The rubber came away easily and where it had crossed at the back I discovered a button, entwined with string. I pulled it to release the flap and peered inside the envelope. The whole interior was coloured black and for a moment I believed the packet to be empty. How pointless. I slipped a finger into the chasm. It hit upon something soft and velvety, so I turned the packet on its side and gently shook until a small pouch slithered onto the des
My heart beat fast in my chest and beads of moisture broke forth on my brow. I took the claret bottle, half-empty now and drank from its mouth. I knew without a single doubt that what I was about to do would change everything. My hands trembled as I pulled the cords at the small bag’s neck and tipped out the contents. A scarab beetle, its back iridescent in the evening light, its legs bound in gold. A tiny vial, containing a thick brown liquid, stoppered with a tiny cork and sealed with wax. And finally, a key.
What to make of it? I searched inside the pouch and tore the packet completely apart – no instructions, no explanation. The key was not particularly ornate and showed signs of rust, its age indeterminable. Whereas the scarab... it looked as though it been stolen from an Egyptian tomb – archaeologists were discovering old pharaohs every day it seemed. But equally it might be a tourist nick-nack. I touched the insect’s legs, each one had been individually encased in rose gold. I found I could pull on them to stretch them out, bend them at the knees. Fascinating.
I had absolutely no idea of the items’ significance. The key clearly opened, or locked something. A box? A door? The intrigue was almost too much to bear. But of the three pieces it was the glass vial that troubled me the most. I had a strong suspicion it held some opiate derivative, and that I’d be required to partake of it. What if I got a taste for it? It would be the beginning of the end.
***
In the fifteen years since the Great War ended my family’s fortunes have floundered. We can no longer afford to employ live-in staff so Marguerite has a local woman visit three mornings a week. Mrs Chadwick’s knock aroused me from my slumber – I had fallen asleep at the desk, saliva crusting between my cheek and the leather, the vial still in my hand.
“Mr Walters. Can you let me in, sir? I’ve come to do your rugs.”
I’m not one to shout through doors. Still firmly clasping the tiny bottle I stumbled to the door and opened it a crack.
“I’m busy, Mrs Chadwick. Can you come back tomorrow or see my wife about...”
“She’s not here. I had to let myself in.” She looked at me then, and I saw her eyes widen. “Are you alright, sir? You seem unwell.” She covered her mouth with the back of a gloved hand. The acrid scent of alcohol on my breath hung between us.
“I am perfectly well. I had some business to attend to and worked late into the early hours. I really should get some sleep now so if you could come back? We’ll pay you for your trouble, of course.”
The woman chewed her lip. Marguerite was her employer; I had never intruded on their arrangement before now.
“Well,” she said. “I suppose as Mrs Walters isn’t here I don’t have much choice.” She sighed, the weight of this inconvenience heavy in her heart and I heard her mutter as she wandered off down the hall. I waited, longer than I would have liked, for her to leave the house.
As soon as the tradesman’s door slammed shut I opened my hand. My mind immediately filled with memories of falling into a heady stupor, dreams of running down endless flights of stairs and all to the sound of the click, click, clicking of Marguerite’s needles.
I drew the vial up to my face. It was full.
***
Despite what I’d told Mrs Chadwick I had no intention of going to bed. It would be a long wait until The Rapture opened at six that evening so I cleaned myself up, making a mess of the shave in the process, then prepared to busy myself for the rest of the day with correspondence. I heard Marguerite come home around eleven and made the effort to apologise.
“It’s not that you’re drunk all the time, Richard. It’s all the secrecy. Why can’t you be more honest with me?” When she was upset her voice lilted with a curious blend of Spanish, of Italian...of a dialect even more archaic. It reminded me of the young bride I, in my taste for the exotic had brought home from a risky business trip to Barcelona thirty years earlier. The novelty of my wife’s golden skin and wild chatter had soon worn thin, however as her face paled to resemble that of other English women and her accent faded to bland.
I bit back a genuine rush of guilt and slipped my arms around her still-tiny waist. Her strange green eyes welled with rare tears and I wanted to lick them, such was the colour of oyster beneath the black lashes.
She pushed me away. “Why are you looking at me like that? You scare me.”
I scared myself.
“I’m going out,” I said, and took off to the park via the Post Office; the vial, the scarab and the key in my pocket.
***
One sees an eclectic mix when occupying a park bench for any extended period of time. Young couples, inexperienced but full of the madness of infatuation flirt with each other until they’re dizzy. Mature lovers on the other hand are more sure of themselves, and know exactly where an afternoon’s promenade will lead. I too used to stop and flirt a little with the nannies and young mothers that brought their wards here to play in the gardens and mazes. Lately though, I had kept to myself. My intrigue no longer lay in observing those in plain sight, instead I preferred to wait beside walls of hedges, listening for sharp, rising breaths to emanate from behind them, shaking the branches, rustling the leaves. Discreet love; hidden in the open air, paid-for or otherwise.
That evening my curiosity was fulfilled when I witnessed a moustachioed old goat run out from a small grove of trees with a girl half his age. They scurried away together, giggling lightly before separating with a snatched kiss. Moments later, adjusting his suit trousers, another man emerged from the same spot. He turned the other way, and walked straight towards me.
“Babylon,” I whispered.
“Eight o’clock,” he replied, and passed me by without a further glance. I looked at my fob-watch. Two more hours yet, but The Rapture’s doors would already be open.
I made my way quickly to Bishop Street. I’d withdrawn sufficient funds to repay my debt and planned to spend a pleasant evening, treating any companions that happened to stop at my table. Babylon had a thirst on him; he always cost me a pretty penny. Tonight though, when he arrived and I was on my fourth glass of port, he slunk into the booth beside me and waved his hand when I offered him a drink. He reeked of tobacco; a strange, sweet smell that repulsed yet enticed me. I didn’t have time to ask if he could procure me some before he was tugging at my sleeve and whispering some indecipherable chant into my ear.
“Come,” he said finally. “It is time.”
I don’t know where I’d expected to go, but it certainly wasn’t back along my own street...to my own house!
Lights flickered at all the windows and I wondered briefly what on earth Marguerite would make of my guest. I needn’t have worried – she wasn’t home – again.
Babylon had refused to speak to me on our short walk to Princes Street but now that we stood in my hallway he began talking at such speed I couldn’t understand the man. He reached a climax of babble and stopped, gulping an almighty breath of air.
“We must prepare.”
He marched into the library and a wave of cold realisation rippled through my skin as he approached the bookshelves. He had been here before. To prove it he reached up and pulled down a tattered volume, European Saints and Martyrs by Izzard G. Welch. Babylon carefully opened the book; its spine creaked as he turned the gilt-edged pages.
“Here,” he said and pointed at a short entry, no more than three paragraphs long.
Santa Margarita of Cortona – died 1297. Canonised 1728.
I’d seen this before. Once, shortly after my marriage. I said so now.
“My wife, she’s named for this saint. It’s tradit
ional in Europe.”
“Read it,” Babylon said, ignoring me. “It speaks of her, and of my origins and name too.”
My shoulders high, my lips tight I read the entry with some heathen indignation. This poor girl had been raised in Cortona, far north of Rome and was evidently a free spirit for she “mixed with undesirables” and rebelled against her father and step-mother. Finding herself with child after witnessing her lover’s murdered body suspended from a tree she was struck with such an overwhelming state of penitence that it could only be concluded she had been possessed by an evil spirit.
I laughed out loud and read on.
Margarita’s confession, once she had repented, told of a mythical beast, a wicked entity that had regularly assaulted her. When asked its origin the creature replied, “My name is Veltis, and I am one of those whom Solomon by virtue of his spells, confined in a copper cauldron at Babylon, but when the Babylonians, in the hope of finding treasure dug up the cauldron and opened it, we all made our escape. Since that time our efforts have been directed to the destruction of righteous persons, and I have long been striving to turn thee from the course thou hast embraced.”
The smile fell from my mouth. Copper cauldron? The man standing beside me...the man named after the city of Babylon, had spoken of this from our very first meeting, hinting at what the cauldron contained.
“Do you have the key?” he asked. I felt inside my jacket – the pouch had gone.
“It was here when I left the house. I must have dropped it at The Rapture.”
Panic welled in my soul; my one chance and I’d lost it through sheer damned carelessness. Babylon’s lips curled back over large, grey teeth. I could barely tell if he were grinning or sneering.
“Then all is well,” he said, to my surprise. “Come.”
The kitchen is my wife’s domain where she prepares Mediterranean meals inspired by her grandmothers. It suits me well, but I can honestly say I venture there barely once a year. Babylon opened the double-doors leading into the room and headed straight for the larder. In my confusion I did not speak, and when he pushed aside a row of jars containing dried pulses and exposed a rope and pulley set into a panel, I felt the breath steal away from my lungs. The entire wall slid aside as he tugged the rope to reveal a stairway that descended deep into the bowels of the house. Thirty years we had lived at Princes Street, and I’d had no idea. I made to follow Babylon but he held up his hand.
“We must wait. She will call us. Be patient.”
He reached into his coat and pulled out an ornate cigarette case. Inside, neatly rolled, lay a dozen or so black cheroots. He offered me one and had lit the match before I even accepted, which of course I did. Goodness knows what Marguerite would make of us smoking in her kitchen, especially this pungent blend but I no longer cared as my mind quickly began to relax. Happiness, exhilaration even, teased at my senses and I became incredibly aware of the soul of everything around me. The containers on the shelves throbbed, boasting of their ingredients. Dust motes sparkled and lingered, rushing from my fingers when I reached for them.
Babylon watched me with some amusement. He drew on his cheroot and blew the smoke into my open mouth. It tasted of gardens, of the earth and her bounty. Somewhere in the distance came the rhythmic sound of drumming and I found myself twitching to its ritual tune. We finished smoking and Babylon grew serious once again.
“Follow me.”
We descended the stairway, going deeper surely than the very foundations of the house until we arrived at a cross-roads of tunnels, lit along the way with torches of bare flame.
“Which way?” I asked, grabbing Babylon’s arm.
“Which way do you think?” That lip-curling sneer again. How was I supposed to know? But I closed my eyes and listened. The drumming came from only one direction. When I opened my eyes, Babylon had gone. I followed my ears, taking unsteady steps along a cramped tunnel towards the music, if it could be called such a thing. What I discovered at the end of the passageway elevated my reluctant fear into pure awe.
The chasm I entered was vast, the pounding rhythm so loud it vibrated through my entire body until I shook with it.
“Dance.”
A voice I didn’t recognise came through the air, repeating itself dance, dance, dance until I obeyed and began to stamp my feet and spiral, my arms wide...
And then I saw her. The woman Babylon had promised me. She danced before me naked on a stage of black soil, her skin and hair blue in the distorted light of the cavern. Long fingers undulated as she pulsed to the music, writhing in a personal ecstasy. I wanted to possess her, wanted her to possess me – and in that moment I realised I knew her name and if I said it out loud I would be lost forever.
I couldn’t help it.
“Veltis.”
The drumming stopped. The flames dipped. Sweat soaked my clothes and when I looked up from my sorry state the woman had taken her leave. The sense of loss forced me to my knees and I called again, offering my very soul for just one caress, begging to be her slave.
Gradually the light from the torches grew brighter, reflecting off the rough-hewn walls and ceiling. Every surface billowed as if covered in a silken web; a gentle breeze chilled my damp flesh and I squinted, unable to understand the sights around me.
A kiss at the back of my neck forced me to turn around; Babylon stood inches from me – nude but for a length of cobalt blue fabric tied around his hips and groin, open at the front to expose his erect manhood. His eyes glowed gold, reflecting the flames. He moved towards my mouth with open lips; I leaned forward to receive his tongue but instead, he spoke.
“Drink.”
He brought the familiar glass vial into the space where our breath mingled; the stopper had been removed. He took hold of my chin to force my head back, just slightly, and poured the thick unction into my throat. Immediately my world took on a different hue. I slipped to the ground and watched as angels and demons were projected onto the cavern walls; not static portrayals but living, writhing entities fighting and playing, laughing and killing. Creatures and beasts, magnificent beasts ran and slithered amongst them, copulating and destroying everything in their wake.
I saw mountains rise and fall; great swathes of land drowning under torrents of rain, freezing and melting again and again. Ash and lava burst into the sky in violent expulsions, and from there set the earth on fire. Animals and birds and fish burst into view followed by people, a few to start with, but growing rapidly in number and height and shade of skin to fill the world with a palette of populations. And there - just when I feared my heart and mind would give out with the speed and abundance of sights - the vision faded.
“Don’t stop,” I slurred, wanting the hallucinations.
My plea was rewarded. I found myself staring at an immense hall with marbled floors and pillars. In the centre, a hearth fire raged from a great hole, and above the hole swung a substantial copper cauldron the height of two grown men. Its edges glowed with verdigris, steam seeped from its lid. I watched as the room filled with people; beautiful, tall and dark-skinned with green eyes the colour of oysters. I gasped and the memory stirred my heart and my groin.
A man...Babylon! approached the vessel and raised his hands, bringing the swing to a gentle halt. He clapped twice, ordering the removal of the cauldron lid. The crowd of people cheered, and from the cooking-pot flew the most astonishing creatures I have ever seen; diaphanous beings, pulsing and throbbing with all manner of colours. Some had wings, others had tails – all had claws and the sharpest of teeth but this did not disturb the onlookers, rather they welcomed the bites and scratches of the creatures that flew amongst them until the last of the crowd collapsed to the marble floor, bleeding and dribbling in rapture, for that is surely what I had witnessed.
The spirits or demons – I suspected they were something else entirely - whirled about the room for a little longer before returning to the cauldron, one by one, like dogs to their master’s feet. One of the beings lingered before sli
pping back inside the pot. Its iridescent wings closed over its back, its legs of gold clicking, and it seemed to look directly at me – with a woman’s eyes.
The lid was replaced and the scene changed again.
Behind me, I heard a scuttling of feet. I turned, as quickly as I was able in my drugged state but only Babylon stood there and I saw tears on his majestic cheekbones. I returned my gaze to the chasm, with its visions and mysteries and revelations of a world I truly wanted to believe in. Seeing my own wife indulging in carnal activities with an entire room full of men and women shocked me into sobriety. I staggered to my feet.
“Marguerite?”
Babylon joined me.
“Santa Margarita of Cortona,” he whispered as I watched the woman I’d once loved labour over genitalia, as those around her laboured over hers.
“I don’t understand,” I said. But then it became clear. In the corner of the room – the cauldron, brown now with age, lay tipped on its side. The lid had been bolted on and the whole contraption was bound with chains. This scene was surely millennia after the adoration ritual I had witnessed only moments before.
My Marguerite stood up, wiping her mouth. She shouted some command in a foreign tongue and was approached by a man, his head bowed. He handed Marguerite a key - I recognised it from the pouch, the very same - but this one glimmered in the light. The shadows in the room continued to ebb and flow in copulation but more subdued as the orgyists lazily observed their mistress unlock the copper cauldron.
The brightness of the earlier rituals had sullied here into rotten, warped hedonism. And now, only three beings slipped from the unlocked cauldron and I wondered briefly what had become of the others. These tragic beasts were no longer translucent but bloated, skins scaled and ripped. They sloped across the room in search of nourishment, which they found easily enough amongst the indolent whoredom of bodies too addled to lift themselves from the floor. Even as the creatures scratched and nipped and ate and drank they soon seeped it all back out again through bleeding orifices and weeping, open sores.
The Bestiarum Vocabulum (TRES LIBRORUM PROHIBITUM) Page 34
