Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “Can I help you?” Magdalena tried to step away from the woman, who only gripped her arm more tightly and leaned closer to her. With her other hand, she jostled Magdalena’s shoulder bag.

  “Let me go!” Magdalena demanded. She wrenched her arm free of the old woman’s grasp. “Who are you?”

  The old woman pulled herself back and stood proudly erect again. She jabbed one bony finger into Magdalena’s face.

  Magdalena fled the remaining few yards down Golden Lane, past the Daliborka tower, and down the steps to the metro station. She only regained her breath and poise when she reentered the office with the book Professor Hron had sent her to purchase. He was still not in the office, so she deposited the book atop his desk.

  It was lunchtime before she reached into her shoulder bag again. She was looking for some envelopes she had brought to mail and was rummaging through the bag when she noticed a postcard. Not a card she had brought from home. She pulled it from her bag.

  “That crazy woman in Golden Lane must have slipped this into my bag when she grabbed my arm.” She turned the card right-side up to study it more closely. “But who knows if she meant the card to be reversed or not.”

  The card depicted a woman crowned with twelve stars seated on cushions in a wheat field on the edge of a forest. A stream cut through the trees and emptied into a pool beside the woman. Her left hand wielded a scepter and a heart-shaped shield, inscribed with the circle-and-cross image of Venus, rested against her divan. It was the Empress, one of the major trumps of the tarot deck.

  “I’ll have to look up its meaning later,” Magdalena told herself.

  That evening she got out her favorite tarot reference book and looked up the Empress.

  “The third card of the major trumps,” she read, half-aloud, “the Empress is the life force of nature. She is fertility and growth, abundance and energy shared. She is wild and free, undomesticated. She is also the unknown and clandestine, the darker side of Mother Nature. When reversed, she portends the resolution of complicated matters. She warns against absence and lack, the denial of life and the unnatural.”

  Magdalena bit her lower lip. “Why would that woman give me this card? What was she trying to tell me? Did she even know that she was giving it to me or was she confused and thought she was giving this to someone else?” Magdalena didn’t know what to make of the experience. In her dreams that night, she was pursued down the alleys and lanes around the hill leading up to the castle, the hrad, by a dark figure she could not identify. When she woke the next morning, she was exhausted.

  She had hoped to work on a few mechanical tasks that morning in her office, mostly typing from Professor Hron’s handwritten notes for a lecture or book chapter. However, there was another note from the professor on her desk when she arrived.

  “When did he leave me this?” she wondered. “Does he come here in the middle of the night just to find things for me to do?” The note directed her to make photocopies of dozens of pages he had marked with scraps of paper in a rather large, thick book. She sighed and took the book down the hall to the room with the copy machine. At least this would be fairly mindless and require little concentration.

  She carefully opened the book to the first page he had directed to be copied. The binding was old and the spine of the book was disintegrating. She adjusted the book on the plate glass surface, closed the lid, and pressed the button. Green light flashed from the bowels of the copier and a page slid out of the machine.

  She picked up the book to turn to the next page the professor wanted copied. She noticed illustrations as well as text in the book—drawings, woodcuts, photographs. Some were locations or old maps that must have been mentioned in the text. Some were illuminations from old manuscripts. Some were of people, mostly from the early 1900s, it seemed, judging from their clothing and the automobiles in the backgrounds of some of the photos. She set the book face down on the glass again and pressed the button. Another page slid out of the copier.

  She continued for a few more pages—picking up the book, juggling its weight and heft as she shifted it around and found the next page to copy, inserting it back atop the machine, pushing the button. After about the twelfth repetition of this operation, a corner of the book’s cover caught on the lid she closed to reduce the glare from the green light beneath the glass. She tried to wrest the book free and it slid from her fingers onto the floor with a loud thud.

  Several pages shot free from the grasp of the binding and others were knocked askew at jaunty angles. Magdalena bent over and picked up the book, heaving it atop a nearby counter. She picked up the pages from the floor and set about trying to restore these to their proper order in the volume.

  As she searched to match the numbers of the pages in her hand with their proper placement in the book, she realized that this was a dictionary or encyclopedia of local people, places, and incidents associated with the supernatural. She turned the pages slowly, partly because she was half-reading the text and partly because the paper, very dry and yellow, felt about to crumble into dust.

  “Let me see,” she muttered. “This is page 196 that came loose and here is page 191 still in the book but askew. Let me put this straight and then…” She turned a page or two and froze.

  A face stared at her from the dusty volume. It was a photograph of a woman standing in front of a small cottage. An elegant woman, dressed in black with a small fur stole. A face Magdalena knew.

  “Oh, my God,” quietly escaped Magdalena’s lips. She found the appropriate entry in the column of text next to the photograph. “This cannot be happening!”

  “Matylda Prusova, commonly known as Madame de Thebes,” the book identified the photograph, “was a well-known tarot card reader and fortuneteller in the Prague of the 1930s and 1940s. She was frequently consulted by all the best Czech society in her residence at Number 14 on Golden Lane and became famous for her predictions. She was arrested by the Gestapo during the Nazi occupation and tortured to death during interrogation because she refused to stop predicting the collapse of the Third Reich and the downfall of the Nazi regime. There were rumors at the time that the Nazis had employed a charm at her execution to silence her and prevent her from speaking out from beyond the grave.”

  Magdalena stared at the photo. She had certainly heard of Madame de Thebes, who was somewhat famous in tarot circles—especially in Prague and Central Europe—but had never seen a photo of her before. It was definitely the same woman who had stalked Magdalena on Golden Lane the day before. The same hat. The same dress and stole. The same eyes.

  Magdalena peered closely at the photo and then jolted upright. She had encountered Madame de Thebes, a fortuneteller executed by the Nazis nearly sixty years ago. A woman unjustly condemned and murdered who was believed to have occult powers to know the future. If Magdalena could encounter this woman in broad daylight near the castle, why could she not have encountered another such woman in the night under the bridge? Another woman, murdered for her reputed occult powers more than six hundred years ago?

  “It also explains why she gave me that card, rather than speak to me,” Magdalena realized. “She couldn’t speak to me. The Nazi charm prevented her. But if it truly was Madame De Thebes who gave me that tarot card, what was she trying to tell me?” Magdalena sat, or rather collapsed, into a chair in the corner and racked her brain.

  “The Empress. Third of the major trumps.” What else had she read about the card? “Fertility. Abundance. Undomesticated, wild and dark. That’s what I remember. But what if she had meant to give it to me reversed? What was that? Oh… Resolution of complicated affairs. A warning about the unnatural. Denial. If she was trying to tell me something, why couldn’t she have been more clear about it?” But the reality of her encounters with both women hit her like a punch to the stomach.

  The tarot card she had received seemed to underline the necessity to accept or even embrace her experiences. After all, the card was a real thing. A physical object. It was not simply a figmen
t of her imagination or memory. But it was more than simply a card. It was an invitation. An invitation to find life. Excitement. An invitation to embrace growth and challenge. But was it a warning as well? A warning not to deny the unnatural, maybe? She needed to acknowledge—to herself, first of all—that she had met the dead. The dead who had certain expectations of her, messages they had shared with her, requests they had made of her. Madame de Thebes in her silent way no less certainly than Fen’ka with her elaborate story.

  These women demanded a response from her. How could she deny them? How could she deny herself this opportunity?

  That afternoon Magdalena decided to look for the Flauros and Halphas that Fen’ka had told her to find. She had to satisfy Fen’ka’s demand for justice after her murder. Magdalena began by looking in the book she had been copying pages from that morning, but there was no mention of either name in its alphabetical entries. Next, she turned to the Prague phone book for families with surnames that could be variations on Halphas or Flauros. None. She spent one lunch hour looking for businesses that might have some form of Flauros or Halphas in their name. Nothing. “Time to get more creative,” she muttered to herself.

  Where to turn next? Fen’ka had told her, “Turn to Halphas and Flauros. They will show you who to trust, who will be able and willing to get justice done for poor old Fen’ka.” If the spirit of a murder victim had suggested those names, they might be people who were familiar with crime and criminal activities. Police officers or detectives. Because the murder had happened so long ago, perhaps they were historians. She looked through the Charles University faculty directory to see if there was a Professor Halphas or a Professor Flauros. Neither name had appeared in the Prague phone book, so maybe—even if they were on the university faculty—they lived somewhere outside the city but would be listed by the university under the correct department heading. Unfortunately, no faculty members had names like these.

  On the other hand, neither name sounded Czech. Maybe they were outsiders, just as Fen’ka herself had claimed to be an outsider, living away from “the prying eyes of strangers,” as she had described herself. Staff of one of the foreign embassies, maybe? People with diplomatic status that would allow them to poke into old documents and crimes without fear of reprisal? “Possible, but almost impossible to track down,” Magdalena mused as she stood across from the American embassy near her apartment one dusk on the way home from work. She stared at the great gates across the street where soldiers paced to and fro. The security had gotten much tighter these last several months since September 11, when the World Trade Center had been attacked in New York. “If I just walk up to the gate and ask, ‘Is there anyone who works here named either Flauros or Halphas?’ they will either think I’m crazy or arrest me for being a terrorist. They would never tell a stranger who works in the embassy.” So that line of inquiry seemed closed off.

  Where else to turn? She needed help finding the ones who were supposed to help her. This was getting aggravating. And frustrating. What other possibilities were there? “Why couldn’t Fen’ka have told me more before Jarnvithja paddled away?”

  One midmorning the next week, as she was filing letters for the professor about upcoming guest lectures he’d been invited to give, it struck her. “Of course!” she exclaimed aloud, and was glad no one was in the office to hear her. “I’ve got it all backwards! Fen’ka told me that Flauros and Halphas could help. But she is a ghost!” The word still sounded strange and unreal. How could she put such stock in an experience anyone else would say was a dream or an instance of sleepwalking? “If Fen’ka is a ghost, Flauros and Halphas probably are as well! Or some kind of spirit,” she concluded.

  “I’m sure of it. They must be spirits to invoke for assistance. I just need to find out what kind of spirits they are and how to invoke them.” Given the reality of her experiences with Fen’ka and Madame de Thebes, she was in no doubt about the possibility of conjuring other spirits. “I’ve seen spells for conjuring spirits in those Wiccan books we get, but never took them seriously. Or figured they were about changing ‘states of mind,’ not about summoning real spirits. Personalities.” Electricity ran up and down her spine as she stood at the filing cabinet.

  As soon as she got home, she raced straight for her bookcase and got out the half dozen books of Wicca and magic—the “Craft,” as the books often described it—she had on her shelves. She looked in the table of contents for each, but none listed a Flauros or Halphas. She looked in the back to see if the names appeared in an index. No luck.

  “Do I dare…?” she asked herself, thinking about calling her friends to see if any of their books listed the spirits’ names. “How do I explain why I’m looking for them?” She decided it was worth the risk. She dialed Victoria.

  “I just walked in the door,” Victoria said as she answered the phone. “Give me a minute to take off my coat. What is it you want to know?”

  “I was looking at one of the books Professor Hron lent me last week. Or maybe the week before. Anyway, I hadn’t had a chance to look much at this one before,” Magdalena lied to her friend. “It mentions the names of two spirits—Flauros and Halphas—and assumes the reader knows who these two are. So I was wondering if any of your books say anything—even a little bit—about who these two spirits are and what they are supposed to do. Because mine don’t,” she added.

  “Hang on. Let me see.” Magdalena could hear Victoria set the phone down and rummage around the bookshelves across the room. Of all her friends, Magdalena had the largest apartment; as even hers was on the small side, Victoria’s was even smaller. The noise easily carried over the phone line.

  Victoria was back a moment or two later. “I’ve got the books.” Magdalena could hear her friend sit down, open one of them, and flip through the pages. “Hmm… Nothing in the table of contents of this one. Let me check the index. Nothing here. Not in this one either.” Magdalena could hear books being set aside, moved from one pile to another.

  “No,” Victoria finally reported. “None of them say anything about either Flauros or Halphas.”

  “Damn,” Magdalena muttered, as much to herself as to her friend. To Victoria, she said, “The book seems to imply that these two were fairly important spirits in the Middle Ages. I’m surprised none of our books say anything about them. You’d think two such important spirits would at least be mentioned. How quickly we forget!” Magdalena could hear an echo of Fen’ka’s complaint in her voice.

  Victoria paused to think. “Why not just ask Professor Hron?” she suggested.

  Magdalena bit her lip. “Well…” she began, drawing out the syllable. “I suppose that is a possibility.”

  Victoria laughed. “Really, Magdalena, sometimes I wonder about you! That seems the obvious solution! Just ask Professor Hron who these two spirits are and why they were so important. It doesn’t seem that difficult!”

  “I guess you’re right,” Magdalena agreed to avoid arousing suspicion. “I was just hoping to figure it out tonight and not have to wait until tomorrow.”

  “Must be a real exciting book,” Victoria laughed again. “Let me know what you find out,” Victoria said as she was hanging up. “You’ve got me curious now as well!”

  “Do I dare ask Professor Hron?” Magdalena asked herself after hanging up the phone. “How do I explain to the professor why I’m interested in these two spirits?”

  She decided to risk asking the professor the next morning at work.

  Midmorning the next day, she knocked on the professor’s half-open door. His private office was behind the larger office up front where Magdalena sat, together with two other women who also worked as secretaries for the department. They each had one professor they worked with, but in addition to those duties, they all had a certain amount of work to do for the department. Her fellow secretaries, both much older than she, had worked in the same university office for decades and considered themselves the source of all real power and authority in the department. They had been there l
onger than any of the other staff and longer than many of the faculty. Professor Hron was one of the few who had been there longer than they, so they always treated him with the utmost deference even as they virtually ignored Magdalena. They would never dream of interrupting Hron needlessly, whereas they would not hesitate to knock on the door of the junior faculty and “suggest” what the instructor needed to tend to or look at. As Magdalena knocked on Hron’s door, Lida and the other two older women—who sat across the room from Magdalena—looked at one another. One lifted an eyebrow while the other pursed her lips and the third shook her head.

  “Yes? Come in, Magdalena,” the professor responded to her knock. She stepped into the office.

  Professor Hron was sitting behind his great mahogany desk, covered with stacks of papers, files and notes. His computer monitor and keyboard were next to his desk and the walls were covered with bookcases stuffed with volumes, many with shelves of two or more rows of books deep. He was turned away from the door, putting something in a cabinet drawer. As Magdalena stepped towards the desk, he swiveled around in his chair to face her.

  He was a large man, but in other ways very similar to her grandmother. The same warmth and concern for everyone radiated from him, the same love of old Bohemian stories, the same delight in sharing those tales with others. He seemed to be the same age Magdalena remembered her grandmother being, but neither her grandmother nor Professor Hron ever seemed to age further. He was bald, but a fringe of silver-gray hair ran around the lower back of his head, so he looked like one of the tonsured monks Magdalena had seen occasionally in the manuscripts the professor had brought into the office. His glasses were always sliding down his nose. His jacket, hanging over the back of his chair, was the stereotypical tweed with leather elbow patches and his tie hung neatly down the front of his white shirt. He was nothing if not grand and elegant. Everything Magdalena wished she was. He smiled, waiting for whatever it was she wanted to tell him.