* * *
MING XIAN
I enter the yin realms to find that I’ve become haunted. The burning historical site is quite visible here among the shadows, the terrible stench and angry flames not offset by any fresh breeze or living scents. I can hear the steady refrain of small tears in the shroud between worlds as more and more of the fire’s victims fall through into death. And I hear the ensuing screams; it hasn’t taken long for predators to catch the scent and gather around, and I lack the means to drive more than a few of the soul-eating beasts off.
Some of the ghosts around the periphery of the fire manage to scramble up ghostly ravines before the beasts notice them. The ones coming in my direction see the vitality of my aura and flock to me instinctually. Like living people in shock but more so, they lack the strength of coherent thought. They know only that something terrible has happened to them and that they must find relief even before they find answers. I seem less dazed than them, and therefore, in their muddled minds I am the sum of mother, nurse, priest and judge—The One Who Knows in all her facets.
Fortunately for them, I do know a fair amount. I lead as many as I can up over the nearest crest and down the other side. Here are small caves near the waterline, flooded in the living world when dams raised the river level in the late forties. The caves were important hiding and meeting places in the early decades of the revolution, though, and the passion invested in them protects them still. Doors made of the rebels’ memories of concealed stone and wood let the new ghosts duck inside and shield themselves from the hunting beasts. We can hear their growls outside, and we will know that it’s safe to leave when quiet returns.
I look from one ghostly face to the next, and almost weep when I see that one of them is my friend, Dou. She doesn’t recognize me; she has the blank look common to so many of the recently dead. She can say nothing but a few muttered words like “help” and “run, ” and the ones that chill me, “Red eye, red eye. ” As she says this, she points at the eyes of someone still vivid in her memory. The others take up the chant, “Red eye, red eye, ” and they all point at one eye and then another of someone they imagine standing in their midst. Their intensity ebbs and flows for most of an hour, before they all gradually wind back down to the typical postmortem daze.
Whoever or whatever it was with the red eye was presumably the last thing they saw while alive, and quite likely was responsible for the fire. A malicious yang-attuned magician might call forth burning yang and then stride through it in search of his (or her) prey. It might also be some predator of the yang realms, pulled across the mirrorlands by such a magician and sent to hunt amid the flames it would find very comfortable. I don’t know, and since it’ll be some while before these souls recover their coherence, speculation is almost certainly a waste of time.
The noise beyond the caves seems to have largely settled down, so I take a chance on stepping outside. I leave the new ghosts behind me.
The hunting beasts have left deep tracks in the shadowy mud around our cave, but apparently never quite picked up our scent by the threshold, and they are gone. Quickly I climb the ridge and see that the fire’s almost burned itself out. It has very little yin force now: what’s left in the material world must be mostly smoldering ruins. Here, the debris of the halls and their valued contents lie in pieces, which will take hours or days to coalesce into relic forms. In a week or two, perhaps, there will he a complete memorial of the site, ready for the Jade Emperor’s soldiers to take over for their master.
(If, that is, there were either the master or the soldiers to still do the job. I suppose that as things are now, the remaining soldiers must huddle in the great palace, and the maelstrom winds will take this place apart once more. )
Still unsettled by the new ghosts’ chant, I look up and all around for anything that might fit the description “red eye. ” I find nothing. The flames bum white and gray rather than red, and the storm clouds high overhead have an occasional vivid yellow or green flash of lightning, but no red. The moon would be bone and ash if I could see it, and the sun would be its usual pale self, I presume. In any event, the clouds screen both of them. The red eyes have apparently receded for the moment, perhaps hunting me elsewhere. It would no doubt be handy to have some defense, and I think about descending to pick up as intact a relic pistol or rifle as I can find among the now-cooling ruins, but something tells me that it’s not entirely safe there yet.
Intuition reaps its reward as I watch. A straggler ghost rises out of a two-story-high pile of stones that have not yet begun to reassemble their lost shape. He wears a military uniform but lacks the air of command, and it takes me just a moment to realize that he must be one of the actors who delivers great speeches in the slightly sanitized style of the revolutionary heroes. Despite his slow start, he seems less dazed than my charges did, and he proceeds purposefully through the labyrinth of ruins toward the Yanan road. Unfortunately for him, at least one of the beasts remained behind. He doesn’t even have time to cry out before it leaps from its concealment behind an arched doorway and rips through his neck, releasing a bubbling hiss of ectoplasm. Where there’s one, I think, there’s likely more. Weaponry will have to wait.
* * *
WILLIAM
“Okay, Terry, ” I say, “you’ve got my attention. Tell me what’s up. ”
We’ve adjourned from the airport lounge to the hotel room I reserved as a base of operations. This time we’ve got something to drink that actually is vodka, or at least a much better approximation, and I’m feeling pretty comfortable. Jet lag will beat the shit out of my rest later, but I’ll deal with that when it comes. For now I’m plenty awake, wondering what the hell my old friend is up to and still feeling pretty sure that I’ll have to kill him before much more time goes by.
“You weren’t too far off, ” he says after another long sip, “about that guru thing. After I split from the Adepts, I did spend quite a while putzing around in search of someone who’d tell me the real story. You know what things are like on the fringes of the Traditions"—I nod at that—“so you can probably list most of the folks I hung out with, the first few years. ”
“But none of them would show you that table trick. I’m not even sure I understand it myself, assuming it was real. ” I keep that in mind as by far the most probable explanation. Nearly everything that the credulous think of as magic is purely a matter of perception. It is a fucked-up and disorderly universe, but less so than they’d like it to be. I’ve got both physical shielding and extensive training in mental discipline to resist the effects of most kinds of manipulation; I also realize that no defense is perfect (just as no offense is), and I figure that self-scrutiny is always, always, always in order.
He smiles and nods at that. “You’re wondering how you can establish that I’m not tricking you. We can work out a protocol for that later, maybe. For now let me tell you the rest of the story. "
“I’m all ears. ” I feel a sudden hot tingling all over my skin, and for the briefest instant I am all ears, a human-shaped mass of ears. It’s gone before I can even fully register what’s going on. It leaves me badly shaken.
Terry, meanwhile, is just about laughing his ass off. “C’mon, man, it was great when Tex Avery did it in that one cartoon and it’s still great. Loosen “Fuck you, Terry. Nihilism hasn’t improved your taste any. Get on with the story. ”
“Yes, sir, ” he says with a sarcastic salute. “So there I was, scrounging my way through one magical scam after another, and gradually becoming more and more disillusioned with the whole thing. That was when I started noticing just how much things would break down when I was right on the brink of full-bore trance or of passing out, whether I was trying to introduce anything deliberate or not. ”
“Oh yeah, ” I interrupt. “Very common problem with all sorts of semi-conscious psychic phenomena. ”
“Still hoping for a definition, aren’t you? ” He sneers rather than laughing this time- “That’s the crucial difference righ
t there, really. I looked at what was happening to me and took it where it led. You’re still busy trying to shovel it into a mold that you find convenient. Or ‘true, ’ or whatever you may want to call it. All the same thing in the end. ” He leans forward earnestly. “Definition is a lie. ”
I’m not impressed at that. Despite his power, whatever it may turn out to be, this is the stuff of college philosophy, and not very good philosophy at that. “You do realize just how tautological this all is. ”
“Ha. Fuck your meta-discourse levels. I’m just telling you what’s left after all the molds break and you’re standing in the midst of raw experience for the first time. There isn’t anything at all unless you make it happen. That’s as true of words and numbers as it is of gods and demons. ” He spreads his hands out and claps them together. “Nothing at all. Not even air to push around. That’s just one more part of the conventional wisdom. ”
“Can I just disbelieve in you and start my time in the airport over again? ”
“Sure. Go right ahead. ” He pauses for a moment and looks for all the world like he expects me to make something happen. “No? Okay. Your loss, my gain. Pretty literally. ” He takes another sip. “I’d miss booze. Anyway. I started doing some controlled experiments, and I found that if I damaged my perceptions in just the right way, the world would start drifting around, and would keep doing it until I healed the damage and started perceiving it again in a consistent fashion. And I discovered that there are some other folks who’ve been studying this thing for a long time now. "
“You found your guru in a black hole. ”
“Pretty close, spunky. One night I let go of my whole hotel room. The rest of the city was still there, starting with the hallway, but it was all miles away. Close up at hand, there was just me and nothing else. Not even blackness, since there wasn’t space to lack color. It was the best absence there ever was. Wasn’t. Whatever. I loved it, I knew that much. ” He looks genuinely happy with the memories, too, and I begin to wonder just how far his mind has gone. “And then the other guy came in, walking out of the hallway and into the emptiness my mind had made. Nothing very flashy to look at, like a somewhat less ugly young Humphrey Bogart, but there when nothing else was. So that got my attention. ”
I’d wondered a little if this might be an impostor, but that kind of movie reference ruled out some of the obvious possibilities. It’s a thing Terry only did around people he was comfortable and relaxed with, and he wasn’t even always aware of it. It’s just how his mind made descriptions, apparently. “And what did Humphrey want to sell you, besides encyclopedias? ”
“Just about the first thing he said to me, actually, was ‘Have you considered the advantages of a really fine set of encyclopedias? ’ Then he told me the rest, about the power in the void and about how much our power to dissolve the world depends on understanding the specific illusions to be undone. That’s where the encyclopedias come into play, you see: more data. ”
“Terry, you are fucking insane, and you’re also dangerous. ”
“Okay, Bill. Shoot me. ”
“Eh? "
"I know you’ve got a gun stashed in that chair of yours somewhere. Take whatever you think will help you shoot well and then shoot me down. ” “You’re serious. ” I peer at him.
“Absolutely. This is just wasting time if you’re going to keep fucking around with second-guessing me. I need you to pay more attention. ”
“Okay, then, ” I say, and get my shooter’s kit ready. Light-regularizing lenses for the glasses, for low-light enhancement without flash risk. High-decibel earplugs. An amphetamine cocktail plus some tailored neurotransmitter enzymes for energy without the quivering. Finally the gun itself, sighting through a little slit in the armrest. Three shots in quick order.
The first one hits him and the bullet simply disappears. The second one fires as usual but emerges slowly, and loses momentum with every inch traveled, dropping inert to the floor a foot shy of Terry. The last one doesn’t fire at all, but a gray-red goo drips out of the gun barrel. No further shots fire, no matter how I press the trigger or fool with the mechanism.
"There, you see? I got bored with being shot at a long time ago, and I just don’t pay enough attention to bullets anymore. You should be glad I do still pay attention to my friends. ” I still think he’s out of his mind, but I have to accept that there’s something going on worthy of note, either in my mind or out in the world. “So where was I? Oh, yes, the guy without the encyclopedias. It turns out that there are people who like to live in the void. Probably the direct descendants of the original human beings, since it looks like we emerged spontaneously from the void and created the rest of the world to support our delusional sense of how things ought to be. Most of us never get loose of that, but some do, and I’d just proven myself worth their attention. ”
“Uh huh. That’s, well, not bad as initiation stories go. ”
“You still don’t get it, but that’s okay. See, I’m here because I think you might get it, with a little effort. I’m from no government and I’m here to help you, so to speak. ”
“You want to initiate me. ” Not a question, just making sure I understand.
He takes another sip, and empties his glass. “You got it. Not all at once right now. It’s just that I found myself suddenly wondering what my old Bill was up to, and then the next thing I knew I was here, watching you get off that nice little rental jet of yours. So I came up behind you, and you know the rest. I figure I owe you one, with all the stuff going down. ”
“Like what? I mean, I know what I’d mean if I said that, ” I explain a little pedantically and a little drunkenly, “but I don’t know what you mean by it. ”
“I mean the fucking end of the world, man. Game over, do not pass go, no extra ball, that’s what I mean. You get the front row center seating for the goddamn apocalypse, if you’ve got the stones to take it. ”
* * *
ROBERT I ARRIVE BACK AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD WHERE THIS ALL BEGAN, BUT WHILE I’D EXPECTED TO GET TO THE RITUALS AS SOON AS I CHECKED INTO MY ROOM, I DECIDE NOT TO DO THAT. THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG IN THIS PART OF THE CITY, AND I WANT TO UNDERSTAND IT BETTER BEFORE I PROCEED.
Part of the wrongness is in my own memories. I know that I had good reason to seek out Marilyn’s help, and have vivid recollections of spirits that remain locked in their backward path through local time. And yet sometimes I remember one of them managing to speak to me in forward time, or perhaps me managing to understand it despite the reversal. I strongly suspect that this is a bit of future memory intruding into my present consciousness. I’ve never had the experience myself, but many shamans have, and it’s a fairly well studied phenomenon. Since the realms that are home to the deepest layers of the soul lie outside time, those of us who habitually poke around beneath the skin of things do sometimes encounter these moments which are part of our lives, but have not yet happened in the realm of mundane experience. I certainly hope that’s the case here, as the alternatives—like altered memories of the past or, worse yet, an actually altered past—would be far worse.
Part of the problem, though, is the people. In any large city you find plenty of drifters whose souls are very weak, and the various spirits that prey on them. Anywhere there’s a lot of misery, there’s a whole ecology of nasty, infesting spirits who drain the health out of their victims and mess with their surroundings to make the miseries worse. These are our patients, in our role as surgeons to the health of our chosen/called communities. What I’m seeing around me now, though, is different from the usual in two ways.
First, there are a whole lot more of those weak-souled types than usual here. Some of them seem to be damaged local residents, others drifters from outside. You’ve seen the sort of people I mean, and noticed how they’re often busy talking to nobody visible. When they’re lucky, they’re talking to a spirit or dream-form projection of one of us shamans; when they’re not, they’re being tormented by banes and other nasty spirits, and tr
ying to cope as best they can, just as you’d try to cope with an obnoxious hanger-on who won’t shut up and won’t go away. (It usually works about as well for them as it does for you, too. ) Anyway, where normally maybe one person in ten in a big city is like that, here the ratio is more like one in two. There’s a tremendously fertile field for all the sorts of spirits that we prefer to keep at bay or away altogether.
Second, there are people much worse off than that. Some of them seem to have had their whole soul, everything beneath memory and subconscious thought, blown clean off. Watching them is like watching near-terminal lepers. The empty husks of their souls are filled up with parasites and monsters of every description. I have to constantly reinforce my defenses: they see me watching them, and would attack me if I left my guard down even for an instant. I feel a deep compassion for the soul-stripped, but they’re also terribly dangerous to themselves and everyone else in the vicinity. Left unchecked, they can overwhelm all the normal souls in an entire community and render it spiritually sterile. Once that happens, physical death is inevitable. It’s the story of how any great city dies, and after working so hard to bandage up New York’s last patch of wounds, I’m eager not to have to do anything like funerary rites again.
I spend half of each day working to protect the room where I’ll perform the traveling rites next. I start by sanctifying the room itself and building my favorite little shrine, complete with small mounds of debris in which each of the Rubbishes can manifest. From there, I extend my reach down the hall, to the elevators and the shared bathrooms, and into the adjoining rooms each time one is empty. I’ve spent more than enough time in Third World blights to have no problem bringing housekeeping for a little private time. One or two of the maids actually recognizes at least some of what I’m doing, and one tells me how glad she is that el brujo is on the job like this. After a couple of weeks, my room’s whole floor and most of the levels above and below it are purified.
World of Darkness - Time of Judgement - Mage Page 11
