"We're not going to have the gloves off all night, are we?" Simon asked. He started forward, but Lynn gave no indication of allowing him inside.
"No, we certainly aren't," she answered. "Because we are not going together."
Simon took a step backward. "What?"
"I took your advice and spoke with Barry. He was quite eager to escort me. So I have no more need of you." Lynn's smile broadened into wicked stepsister proportions. "He'll be along any minute. I'd really appreciate it if you get lost. Thank you." At last she retreated. She gave the door a push. "Merry Christmas." The door slammed shut.
Simon laughed lightly. If he had thought about it, her actions were not unpredictable. Barry was another of the account managers at Demographic Research, and from Lynn's descriptions a back-stabbing climber. He was only twenty-eight and looked like a minor Dickens character, and Simon could count on her to translate his youth, physical shortcomings, and admiration for her into sure signs of malleability. He figured they would either be married within six months or end up killing each other. He turned from her door still smiling. God bless Barry. He was about to learn just how lucky he was to have Lynn.
By the time Simon reached Witherspoon Street, the glow of his relief had worn off and he was colder than ever. The wind bit icily at his face. He turned onto Spring Street and jogged to Chuck's Cafe, for dinner and thawing. He ordered Buffalo wings and fries, with a giant Coke to slake the fire of the wings' spices. He made only a token gesture of protecting his evening wear; without Lynn to escort he had no idea if he would ever need such heavy-duty threads again. He hung around the cafe for an hour, shooting the breeze with his friend Rich, a graduate student in physics. Then, warmed inside and out, he decided to brave the cold as far as Nassau Street, to shop for a small "thank you" Christmas present for Frederika-definitely not too expensive, lest she get the wrong idea. One of the few things he knew about her was a fact that Neil, the psychologist, had mentioned: she loved to garden and had taken it upon herself to redesign and personally replant the mansion grounds. At Micawber
Books he found a beautiful volume on English gardens. By the time he reached the head of Hodge Road it was a quarter past nine.
The street was dark and deserted. Tendrils of snow gusted under the feeble streetlamps, appearing like Walpurgnisnacht souls in flight. Simon lengthened his stride. The Vanderveen house stood a mass of solid blackness. He wondered if Frederika had wisely taken her cold to bed. He cut across the lawn and hugged the house, wanting out of the wind. As he rounded the corner, he took a hitch in his step. The faintest hint of light penetrated the ballroom draperies. More strangely, it seemed to shimmer and pulse. Simon made a detour around the wing, searching in vain for an opening in the curtains. Then he remembered the skylight. He climbed the iron steps almost as far as the landing. His high vantage gave him a view down through the glass onto the far third of the ballroom floor. He saw four white lit candles, which formed a large, downturned arc. He could see no one from where he stood, but his mind formed a vivid and disquieting image. During his college days, incense and candlelight had helped him seduce more than one young woman in his cramped and common dorm room. The effect of many more candles, in such an opulent open space, had to be far more libidinous. He fought with his conscience for all of five seconds, then clambered over the iron railing and down onto the ballroom roof, to spy Frederika's latest conquest.
The roof was slightly canted, angling up from all four walls toward the skylight. Simon duck-walked cautiously over the gritty tarring and dropped to his stomach when he reached the skylight. Slowly, he peered over the edge of the glass frame. Now he saw virtually all of the room, illuminated by a great ring of twelve thick candles. In the room's center lay three concentric white circles. He judged the outer diameter of the shape as eight feet. To the north side of it, almost touching, lay another circle with a diameter of about four feet. The smaller circle had been completed, but the larger figure needed considerable work. Simon recognized both immediately. He had, in fact, laboriously copied them just the day before. They were called mandalas, and their purpose was nothing less than raising the dead.
The practitioner of the black magic was Frederika Vanderveen. She was alone. She knelt at the outer edge of the larger circle, dressed in the same white robe she had worn in the cemetery, carefully pouring powdered chalk into complex forms. Her request to have him copy the necromantic section of the Memphis Grimoire had raised a characteristic curiosity in Simon that led him to also page through Lemegeton and The Key of Solomon. Further research informed him that in medieval times the latter two volumes were considered the ultimate in black ritual arts, but the intricate magic circles of the rarer Memphis Grimoire made their mandalas look like hopscotch courts. Frederika had evidently been slaving at the circles since Simon left the house, and she still had more to lay down. She had completed the innermost ring, with its pentagram and five names of God; she had also finished the second circle, containing the signs of the zodiac and other magical symbols. Now she worked on the hieroglyphic names of the gods of ancient Egypt. Every few seconds she consulted one of the pages that Simon had provided her.
Simon shuddered, from more than the December cold. His trembling brought him back to his surroundings. Frostbite threatened if he lingered outside dressed as he was. He rose to his knees and worked his way back to the staircase. Transferring weight with a cat burglar's stealth, he moved up the steps to his bedroom door. He entered without noise and waited until his eyes adjusted to the dark. The heat of the room stung his ears and hands. He stripped off his coat and jacket, crossed to his closet and began indiscriminately pulling on layers of clothing. He tied a flannel shirt around his head, knotting the sleeves over his forehead. On his way out the door, he grabbed his bed quilt.
When Simon returned to his post on the roof, Frederika was laying down the final names. She had ingeniously used a baker's cake decorator for applying the powdered chalk. Her reproduction of Simon's drawings was an artistic improvement. As she worked, Simon's lips silently mouthed the names of Edjo, the cobra goddess; Horus, the falcon god of the dead; the sun god Ra, in both his old and young manifestations of Ra-Atum and Ra-Harakhte; and his wife, Hathor. Largest of the names was the ancient god Ptah, protector of the holy city of Memphis. To Frederika's side lay a black wand, a hairbrush, a small, shiny key that looked like the twin to the one she had given Simon, and a silver box. The wind made a sudden plaintive moaning through the trees. Frederika's head turned upward. Simon pulled his face back an instant before her eyes lifted.
Simon drew the quilt over his head and risked another look through the skylight. Frederika stood with the hairbrush in her hand. Her fingers pulled through the brush's teeth, plucking out hair. He was not surprised by her next motions; his painstaking translation of the Latin had fixed the ritual in his mind. When she had gathered all she could, she placed the ball of hair in the center of the smaller circle. The text required at least some part of the departed's body to be contained within the "calling ring." She set down the brush and began the task of moving the twelve candles in until they almost touched the outer edge of the larger mandala. Finally, she picked up the silver box, Simon's translation, and the black wand and stepped into the innermost circle. She reviewed the pages, pulled back the opening of her robe, and stuffed the pages into an inside pocket. Simon's coldness vanished for a while, after he saw that she wore nothing underneath.
Frederika opened the silver box and pulled out a pinch of glistening powder. She tossed it onto the candle pointing directly south and mouthed several words. The candle's flame flared briefly in yellow-orange. She had begun blessing the four corners of the earth and invoking the protection of the spirits of earth, wind, fire, and water. Simon felt another shudder course through him. He knew it was all ridiculous mumbo-jumbo, and yet his most primitive instincts kept insisting that he should be terrified. Frederika's intense observance of the ritual added to the eerieness. She was clearly behaving like a believer.
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The beautiful sorceress set the box of powder on the glazed wooden floor and lifted her wand. After consulting the translation again, she recited three prayers to the One God of All, turning every few moments to face a different quadrant of the room. Each time she did, she glanced down, to be certain she had not strayed out of the inner circle. To do so, warned the book, meant the risk of being snatched directly to hell by the very demons she sought to control.
Frederika paused in a wracking spasm of coughs. When she had recovered she spoke again, in a voice much louder. Her words were faintly audible through the glass. With the final page held before her eyes, she uttered the magic syllables that would summon six of Lucifer's most dread angels to her bidding.
"Berald, Beroald, Balbin, Gab, Gabor, Agaba, arise!" Frederika commanded. The wand trembled in her outstretched hand.
Simon pressed his ear to the glass. Next she would utter the name of the dead soul she wished to raise.
"Bring to me the shade of Frederik Vanderveen the Third, departed on the twenty-fifth day of September, nineteen hundred and seventy-nine."
Simon felt his heart thumping painfully at the base of his throat. His eyes, which had been watering slightly from the cold, pumped out an involuntary gush of astonished tears.
"Venite," Frederika intoned. "Venite! Ven-i-te!"
Each from his and her own vantage point, Simon and Frederika stared expectantly at the smaller mandala, waiting for the smoky materialization of her father's shade.
"Come," Frederika bid, this time in her own language. "Come! COME!"
Only Simon heard her. She lowered the wand. Her shoulders slumped, then heaved spasmodically. She sank onto the polished oak floor, unmindful that her hands had broken past the boundaries of the protective mandala. No howling devil appeared to snatch her into the underworld, but Frederika's soulful sobbing proclaimed the torments of a very real inner hell.
Simon rolled onto his back and stared up at the unwinking stars. Watching the young woman's disappointment for another moment was too much to bear. Casting the spell had not been a silly schoolgirl's adventure with her. He suspected that this furtive attempt at necromancy had also not been her first. Several of the grimoires stipulated that the grave of the summoned soul must be opened at midnight and the corpse tapped three times with a magic wand. One he had not glanced through, however, must have allowed only a mound of dirt from the gravesite for success. Simon had his answer to the cemetery mystery, but he felt no satisfaction. He had traded one answer for a dozen questions. More than roof, glass, and an expanse of air separated him from her, making the sympathy he wished to offer an impossibility. The wind gave another mournful moan as he slowly made his way back to his rented room.
CHAPTER FOUR
December 16
A faithful friend is a strong defense, and he that findeth such findeth a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond price, and there is no weighing of his goodness.
-Ben Sira, Book of Wisdom (ca. 190 B.C.)
The Saturday morning light pouring through the little window added welcome warmth to the bathroom. Simon plodded to the mirror and yawned at his tired-looking image. He had been awake far into the night, long after he stood sentry at his bedroom window, watching until the flickering ballroom light died. That had been toward midnight. He had sympathetically imagined Frederika on her hands and knees, wiping up all her carefully drawn chalk lines by guttering candlelight, mopping as well tears of frustration and perhaps humiliation. He had lain awake to hear her climb the stairs and scud to her room with a weary tread. For a long time afterward his mind revisited and pondered what he had seen, until finally sleep caught him between thoughts.
As Simon dragged a disposable razor over shaving cream and stubble, he heard a series of coughs. Frederika sounded sicker than she had the day before. He lowered the razor and listened. The coughs worsened into short, rasping barks. Simon scowled, angered at how badly she was treating herself. The house had an electronic thermostat, which automatically set back to 62 at ten o'clock. She had worked for two hours in the unheated ballroom, wearing only a robe. He put down the razor, crossed the hallway to her closed bedroom door and knocked.
"Are you all right?" Simon called.
He was answered by a forceful sneeze. He opened the door and peeked his head in. Frederika's bedroom was as he had imagined his rented one might be-appointed with expensive French provincial furniture and set off with a feminine floral pattern repeated on wallpaper, curtains, and bedspread. Frederika was bolstered nearly upright by several pillows. She wore a different bathrobe now, this one quilted and ratty, buttoned all the way up to her throat. Her hair looked like a misused straw broom. She sneezed again, more forcefully. Her hand flailed toward a large Kleenex box at her side, found a tissue and covered her red nose.
"Gesundheit," Simon wished.
Frederika blew. The noise was unwholesome. She made a revolted face. "Thank you."
"I know I'm not your mother," he said, "but if I were, I'd keep you under those covers all day."
"If you were my mother you wouldn't give a damn," Frederika replied, in an oddly matter-of-fact tone. "But thanks for the good advice. If I promise to listen to it, would you do me a favor?"
"Name it."
"I've got one slug of cough medicine left. Could you pick me up one of those 'itchy eyes, runny nose, feverish, coughing, you need your rest' syrups?"
Simon laughed lightly. "I'd be glad to. And as long as I'm at your beck and call, I'd like to get you breakfast. What'll your stomach hold?"
"Black coffee and buttered toast would be fine." Frederika eased partway down under the covers. "Oh, and the Princeton Packet? It's on the kitchen counter. I'm sorry to be such a bother."
"It's okay," Simon said. "I probably shouldn't have stuck my nose in. Do you want me to call someone to help you? A girlfriend… or whatever?"
Frederika coughed and shook her head. Simon had no idea who she would ask for if she had said yes. From what he knew of her, she was a loner. She had no special friends at the library, and whenever he saw her on the streets of Princeton she was by herself. Except for the fireworks relationships she built around sex, her existence might be that of a hermit. Hermitic and hermetic, he thought, wryly.
"I'll get breakfast," Simon said.
"You might want to finish shaving first," Frederika suggested.
Simon took her advice and hurried through the rest of his bathroom ritual to get to the breakfast preparations. He realized that it felt exhilarating coming unexpectedly nearer to her, like jumping up on the ledge of a high rooftop. He hunted up a breakfast tray and arranged the coffee, toast, napkin, and newspaper into an esthetic composition.
"This is embarrassing," Frederika told him as he set the tray down over her lap. "I hardly know you."
"That can be remedied," Simon said. "Ask me a question."
Frederika stopped raising the coffee cup and looked directly at Simon. "How was the party last night?"
"Uneventful."
She laughed, making the air in her chest rattle. "Great beginning."
"Sorry," Simon apologized. He was not about to tell her he had come home early enough to witness her attempt at necromancy.
"All right," Frederika retracked, "tell me why you work in the library."
Simon sat on the edge of a chair placed near the bedroom door. While she sipped and nibbled, he gave her a capsule summary of how he had chanced on library work, grown to love it, and still lingered on, in hopes that it would lead him to his "great and unique purpose in life." As he spoke, another part of his brain sat in silent judgment of what he said, weighing each word in light of his audience. He was surprised at his own candor but credited it to a subliminal desire to yield something of himself in exchange for what he had learned of her by spying.
Frederika had rested her cheek on her fist as she listened. When Simon finished, she said, "I find it hard to believe that translating old Latin texts will give you direction."
"It got m
e out of my girlfriend's house and here, didn't it?" he replied, smiling.
Frederika raised her forefinger. "Touche!"
"Speaking of Latin," Simon said, "do you know if your roommate got the translation yet?"
"I haven't heard from her." Frederika's face betrayed not the slightest hint of her lie, exquisite in its artful, wide-eyed innocence. Simon made careful note of her skill.
"Incredible, that black magic stuff," he remarked.
"Is it? I would think it was all superstitious nonsense."
"And yet some people still believe. Just the other day, I read about animal sacrifices in a park outside Philadelphia. In modern times, why do you think people still try it?"
Frederika shrugged. Her eyes cast restlessly toward the window. "Boredom. A… dramatic way to rebel against society. Or against the mainline religions."
"Some people must really believe in it," Simon persisted. "I think maybe they're looking for a sign."
Frederika looked back at him. "What kind of sign?"
"For an afterlife, good or bad. Anything to convince them that there'll be something after death." Simon's pupils dilated, as he concentrated on picking up the slightest trace of a reaction on his landlady's face. He could not tell if he had failed to hit the mark or if she was again using consummate muscle control, because she betrayed no emotion at all. Yet he sensed that he had pushed her as hard as he should. He stood.
"I have a tennis game at nine," he apologized. "Can you hold out for that cough medicine until noon?"
Frederika seemed mildly interested at his mention of tennis. He pictured his two-dimensional image taking on a little bas-relief in her eyes. "Sure. Thanks again," she said.
Simon backed out of the room as one might for royalty, pulling the door shut. Walking down the hall, he became aware for the first time that the adjacent bedroom door had a new knob. It was an outside lock model, identical to the one that Frederika had had installed in his room. He tried it and was not surprised to find that the handle would not turn. Simon was positive of its purpose. This was the lock for the key he had seen through the skylight. The room beyond was Frederik Vanderveen's. Before last night it had held a brush with traces of the man's hair. Frederika obviously did not want her boarder in the room. He wondered idly if his key might fit into the lock. After only one brief interview, he suspected that an inanimate room might reveal more than Frederika Vanderveen ever would.
The Book of Common Dread Page 7
