Witches IRL

Becca O’Donnell

The first night I joined them I knew I’d found the real thing. 

I’d been dubious at first, searching for weeks on and off with no success. I’d log in on lunch breaks and toilet trips, refreshing Instagram, Twitter, TikTok – the whole suite of social media trash. Sometimes I’d find the links a day late, after they’d expired, hidden in a mess of a caption and leading nowhere. Finally, at 3a.m on a Tuesday, I’d clicked through and found myself where I was meant to be. 

Everything was arranged neatly and professionally. The daily chatter ranged from mundane to almost perfectly staged in its absurdity. Clicking around brought me to a conversation in real-time, messages flicking ever upwards:

Queenie1680 – whats paypal

Mrs_Crowley – Why do you need PayPal Queenie? 

Queenie1680 – a nice man want to come visit me

Moonchilde – Queenie no 

SMOLbard – I think someone’s trying to scam you. 

Queenie1680 – he just needs a bit of money so i pay the airfare and he’ll pay me back

Moonchilde – I don’t think he’s real. 

Mrs_Crowley – Remember what happened when you tried to buy that crypto?

Queenie1680 – dr ruja had lovely hair and just wanted friends

SMOLbard – and all your money! 

Moonchilde – smdh.

Lanadelgay – Good morning! Right, why’s Queenie sad?

Lanadelgay – Ok, I caught up. That’s a scam, Queenie 

Cora_liner – Hello.

Barklikeagod – Hello newbie! Welcome to ~*Baba Yaga’s Hut*~. Please make sure you read our Rules and Announcements before posting further comments. 

Moonchilde – wtf, hello? 

Lanadelgay – hi newbie!

Mrs_Crowley – Welcome.

SMOLbard – What’s up? 

Queenie1680 – dr ruja might come back i bet she’s still really loney

Queenie1680 – oh hello 

Moonchilde – Right, who’s been posting the link around? 

#

Initially, I was met with trepidation. Many people, they said, joined the server looking for something specific, something small and greedy. Get rich quick. Make them love me. Bring my cat back from the dead. This wasn’t, they told me, what they specialised in. They were interested in justice. So, I shared with them what I needed. The revenge I wanted to take. 

Looking back through the archived chats, the evidence of piss-taking was everywhere. People would appear, make a request, have it fulfilled, and leave. They weren’t, the coven informed me, a magic lamp. They had more purpose than that. They wanted payment in people’s time. The minimum amount of time they requested was a year's attendance at IRL meetings. If that agreement was broken, well: 

Mrs_Crowley – We’ve got ways of taking it back.    

#

The first time we met IRL was also a Tuesday, many weeks later. By then the weather had turned. Wimbledon Common was filled with dense fog, little droplets suspended in the air, diffusing the streetlights.

I was early, overly eager, worried I’d miss the others and feeling jumpy out on the common this late at night. A few people sped past on bikes, sticking to the path. I ran through everyone’s names in my head as I waited. I’d been told there was a strict “no real names” policy during the meetups, although no one explained why. 

Queenie arrived next, a fat brown and white dog waddling along beside her. I knew it was her even before she stuck her hand out to me, a bag of dog shit swinging on her wrist. Her hair, clean and white, framed a face labyrinthine with age.   

‘Cora?’

‘That’s me! Queenie?’ 

She nodded. The dog threw himself onto the ground and sighed, scratching himself and grunting quietly. Queenie ignored him and pulled out a tube of Rolos. 

‘You want?’ she asked, proffering them. I took one, and the one next to it came away too, the bottom-heavy chocolates stuck together at the base. ‘That’s a good sign, I think,’ she said, gently reaching over to unstick the second one, before popping it into her mouth. I’d expected her teeth to be pointed or rough and was surprised by the neat row of white veneers. 

Lana and Moonchilde arrived together, neatly dressed in office-appropriates, with matching trainers and Hershal backpacks. Without breaking their conversation, they waved at Queenie and me, put down their bags, and began a quick change, shrugging off suit jackets and pulling on oversized sweaters. 

‘Did you see that guy looking at me though?’
‘In your dreams babe.’

‘Gross, as if that’s what I’m dreaming of.’ 

For ages, I assumed they worked together, that it was weird it never bled through onto the server. Eventually, I learned they worked at different ends of London and met at Wimbledon Station before making the walk up to the common. 

Mrs Crowley arrived on her own, one hand clutching a smouldering Silk Cut, the other an iPhone, fast to her face, a shopping bag threaded over her arm. She was inexplicably dressed in a vintage Juicy Couture tracksuit – I’d pictured her in florals and pearls.

‘Okay peanut, look, Geema will be round tomorrow, and we’ll go to the Disney store then ok? No peanut, not the one in Kingston, that one closed, remember?’

Smol was late, which I’d come to learn was quite normal. Her bright yellow Lucy & Yak jumpsuit was decorated with patches and buttons, and she insisted on hugging me upon first meeting. She smelt lovely, like cocoa butter and Santal 33. She told me later she’d grown up in a commune in Brixton and hadn’t been allowed access to the internet at home until she was fourteen. 

‘Who are we waiting for?’ I queried when, after Smol’s arrival, there was no collective move to head out. Mrs Crowley looked up from her iPhone, her thin, pencilled brows perfectly stationary. 

‘Bark. She’s not dialled in yet.’

Queenie’s dog shuffled to his feet and began snuffling around.

‘Bark? Do you mean the server bot? They’re a real–they’re a person?’

Moonchilde was pulling out an iPad, secured in a shockproof children’s plastic case shaped like a large butterfly specimen. 

‘You ever read about golems? She’s a bit like that. But instead of clay I used numbers,’ she said, punctuating her sentences by jabbing at the screen, ‘I remembered to charge it this time, so she won’t drop out.’ she added, without looking up.

‘Well done. We need to look into getting a power bank,’ said Smol, smiling as she touched me on the arm, ‘I was confused a little too, at the start, but honestly, it’s not a big deal. Bark just wants to change things for the better, like the rest of us.’ 

The iPad pipped and the familiar Discord ringtone chirruped out into the evening air. Moonchilde gently tapped the screen and turned the iPad around to us, holding it firmly by each handle. There was no video feed, just a still image of a mangy-looking wolf with sandy gold fur. A jackal. 

‘GREETINGS!’ said the iPad. 

Bark’s voice was pleasant enough, with the faint musicality of a Vocaloid and clarity of a text-to-voice service. Mrs Crowley dropped the butt of her cigarette in a shower of sparks, grinding it under one heel.

‘Shall we get going?’ 

#

We wound our way deeper into the common. A witch had been hanged here once. Or, at least, that’s what I’d read. I’d also read the local churches had trouble filling their pews, back when such things mattered. They’d blamed it on the alluring pleasures of the common. I thought a little about the murder that had happened there, the year after I was born, then put it out of my mind. The canopy of trees thickened as we left the well-trodden paths. 

That first night, I watched them set up, drawing a circle with handfuls of Maldon Sea Salt and placing fake plastic tea lights at regular intervals. There were none of the trappings I’d begun to expect at this kind of gathering: no statues, crystals, carved wands, expensive cauldrons, or colour-coordinated robes. There were herbs, gathered from Queenie’s garden, a little wooden bowl Smol filled with water from her Klean Kanteen, and so much salt. 

Surreptitiously, Mrs Crowley drew a large pillar candle from her shopping bag, placing it in the middle of the circle. Tall and fat, it made me think of the Paschal candle from church, which had remained alight, it seemed, for most of my childhood. Fires were banned on the common which is why the tealights used in the ring were fake, but the large central candle would hopefully remain hidden by our collective bodies.

I shivered, at first from the cold, and then from nerves. Moonchilde hunkered down in front of me, wiping her salty hands on her band hoodie. 

‘Hey, don’t freak out. We’ll take care of you,’ she said, quietly. Her eyes were a warm brown with green in them. She reached out and tucked a stray curl behind my ear. ‘You’re all good.’

We settled down, and Lana propped the iPad against the green and white box of salt. All eyes fixed on me. 

‘Did you bring it?’ asked Queenie. 

Wordlessly I handed over the package and her face relaxed into a warm mess of wrinkles, eyes like little blackcurrants. The corpse of the songbird, which I’d so carefully wrapped in brown paper, was laid out on a bed of salt and sweet-smelling things: sage, angelica, orris root. It looked so tender and small that, for a moment, I felt terrible, guilty about removing the head as they’d asked. The others gathered around us, swaying, singing. 

Queenie, her tongue stuck out in concentration, passed the head through a flame, once, twice, three times, before returning it to the bird’s body. The voices of the others around us rose in their song, louder and louder until they were joined by the keening caress of the songbird who flew up and out of Queenie’s hands and into the canopy of trees above.

She wiped off her hands on the front of her dress and nodded, satisfied, and I knew the terrible thing I’d wanted had been done. 

Confirmation of our success trickled down to me in the following weeks. Kernels of gossip in the group chat. Subtweets. Whispered conversations in the kitchen at a party – all the most golden forms of currency. My boyfriend –my ex-boyfriend– had been raced to the hospital in the middle of the night. Had I heard? Gosh. How awful. His new girlfriend, Diana, nine years my junior, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, had called a mutual friend incoherent with panic at two in the morning. Could he come sit with her? Matt had been taken to the local hospital with testicular torsion. Then, a castration. No children. 

#

After that, we did many things together. 

When news broke of a reality star being held captive by her manager, banned from handling her own money or leaving her home? We cursed him. I’d expected something small, a break in the case resulting in her legal freedom. Instead, the manager had died, a blood vessel in his head exploding during a fit of rage.

  A woman had taken money from thousands of sick people and promised them cures, healing. She’d promised her shareholders millions. All fake – her promises dissolved like ash in the rain. While the law was slowly catching up with her, it felt inadequate. Her long red hair, showcased so lovingly in her Instagram posts, seemed to us a blessing she did not deserve. In her first court appearance, she wore a scarf around her head. The papers accused her of sympathy-mongering.  

We heard of workers being exploited at one of the large fulfilment centres, somewhere deep in the countryside. We cursed the building itself and, a week later, the roof caved in, the workers only escaping due to a well-timed fire alarm. The papers reported subsidence and poor craftsmanship as the cause, but an office worker who’d been on shift that day posted something different on Reddit. He described plants, birds, and creatures pulling down the walls, reclaiming the land. No one believed him. We were very proud of that one.

#

SMOLbard – the prime minister 

Queenie1680 – it’s out of our price range 

#

Moonchilde was murdered at the end of Spring. She wasn’t online for a day or two – we joked she’d finally found a boyfriend. 

#

Mrs_Crowley – She was manifesting it for ages. I’m happy for her!

#

On the third day, photos of her bloomed across socials, her smiling face immaculately made up. Susan Gillespie. Thirty-four. 

#

Lanadelgay – Susan? Her real name was fucking SUSAN

#

She’d been found in a park in Islington, her body discarded in a maintenance shed. The watchful eye of CCTV had captured her here and there in the city that day. Arriving and leaving work in Farringdon. Returning home to Clapham and leaving again, wearing a long black sweater dress. The last released footage showed her slipping down into Clapham Common tube station before the city swallowed her up. That night—someone pushed a blade deep into her sternum. They’d hurt her. For three days she lay silently hidden before a caretaker discovered her, small and exsanguinated in the corner.

#

Barklikeagod – Moonchilde made me

SMOLbard – we all made you 

Barklikeagod – Moonchilde made me run 

#

We wanted revenge. We wanted to curse someone. We needed it, like oxygen and calories. 

#

Lanadelgay – We blew up a building, we can fucking curse someone for Moonchilde. 

Queenie1680 – no 

Lanadelgay – Queenie you’re fucking me off, 

Queenie1680 – you can’t curse someone you don’t know who it is 

Lanadelgay – smdh

Lanadelgay – I give up then.

Lanadelgay – what’s the point of any of it?

Queenie1680 – not giving up. 

#

Moonchilde suddenly belonged to everyone. A stranger started a subreddit specifically for her case, an uncomfortably formal picture from LinkedIn grinning from the banner. At first, the posts were interesting – helpful, even. We learned about her brother, his family, and her debt. This lasted a week or two. 

#

Meerkaty – My cousin went to school in London. She says Islington is a well-known hub for sex trafficking. She was probably mixed up in it all.

PM_ME_UR_BITS – The area around Kings Cross is just rife with crime. I’ve heard there’s gangs. Why was she there so late? It’s all so dodgy.

the_beecharmer – There must have been a boyfriend. Maybe secret? Maybe tied up in something. I don’t know, it just seems odd to me too, like, are they sure they found all her devices?

lana_del_gay – You all need to shut. the. fuck. up. 

#

I don’t know why it took us so long to work out what needed to happen. 

#

Queenie1680 – i think it will have to be a sconce 

Queenie1680 – *sceance 

Queenie1680 – we need to talk to the dead 

#

‘We don’t fuck with the dead,’ Mrs Crowley said and took a long drag from her cigarette. At some point in the past month, she’d swapped her Silk Cuts for Marlboro Golds. ‘You know that, Queenie. Spells and charms are one thing. A summoning is something else.’

Gathered outside a pub, hunched around an outdoor heater, we clutched freezing drinks whilst a wind whipped through the deserted beer garden. Queenie's dog huffed to himself under the table. Smol tapped her acrylics against the chipped wood. We’d never been anywhere so proper together.

‘I’m aware, Mrs Crowley,’ Queenie said and inclined her head, ‘it’s not something I’d suggest lightly. But if we can find out anything, a name, even just a description, we can get Susan what she deserves.’ 

I felt myself wince at the use of Moonchilde’s real name and watched Lana do the same. She’d been perfectly silent this whole time, eyes glazed, mouth slightly ajar, but now she jerked back to us, slowly turning her head to look at Mrs Crowley. 

‘Since when,’ she began, her voice quiet, cold, ‘have we been good-vibes-only, pink pussy positive, karma-whoring, crystal-toting bitches? This isn’t supposed to be easy. This is supposed to be hard. We’re supposed to be different.’

#

Mrs_Crowley – I bought the candles. They only had gin or vanilla scented.

Mrs_Crowley – I got the gin ones if anyone was curious. 

#

‘Cora, draw a circle. Lana? Snacks, please.’

I made the circle larger than normal, allowing, as Queenie instructed, room for guests. Lana arranged herbs and pieces of green apple on a pink, cut glass plate. Food for the dead, she said, for feasting. Thyme, to ease the soul of a spirit who’d met with a violent end. Bay to aid communication. Lavender, because it smells good, and Queenie had a lot of it going spare.  

‘I’m going to put you right here, okay?’ SMOL propped the bulky iPad against a lump of rotting wood. On the screen, sent through the chat function, a GIF of Betty White, dabbed in thanks.  

Mrs Crowley, a cigarette dangling from the side of her mouth, dug a small hole and filled it with kindling and pungent firelighters. She dropped her cigarette into it and soon a small flame bloomed. Smoke scented the air. Someone dropped thyme into the fire. The smell of it roasting made me hungry.

It was late and dark in this corner of the common, far from the streetlamps and their light. Far from the city, from the path, the mothers, the prams, the cyclists, the exercise toffs, and all their persistent, petty bursts of sound. Queenie passed her flask around, hot and steaming. I took a deep swallow and shuddered at the heat of it and the strong, sour flavour. Chervil, I guessed. And something else. 

The moonlight felt silky soft on my skin as I slid my jacket from my shoulders and rolled my chest towards the sky, feeling each gap in my spine compress. I filled my lungs and flinched as the smoke prickled them. I asked my heart to stay where it belonged. 

We sang. Usually, we stuck to things we all knew. This time we’d learned something, a favorite song of Moonchilde’s. We crooned and wailed our way through it, looping the song’s hook over and over. 

And the meteorite's just what causes the light

And the meteor's how it's perceived

And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void that lies quiet in offering to thee.

The fire guttered and spat. A hissing sound began, somewhere beneath the flame, bubbling up and out, winding itself into words that spilt and echoed through the copse.  

so loud

always so loud. 

‘Moonchilde?’ Lana asked, querulous. 

and now she’s asking us. 

‘We seek our friend, Susan Gillespie, sometimes called “Moonchilde” Queenie said, her spine straight. ‘We have no interest parlaying with you, spirit.’

The shadows of the flame encroached on her face, the deep welts of her wrinkles swallowing the light.  

stumbled on your circle—

my way to somewhere else. 

I heard someone take a breath, heard it shake through them. 

mr guppy misses women. 

‘What’s it talking about?’ whispered Smol, somewhere from my right. 

fleshy. warm. just mr. guppy.

—nothing. 

you want your friend? 

The smoke twisted, turned, spinning in on itself instead of rising to form a small, neat cone, pulsing with each utterance.

can help you find your friend.

for a price.

don’t work for free.

‘We can’t pay you anything,’ Mrs Crowley’s voice was clipped, short, ‘We won’t.’ 

deny me my fee? 

‘And what would that be?’ I was surprised to hear the words spill out of me. 

nothing much. 

a few tears.

broken arm.

spider silk. 

shoes. 

‘Well, you’re not having my bloody shoes,’ said Queenie, formality dropped. 

little witches grasping at straws

don’t even know what you’re doing here, do you?

strange. and with a beldam so old.

where’s your little friend wandering? 

‘We just want to speak with her. Please. Just let her come through instead?’ said Lana from across the circle. 

silly little witch 

little biiiitch

rusty dusty crusty little witches

nothing to lose 

not true

not true.

don’t get dead–

—not all it’s cracked up to be. 

The smoke swirled, vibrated slightly, then puffed up large and important. It was laughing. The laughter was squeaky, not the expected baritone. The laughter stopped. Nobody spoke.

really? nothing? right. okay. i thought that was pretty spooky. one of you could have screamed or something. 

Scuffling from across the circle. Lana crouched, one hand holding the flask, ready to extinguish the flames. The voice beneath yelped. 

look i’m sorry, yes i was trying to spook you, okay. but i wanna help. i could find your friend maybe. mayb—

A sound then, like fabric tearing.  

ohhhhh fuck oh fuck. oh shit, you guys. they found me.  

Another sound, like an engine failing to turn over. 

please man, i was just messing around, i’ll leave, i’ll go, i’ll—

Silence. Then a sound like a detuned radio sliding between stations, emanating not from the flames but from the iPad. The screen lit up in a Technicolour blur as it raced through an endless scroll. 

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrresurrect dead

on planet Jupiter

The new voice was smooth, slick, modulating from NPR to BBC4. Lana shook, frozen in place, water splashing on either side of the flames. 

On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

‘Please, we just want to talk to our friend! Can you help us do that? Talk to our friend?’ Lana shrilled.

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.

You said that you want to bring dead people back to life.

‘We don’t want to bring her back. We just want to talk to her. We just want to know what happened, so we can—’

so anybody that you want to talk to, so forth, there they are. Is that the idea?

‘Yes, we just want to speak to our friend, Moonchilde. Sometimes called—’

I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt. 

‘Please stop, please–’

Goodnight little girls. Thank the lord you are well. 

The fire gasped and went out. For a moment breath refused me. Something was clogging my throat. I heard Smol vomit, heard Queenie cough. Lana swayed and slumped forward into the coals. When we pulled her free, her face and hands were immaculate, unburnt. 

#

Lanadelgay – I’m fine. Everything’s perfect. Very healthy. 

#

The server was quieter than it had been. No memes. We were gentle with each other. No one mentioned our failure, our fear. Bark wasn’t online, their program simply crashing each time we tried to relaunch it.

#

Lanadelgay – I’m so glad we’re all still talking. 

#

We made plans for our next meetup. Lana didn’t show. 

‘She’s been sending me weird DMs,’ admitted Smol, opening her phone and pulling up the server. Lana was online. 

#

Lanadelgay – How you gonna love somebody, when you can’t l; love yourself can i get an amen amend aha

#

The screen filled with messages, those same strange quotations flicking up, one after the other. We read on, in silence. 

#

Lanadelday -So healthy/Gone healthy all of a sudden/in search of the midwife who could help me/who could help me/help me find my way back in. There are worries where I've been

Lanadelgay – I just wanted it all, IonlywanteditallijustijustijustallIonlywanteditallijustijustijustallIonlywanteditallijustijustijustallIonlywanteditallijustijustijustallIonlywanteditallijustijustijustallIonlywanteditallijustijustijustfuck

Lanadelgay – Goodnight little girls, praise the lord you are well. 

Lanadelgay – Goodnight, goodnight, dear Miss Clavel. 

#

The server was quiet. No keyboard cat to play us out. Then another message, a final one: 

Moonchilde – This time, don’t fail me.