by Leo Hunt
“He’s just such a weird loser,” I say after a while. “Remember that, like, half-hour monologue on how water has a memory? Like, it remembers what you put in it? And then you asked him if water has a memory of being dinosaur piss, and he didn’t know what to say?”
“Yeah, that’s homeopathy,” Elza says. “Your mum’s into that stuff, too, though.”
“I know. It’s just not annoying when she talks about it.”
“He does have a lot of strange ideas.”
The thing is, Elza’s not wrong about Mum having weird ideas. She’s into crystal healing, books about ancient astronauts, Reiki, and ear candling, to give just a few examples. My dad, my real dad, had some strange ideas, too. He had a TV show where he exorcised haunted houses. The thing about my dad was that his weird ideas, unlike Darren’s, were true. There really are ghosts, and Dad kept eight of them as his servants. When he died, I inherited them, along with his book of magic and his sigil ring. That was more than a year ago now, last Halloween. The ghosts nearly broke free, and I had to make a deal with the Devil to stop them.
“So where were we?” Elza asks, pulling out her books.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Who cares?”
“Luke.”
“I’m joking! Ha-ha. Funny. Of course, I care. What’s on the menu this week?”
“Well, we’ve got Satan: A Semiotic History. And Performative Gender in Dante’s ‘Inferno.’”
“Elza . . .” I look at the library books. Their plastic laminated jackets are pristine. She’s clearly the only person who’s ever borrowed them.
“I’m running out of stuff in the Dunbarrow Library,” she admits.
“Do you really think these are going to help us?” I flip through Satan: A Semiotic History. I can’t understand a single sentence in any one of the seven hundred pages. Over the past eight months, we’ve been trawling through everything ever written about the Devil. We’ve done Paradise Lost, Faust, the Inferno. Elza even read most of the Bible. We’ve suffered through weird websites and blogs about modern Satanism, which Elza says isn’t really proper Devil-worship at all, and it’s closer to Objectivism (whatever that means). Unsurprisingly, none of it matches up remotely with the Devil I know. He isn’t red, he doesn’t have horns, doesn’t speak in verse, and I don’t think he was ever an angel. The lurid, sailor-tattoo Devil you’re thinking of has nothing on Mr. Berkley. He looks like a tanned, handsome lawyer, with a smile that’s a little bit too white. And then, once, I think I saw what was underneath that mask. It was bottomless darkness.
“I suppose we could start on the university library next,” Elza’s saying, flipping through Performative Gender with a scowl. “Brackford might have something we haven’t —”
“We’ve got the book we need,” I say, for the hundredth time.
Elza’s scowl deepens.
“You know exactly what I think of that,” she says.
The book I’m talking about is in a metal toolbox, buried under old clothes at the back of my closet. It’s the Book of Eight, the powerful magic book I inherited from my dad. It contains the spells you need to bind the dead, open the gateways into their world, and lots more. I’ve only used it twice, and each time it ate into my mind, replacing my normal thoughts with whatever’s written inside the Book. The first time I read it, I was immobile for three whole days, and I can’t remember anything about where that time went. Elza thought I might be dying. Ever since then, she’s understandably not keen for me to read the Book again.
“You know I don’t want to look at it either,” I say. “But we don’t have many options.”
“Luke, come on. How many times have we gone through this? Berkley gave you the Book of Eight himself. He’s given it to you three times now. Why would he give you the thing that tells us what his weakness is?”
“He wouldn’t,” I say. I know that. Elza’s right. I still want to look in the Book, though, if just to check. To make sure. Sometimes I take it out and think about opening it, at night, when nobody else is around. I’ll sit there with the Book of Eight held in my lap, imagine putting my sigil ring on, opening the Book up, letting the words flow into me. Sometimes I think about what Ash told me, that my mind was part of the Book now, and the Book itself is a lake of stars and darkness. If someone cut into my head with a knife, I wonder what they’d find. Whether night sky would be looking back at them where my brain used to be. When I close my eyes sometimes, I almost feel like I can taste the stars.
“Luke.”
“What?” I say. I had my eyes shut without realizing it. Elza looks worried.
“You just drifted off,” she says. “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yeah,” I say, flashing what I hope is a convincing smile. The truth is I don’t feel that great. I keep thinking about the dead swan. I keep thinking something terrible is happening, but we just can’t see what it is.
The last afternoon of the year passes uneventfully. We eat Darren’s lentil stew, which I have to admit is pretty good. Even Elza can’t read the books she borrowed for more than a few minutes without getting a headache. They seem like the kind of books that were written by the author only for themselves. In the end we give up and watch a movie.
At eight we get into Mum’s yellow car and drive off to Darren’s place, leaving Bea shut in the laundry room. Ham used to batter the door with his body if he thought I was trying to leave home without him, but Bea just settles down without a second thought, tucking her legs under herself and folding her ears over her eyes.
As the car moves down the hill, away from Wormwood Drive, I find myself straining in my seat, trying to see if I can catch a glimpse of the frozen river through the trees. I want to see if the swans are still there. Elza’s looking, too. I can’t see any birds, and when we cross the bridge over the frozen river, there’s not even a sign of a single white feather. They’ve vanished. I can’t tell if that makes me feel more nervous, or less.
We drive through the center of Dunbarrow, the town square already filling up with people ready to celebrate New Year’s Eve. All the Christmas decorations are still up, strings of red lanterns, enormous gaudy coils of golden wreaths hanging from every lamppost. We drive through the outskirts of town, past close-packed red brick houses, past the garage next to the motorway, done up for the festive season with a truly frightening inflatable Santa who looms over their roof, swaying in the wind. We pass under the motorway and go north, heading for the wild moors and forests where Darren lives. The streetlights become less frequent, then stop entirely. For a while we drive through farmland, hemmed in by hedges, then the road winds higher, up into the hills, and the fields are replaced by bleak moors, stony ridges, lonely trees. Dunbarrow and Brackford are just a smear of orange light on the horizon behind us. The sky is clear, with a wide, fat moon, a splattering of stars. I can see the comet everyone on the news has been getting so excited about, a greenish-blue streak in the sky. I point it out to Elza.
“Oh, yeah,” she says, looking past the trees. “I was just reading about it yesterday. That’s a rare one, you know. It’s got this massive orbit: they worked out that it comes by the sun every eight hundred years. The last time anyone saw this comet with their naked eyes was medieval times.”
“Beautiful stuff, man,” Darren says. “It’s such a privilege to witness something like that. Did I ever tell you how I saw the eclipse this summer in Thailand? I’ll never forget that. Was out there with my little sister Margaux — man, we were so wasted, had a bit to drink, some good smoke —” Darren breaks off here and glances at Mum, with a bit of an Aren’t I daring? expression, like any of us are going to be surprised he smokes weed. “Anyway, the sun went dark, and Margaux said it was, like, the most spiritual experience of her life. That eclipse. She’s really stoked to meet you guys.”
“Your sister’s here?” Mum asks. “I thought she was traveling.”
“Yeah, she’s crashing at my place for a few days. I thought I told you, babe? It’s cool. One more for t
he party, right?”
“Of course.” Mum smiles. “It’ll be lovely to meet her.”
“So shall we get some jungle going on?” Darren asks, reaching for the CD player. Elza takes a deep breath.
Great, so now we’re spending New Year’s Eve with Darren and his younger sister, who I’m imagining is exactly as annoying as Darren.
The car travels on. Our headlights illuminate stone walls, overgrown hedges, a group of sheep huddled against a wire fence, their eyes reflecting the glare from our headlights like tiny green mirrors. For a moment I think their faces look like masks somehow, or maybe lanterns with pale fire burning inside them, and then we drive past them and the sheep are gone, and once again I’m left wondering what I was thinking. Maybe I really am just cracking up, finally. After everything I’ve been through, it might’ve been a long time coming. In the dark I reach over and take Elza’s hand, and without asking why she squeezes it.
We come to Darren’s place almost by surprise, rounding a corner and suddenly seeing soft orange firelight shining through dark trees. The car bumps up a rutted track, obviously carved out by vehicles a lot more practical and hardy than Mum’s little yellow car. We pass through a wooden gate, and we’re in Darren’s yard.
I haven’t been here before, but Mum’s told me all about it. Darren’s off the grid, lives without a telephone, electricity, or gas. The glow we could see through the trees is a bonfire burning in a big rounded pit off to the side of the buildings. Darren’s main house is an old cottage, maybe a farmhouse from a long time ago, big gray stones coated in ivy. I can see candles burning through the windows. There are sheds, a garage with a big rusty truck standing up on blocks, a tree trunk that Darren’s halfway through carving into something with his chain saw.
“Well, here we are, dudes,” he says with a grin.
“Wow, yeah,” I say.
We get out of the car. Without any electric light, the darkness seems thicker than it ever does in Dunbarrow. The fire illuminates the side of the house and the yard where we’re parked, but the shadows are heavy and long, and a black double of me stretches from my feet all the way to the edge of the barn, where the light fades. Elza crushes herself against me.
“So cold,” she whispers.
“There’s no heat inside either,” I whisper back. “We’re not part of the capitalist system out here. So get used to that. Forget about material comforts.”
“Surrender your flesh,” Elza whispers, grinning. “Join ussss . . .”
“What do you think the chances of this being a cult induction are?” I ask her.
“Extremely high,” Elza whispers. “If he wheels out a big wicker man, that’s when we run.”
“So where is your sister?” Mum asks Darren.
“Oh, yeah. She built the fire — doesn’t seem to be watching it, though!” he says, like it hadn’t occurred to him before now. “Could’ve burned the whole place down, ha-ha!”
“Maybe she’s inside?” Elza suggests. “There’s smoke from the chimney, too.”
“Yeah, maybe, man, maybe,” Darren says. “All right, let’s go check.”
He leads us across the yard and into his house. The door frame is low, the walls heavy and thick. It’s very warm in here, and I feel a prickle of sweat break out on my forehead. Guess I was wrong about the no-heating part. The place is hung with rugs, swaths of Indian fabric, and there are candles jammed into jars and bottles, lighting everything with a buttery radiance. The heat’s coming from a real log fire in the fireplace, with a woman, who I assume is Margaux, sitting in front of it.
She looks up at us as we stumble in, and for a moment it seems like she doesn’t recognize anybody, like she’s not sure what to do, and then a smile breaks out on her face.
“Sis,” Darren says, “this is Persephone and her kid, Luke. And this is his girlfriend, Elza. So glad you guys could all be here tonight!”
“Margaux, it’s lovely to meet you,” Mum says. “Darren’s told me so much about you.”
“Me, too,” Margaux replies. Like her brother, she’s got the skin of someone who spends a lot of time outdoors in the sun, a deep bronzed glow that you can tell is real and didn’t come from a tanning salon. Her hair’s long and red, spilling over her shoulders and down into her lap. She’s younger than Mum or Darren, but older than us, maybe thirty. She’s wrapped in a blanket, with a pack of cards on the floor in front of her. Playing solitaire or something, I suppose. It’s not like Darren has a TV up here.
“So there’s a bonfire outside,” Darren says. “Thought you were going to watch it.”
“I’m cold,” Margaux says, giving him a wide smile. “Northumbria’s a shock after Malaysia.”
“You’ve got thin blood, Sis,” Darren says. “Look, I better make sure it’s burning right. Coming out, babe?”
For a moment I don’t know who he’s talking to, then I realize he meant Mum. Wow. He’s got his hand right on her bum. Just lying there for anyone to see. They’re like lovesick teenagers. They slip back out into the cold, leaving me and Elza with Margaux. Nobody says anything for a moment. The fire spits, spraying sparks up into the chimney. She must be absolutely roasting under that blanket.
“I really like your hair,” Elza says at last.
“Oh, thanks,” Margaux says. “I love yours too, Elza. It’s very new wave. Would you two like a drink?”
“Sure,” I say. Margaux gets up and wanders over to the side table, where a few bottles are. She’s wearing brown overalls, a purple sweater with holes at the elbow. Her hair’s insanely long, like down to her waist, bloody crimson in the firelight.
“Rapunzel,” Elza whispers to me.
Margaux Hart pours us out some wine into tea mugs and shuffles back over. Her eyes are green, I see, as she hands us the mugs. The wine is warm and sweet. Margaux settles back down in front of the fire. We sit on one of Darren’s lumpy sofas, Elza’s leg pressed against mine. Margaux watches as we both drink.
“Are you playing cards?” I ask.
“Oh,” Margaux says, “I’m not really playing. I was asking for advice.”
“Tarot, right?” Elza says.
“Yeah,” Margaux replies. “Do you read the cards as well?”
“My gran used to,” Elza says. “I still have her set at home somewhere, I think. I haven’t looked at them for a while.”
“Why do you have them?” I ask.
“They tell the future,” Margaux says carelessly. “Other things, too. They can tell you stuff about yourself that you don’t know. Answer questions. Tell you the truth.”
She gestures with her hand, which is tattooed, spirals of blue ink spilling from the back of the hand down to each knuckle, an ornate pattern. Maybe she got that done in Asia.
I look closer at the cards in front of her. They’re larger than normal playing cards, lined with gold trim, and each one has a picture on it — colorful illustrations of peasants and knights and angels and stars.
“I was just asking them about a bloke,” Margaux says, smiling in a mock-embarrassed way. “Didn’t tell me anything I don’t know already. You can give them a whirl if you want.”
“I dunno,” I say. I know all about this fortune-telling stuff, tea leaf reading and whatever. I don’t believe in it. As someone who’s seen and done real magic, I don’t have a lot of patience for tarot cards. Real magic comes from the dark places inside you, and it hurts people. It doesn’t give you advice.
“Why not?” Elza says, at the same moment.
“Really?” I say.
“Men often don’t have time for the cards,” Margaux says. “It’s something where you need a woman’s intuition, I feel. Do you have a particular question or problem, Elza?”
“Yeah, I do have a problem, actually. I want to know what we should do about Mr. Berkley.”
“Are you sure we should be asking that?” I hiss.
“Why not?” Elza says. “He’s just our neighbor,” she explains to Margaux. “He’s having this fight with Dad a
bout building a new, uh, extension on his house. It’s really stressing me out.”
Margaux gathers the cards up and starts shuffling them.
“I’m really not sure about this,” I whisper again.
“What harm would it do?” Elza whispers back. “Books aren’t getting us anywhere. We need something to go on.”
“So I’m thinking a five-card spread,” Margaux says as she shuffles. “That’s simple enough, good for giving you an idea for a direct course of action about this Berkley.”
“Sure,” Elza says. I take a sip of wine. Elza’s never met Mr. Berkley in person. I’m not saying she doesn’t take him seriously, but . . . I just wonder if he’s watching us. He might be able to see us right now. He might have heard her say his name.
Margaux lays the first card down, taps it with a tattooed finger. It has a yellow background, and the picture shows a man in a white-and-red robe, with an infinity sign scrawled above his head. My skin starts to prickle. There are red roses around him, and he’s holding a white rod in his right hand. I know this is just some dumb pack of cards, but the infinity sign makes me think of the Book of Eight, Dad’s magical book with an infinite number of pages.
“This is one of the major arcana,” Margaux explains. “The Magician.”
“The Magician,” I repeat. I look at the little figure and think again of my dad and his rings, think of the Shepherd, with his sigils tattooed on his palms. I think of Ashana Ahlgren, her white hair and gray eyes. I think of myself, sitting here by the fire with a mug of wine. The Magician.
“So normally this first card gives you the general theme of a reading,” Margaux says. “The Magician’s a good card. Skill, action, willpower. So this reading might be giving you a course of action to sort out your problem with Mr. Berkley.”
“Sounds good,” Elza says.
“The second card of the five will determine past events that are affecting this current problem,” Margaux tells us. She licks her finger and flips over the second tarot card. Despite the heat of the living room, I feel deathly cold. I can see the card before she flips it over, know what picture will be there on the other side.
