After the, ‘Thank you for seeing me,’ and ‘I hope business is going well,’ Combs got down to the nitty gritty of her visit. “It’s just an old book, really,” she said with honey in her voice. “It’s up for auction at Sotheby’s, well ahem, it should be up for auction at Sotheby’s, but I’ve done an outside deal with the current owner and am buying it outright. You know, I absolutely despise the ugly rigmarole of bidding, and complete and utter anonymity is a key issue here. Um…after the incident with the last item you procured for me, I know you can be trusted to keep my dealings to yourself.”
Pale pink lips formed a large smile, revealing Combs’ perfect, shiny white teeth.
Even in her best black suit, Cassey felt scruffy in Combs’ presence. She returned the smile, and said, “So it’s a simple job. You want me to go pick up a book for you. So…” She stopped there, allowed a silence to fall between the pair. “What’s the catch?”
“Aha! Now this is why I like you,” Combs said, and leaving her purse on her lap, removed her sunglasses. Large brown eyes, heavy with mascara, twinkled, along with a predatory smile that Cassey had grown to hate. “The book, they say, is cursed.”
Cassey blinked slowly and said, “You’re shitting me, Miss Combs.” It wasn’t disbelief that had her saying and thinking profanities, but the fact she had dealt with a mysterious, supposedly cursed book before. She never took such things lightly, not now, even with the wolves at her door. “No, I’m sorry, but no,” Cassey continued. “I’ll have nothing to do with it.”
Miss Combs pouted. “I honestly didn’t think anything as paltry as a curse would deter you, Cassandra Bane. Anyway, I’ll give you forty thousand dollars, half now, the other half on receipt of the manuscript.” She proceeded to place her sunglasses on Cassey’s desk, then opening the clasp on her purse, dug into it and removed a large brown envelope. She dropped it loudly before Cassey, then closed the purse and replaced her sunglasses.
Cassey eyed the envelope hungrily, then unable to resist, reached over and pulled it to her side of the desk.
“Damn you Combs,” she whispered.
“We’re all damned my dear,” Miss Combs said, and flashed her teeth with a snarl of a smile. “It’s how we find ways to enjoy life regardless, that’s what counts.”
With a sigh and a nod, Cassey said, “Okay, where do I start.”
Combs nodded towards the envelope. “The address you need is noted on the CD inside. There’s a little light reading there so you know what you’re getting into. So that’s it, a simple book collection. Call me when you have it.”
Cassey grimaced and felt like saying something about Combs’s ‘simple’ claim, but instead replied, “Of course, I’ll have it for you in a day or so.”
“Excellent,” Combs said, and her face split into a beaming smile. “Well I must be going. My driver is waiting.” At this Combs stood, offered a gloved hand that Cassey reluctantly shook, and left her office. To Cassey’s chagrin, her vanilla scent remained.
Cassey waited a few minutes before tearing open the envelope, which she did eagerly, emptying the contents onto her desk. Bundles of notes, twenty thousand dollars in crisp new bills, fell in a heavy pile before her. Within the pile lay a compact disc in a white paper sleeve. Cassey picked up one of the wads, flicked through it, then sent the door to her office a foul look. Dealing with that eerie woman felt a little like selling her soul, but damn, the money was good. She dropped the bundle of notes and removed the compact disc from the pile.
Housed in a sleeve with a plastic circular window in one side, across the disk the words, ‘The Starry Wisdom Library: The Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time—Digital Edition,’ were printed in black gothic script.
“Hmmm,” Cassey said and flipped it over to read a note written in spidery blue script: ‘Read the entry on ‘The book of Nonterraqueous’ and below this, ‘Mr P Lake, 180 Davenport Ave., New Rochelle, New York. ’ It bore the signature ‘J Combs’ at the bottom. Cassey didn’t know what the J stood for, and didn’t particularly care.
“Okay then, let’s see what you have for me.” She pulled her laptop from the left side of her desk, lifted the lid, and with the machine already booted from earlier, pressed the button on the side to open up the CD drive.
She slipped the disc inside, closed the drive, and waited a few moments until a light brown rectangle appeared in the centre of the screen. The words ‘Starry Wisdom Library Loading,’ were displayed in the box, then beneath: ‘View Entries?” Cassey pressed her finger to the mouse pad and moved the curser towards the box, tapping it to invoke a full screen image.
The Starry Wisdom Library: The Catalogue of the Greatest Occult Book Auction of All Time
The script was gold lettered with black borders, with a light brown background behind it covered in heraldic designs. Beneath the word ‘library,’ and centering the screen, stood a shield shaped icon with a golden eye within. The eye had a three lobed pupil, and was surrounded by golden spines and flames. Cassey moved the cursor around the words and when she touched the shield, the arrow became a hand.
She clicked, and the screen turned white. It held a long list of entries down its centre.
She scrolled past ‘Dedication,’ and ‘Acknowledgements,’ ‘Introduction,’ ‘Prefactory Note,’ and ‘Learned Personages.’ Just how old is this catalogue anyway? then paused at something titled, ‘Summary of Lots on Offer.’
Cassey clicked on it and started to read down a new screen of entries that bore paragraphs detailing the titles and cosmetic conditions of various oddly titles books. She scanned the names quickly, reading titles such as ‘The Black Book of the Skull,’ ‘The Daemonolorum,’ others with foreign sounding names, and guessed she was perusing a digitalized edition of some old auction catalogue of books on witchcraft and demonology. Of course it’s witchcraft and all that other vile crap, otherwise why would Combs be interested? She thought this and shook her head, scrolled down a little further and under a subsection titled, ‘EIGHTEENTH CENTURY,’ read the words: ‘30. JACOBS, Curtis. The Book of Nonterraqueous: or of Things Not of the Earth, Air and Sea.’ Her cursor touched the entry, and Cassey pressed down.
The link took her to a lengthy excerpt on The Book of Nonterraqueous. Cassey read through it slowly, wanting to memorize the relevant points. The book had been written by a man named Curtis Jacobs, a nineteenth century mystic who had gained some notoriety and a small cult following in the 1830s due to his ability to answer impossible questions during his trance states. It was after one of his trances that Jacobs claimed to have encountered a female angel named ‘Bath Kol,’ an entity that existed upon another plane called ‘The Dreamlands.’ He claimed to have met her there repeatedly during the years 1834 and 1835, where she narrated the contents of The Book of Nonterraqueous, which he transcribed onto paper.
According to the entry, the book held descriptions of various spiritual planes, their inhabitants and deities, with instructions on how to reach the planes, both through trance and physically. There were also instructions on how to summon the beings from the planes, including Bath Kol herself.
In 1836, Jacobs had fifty copies of the book published at his own expense, and apparently, the rituals inside worked. In the first month of its sale, mainly to Jacobs’ friends and followers, seven owners disappeared and five died, murdered in horrible circumstances. A disturbed Jacobs went on to destroy all remaining copies of the book, including those he could retrieve from the estates of the dead and missing owners. His followers’ faith in him did not diminish however, and a year later, when he himself disappeared, the small cult claimed he had transcended to one of the spirit planes described in the book.
Then in 1838, after a group séance formed to contact Jacobs, the cult was found dead, some to suicide, some to murder, with two members missing and presumed guilty of the killings.
Cassey could well understand why Combs wanted to own such a book. It was right up her dark alley, and according to the auction cat
alogue, the very copy used by the followers in their fateful, final meeting had been the one up for auction in 1877, complete with bloodstains. Cassey assumed, but of course couldn’t be certain, that the book up for auction at Sotheby’s was the same copy.
To Cassey, the book’s history was on par with Tutankhamun’s “curse,” for old books often had sordid, mysterious histories, and the older they got the more devilish prestige they appeared to gain. She certainly wouldn’t want to test her pessimism by reading the book however.
When the text ended, she scrolled down to a page bearing a black and white ink drawing she assumed was taken from the book.
The illustration depicted a strange creature, shaped like a scaly cone topped by two back-to-back female torsos. Bald, naked and full breasted, each had wings instead of arms. The heads bore haughty expressioned, Elfen faces, high browed with pointed ears. The wings, protruding forward from the shoulder blades, had sharp sword like protuberances in place of feathers. Beneath the illustration was written: ‘The Angel Bath Kol.’ Cassey scrutinized the picture. Was it just her imagination that made the faces resemble Combs’? Perhaps it was the arrogant demeanour the artist had skilfully portrayed. Whatever it was, the picture offended her, and with the entry finished, she was quick to close the program.
“Think of the money,” she said, and began scooping her payment back inside the envelope.
***
Cassey found herself running down a yellow-walled corridor, with fluorescent lights flickering overhead. Doors stood to her left and right, white doors with bars on the windows. She was back in the asylum, a terrible place Cassey revisited often in her darkest nightmares. Something huge rumbled behind her, a thing that rolled and stamped and squeezed itself down the corridor, growing nearer by the second. She couldn’t look back, for the thought of seeing what pursued her made her weakening legs feel like jelly. That it was a horror, an obscenity, a sanity-blasting fiend, of this she had no doubt. The corridor continued, its termination remaining distant no matter how far she ran. And the horror was closing.
Cassey noticed an open door ahead and to her left, and taking a risk, darted into the room, slamming the door closed with her back. The horror rumbled past, and finally Cassey had the opportunity to get her breath back, gasping loudly as she slowed her panicked breathing. Her eyes, quickly growing accustomed to the room’s darkness, revealed she wasn’t alone. A man stood with his back to her in the small, cell-like space, a thin emaciated form dressed in sagging white pajamas.
“H-Hello?” she said, and he turned his bald, yellow-tinged head to her. His eyes bulged horribly from the sockets, for there were no lids to frame them. Feeling renewed fear, Cassey pushed herself against the door. The man’s thin lips opened to reveal yellow stained teeth, and he issued a shrill unnatural, drone.
The sound continued as Cassey swam up from the nightmare, and a few seconds later she was groggily reaching for the cellphone on her bedside table. Her first attempt at retrieving it failed, and it clattered back down. She gripped it tighter, brought it to her face, and flipped her thumb across the screen to activate it.
Cassey squinted to focus her vision, and found the time read ‘4:42,’ and beneath that: ‘CALLER UNKNOWN.’
She rolled onto her back, tapped the answer icon and put the phone to her ear.
“Hello?”
Cassey waited for an answer and heard silence for her trouble.
“Who is it?” she asked, growing angry, and was about to sever the connection when a voice, male and quiet by distance, said, “Miss Bane, is that you?”
“Speaking,” Cassey replied. “Who is this?”
“Friend,” came the reply. “The book you are seeking. We want it.”
“Uh, this is way too early for this kind of shit.” Cassey yawned and shook her head.
“Whatever she is offering, we can offer more. Meet?” the distant voice continued, and at this point Cassey had had quite enough of her mysterious caller.
“No dice. A deal is a deal,” she said, and severing the connection, tossed her cellphone to the bedroom floor.
Someone else after the book? Maybe Combs scuppering that auction rubbed someone up the wrong way. She was too tired for further speculation however, and rolled over, curling herself up in a ball to embrace the remainder of her night’s sleep.
***
The next morning, after spending some time working at the office, Cassey climbed into her silver Toyota Venza parked outside Freedom House, the 25th Street building from which she worked. After starting the engine and fastening her safety belt, she tapped the address Combs had given her into her GPS. It was a simple enough route, she found after scanning through the digital map: she had to turn off 25th, drive down 23rd until she reached the East River, then it was a fairly straight journey down FDR Drive before the Interstate. Her GPS estimated a fifty-minute journey, but that depended on traffic.
Cassey released the handbrake and set off, following her male-voiced GPS’s instructions, although she was already familiar with a good part of the route. It was all clear driving until, after turning left at the East River, she reached FDR Drive where she was soon forced to slow down for road works. She watched men in white helmets and fluorescent yellow vests stand around ditches for a while, then her thoughts turned to her dream, and her current journey. Was the dream a portent, a warning of things to come? She hoped not, for she had dealt with one cursed book already, and what where the odds of her encountering another?
The traffic moved again, and a few miles later she was driving over Robert F Kennedy Bridge across the Harlem River. A fairly straight drive along the Interstate followed and then she crossed a second river, the Hudson. As she drove along the New England Thruway, the scenery around her changed from grass and grey industrial to a border of forest flanking either side the road. This scenery continued for some minutes, and seeing signs for New Rochelle, Cassey realized she was near her destination. Following the GPS she turned right off the Thruway onto Drake Avenue, a wide street of mostly red brick and white panelled houses. A few more streets and avenues followed, then she was on Davenport Avenue and nearing the end of her journey. The avenue had two wide lanes, the properties to either side surrounded by freshly cut lawn and trees, some almost invisible behind tall masses of foliage. The GPS told her to stop outside one such property, a red-panelled, two-story structure with a grey-shingled roof. It had no driveway, but there was a path between the trees and bushes to the house’s right.
Cassey pulled up and checked her watch. The time was just after eleven, meaning the journey had taken an hour. Fairly satisfied with this, she left the car and stepped upon the path, brushing past overgrown bushes to follow it left towards a brown front door with dirty glass panels set within its upper half.
This didn’t feel right to her. The area was too overgrown, the house, with its lichen stained panels and peeling paint, just too unkempt in appearance.
Perhaps the owner is down on his luck, she guessed, and hence the dodgy book deal with Combs. Perhaps the curse got him. Cassey giggled nervously. She paused at the door, noted the cracks in the glass and knocked.
There was silence for a few moments, then Cassey heard a shuffling behind the door. This was followed by bolts being pulled, four of them, then the removal of a chain and finally, a key being turned.
Someone’s paranoid, she thought, and the door opened half a dozen inches then stopped at another chain.
A man’s small, unshaven face stared up at her, pale and wrinkled with a grey head of hair. He squinted as he sized her up, perhaps through suspicion, perhaps due to the transition from shadows to daylight, and said: “Combs gave me a description, and I guess you fit.” He smiled but it wasn’t a friendly one. “Hold on,” he continued, and disappeared back into the darkness of the house.
Cassey stood there feeling uncomfortable and tried to work out the man’s accent. British? No…that isn’t it. She settled on Australian and heard him shuffle back to the door.
His face peeked through the gap, as did something bundled in brown paper.
Cassey stopped it with her hand. “Hey, Mister Lake? I take it you’ve been paid for this, haven’t you?”
The man nodded, said, “Don’t worry about that. Now please, just accept the book.”
She gripped the package, pulled it through the gap in the door, and felt like she had just agreed to some dark compact.
“Good luck,” Lake said, and a second later the door was shut and the bolts were quickly replaced.
“Huh. Thanks… I guess.” He couldn’t wait to be rid of it, and me. Cassey looked from the door to the package. Fairly heavy in her hand, the brown paper, neatly folded, was taped like a Christmas present. She turned and made her way back to her car.
Back on the street, she walked to the back of her Toyota, unlocking the trunk to tuck the book inside a small green rucksack that sat between the spare tire and the toolbox. She closed and locked the trunk, and a few minutes later was turning the car around to drive back down Davenport Neck.
Upon reaching an intersection, Cassey examined her GPS map and decided to use a more scenic route back to the office, taking the left turn down Pelham Road. She drove between trees and wide lawns leading to red brick apartment buildings, and soon enough reached Shore Road, the buildings being replaced by thick woods. She was the only driver on the road, and this combined with the nice scenery soothed her so much she unwound the window and relaxed. Things were going smoothly, for a change, and soon she would have the book out of her hands and hopefully, Combs out of her life for a while.
Movement catching her eye in the rear view mirror, Cassey saw an ice blue Cadillac speeding behind her. There was plenty of room for it to overtake, but sticking her hand out of the window, she waved it along regardless. The car sped up beside her and Cassey saw a pale-faced female passenger staring back at her. Then to her shock, the car veered right, slamming into her. A violent jolt followed, the heavy crunch of the impact making her lose control of the wheel.
Within Stranger Aeons Page 5
