefully, perhaps.

There is a promise there. Though, of what, I’m unsure. Even this feeling of unsureness is unsure. I get the feeling that all of the things I ever thought, felt, dreaded, or feared––everything I rejoiced about, or ever worried over––all the problems that have been mine for so long––are nothing.

I am in a city that is working into its third millennium.

This journal is to be my city. Every mistake is a blind alley that leads somewhere new. Every happy accident a cause for ruin. I will build ruins and blind alleys, and people my city. There will be monuments, no doubt.

The light is the light of discovery, the darkness the ever-receding abyss, about which I am unsure. My sureness, in the face of my uncertainty, is an attempt to defeat my abyss. My words, weapons. I hope to say, I know. I hope to do that very much.

It’s me, Halsey.

* * *

You leave chapters in the past. You start new ones better. You try to forget about the letdowns and insecurities, the misfortunes, and the mishaps.

Termini Station was really my first experience of Rome. I had the tour guides, the maps. I had the sense that every traveler needs, that if you just go maybe you can find.

Termini Station was real, it was modern, it was high-tech. The high-speed train which had brought me was sleek, shiny. The front of it looked like a very wise worm, with a face made out of headlights and windshield wipers. I saw through the glass of the huge terminals. Rome.

So I set foot in Rome, and Rome set foot in me.

The first thing I noticed was the super abundance of cars, traffic. Cars are smaller in Europe. These looked tiny. They had names like Punto, Opel. City cars. One had doors that went up, not out. I soon understood why.

I didn’t drive––yet––but the problem of travel immediately became apparent to me. My tour guide, a book I kept on me at all times, said that Rome was a ‘walking city,’ which meant, apparently, everyone hoofed it. That was so not the case.

I put my hand over my mouth, looking at all the smog. Perhaps there was another, secret Rome, I, being a foreigner, wasn’t supposed to know about yet (inward smile).

I put my backpack on. It had all my personal information in it, including my passport, which was so well stamped it looked like a piece of modern art, and headed for the exit––all of those words, hopeful, etc.

Everyone was zipping around on scooters, motorini, as they were called, I was soon to find were the preferred method of travel, or else stuck in cars, impatiently bending their horns at the people in front of them.

I pulled out my map, which was basically advertising to someone, “Hey, come rob me!” The guidebook warned me that Termini Station was home to pickpockets, drug dealers, and prostitutes. I wanted to go to Via Condotti ASAP, where I had rented an apartment for the remainder of the summer. It had a view of the Spanish Steps! An agent had set it up for me for a small fee; unfortunately, until I came into my inheritance, people would insist on treating me like a child. The question now was, How to get there?

The first thing I noticed on the laminated map I had, was the big streaking red line, Line A. This was the Metropolitana, the subway, which ran underneath the city. Northwest it crossed the Tiber. But it stopped just two blocks from where I wanted to go.

I had just gotten to Rome, however, and I didn’t feel local enough to ride the subway. I thought about the money I had in my pocket. It was all large denomination, multicolored euro, ranging from five to five hundred. Something about exact change only made me scratch the bus option. Plus, I wanted to see the sights. I was very new to a very old city. If I took a cab, it would be the best of both worlds. Right? I was guaranteed not to lose my way.

According to the map, it was two miles from Termini Station to my apartment. I had been on a train all day, and my legs were sore. Two guys checked me out, so I hid behind my map. They flagged down a minicab.

I followed behind and got the next one in line.

The door was dented, and it stuck when I opened it. Non-alcoholic aperitifs littered the inside of the cab. They advertised SUCCO DEL GATTO, a bitter type unknown to me. The red bottle had memorable gold foiling.

Next came the part that I was not looking forward to. Interacting with native speakers. I did not speak Italian. Zip, squat, zilch. Not a single jot. But I was beginning to get the whole if-you-just-have-money-and-throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air thing, then they tended to be rather cool about the whole situation.

My cabbie said three beautifully pronounced syllables: ah-doh-vay. It didn’t sound like a question. My gist-o-meter, however, was functioning perfectly correctly. He was asking me where I wanted to go.

I climbed over the front seat and showed him on the map. “Cone-doh-ti,” I said. His gist-o-meter was better than mine. “I speak Americano,” he said. We were moving. He smiled in the mirror. Somebody cut us off. “First time to Rome?”

I nodded.

He stopped to yell something out the window I had only ever heard before in The Godfather. “You will need to be careful, young lady,” he said, still gesticulating at the offending motorist. “Here, look.” It was evident he lived in his cab. He dug, while we waited in traffic, through a pile of old newspapers. “You don’t have to speak Italian,” he said.

I was shown pictures.

“They say there are no leads, yes. No leads, yes.”

I nodded.

“They say that he climbs through the windows, yes.”

Okay.

“Look. He does things to the bodies, see.”

I did see; or was he saying yes?

“They have a name for him, yes.”

I suddenly realized what the cabbie was showing me. “There is a killer on the loose, yes.”

“Sì,” I said, utilizing my only word of Italian.

“The papers are full of him, every day. They say, Is today the day?” We moved another inch. He had a little ice chest tucked into the floorboards. I suddenly found out where the gold-foiled aperitifs came from.

Very moved when he offered me one, he popped it open on the edge of his dashboard, which he used to pop things open with, and we sat and chitchatted about the strange case.

I learned that they called him Peter Panico. The killer, not the cabbie. It was a name the newspapers had come up with. “He crawls through windows, yes.”

I got a little chill, when I thought about it.

“All of the victims are girls, yes.”

No wonder he was warning me.

The Succo del Gatto had a strange kick. It was bitter, potentially habit-forming, goodness. I smacked my lips, unselfconsciously. So did he.

Saint Peter. Peter Panico.

The light and the dark.

The abyss and the not-the-abyss.

He kept all of the Peter Panicos, he said. I was treated to newspaper after newspaper. We drank our drinks, and I half read the articles. Certain words stood out. Omicidio, ‘homicide.’ The victims had not survived. Misterioso, mysterious. The cops didn’t have a clue. One last word, and it brought a panic. Occulto.


Investigators were attributing the killings to certain strange goings-on, the Questura, which was the police, had listed under the occult.

A little aerial of fear vibrated within me. This is what you were looking for, isn’t it? I told myself. Proof?

“Missing people, dead bodies. It is not hard to see what is going on,” said the cabbie. I lay back and thought it all through, hugging my backpack protectively.

He put on some music.

A serial killer. He’s doing things to bodies. The occult....

We were almost there. I took out two crisp blue euro. “Smog and monuments,” he said, “smog and monuments.”

I took his meaning. “Good-bye,” I said. I left him to the traffic, and looked from the sidewalk, down the length of Via dei Condotti. It was full of famous names. Gucci, Bulgari, McDonald’s. I put on my backpack. If anyone grabbed it, they would have to drag me with them. It looked like Mardi Gras or the Running of the Bulls. Tourist Rome. Gobs of people were flocking en masse everywhere the eye could see. I realized why I had wanted a place here. It felt safe.

Balconies and the open black shutters of private apartments jutted above wrought-iron gas lamps. It gave that feeling of je nais se quois.

I felt tired, at the same time, exhilarated; I wanted to go nowhere, I wanted to go everywhere. I wanted my room. Four walls, and a bed. I wanted to relax, and get cleaned up, maybe watch the people down below.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this business.

* * *

My landlady was the suspicious type. She didn’t speak a word of English. I think we managed by pointing and by looks. And it was these looks that she was so masterful in; she had a look for every condemnation.

Make a loud noise––look.

Come in after what she considered late––look.

The biggest look revolved around the boyfriend situation. I didn’t have one. She gave me a big, fat look.

“I swear,” I said.

Why did I get the feeling she didn’t believe me?

That first night, she went over the rules. No boyfriends. No loud noises. No mysterious comings and goings. Especially no boyfriends making loud noises, coming and going. She waved and gesticulated and pointed her crazy arms.

What the H? I get it. No gentlemen callers. But she didn’t believe me.

It took an hour to satisfy her I was who I said I was. She seemed determined to find fault with my room-renting abilities. She was doing me a favor––a ragazza like me. Break one rule––that was it. No smoking, also.

I pantomimed I didn’t. She didn’t believe me.

Finally, with one last portentous gesticulation, the gauntlet was through, she let me have the room. The ordeal had been worth it. It was beautiful. I immediately felt at home.

She smiled and deposited the key. She plunked it into my open palm, whereupon I felt its satisfying weight.

The room was immaculate, frilly; it had a balcony, with French doors, two small windows either side, with louvered exterior shutters. Curtains hung around a giant four-poster bed decorated in pillows with mauve bedsheets in thick Egyptian cotton. There was a wrought-iron candlestick on the bedside table in the shape of roses. Black and interlacing, they crawled up to lavender-smelling candles, whose wicks were new.

There was a small closet with a dozen bent metal coat-hangers and a louvered door that could close. There was a small writing desk and a chair and the floors were unvarnished, lived-on, wood. There was everything I could need and more. It was quiet in the hall––that led to the thin slanting stairs––that led to the street. My landlady monitored everything from a small room, located at the top of the stairs. To enter, she had to buzz me in.

But this––my room... I was a firm believer in Virginia Woolf, who said, All one needs is a room of her own. I could tell the landlady had been wondering how old I was. I had one of those faces.

I could look younger or much, much older. Something I had inherited from my mother. I felt the locket at my neck that was the only heirloom I had of my mother or father.

It had a picture of them both. Her, when she was my age. Him, on their honeymoon. It was the only personal possession that mattered to me: My mom and dad. I had never met either one of them, and I never would.

I removed it and hung it on the iron roses, and proceeded to unpack the rest of my belongings. I traveled light, as a rule, and when I did travel, it was not necessarily to acquire things.

I was in Rome to meet someone. Not the kind of rendezvous my landlady was so hung up about. I was there to meet someone who could help me find information. Or rather, relate certain information to me.

About the only thing I knew was that his name was Ballard. Whether it was a first, last, or nickname, I didn’t know. The postmark said Roma, it was sent via Poste Italiane, so I knew the envelope originated from where I was at now.

The address was handwritten cleanly on the front. It was this Ballard I didn’t know. Where had I ever met anyone named Ballard?

It was the things he said, which had sparked my voyage, and led me on this leap of faith. In particular, reference to my mom and dad. The letter literally said: “I think my uncle knew your parents. He wanted me to give you this.” He continued on, and won me over.

Leaving Massachusetts, when it was the only world I had ever known, was difficult, but there was nothing for me there. This coincided with a desire for me to stretch my wings. But was it a premature wing stretching?

The Headmistress at my school, Mistress Genevieve, seemed to think so. “You are only seventeen,” she said, “and have not yet graduated. This institution has a responsibility for your welfare,” and so on.

I protested. I was adamant. I made my case.

She listened to none of it. “Perhaps when you are older, Halsey. I’m sorry. As trustee of your parents’ estate, I have final say, and I say no.”

The word hung in the air as no’s often do.

“Well, I’m going, anyway,” I said.

“Decisions are decisions and we live with those decisions, Miss Rookmaaker,” she said.

I told her I had decided. She said I was being impudent. She went so far as to say, A snot. I didn’t feel like a snot. I felt like this was an opportunity I had to take to explore something I had to know. She said she knew what was good for me, and that would be good enough. “After all, it was your parents who elected me your guardian. Does not their word count for something with you, Halsey Rookmaaker?”

* * *

I put the backpack in the corner of the closet and shut the small louvered door, then roamed my new abode in my bare feet. A small bend led to an even smaller bathroom. But the floor plan was pretty much that described. I stepped onto the balcony as the sun was setting and let my eye travel over the small crowd that was forming below. It was a quirk in Roman architecture that the first floor was actually the second. I was five stories high. The roads were narrow even in a posh district such as this.

I thought of the stars and the wheeling clouds and the colors of the night. And I thought of what to do. I had decided that I wasn’t going to stay in. On the contrary, I wanted to take a look around. The nightscape looked promising. I actually had a very good view.

I unpacked my laptop, and plugged it in. While it charged, I studied the map. The neighborhood I was staying at was, quote, a place of interest. Good to know, I thought, as I radiated my finger outward, I realized that all of Rome fit that description.

I was sitting at the small desk that was now mine. Made from aged and cracking wood, it had a single locking drawer with a key. I had a passion for antiques. This looked prewar. Inside the drawer sat a notepad and pen. I removed the top sheet that had some scribbles on it––a phone number with the Rome prefix, followed by the name Enzo.


There were also a few paper clips, a pair of scissors, some random staples, a whole box of multicolored tacks.... A spool of black thread littered the bottom, together with sewing needles. I would add my own journal to the contents, when I was done writing in it for the night. I loved to write, it helped me think. When I wrote things down, I remembered them better. My journal had an all-black cover; I filled it, religiously.

The most interesting conversation today had been with the cabbie. ‘I am here, finally, and already strange things are happening to me,’ I wrote. ‘The bad thing about my hideaway: no kitchen. No stove, no refrigerator. Dining out is its own reward. I am looking forward to authentic pasta. Drinks served at small tables. Conversation filled with “ciao,” and “bella.”’ I paused, uncertain how to proceed. I got out four tacks and pinned the map to the wall. It looked impressive. ‘The city is built on seven hills. Each hill is an area. And each area is distinct.’ I thought that was interesting. I looked at the map. I was in Piazza di Spagna. ‘I want to see the azaleas on the Spanish Steps.’

So much for writing. I put it away and locked the dainty-looking drawer. I would need a place for my two new keys. I put them next to the laptop and went to take a shower. Only, my bathroom didn’t have a shower. It had a tub. The porcelain type with clawed feet.

I should describe myself. I had long hair.

It was wicked black.

My skin was pale, because I was a night owl. I swear I didn’t look like a freak. Sometimes I felt like a freak, though. As far as the measuring tape went, I was terribly, terribly average.

Description done. In the morning, I would get my stuff. Hair care products, etc. I gathered up my hair, pinning it up, and opened the tap. The pipes shivered. Some brown dirt flopped out, then it started gurgling. It took forever.

Finally, clear liquid spewed into the porcelain tub. It got hot.

It felt good, after the long train ride. I felt all of the fatigue wash away. All I had was a piece of soap but it was good enough. I bathed with the door open. When you grow up in a private New England Academy where the rules are strict––

I shook my head; I wasn’t going to hate on them. It felt good to have a place of my own.

Still––the one thing I missed was privacy. I had it.

When I got out, I tracked watery footprints to the closet, and put on a few new things. I hung up the rest of my pathetically meager wardrobe. Sadly, there were hangers to spare.

I decided I would remedy that tomorrow. Or the next day. But that was the whole point. I had days. The whole summer. I was free. It inspired me to make a new entry.

‘It’s me, Halsey. This is going to kick butt. So you know.’

I put on a pair of flats and went out the door in jeans and a tank top.