The Book of Common Dread

by Brent Monahan

  Vincent waited until 5:30 without expectation of Frederika's call. In her entranced state she could not be counted on to act logically, much less anticipate what he would expect of her under changed circumstances. He drove immediately to the Vanderveen house and found it dark and unoccupied. He bellowed his rage into the night. Outside lights winked on up and down the block as he climbed into his rented car. He drove the length of Route 1 from Princeton to New Brunswick, winding through every hotel and motel parking lot in search of a white Mazda sedan. The one matching car he found had an infant's safety seat in the rear. He accepted the futility of his search and hurried back to Princeton.

  The situation looked so bleak that, for a minute, Vincent seriously considered how he might bring down the entire Firestone Library. Then he set the notion aside because nothing short of several tons of dynamite would guarantee that the steel case in the heart of the structure would be totally destroyed. Ordinarily he would have rejected such a plan because of his reverence for books. This great library was worth all the lives he had managed to spare in this century. He had known that at least one other of his kind operated in Europe when the museum and library had been torched to destroy the copies of Manutius's book. Perhaps Little Nick had doled out those assignments to another minion precisely because he knew Vincent would have balked at such sacrilege. Now, however, when Vincent had so recently incurred the anger of the Dark Forces over sparing the widower scientist, even this library's existence balanced against his own survival did not seem such a difficult choice.

  Yet there had to be a simpler solution. If he could not learn Simon's whereabouts from Frederika until the next noon, Lynn Gellman seemed a logical source. After entering her home and examining her personal phone book, her appointment book, and her wall calendar, he resigned himself to wait for her return, prepared to kill her and anyone she invited inside to save the night. Yet once again, despite his recent promise to himself to act ruthlessly, he had shown her mercy. Profound as his terror was of angering those who controlled him, a new impulse vied for control of his actions. Something that made him feel so good, so-impossible as the word might seem-rejuvenated, could not be called a weakness. Could it?

  At least, Vincent reflected, he had three more leads, each of which he would follow as soon as he played his answering machine and learned whether or not Frederika had called on her own. He entered the old duplex house and went directly upstairs to his bedroom. He saw the red light winking on the machine and hastened to rewind the message.

  "It's only a prospective customer," the whispering voice informed, causing Vincent yet again to jump in surprise. "She called twice, but her first message was erased."

  Vincent became aware of the draft from the window. He saw the broken glass and the open lock.

  "Your visitor erased it after he listened to it."

  "Who?" Vincent demanded, resigned to playing Nick's cat-and-mouse game. A profound and rare shudder shook him. In spite of his long-held determination never to show fear in the voice's presence, he could barely control his agitation.

  "The man who visited you and demanded you leave the woman alone. Does he know about us?"

  "No, of course-"

  "Does he know what you are?"

  "No! He just wants his girlfriend back."

  "You told us that you had him under your control."

  "I have. This is the worst he can do," Vincent asserted, working as hard as he ever had to make a lie sound positive.

  "Will he get you the scrolls tonight or will he not?"

  Vincent abandoned the idea of finding Lynn's three leads to Simon's whereabouts. His uneasy presentiment about the librarian had come to horrible fulfillment. Penn had surely received a copy of the translation from Reverend Spencer. By now, Vincent assumed, he had also heard about the old man's bizarrely fatal accident. The ineffectual-looking young man had to be armed with the scrolls' information and the knowledge that Spencer's precautions had failed. Penn was, therefore, highly dangerous. Wherever he had lain his head the night before, Vincent was convinced Penn would not be there tonight.

  "The night is young," Vincent evaded. "I will have this done by tomorrow night, if not before. The scrolls' translator is dead already."

  "Yet another death?" the voice said, and, before Vincent could reply, "The translator can be replaced."

  Vincent turned a full circle in his rage. "If you're so fucking smart, why don't you get the scrolls?" he screamed. He plucked his hairbrush from the dresser and hurled it at the picture of The Seven Ages of Man, shattering the glass across half the room. He took several deep, composing breaths. "I've never failed before, and I won't now. Is there some special reason this must be done tonight?" he asked. "Is there?" The room stood silent as a sarcophagus.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  December 24

  He that finds his life will lose it.

  -Matthew 10:39

  Simon woke with a start, features frozen in alarm. The Christmas tree still glowed beside him. He struggled up from the couch and loped to the base of the mansion's ornate staircase.

  "Frederika?" he called. The house felt as empty as when he had drifted off to sleep. He guessed that hour had been about four a.m. He hurried to the back of the house and looked out the utility room window. The garage doors still hung open, exposing a dark, hollow space. He was not surprised, not after the answer to DeVilbiss's identity had come to him as his mind ascended from sleep. Now all he needed was to find the exact biography and confirm the details. The facts of the account he recalled only vaguely, but his emotional memory registered clear alarm.

  While Simon wolfed down a stale doughnut, he stared at the two books he had stolen from DeVilbiss's house, thinking what a puny, useless act it had been. Just as he gulped down the dregs of a container of orange juice, the telephone rang. He grabbed it on the second ring.

  "Yes?" he said, disguising his voice in the bottom of its range.

  "Simon?" the caller asked, hesitantly.

  "Good morning, Rich," Simon greeted with relief.

  "It didn't sound like you," the physics grad student said. "Have you by any chance been listening to WHWH this morning?"

  "No. Why?"

  "The announcer said there was a gas explosion yesterday on Mercer Street. I heard the boom, but I didn't know what it was till now."

  "When?"

  "About four o'clock."

  "I was in Philadelphia," Simon said, looking anxiously at his coat and cap, hanging on a hook near the back door.

  "That explains it. I called you a little while after the explosion, but you weren't-"

  "What blew up, Each?"

  "Reverend Wilton Spencer's house."

  Even as the shock electrified his nervous system, Simon accepted the news. Willy had not been a paranoid after all. And Simon finally knew DeVilbiss's connection to Firestone Library.

  "Isn't he the guy you said was working on those old scrolls?" Rich asked.

  "Yes, he was," Simon managed. "Was he inside?"

  "They think it was him. There was one body, but it was…"

  "I get the picture," Simon said.

  "Incredible! First I lose my advisor, now you lose somebody working in your area. What the heck's going on?"

  "You wouldn't believe it."

  "Wanna try me?"

  Simon dropped the last of the doughnut in the garbage. "Sure. After I do some research at the library."

  Rich snorted his perplexion. "The library? I don't-"

  "Hang loose, pal. I think at least one of these deaths wasn't an accident. You gonna be around this afternoon?"

  "Sure."

  "Then I'll call you later. I may need some help."

  "Count on it, buddy."

  Simon hung up and knelt in front of the kitchen hearth's decorative woodpile. One piece of oak looked ideal for sharpening into a stake.

  ***

  The biography proved almost as elusive in the library's stacks as it had been in Simon's memory. He had forgotten th
e author's name and had to hunt it down through the subject of "conjury." The author was a little-known performer, celebrated only as the chronicler of the Britannic Brotherhood of Magicians. It was an elite group of prestidigitators who not only enjoyed royal cachet but also controlled the bookings in theatrical halls throughout the British Isles. Simon had found the author, "The Grand Gilliam," tedious, xenophobic, and a braggart, but the Victorian world of legerdemain he described was fascinating.

  Simon walked slowly out of the maze of stacks toward a window-lit reading cove, scanning the pages for the passages he needed. No one stepped in his path, nor was anyone seated in any of the couches or easy chairs. A Sunday that also happened to be Christmas Eve attracted few researchers, even during the library's reduced hours of operation.

  Simon dropped into a heavily stained and tattered plush chair and continued flipping pages. Finally he saw the name that had so long eluded his memory. His eyes swept slowly through the lines, wanting to miss no clue to combating the creature who was neither magician nor herbalist.

  ***

  In the winter of 1898, the club suffered an incident that reminded its members of the true magic which surrounds us, the magic which we pretend to duplicate by purely human agencies. For some time, the BBM had been assailed by an Italian who averred considerable repute in his homeland and the south of France as a conjurer but of whom not one favourable report had reached our hearing. He went by the name of Signore di Bussolotti, a puerile play on the Italian name given to cup and ball players, which invoked among the members a prejudicial antipathy. He had doubtless heard of the memberships we had bestowed on Herrmann the Great of Germany and Harry Kellar of the United States and thought that a foreign name provided some sort of easy entree. His persistence and the claim to several unusual illusions finally convinced us to audition him.

  On the twelfth of December, the requisite four members necessary to grant membership, along with assistants and cognoscenti of magic-numbering altogether, I believe, ten persons-assembled at St. George's Hall. The gas lights were lit, and we dispersed throughout the house to observe the Italian's skills. He was handsome in a Mediterranean way, rather tall for his race, and most especially striking in his pale rather than swarthy complexion and the unusual amber colour of his eyes. He looked to be about forty yet maintained the thinness of youth. He wore expensively tailored evening dress of the style popularized by Robert-Houdin, in which he cut quite a dash.

  He began with card tricks, and I immediately was struck by the man's strangeness. Whereas many lesser magicians will have personality and patter aplenty to divert and misdirect, they will fail to mystify through lack of dexterity. This person evinced exactly the opposite, appearing somewhat ill at ease and slow in his speech but exercising manual skills with a speed I had never before seen. As all good magicians understand, no quickness can compensate when the audience's eyes have not been redirected or their minds not been prepared to expect something distinct from the illusion. Whispering among ourselves, we credited his difficulty with our tongue as a reasonable impediment and bid him continue.

  I was also struck by the fact that, again as the immortal Robert-Houdin had done, Signore di Bussolotti worked without the aid of confederates. For his first major illusion, he called upon two of our group to assist him. He produced seven overlarge playing cards, which he asked to be shuffled. He stepped to the back of the stage with one of my assistants, whom he enjoined to hold his hands fast and prevent him at all costs from moving to the footlights. He bid the lights in the theatre be totally extinguished. Need I tell you what an unnerving experience it is to be possessed of your faculty of sight in one moment and to be utterly deprived of it in the next? The blackness was complete. He commanded Mr. Petrie-Jones to shuffle the cards one more time, then to place one in a special holder, to turn in a complete circle holding the card outward until he again faced the audience, then to pull the card forcibly from the holder. I listened to Mr. Petrie-Jones inserting the card, heard di Bussolotti call out 'Jack of Clubs,' waited a moment and saw the card illuminate in an eerie blue glow sufficiently bright to allow the audience to see that it was indeed the card the Italian had called. Twice more, the trick was repeated, the second time with much laughter when Petrie-Jones lost his bearings in the dark and faced stage left instead of straight outward. I was impressed, but David Devant correctly pointed out that no town's fire marshall would allow a period of total darkness during an actual performance, rendering the trick unusable.

  The Italian moved on to pigeon killing, that heinous trick devised by another of his blood, the infamous Bartolomeo Bosco. Bosco it was who first convinced audiences that he was decapitating the heads of white and black pigeons, switching the heads and restoring them to life, when in point of fact he was pulling other pigeons out of his false-bottom boxes and assassinating birds at every performance. The revival of this sadistic illusion sat poorly with our crowd and had already decided the opinions of several.

  Di Bussolotti performed the 'Sands of Egypt,' then trundled out two large box illusions, both known to us. He smiled with disarming charm at the two ladies in our audience, producing his desired effect, but I could discern a trace of panic in his eyes. He left the stage for a minute and returned with a delicate table on rollers, atop which sat a large, black lacquer box decorated with silver moons and stars. He knocked on the box and stepped away from it. Under its own power a harlequin doll appeared, being about two foot in height. The doll he called Pierrot Lunaire. It was very much the duplicate of the great Robert Heller's automaton, which sprang in and out of its box, smoked, whistled, and answered questions. This one, however, was somewhat larger. More importantly, di Bussolotti's willingness to allow minute examination of the table proved that there were indeed no helpers. Up close this Pierrot was a marvel of creation, having glass eyes that roamed back and forth as if through an independent will and fingers so delicately articulated that it could pass a pen from one hand to the other. Like Heller's machine, it did a handstand; it also whistled. But here the Italian appeared to surpass the old master. His Pierrot, he declared, performed mathematical calculations, and he invited us to pose it any problem. Having said as much, he stepped back and seemed to let the doll work on its own. We obliged with a few simple additions, which the doll supplied, along with such written derisions as 'Are your brains not as nimble as your hands?' Thus challenged, we began demanding square roots, then the answers to quadratic equations. Its answers, in florid script, were always swift and perfect. Just when we began to murmur our total perplexion, the doll froze in place and would not respond further. Di Bussolotti tucked him back in his box, explaining that his mechanism had, unfortunately, wound down.

  The four members retired to the back of the house and argued membership. David Devant pointed out that the calculating doll was perhaps the most amazing trick any of us had ever seen, but Reginald Stephens rightly remonstrated that such a machine was properly the province of watchmakers. The Italian's other failings could not be made up by this one capital feat. It was no more acceptable to our theatres than the bizarre moving picture magic of the Frenchman Melies to whom some of our number had been exposed.

  I had the onerous task of informing the Italian that his magic was not up to our standards. Instead of skulking quietly away or else hurling bitter invectives, he merely smiled and said, 'What, gentlemen, is the most dangerous trick in the world?'

  'Why, the bullet-catching trick,' Devant answered.

  'Has it not killed at least three of our profession?' the Italian asked.

  'More, I think,' said I. 'Do we not all recall the fellow who was killed recently, not by the false bullet but by the piece of the ramrod broken off in the barrel?'

  'What would you say, then, if I did not catch the bullet in my hand but rather in a pail behind myself, allowing the bullet to travel through me without harm?' the petitioner asked. 'Would not such a trick be worth a two-year contract?' Speaking above the murmurs of astonishment, he went on to challenge
our powers of observation and our credentials as master conjurers.

  Petrie-Jones turned red in the face. 'Will you allow us all up on the stage?'

  'Certainly,' he said.

  'But,' spoke up one of our guests, a man occasioned to carry large sums of money on a regular basis, 'what if the gun were not yours?' He drew from his pocket a small calibre pistol. Here the conversations broke into an uproar. Di Bussolotti himself silenced the group by waving his hands.

  'I accept these conditions if the Brotherhood promises absolutely that I shall have a three-year contract to play in your halls,' the Italian said.

  We were stymied by his answer. Our conclusion was that it was only sporting to accept his proposal. A sturdy bucket was found, to be held aloft some two feet behind the man. First he and then each member of the Brotherhood examined the gun and bullets minutely. Seeing that the weapon was indeed real, none of our number was willing to murder a man whom we clearly thought insane. At last, the Italian suggested a solution. In case the trick did not go according to his plan, the one shooting should direct the bullet through the left extreme of his chest, missing his heart, so that he had a decent chance of survival. The bullets were further to be dipped in alcohol (which he had ready), to destroy bacteria on their surfaces. That decided, I volunteered to pull the trigger. The bullets were prepared and reloaded, without his handling them in any manner, then replaced in the pistol. Di Bussolotti took his place, and Petrie-Jones held the bucket out. I paced back three long steps, turned, aimed and fired.