“My God, James that’s the best thing I ever heard. Do you really think it was the book?”
“I am pretty sure. I am going to try and cure my brother’s diabetes and then I’ll know for sure.”
“Good God, do you realize what this means? We are going to be the richest men in history. We have a cure for cancer.”
James stood up, laid down his green coffee cup. “I have a cure for cancer. I don’t know what you have.” He walked to the door.
I didn’t hear from him for a month. My lawyer helped me end the partnership. I called, I wrote, I e-mailed. I tried getting hold of mutual friends. I had the locks changed at our warehouse.
Then he showed up. Banging on the door one October morning. He clearly hadn’t slept in a while, he wore old khaki pants and a worn flannel shirt. He didn’t exactly smell like a bouquet.
“Robert, I am so sorry. Can I come in and apologize?”
I assumed his mom had a relapse and he had returned to the land of sane people.
“Of course you can come in.”
“I got papers from your lawyer. It claims I abandoned the business.”
“You did, but if you are really better now, maybe we can just tear up those papers. Really James, come in—it’s cold out there.”
He came in. I closed the door, putting the “Closed” sign in the window (like we ever had walk-in customers). He went to the sink and got his old green mug—I hadn’t thrown it out. He poured himself a cup.
“I feel like I have lots of things to say. But they can be summed up simply. I am very sorry that I didn’t share the cure with you. It’s gone now.”
“You mean your Mom is worse?”
“Oh no. She is amazing healthy. I mean the cure is gone. I tried not to re-read the book. But I broke down. But it had changed. No more pentagram on the cover, now there’s a swastika. There is no fifth section. The book looks like it has always ended on page 360, when Altryss walks away from his empire. And the spells for armies and wars and charisma are now printed in the book.”
“Can you show me the book, James?”
“Oh, I know what you are thinking. James is crazy daisy. But I won’t show you the book. It’s evil.”
It was exactly what I was thinking. Then I had a paranoid flash of wondering if he could read my mind.
“So.” I faked a smile. “You going into politics now?”
James didn’t smile.
“All I can think of is ruling people. I don’t like what I am becoming.”
“James, destroy the book. I never wrote Marcus. No one knows and you will be OK.”
“I can’t. I tried. I got to go; I just wanted you to know I was sorry.”
“Can’t you just stop reading it?”
“I think when I get politics out of my system, I can stop. I’ve never dreamed of being super rich.”
“You’ve never dreamed of rulership. You wouldn’t even run for con-chair.”
James left.
In a month posters and ads for becoming county commissioner were everywhere. He was ruthless, he found dirt and scandal on everyone in the county. When he spoke in public, it was like he Nuremberg rally. I went to one speech to try and talk to him. By the end of the speech, I knew he had my vote for county commissioner, governor, president, and dictator for life. You, gentle reader, may know what happened next. After his election he began digging up dirt on the governor. He got some KKK boys to threaten his political enemies. Despite warnings from media pundits, he was governor the next year. His opponent had a rather questionable car accident. Two of his aides died in mysterious fires. An elderly judge was picked up by a tornado. Everyone outside of Oklahoma compared him to Huey Long on a good day, Adolph Hitler on a bad one. It was rumored that the CIA tried to take him out.
Then in his third year, he quit. Everyone thought it was because of the scandals. He sent me a Xopy (a fannish word for a Xerox copy—once of the fen always of the fen) of the cover of the book. Under the title was an inverted triangle. He enclosed a copy of the last page. Page 270.
In the Great Depression his grandfather had bought drilling rights to the three small hills in Caddo County—Ghost Mound, Dead Woman Mound, and Rock Mary. The grandfather also got mineral rights to Devil’s Canyon. These had been easy to buy because the geology of the time marked the lands as oil free, and the poor Chickasaw who owned the rights were eager to sell. It was 2016 and there were better techniques for extracting oil. And oil there was under each of the little hills, and a ton of natural gas under Devil’s Canyon. Rumor had it that he had found secret information when he was governor. Money flowed in and was invested in some obscure nanotechnology company. It’s A Small World After All Ltd. They perfected garbage mining. James Grady was on the way to being among America’s top 1%. He made national news again by winning the Texas state lottery during a visit to Austin.
That Christmas I got a beautiful card from him with a check for $500,000.00 in it. He wrote, “I am so sorry, so very sorry.” My wife was pretty stoked.
I wrote back a month later when Forbes ran his picture. He sent me another Xopy. The book now had crossed arrows under the title, and ended on page 180. I went to visit his mom. He had bought a really nice home—the snazziest home in Binger. She hadn’t seen her son since he ran for governor. Next year she was turning one hundred. She hoped James would come. I promised her I would.
James Grady was in the news again. “Billionaire drops another Mistress,” “America’s Super Rich and Thai Sex Tourism,” “James Grady Dates Another Porn Star.” Lesser, local headlines told of his oil and gas wells playing out. Could this be the balding fanboy that used to live in his mother’s basement? I had thought of writing Marcus several times over the years, but the story was too fantastic.
About a month before his mother’s centenary, James sent me the last Xopy. Beneath the title was now a disk. One really big period. I wrote back reminding him of his mom’s big day—and begging him not to try to see Absolute Beauty.
Not see Absolute Beauty? Who could resist that? But unlike Odysseus he could not tie himself to the mast, as the rowers passed the island of the sirens.
He came a week before his mother’s birthday. She was thrilled. He still had more money than an average human could conceive. There aren’t any hotels in Binger so he rented the medieval themed one in nearby Anadarko. Every relative, every friend, every one that possibly knew his mom was given a room. He bought in chefs from Oklahoma City. It was wonderful. At the end of the evening, long after Zealia Grady had gone to bed, I talked to my old friend. He had aged a great deal in the last decade. His hair was gone, his features wrinkled, his eyes sunk into his head. Why not? He had lived four lifetimes since I last saw him.
“James, whatever you’ve been through—come home. Come live in the great house you got your mom. Come down to our warehouse and we’ll look for books together again. It can be good.”
“No, Robert. But thank you. I really needed your forgiveness and acceptance. It is what Absolute Beauty must look like.”
“So you haven’t read the first section?”
“Oh, I’ve read it. From page one to page ninety. I simply haven’t performed the last spell. I did some research. Bok had the book typeset in the USSR. No one who could read English was allowed to see it.”
“Do you have it with you?”
“I always have it with me.”
“We can burn it right now. I have a portable barbecue in my car, my nice new car you paid for. And I’ve got a couple of bottles of charcoal starter.”
“No, my friend. The book insists on its mission. If you tried, you would wind up getting burnt, not the book. Twice when I was governor I had an aide try and destroy the book, and both died in freakish ways.”
“Do you have to do the last spell?”
“I have been fighting my heart to not do it. I wanted to come and make things right for my mother and get my peace with you. Let’s not end the evening on this topic.”
He brought ou
t a bottle of hundred year old brandy, which was the smoothest fire I ever drank. We talked about the old days, scrounging Goodwill stores in dinky Oklahoma cities for first edition Arkham House books. We joked about the crazy cat lady that sold us her late husband’s signed Heinlein’s including a signed first of The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress crusty with cat barf. We laughed about the day we had the little fire in the warehouse. Finally, in the manner that only two old straight men can finally say it, we told each other good bye.
I went to my room. I would never see him again.
He hung himself in the night.
His note read:
Dear Robert,
Absolute Beauty did exist in our old times, and in games of space explorers when I was a kid, and in the girl I wanted to date in high school, and in both my marriages, and in several of the women I fucked, and in wildflowers and the stars. But It is so much more. My life didn’t matter compared to the minute of seeing It. I can never be happy. The book is blank now.”
James A. Grady
I asked the hotel to search his room for the book. Nothing turned up.
His mother died in the next week, overcome by her son’s deed. I lied to her and told her that he had incurable cancer and couldn’t face the pain. I said he loved her immensely and had moved heaven and earth to make her last party special. For myself, I was depressed for months. I had the all usual guilt of any survivor combined with the burden of an amazing tale no one would believe.
But work is a great cure. I continued my rare book business, throwing hours into it. I hired a young woman to help out, Lori Scott. Six months passed, and I began with the notion of writing up James’s fate as a short story. Then my news followed. A routine doctor’s examination show that my body was in much the same shape as Zealia Grady’s had been a decade ago. The big C.
While I was at my doctors, the UPS truck bought a package. Lori opened it and put it on my desk.
Ool Athog Chronicles: A guide to life with Selections from the Typhonian Tablets by Vladimir Horace Bok. It looks just like it did with its big beautiful pentagram on the cover.
I wonder if there is any way I can just read the cancer spell.
(For Willie Siros and Scott Cupp, Two Guys from Texas)
THE THIRD MOVEMENT
ADRIAN COLE
Artavian Wormdark, buried somewhere in the depths of his private library, practically immured by grimoires, booklets, pamphlets, manuscripts and every other manifestation of the written word, raised his ageing head, cocked it on one side, much as a predatory bird would have done, and listened. Something outside the tomb of volumes had stirred, directing its attention this way. Where his beloved collection was concerned, Wormdark had a preternatural sense. He had once been told that if anyone anywhere as much as mentioned his books, his ears would pick it up and set him on his guard. He extricated himself reluctantly from the warm embrace of his deepest armchair, turned off the stereo that had been softly playing the Moonlight Sonata and made his way to the door. Having gone through the complex ritual of unlocking it, exiting the chamber and re-locking the door, he climbed three flights of ancient stone steps, up into the main body of the house, which, to all intents and purposes, had the look and feel of any normal house.
His unique ear told him that whoever was visiting him was still waiting, with commendable or exasperating patience, outside the front door. Wormdark was already beginning to get a feel for who—or what—it might be. After another, even more complex process of unlocking, he edged the door open and peered out at the vaguely revealed, claustrophobic Manhattan backstreet, tucked well away from the hurly-burly of city life. Night had a firm grip, a wall of utter darkness, though there was a shape enclosed in its shadows on the doorstep.
“Mr Wormdark?” said the visitor. “I was hoping I would catch you in.” He spoke very politely, though Wormdark felt instinctively that this was an assumed demeanour.
Wormdark studied the man, who was almost twice the height of his own diminutive figure, as indeed, most men were. The visitor wore a dark cloak of some kind, somewhat incongruous in the modern city, and a slouch hat that hid most of his features. What Wormdark could see of them were sharp and angular, slightly sinister.
“What is your business?” Wormdark piped, feigning both great age and failing health. He was not a young man, of course, but his health was singularly good, though few would have guessed it.
“Your reputation as a hunter of rare books is second to none, sir. I am given to believe that there are few, if any, books that you cannot find for anyone able to match your fee. I am most anxious to secure your services. Please forgive the inconvenience of the hour.”
Wormdark screwed up a face that was already well lined and desiccated, running a gnarled hand through a tangle of white hair that had gradually retreated to the back and sides of his large head, beyond its shining dome. For a while it looked as though he would growl a refusal, but instead he undid the door chain and eased the door open further, waving the visitor into the hall. The man took off his hat to reveal the features of a young man, with bright eyes and an expression that some would have called cruel, or at least, hard.
“My name is Vermilion, as in the color. I’ll pay you well,” he said in crisp tones, as though it would be enough to secure the deal.
Wormdark led him into a cramped drawing room, its walls mostly lined with more books, though none of these ranked among Wormdark’s most treasured. They were mainly for show, but were nonetheless impressive. The visitor, however, appeared to pay little attention to the packed shelves or his surroundings. Wormdark indicated a seat and both men sat in the glare of an overhead light—a modern bulb set in an incongruous ancient fitting that would have been more suited to the age of gas.
The Visitor declined a glass of brandy and pressed on with the business in hand. “I am told, sir, that you hunt down the rarest of books, and that your searches take you beyond normal realms and that you specialize in the forbidden and the banned. No book is too cursed, too remote to evade you. Your reputation has spread to places you could not imagine.”
You cannot imagine some of the places that I can imagine, Wormdark would like to have said, but he simply nodded and gave a smile, of sorts.
“I am sure,” the visitor went on, “you’ve collected works on dark gods and dubious cults the world over. Some too terrible to name.”
“I flatter myself that I have a nose for such things. I enjoy the challenges these quests provide. They help to maintain my appetite for life.”
“Indeed. My masters are very powerful beings. You’ve no need to know the details.”
Ah, but I already do, thought Wormdark. You serve a growing force of darkness, a nexus of evil tapped in to a frightful source of power. Unless I miss my guess, you are a new recruit, anxious to win your spurs and rise among the ranks. I have seen your like before and with a growing frequency that disturbs me.
“There is a book I would very much like to obtain for them,” said the visitor, leaning forward, his eyes glittering, unnaturally colored, betraying his true nature. “What do you know of the Malleus Tenebrarum?”
Wormdark’s fingers intertwined and wriggled about in his lap as though he had become agitated. He sat back, apparently absorbing the name. “More often spoken of as the Hammer of Darkness. A particularly dreadful work, and one so powerful that very few people have seen it over the many centuries of its existence. It is said to have been created in a time before Man walked the earth, in the days when the Elder Gods enjoyed greater freedom. To all but a few, it is a myth.”
The visitor shook his head slowly. “I think you know better.”
Wormdark shuddered. “I am afraid so. The truth is deeply hidden, as the book is undoubtedly the greatest work of the occult ever conceived. It has numerous capabilities and, for example, it contains lists of all the artefacts of power, those utilized by the white magicians, as well as the practitioners of the blackest magic, and it provides instructions on how all these diabolical devic
es can be used. The Torque of Fire, the Amulet of Unrest, The Chaos Blade, and so on. The book also states the price to be paid for the use of such use frightful items.”
The visitor’s expression betrayed his pleasure at hearing this. “Then it is true. The Malleus Tenebrarum exists.”
Your masters know that only too well, Wormdark mused. Oh, how they covet this book! I have heard of their previous efforts to obtain it. They have come close to getting their claws on it, too. Gods of Light, but if they got it, they could wield every artefact of power in existence and it would be the end of this phase of Man. There would be a new era of darkness beyond imagining.
“I have been asked to find the book before. For example, the Miskatonic University would love to obtain it and have sought my help any number of times. I have always declined such requests.”
“You know the whereabouts of the book?” said the visitor, running a serpent-like tongue over his thin lips.
Wormdark shook his head. “It is not given to someone as inconsequential as me to know such things! No, no, it has its own guardian. Carefully selected, the guardians are always the sole keepers of knowledge about the book’s whereabouts. Periodically the guardian changes, for example when one is about to succumb to old age, at which time a new one supersedes him. This is sometimes done through a temporary guardian, who would pass the details of the book on. When this happens, the intermediary loses all memory of the book once he has passed on the information to the new guardian. Former guardians similarly have no memory of having served, or where the book can be found.”
“Then I need to find the current guardian,” said the visitor. “Do you know his identity?”
Wormdark shrugged. “It is not something I would normally want to know, there being such a degree of danger attached to the knowledge.”
“You can find out?”
Wormdark shrugged again. “Well…”
The Tales from the Miskatonic University Library Page 3
