The Bad Box

by Harvey Click

  She sat up so quickly that Ben grunted and rolled over. Darnell was standing naked a few feet from the bed, glowing whitely in the dark.

  His hands were primly in front of him, covering his groin. He looked emaciated and sick and was nearly bald, with just a few thin tufts of hair still clinging to his scalp. On his skinny torso were three ugly sutured wounds shaped like crescent moons, and over his heart was a wound shaped like an X. He had the small breasts of a young woman.

  Sarah let out a sharp cry and grabbed the sheet to cover her own breasts. Ben made another slumberous sound and stirred.

  “Please don’t wake him,” Darnell said. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. I don’t know how much time I have. You have to listen.”

  He moved a step closer to the bed, and Sarah shrank back against the headboard.

  “Angel’s very sick right now, but I don’t think she’s going to die,” he said. “She’s with her friend, whose name is Stonebrenner. He’s not an ordinary man, he’s some kind of monster. He’s been teaching her black magic. Now that she’s too sick to resist me, I’m using the powers he’s taught her. That’s how I’m here—it’s a trick he taught her. He calls this an astral body.”

  Darnell reached out his hand to the dresser, and it passed through the wood. “You see, I couldn’t harm you with my hands even if I wanted to. But there are other ways, and I won’t be in control for long.

  “He’s giving her a treatment that has made her sick, but when she’s better she and Stonebrenner will kill you. You know too much about me, so she thinks you’re a threat.

  “And if I can find you, so can she. I don’t even understand how I found you, but she probably does. It must be another trick he taught her. It’s like something drew me here.”

  Sarah poked Ben with her elbow and called his name.

  “No, don’t wake him,” Darnell said, but it was too late. Ben’s hand was already darting to the floor at the side of the bed, where he usually kept a gun, but it was downstairs in his bag.

  “Ed!” he shouted. “Intruder! Bring a gun!”

  “It’s Darnell,” Sarah said.

  “Ed!” Ben shouted again. “Intruder!”

  Sarah could hear Ed stirring in his room across the hall.

  “He’s trying to warn us,” she said. “He’s not really here, it’s some kind of magic trick.”

  The apparition raised his hands in a pleading gesture, and Sarah saw that there was only a sutured wound where his penis and testicles should be.

  “Please listen,” he said. “I can’t be here much longer, I’m too sick. Stonebrenner won’t be easy to kill. Neither will she by now. There’s a kind of metal called Hermesium. It’s one way you can kill them. There may be other ways, but he hasn’t taught them to her yet.”

  The door burst open: Ed with a pistol grasped in both hands.

  Darnell ignored him. “Hermesium,” he repeated. “It’s some kind of special alloy. I don’t know where you’ll find it, but somehow you have to, and you have to kill them with it or else they’ll kill you.”

  His pale blue eyes gazed at Sarah, two blue flames flickering in the dark.

  “Sarah,” he said, “this is agony, beyond anything you can imagine. I want to die. You have to kill me. Swear you’ll kill me and the evil thing that lives in my body. And kill her friend too.”

  The white apparition faded like an ember. Only the two flickering blue flames of Darnell’s eyes remained. Then they went out too.

  “So maybe you don’t think I’m crazy anymore,” Ed said.

  Part Six: Dealing Death in the Dark

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Half an hour later, while she was drinking coffee in the front living room with Ben and Ed, Sarah could still see the flickering blue flames of Darnell’s eyes. They seemed to have left stains on her retinas.

  “It could have been Angel pretending to be Darnell, trying to lure us into some sort of trap,” Ben said. “Maybe it was even Stonebrenner.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ed said. “Why would Angel or Stonebrenner tell you about Hermesium?”

  “That’s probably just some mumbo-jumbo made up to confuse us,” Ben said.

  “Ben, I’m disappointed in you,” Ed said. “I know I’m a tedious old man, but really you ought to listen to me once in a great while. Three hours ago I was sitting right here on this sofa telling you about Hermesium, and I could have sworn you were sitting just a few feet away from me.”

  “Sorry, Ed. I guess I must have been getting sleepy.”

  Ed pulled a book from the pile on his coffee table and opened it. “Yep, I could have sworn I pointed to this very page and told you to look at it. It’s a formula for making Hermesium. It’s an old alchemist metal, one of the countless steps toward producing the philosopher’s stone. Sarah, you heard me, I hope?”

  “Yeah, sure,” she said, not exactly lying. She had heard him say something about a poisonous metal, but she hadn’t paid much attention.

  “So what?” Ben said. “So some old book has a recipe for something called Hermesium. That doesn’t prove it’s harmful to Stonebrenner.”

  “But it is, Ben. I told you that too.” Ed pulled another book from the pile. “This is the book I was showing you that discusses Longevitals. It says Hermesium will kill them, especially if it’s delivered to the heart or the brain. So will decapitation. The book doesn’t mention fire, but it stands to reason they’re not made of asbestos.”

  “Fine,” Ben said. “So where do you get Hermesium? Local hardware store?”

  “I told you that too. My basement. I cooked up some two days ago, after I started investigating this Stonebrenner business.” Ed closed the book with a sigh. “How’s your coffee, Sarah?”

  “It’s good.”

  It was some fancy gourmet bean, dark and strong. She would be awake all night, but that was all right. She had no intention of shutting her eyes in that bedroom again.

  “Okay, so what are we supposed to do?” Ben asked. “Bake it up in brownies and get him to eat it?”

  Ed smiled. “Simple. I’m going to cast some Hermesium bullets, make some of my very special reloads.”

  “Wait a minute,” Sarah said. “I mean, we can’t just go busting into Stonebrenner’s house and start shooting up everyone. Don’t you have any laws here in Mount Vernon?”

  “Let’s try to be a little more serious, both of you,” Ed said. “A little while ago you didn’t take a single word I said seriously, but now I want you to. This isn’t a game.”

  Ed’s usually merry blue-gray eyes didn’t look so merry as he glanced back and forth at both of them. They looked tired and frightened and a bit angry.

  “The bullets are for your personal protection,” he said, “and unfortunately you may need them. If Darnell found you, do you think Stonebrenner can’t? I’m going to cast some bullets this morning, and you’re going to load your guns with them, and you’re going to keep your guns with you everywhere but the shower until this business is settled. And that reminds me—I have something else to protect you, something you can keep with you even in the shower.”

  He went to one of the display cabinets where he kept his curios. He unlocked a drawer beneath the glass case, got out a little wooden box and brought it to them. Inside the box were two identical gold medallions on gold chains.

  Sarah picked up one and examined it. A dark red stone was set in the center with undecipherable symbols inscribed in the gold around it.

  “This looks old,” she said.

  “They are old, much older than you think. They’re also priceless, so when all of this is over I would like to have them back. But until that time, I want you to wear them 24-7, awake or asleep.”

  “What are they?” Ben asked.

  “They are Seals of Solomon,” Ed said. “Only four are known to exist, and I have two of them. They are the most potent protection known against the spell of a sorcerer.”

  Ben placed his on the coffee table and said, “Ed, this is the twenty-fir
st century.”

  Ed’s eyes had lost all their merriment; now they just looked angry.

  “Ben, you’re the psychologist here,” he said, “so please explain yourself. A little over a week ago you visited the basement of the Dietrick house and apparently saw something so horrible that you still won’t tell me what it was. One hour ago you saw a horrid apparition in your bedroom, and it was talking to Sarah just as clearly as I’m talking to you. And now you’re making wisecracks about what century it is.”

  “I’m sorry, Ed. Of course you’re right. I really don’t want to believe this stuff, but I guess I’d better start trying.”

  He put the gold chain around his neck and slipped the medallion inside his shirt. Sarah did the same with hers.

  “As soon as the sun comes up, I’m going to call Okpara,” she said.

  “What are you going to tell him?” Ben asked. “That some apparition told us that Angela Dietrick is shacked up with a sorcerer who maybe she dug up out of a grave? Maybe he’ll want to give the police force some Hermesium bullets too.”

  “I’ll tell him the truth,” she said. She was becoming annoyed with Ben’s attitude too.

  “Well, I don’t know about you two,” Ed said, “but I could use a few hours of sleep.”

  They said good night and watched him plod wearily up the stairs. Sarah was embarrassed: last night they had both felt smugly impatient with the old man and his silly old books and newspaper clippings.

  She stretched out on the sofa and, despite the coffee, soon drifted off to sleep. She awoke when someone kissed her forehead, and she let out a loud gasp thinking it was Darnell.

  It was Ben. “Sorry to startle you,” he said, “but the sun’s coming up and you said you wanted to call Okpara. I thought of calling him myself, but he knows you, maybe he’ll listen to you.”

  “I thought you said calling him was a stupid idea.”

  “I was wrong. I guess it’s best to let the sober eyes of the law look at this before we get any deeper into weirdness. I made you some coffee, thought you might want it before calling.”

  “Thanks. Is Ed up?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Did you sleep?”

  “No. I relaxed in a chair and kept my eyes on things.”

  She smiled, thinking he probably hadn’t relaxed very much. While she drank her coffee she tried to imagine what she would tell Okpara, but by the time she dialed his cell number she still hadn’t come up with anything that sounded sensible.

  He answered, and without any preamble she told him about Darnell’s apparition and everything he had said about Angel and Stonebrenner. She even told him about the grave robbing and a few bits of the occult lore Ed had told them. If she spoke quickly enough, she didn’t have time to feel silly.

  Okpara listened in silence. When she finished, he said, “Miss Temple, I do not altogether discredit what you’ve told me. The department isn’t above hiring psychics in some tough cases, though we try not to let the reporters know. I’ve seen two cases solved in that way. Also when I was a boy in Nigeria, I knew of a woman possessed by demons. She could make stones fly through the air, and she spoke in languages she’d never learned. Once she spit a poisonous snake out of her mouth. So I’m not entirely skeptical.”

  “Can you do something?” Sarah asked.

  Okpara sighed. “Miss Temple, do you know what my two favorite days are? Saturday and Sunday. I believe this is Sunday.”

  “Well, maybe tomorrow.”

  “Impossible. Mondays I work, and though the department sometimes hires psychics, they’re not going to authorize me to drive out of my jurisdiction to question a warlock. No, today, my day off, my favorite day of the week, I’ll have to drive there myself, unofficially. Maybe Stonebrenner will let me in if I invent the right story. Possibly I can get a sense of things.”

  “Thanks. I don’t suppose when you’re done you could let me know what you learn?”

  “Yes, Miss Temple, I’ll call and let you know if I see any rocks flying through the air like birds or any vipers darting out of the man’s mouth. You’ll probably hear from me in about three hours. I’m going to leave right away, so maybe I’ll have time for a round of golf when I get back.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Stonebrenner stood in his watchtower, his keen senses like antennae alert to all four directions, searching for a sign of Charles Newman. Of course Newman had probably woven a veil around himself to hide from Stonebrenner, just as Stonebrenner had done to hide from Newman.

  On the other hand, it was possible that Newman was far away, in Europe or Africa or any other corner of the planet. It was possible that Newman didn’t yet realize Stonebrenner had escaped the grave. It was even possible that Newman was dead.

  Not knowing was intolerable; there is nothing an adept prizes so highly as knowledge, for knowledge is the father of power. Not knowing meant that Stonebrenner had no choice but to remain constantly vigilant despite his exhaustion and the other matters that demanded his attention.

  Angel, for example. All of last night he had stayed by her bedside holding her cold, nearly lifeless hand and begging her not to die. Last night perhaps he had learned more about the mysteries of love than he cared to know. He had administered the treatments too rapidly, giving her new treatments before she’d had time to recover from the previous ones, and it had caused an alarming fibrillation, making her heart tremble between life and death. All night long he had cursed Newman, because it was fear of his old enemy that had compelled him to speed up Angel’s treatments.

  An hour before the sun came up, her heart had finally steadied itself, and now all danger was past. Already she was a Longevital with the great powers of recovery that Longevity bestowed. In another hour she would be healthier than she had ever been, and today they could marry.

  Stonebrenner wondered if he had ever been married before. Memory is one of the Longevital’s vulnerabilities: eventually there were too many years for the brain to store. His memory reached back for nearly two centuries with clarity, but events and faces before that grew progressively more obscure, like dreams half remembered. Certain kinds of knowledge, such as the many languages he had learned, stayed with him longer, but experiences disappeared into the ever-darkening tunnel of forgetfulness.

  Anything that had happened to him more than 300 years ago, he could know only from his journals. He knew that his Bavarian mother had borne him in 1560, in the reign of William IV, son of Duke Albert IV the Wise, but his mother existed for him now only as a few scribbles in a journal and as a black and white photograph he had taken decades ago of a painting of a beautiful young woman, a painting that he had sadly lost in his flight from Boston in 1962. Sometimes he awoke with an image of being a child held in a woman’s warm arms, but this was more likely a dream than a memory.

  Even the circumstances of the treatment that had transformed him into a Longevital were lost except for a few cryptic notations. He knew the name of the man who had treated him, but the name meant nothing, and why the man had chosen to give him the gift of Longevity he could only guess. Stonebrenner sometimes wondered if the treatment had been a favor from a homosexual admirer; the coyness of the brief journal entry seemed to hint at things left unsaid. He had been 32 years old when it happened. The 20-some years that his appearance had aged since then were in fact centuries.

  Apparently he had not developed an interest in sorcery until much later. On the contrary, his early journal entries showed an embarrassing predilection for the most conventional Catholicism. They made no more than a dabbler’s reference to the occult until the eighteenth century, when he had made the acquaintance of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro in Paris. Later he had studied with Eliphas Levi, whose face he could still remember though Cagliostro’s was beginning to fade into the tunnel of darkness. In England in the 1880s an obscure teacher had helped him to master the complex magical system of the Elizabethan John Dee. Soon after, he had been initiated into the Unseen Guild.

  He stil
l remembered with delight his victory over James Matthews, whom he murdered in 1937 for the man’s invaluable collection of grimoires and texts of alchemy, including the lost book of Trithemius, Abbot of Spannheim, who raised Mary of Burgundy from the grave at the bidding of her husband, the Emperor Maximilian. But tucked among the books was a manuscript written by Matthews’ own hand, which proved to be of far greater interest than the rest of the library, for it told in detail a story that Stonebrenner had known only by vague rumors.

  According to Matthews’ manuscript, the great magician Cornelius Agrippa, who had supposedly died an ignoble death in 1535, had in fact staged his own death, ensorcelling an unfortunate impostor to die in his stead. Agrippa, in fact, had become a Longevital in 1534, at the age of 48, and had since lived under many names in many places, becoming more powerful in his magic each year that he lived. According to Matthews, Agrippa was still alive but had been paralyzed and entombed by a rival adept in 1897. His body still lay hidden somewhere in Romania.

  The information was exciting to Stonebrenner because he had learned the seven words that could undo this spell of paralysis. He was certain that if he could find Agrippa’s grave, he would be able to revive the great magician, bind him to his service, and learn from him the most profound Hermetic secrets.

  In his manuscript Matthews named his informant, a Longevital who owned a map showing the location of Agrippa’s grave. Stonebrenner’s search led him to Baltimore, where the map’s owner was living under the name Philip Masterson. A penniless and dissolute man addicted to opium, Masterson was employed as a gigolo by an elderly heiress. To persuade Masterson to give him the map, Stonebrenner had found it necessary to murder the heiress.

  So in the spring of 1939 Stonebrenner traveled to Romania to unearth the master. It was a difficult and risky time for an adept to travel incognito. All of Central and Eastern Europe was swarming with adepts and initiates thronging to Germany, where Hitler was making plans to invade Poland and begin the thousand-year triumph of magic over reason. On every train and bus, Stonebrenner sniffed out an initiate of the Vril Society or the Thule Group or the Golden Dawn or, most dangerous of all, the Unseen Guild. But Stonebrenner had woven his veil with care, and none of the occultists recognized him for what he was.