The Music of Razors

by Cameron Rogers

  He closed his eyes for a moment as he walked. To be truly selfless was to be as uninhibited as a libertine. As thoughtless as an idiot child. It was to allow anything passage through you that had the whim.

  Henry wanted to see the water.

  He spent the best part of a cold hour clipping briskly toward the old State House and the myriad wharves that bristled out onto the Charles River just beyond it.

  If someone asked him for money, he gave it.

  If someone told him their story, he listened.

  He found a disheveled young man clutching himself in a doorway, poor bulwark against a biting wind. Whoever he was, he was in his early twenties and had the drawn features one saw so often on people who remained on the street after nine o’clock on cold nights like this. The woolen glove on his right hand, clutched weakly to his left biceps, lacked a fingertip or two, and there Henry saw how black his nails were, how corrupted the flesh of his fingertips. He gently took the sleeve of that arm and rolled it up a little. Infection had worked its way up from his scrofulous fingers, spreading along the lymphatic vessels of the arm. There was an abscess at the wrist, a fragile dome and amber-filled.

  “What happened,” Henry asked. “Was it these cuts on your fingers?”

  The young man nodded weakly. “Broken spittoon,” he said. “Me master’s. At the time. Who are you?” His breathing was like a gentle wind over stray leaves. His coughs were blood against stone.

  Henry slipped the young man’s arm around his shoulder and helped him to his feet. “It’s all right. I’m a doctor.”

  If Voso felt kinship with woodland then woodland Voso would have. Dorian had made a good choice, an area of woodland that was yet to be cleared not too far from where they all lived yet removed enough that they would not likely be disturbed.

  Henry stood alone in the small clearing they were to be using. He knew this was the place, because Dorian had laid the space out beforehand. The ground had been swept, in a circular fashion, and Voso’s sigil scratched roughly into the earth. Later it would be prepared correctly, the runnels filled in with chalk. A small supply of candles and a pile of linen robes were stored in a duffel sack nestled into the roots of one of the larger elms, gone leafless with the turn of the season. Henry wondered if Dorian was around, perhaps watching, an idle voyeur. That certainly seemed like something he would find amusing.

  He had not slept in three days. He felt apart from the world, rather than part of it. It ordered his thoughts.

  What a strange life it had been. To have come from the north and ignorance, and come southerly into God only knew what. If he had taken a different boardinghouse, he wondered, would he have met Dorian anyway? What was it that had delivered him here…why had Dorian delivered him here. Henry wasn’t anything special. What made Dorian think tonight would actually succeed?

  Think, nothing. Believe, nothing. Dorian knew. That was the difference.

  So many questions.

  “Mr. Lockrose?” Finella stepped into the clearing. “Oh, it is you. I was wondering…”

  “This is the place.” Henry inclined his head toward the circle. “How are you, Miss Riley?” In truth she seemed changed. No bodice, none of the formal clothing she so often chose. Finella wore a plain dress, with plain shoes, her auburn hair no longer bound up, only tied back from her face. It suited her. It highlighted her natural loveliness. “Been away?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “No.” Henry looked at the circle. The waxing moon dappled light across it, the straight lines and neat curves of Voso’s sigil discernible as a different kind of shadow amid the soothing, scattered play of light and dark.

  “It feels as if we’re meant to be here now. As though everything up to this point in time has occurred for a reason.” Voso’s name lying in wait before him, Henry crossed the clearing toward her.

  She didn’t stand on formality. “Henry…”

  And he kissed her.

  For two seconds he lived in the only point in time that would ever feel like home. And then she pulled away, leaving him with naught but the sound of her feet on leaves.

  Time passed. Shadows shifted. Dorian and Dysart arrived, carrying tools. Within an hour all was ready.

  “Where’s Jukes,” Henry asked.

  “Adam won’t be joining us,” Dorian replied. “In fact, he is not even aware that we are here tonight. He is an unfortunate liability in a situation where such a degree of seriousness and focus is required. It would have been irresponsible of me to include him. Now let’s have no more talk.”

  Which left them with four.

  They worked in silence, none speaking for fear of destroying the meticulous preparation of the preceding three days. Finella would not look Henry in the face.

  Dorian waited in the clearing, at the northern point of the circle. Voso’s mark was a smaller circle within a circle with his name—VOSO—inscribed in the between-space, and his symbol in the center. All was marked out in trails of powdered chalk. This would be the space of their working.

  “Over there”—Dorian pointed away from the four spotfires that lit the clearing, flames sheltering inside a border of round stones—“you will find a few simple robes, nothing fancy. Remove your clothes—all of you—and bring the robes over here.”

  Henry watched as hesitation and horror at the idea of exposing his rotund form flashed across Dysart’s face. Nonetheless they retrieved the garments laid out for them on the dead leaves, and disrobed. It was a chill night, yet Henry felt nothing shedding his clothes. He kept his eyes forward, neither cold nor shamed. He simply was.

  Dysart on the other hand wrestled with the first of many layers concealing his form, and Henry felt a pang of sympathy for the man. Finella took the act of disrobing with good grace, and Henry in turn felt obliged to maintain her ease by treating their state as incidental.

  This was the first time he had stood naked in the presence of any woman other than his mother. He had kissed Finella and regretted nothing. Being naked before her was like something he had always known. His spirit had touched hers, and now they would part.

  This, then, was both death and birth. Henry felt as resigned to it as anyone on his deathbed, as any child at his confirmation.

  They crossed the clearing to where Dorian waited on the other side of the circle with a giant steel pitcher of water. He took Henry by one thin shoulder and turned him around, tipping the jug above his head. Henry gasped loudly, convulsively, as chill water crashed over his head, spreading in icy sheets down his entire body.

  “Be ye regenerate, cleansed, and purified in the Name of the Ineffable, Great and Eternal God, from all your iniquities, and may the virtue of the Most High descend upon you and abide with you always, so that ye may have the power and strength to accomplish the desires of your heart. Amen. Take your robe and dress yourself.”

  And so it went.

  “O Lord God, Holy Father, Almighty and Merciful One, Who hast created all things, Who knowest all things and can do all things, from Whom nothing is hidden, to Whom nothing is impossible; Thou Who knowest that we perform not these ceremonies to tempt Thy power, but that we may penetrate into the knowledge of hidden things; we pray Thee by Thy Sacred Mercy to cause and to permit that we may arrive at this understanding of secret things, of whatever nature they may be, by Thine aid, O Most Holy Adonai, Whose Kingdom and Power shall have no end unto the end of the Ages of Ages. Amen.”

  Dorian stepped backward to permit Henry to stand before him, holding the journal containing the conjuration. Dorian took from his robe a clutch of parchments bound in azure ribbon, parchments marked with the appropriate signs and sigils. In his right hand he held the knife. Henry opened the journal, and Dorian read aloud:

  “Here be the Symbols of the Secret things, the standards, the ensigns, and the banners of God the Conqueror; and the arms of the Almighty One, to compel the Aerial Potencies. I command ye absolutely by their power and virtue that ye come near unto us, into our presence, from whatsoever par
t of the world ye may be in, and that ye delay not to obey us in all things wherein we shall command ye by the virtue of God the Mighty One. Come ye promptly, and delay not to appear, and answer us with humility.” Dorian drew in a great and final breath, lifted his eyes from the book, and exclaimed: “I call ye Voso, fifty-seventh of the seventy-two Fallen, teacher and shapeshifter, come!”

  Silence. Henry felt the stillness of the moment, the complete lack of sound, save breathing. No night birds, no distant town sounds, not even a whisper from the uppermost treetops. And again Dorian called:

  “Here again I conjure ye and most urgently command ye; I force, constrain, and exhort ye to the utmost, by the mighty and powerful Name of God,” and he said it, and eleven other names, and a lengthy evocation for immediate appearance. And still nothing. Henry turned the pages and Dorian read. Still nothing.

  Finally Dorian said, “Close the book. This is not done with. None of you lose heart nor focus. There is nothing these things respect more than constancy. We will have our audience. Stand away from the circle.”

  The three of them stood away as Dorian paced the perimeter widdershins, examining the integrity of the sigil and refreshing its outline with the bucket of chalk dust he retrieved from the bole of a dead tree. This done he returned to his place at the head of the sigil, took a fistful of damp earth, and tossed a part of it to each of the four corners of the Universe. Then he faced north, fell to his knees, placed the knife on the ground before him, spread his arms wide, and called: “The Name of Adonai Elohim Tzabaoth Shaddai, Lord God of Armies Almighty, may we successfully perform the works of our hands, and may the Lord be present with us in our heart and on our lips.”

  And then he rose, turned, and opened his arms to the circle. Henry again took his place, as did the others. “By the Holy Names of God written in this Book, and by the other Holy and Ineffable Names which are written in the Book of Life, we conjure ye to come to us promptly and without delay, wherefore tarry not, but appear in a beautiful and agreeable form and figure, by virtue of these names we exorcise ye: Anai, æchhad, Transin, Emeth, Chaia, Iona, Profa, Titache, Ben Ani, Briah, Theit; all which names are written in Heaven in the characters of the Malachim—the tongue of the Angels.”

  Again, as Dorian’s voice rang out, silence. And then, somewhere, a bird began to sing. Something trilling. Another picked up the call from behind Henry, and another to his left, distant and unseen. Dorian’s eyes ranged over the blackness beyond the light of the fires, and Henry felt a new weight to the air. Things began to change. There was an intake of breath from Finella’s side of the circle, and Henry watched Dorian’s eyes widen with sudden and satisfied delight.

  There came a perfume, heady and sweet.

  Henry risked looking over his shoulder, and saw the shoots growing there, climbing toward a vanished sun. Lush grasses sprouted within the perfect circle, a round green bed rising through dead leaves. Flowers foreign to New England were growing and blooming colorfully, the air redolent and heavy with their scent. Henry saw tulips and roses.

  Lying on his new bed, eyes closed and slumbering, was a leopard.

  Dorian swallowed. “Voso,” he said. “Voso awaken.”

  “I am awake,” it said. Its voice was perfection, warm and rounded. Impossible music falling upon ears of dirt. “What is your need, Dorian.”

  Henry closed the journal. Dorian would no longer be needing it.

  “You know my name,” Dorian whispered, half to himself. “But then, you know everything, don’t you?”

  Henry took his place outside the circle, careful to never lay a toe inside it as he traveled.

  The great cat lay with its head on its forepaws, eyes closed. Henry could see its ribs expanding and collapsing with each breath, waiting for Dorian to speak.

  “You know why I have conjured you.”

  “I know,” the great cat said. “And I tell you that my answering will bring about an undoing in this world and the next. And you will demand my answer nonetheless.”

  “Then answer me.”

  “You are just a man, Dorian Athelstane. A man who, to me, appears to have died the moment I met you, so short are your lives. And yet you, this imperfect vessel, seek to contain perfect knowledge.”

  “You cannot deny me, and you know I will not desist, so why do you hesitate?”

  The cat opened its great eyes. “Because such things are about choice. You must choose to fall.”

  “Then I choose to fall. Speak.”

  The cat roused itself, unfurling and rising to its feet with no wasted movement. Its lazily shifting tail did not break the circle. It did not take its eyes from the master of the circle.

  “I can offer you a new form if you desire. That is also within my portfolio. Anything in the stead of what you ask.”

  “Speak!”

  The leopard inclined its head slightly. “Three times you have chosen.” It rose up on its hind legs, filling out and widening as it did so, toes becoming fingers, mottled fur falling away…

  The changing took less than a minute. The end result was a giant twice the mass and height of a normal man, standing nude before them. It seemed to Henry to be an amalgam of every racial aspect of humanity. Blackest skin with deeply Asiatic eyes, and shoulder-length golden hair. Fingernails like long wedges of cut glass, with an eye color to match.

  “It is my portfolio to reveal the hidden,” Voso intoned. “But things remain outside even a portfolio that expansive. The one you would learn of is stricken from all records, Celestial and Earthly, by the Hand of God. It has no name, no form, no portfolio, no ritual, no place inside Creation.”

  “That,” Dorian replied through gritted teeth, “is not good enough.”

  “For harmony it must be,” the Fallen said.

  “Answer me by the Name and in the Name of Shaddai, which is that of God Almighty, strong, powerful, admirable, exalted…”

  “Dorian Athelstane, who was once Johannes Paole,” the angel said. “Do not press this.”

  “…and by the Name of El, Iah, Iah, Iah, Who hath formed and created the world by the Breath of His Mouth, Who supporteth it by His Power…”

  “Stop. Your knowledge of what you do is incomplete.”

  “…Who ruleth and governeth it by His Wisdom, and Who hath cast ye for your pride into the Land of Darkness and into…”

  “Stop.”

  “…the Shadow of Death.”

  The demon was silent. And then, with reluctance, said, “So be it.”

  Voso opened both arms, breaking the circle. Powerful hands found a throat each, pulling the two into the circle, the snap of cartilage seeming to echo forever, the shattering of bone as both heads were brought together loud enough to frighten the night birds.

  It was as sudden as it was over. They lay at the Fallen’s feet, face to bloodied face on a bed of green and flowers.

  Dorian couldn’t believe it.

  “Your circle was not perfect, magus. Your attendants were not adequately prepared.” Its clear eyes turned down to Finella’s bloodied face. “It was undone with a kiss. As these things often are.”

  Henry watched Dorian’s throat work, swallowing dry with an open mouth.

  “We will not meet again.”

  Voso was gone.

  Dorian orchestrated the concealment of the deaths with detached exactitude. Their robes, clothing, and jewelry were gathered together. The garments were burned, the ashes scattered. The jewelry would be thrown into the foundations of a building under construction in the town.

  They lay the bodies together as they worked. Henry tried to look anywhere but her ruined face, and failed. It was a blackened catastrophe. The face he had kissed, the head that held such high ideals, now shattered carrion.

  A hand on his shoulder. “You’re done, Henry. Go.”

  The sun was breaking through the treetops. Henry’s white robe was wet and brown down the knees and at every hem. His usual clothes were laid out beyond the clearing, near Finella’s and Dysart’
s, like another body.

  His love had been killed before him. And now he would trade her dignity for one slim chance at freedom.

  He no longer knew himself.

  Jukes.

  When Finella turned up missing, Jukes would know. There would be an inquiry. Finella’s mother would come to Harvard. And Jukes would know. He would not know the details, but he would know that Finella had died, and that Henry had been there. And Dysart…when his absence was noticed, that would be more than Jukes would be able to contain.

  Like something rising from a black ocean the reality of what Henry had to do became clear. Leave Boston. Or this thing would track him until it brought him down.

  He walked home with the sun gone but some light remaining.

  After they had burned the clothes, after they had removed the jewelry, Dorian asked that the last be left to him. Henry had not even crouched, touched her, kissed her good-bye.

  He could not remember where he had spent the following day. Only that he was aware of being transcendently exhausted, and burning with thirst. His skin tasted like salt.

  Mrs. Brown’s boardinghouse glowed ghost-pale in the evening light. Figures gathered on the porch like shades, conversing low. Mustaches and truncheons.

  Police.

  Standing in the door, lips moving quickly, hands fluttering, speaking his fill, was Newspaper Jack. An old hand touched down on his shoulder from behind, stilled him, drew him gently inside. Mrs. Brown appeared, anxious. Said very little, and then the door closed.

  The police stood there, hats tucked under their arms, looking squarely at one another. A conclusion had been made.

  The door opened again. Dorian emerged in hat and coat, weighed down with a suitcase in one hand and a heavy package of tied paper in the other. He placed the suitcase down, doffed his hat to the officers, turned, and closed the door behind himself. Then he picked up his luggage, bid a second farewell, and walked down the three wooden steps to the street, limned briefly by the passing of a cab’s lantern, and away from Henry.