Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

‘Look, Trish, you might be into the occult, but it’s all just a game. Tarot cards and everything. It isn’t real. What that bastard man has been doing is real. As real as dropping napalm on people or torturing them with electric shocks. I’m scared – but there’s an answer to fear. You should be coming to the self-defence class with me this evening, not getting stoned and reading all that garbage. It’s escapist mysticism.’

  Trish offered to share her joint.

  ‘I’m getting out of here,’ said Helen. ‘The air’s poisoned. I need a clear head. I need my sense of balance.’

  ‘Karate means “empty-handed”. You told me that.’ Trish giggled. ‘So you’re going out empty-handed. I want someone holding my hand.’

  ‘Oh, do you? Such as the chivalrous bravos of the football team? Or the security guards in their sexy SS uniforms? I’m damned if I see why women have to be escorted around and curfewed because there’s one perverted lunatic male somewhere out there. Why don’t they curfew all the men? Oh, I’ll tell you why. They enjoy this. They’re using these murders to oppress us, Trish. Then they can all be gallant heroes and stomp us a bit further into the ground in the process. And your mysticism is another oppression. I’m sick of it. If you don’t toughen up, I’m going to put my name down to switch rooms.’

  Trish exhaled. ‘I don’t want a footballer or a guard escorting me. I like going where I please. Alone.’

  ‘Better learn self-defence, then.’

  Trish smiled. ‘Footballers are boring. I want a demon.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake! Take a walk across the Green tonight if it’s a demon you’re looking for. There’s a human one about.’

  Helen gathered her judo costume and marched out, slamming the door, leaving Trish in a cloud of smoke gazing at her row of books on mysteries and magic.

  When Helen got back to her room later that evening -after being escorted to the door of the Hall, to her chagrin, in company with other returning woman students-she discovered that Trish had upended one of the beds and rolled the carpet back. The air was rich with fumes.

  On the exposed floorboards, in white chalk, Trish had drawn a large five-pointed star. A book lay open on the floor beside it, containing a picture of the same. Trish was just finishing lettering a final word in one of the outer triangles: ADONAI. The other four triangles contained these words: TETRAGRAMMATON, HELOI, ANA-BONA, and JOD.

  Trish stepped back, brushing chalk off her fingers.

  ‘Hi, Helen. How did the karate go? Oh, but the power of the soul is greater than the power of the fist!’

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Two people live in this room, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  Tell you what,’ Trish said pleasantly, if nothing happens tonight, I’ll give your self-defence class a try. One try, anyhow. It might turn me on. I guess there’s a lot of mystic energy involved in the fighting arts.’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘Hey, keep clear!’ cried Trish as Helen stepped forward. ‘If you walk across my pentagram, you’ll rub the lines out. Then it won’t be one continuous line. It won’t work.’

  ‘ You promise not to smoke any more dope in this room – or I’ll rub all your goddamn lines out.’ Shuffling her boots, Helen advanced a pace.

  ‘No, stop! Please! I took such a long time getting the angles right. Okay, okay, I promise. No more dope in here. Now will you sit down?’

  Nodding, Helen edged around the outside of the diagram and sat on her own bed; this had been pushed aside, but at least not upended.

  ‘You’ve been taking advantage of me, Trish. You know perfectly well I would never report you for smoking. That would be despicable. But you’ll stop it in here! From now on you can go and get stoned in somebody else’s room.’

  ‘I already promised. Take it easy, will you? I need all my energy for this.’

  Sullenly, Helen started reading the chalk words aloud. ’Tetra … grammaton, Adon –’

  ‘Be quiet! You don’t know what to do.’

  Helen toyed with reading out the other mystic words just to spite Trish, but subsided with a sigh. ‘Will this take long? I’m tired from the practice mats. If it doesn’t work in ten minutes, will you kindly replace the carpet?’

  ‘Ten? That doesn’t give me long to tell the demon what to do.’

  ‘You’re out of your brain, Trish.’

  ‘I’m in a heightened state of consciousness. Now will you sit there quietly while I read the invocation?’

  ‘Aren’t you meant to be standing inside that shape? I mean, I hate to correct the expert – or remind you that you’ve got an essay due on Hart Crane …’

  ‘No, no. In most rituals magicians stand inside for protection. But this one’s different. The demon is contained by the pentagram. The book says so.’

  While Helen tapped her foot impatiently on the boards, Trish picked up her book and addressed the empty chalk diagram.

  ‘Jod, Anabona, Heloi, Tetragrammaton! Rotas, Opera, Tenet, Arepo, Sator! By the power of the Mighty, Adonai, Elohim, Sabaoth, I conjure thee, Ego te invoco, Samathiel. In the name of the Three Most Terrible Names, Agla, On, Tetragrammaton, and by the Unspeakable Name which I now speak, IHVH, I demand that you appear in seemly and obedient form. Come, Samathiel, Come!’

  The air popped. Poised on tiptoe in the centre of the pentagram stood a …

  ‘Oh, God.’ Helen jumped and ran for the door.

  … a manthing with ram’s horns curling from its brows. Its eyes were golden, with black pupils rectangular like a goat’s. Its stoutly muscled body was a coppery red, and naked except for a leather loincloth.

  The creature stabbed a finger in Helen’s direction. Helen promptly fell in mid-stride, sprawling on the floor. She didn’t move.

  ‘I c-c-conjure thee, Sa-Sa-Samathiel,’ stammered Trish.

  ‘Call me Sam,’ said the creature with a grin that seemed purely diabolic.

  ‘- to obey. Obey! By the Unspeakable Name –’

  ‘Oh, screw all that rigamarole. You’ve exactly as much power over me as a ringing telephone has. I can take the call or leave it. This time I decided to take it.’

  ‘I constrain thee –’

  ‘Do you really?’ Samathiel strode forward out of the pentagram. ‘You ought to remember about the cracks between floorboards.’

  ‘By the name El, depart without harm!’

  Samathiel remained.

  ‘How inhospitable,’ he said lightly. ‘I presume you summoned me for some reason?’

  ‘What have you done to Helen?’

  ‘Nothing much – she’s asleep. She’ll wake up when I leave. This is between you and me; it’s no business of hers. Now, why have you called me from the Metaworld?’

  Trish regrouped her courage – despite the fact that Samathiel was on the wrong side of the pentagram. After all, the demon hadn’t seized her. He hadn’t carried her off into flames. Maybe he couldn’t. ‘You do have to obey me, don’t you? I order you to tell the truth!’

  Samathiel scratched his horny head. ‘That’s logically invalid. Your order depends on the assumption I’m being ordered to verify.’

  All demons are liars, Trish thought weakly. Sophists. ‘I shall assume that I command you.’

  ‘Assume what you like,’ he chuckled. ‘I assure you I’m here voluntarily. So how may I assist you, fair enchantress?’

  ‘I want a bodyguard,’ she said boldly. ‘I want him to appear immediately when I need him, but he must keep hidden the rest of the time. There’s a murderer going about. He’s killed and mutilated three women already. I have no wish to be number four.’

  Samathiel mused, tugging at his right horn.

  ‘That’s quite understandable. And I presume that this killer operates by surprise, when there’s no one else about? So I wouldn’t be observed by any curious eyes unadept in the Mysteries. And actually it’s quite unlikely that you will be attacked, statistically speaking. Okay, I agree. Conditionally.’

  ‘Conditionally?’

 
; ‘It’s like this, Trish: irrespective of my own feelings of good will or malice towards you, there’s a balance between the World and the Metaworld. I can assist you. I can save your life if you’re attacked. However, should I do this good deed for you, I must also do a bad deed to you in some other manner. It’s purely for the sake of symmetry. You understand? By accepting the good deed, you attract the bad deed subsequently.’

  ‘You don’t want my soul when I die? That isn’t it?’

  Samathiel winked one of his goat’s eyes. ‘On such brief acquaintance I would hardly plan on shacking up with you in the Metaworld. Which is what that would involve.’

  ‘How bad would a bad deed be?’

  ‘Well, it would hardly be fatal, or that would make saving your life rather pointless.’

  ‘It definitely won’t be fatal?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Well … I suppose if the choice is between staying alive but having something nasty done to me, or being killed, it’s better to stay alive. Whatever! Life’s precious. I accept. How do I, er, summon you if I need to? I mightn’t have much time, remember.’

  ‘Just think these words: Sam Elohim Jod. Shout them out in your mind. I’ll be there.’

  Samathiel caught hold of her left hand. For an absurd moment, Trish imagined that he was going to kiss it. Instead, he twisted her hand over, palm upward.

  ‘I’ll sign here,’ he said. With a fingernail sharp as a cat’s claw the demon sliced a cross in her flesh, so swiftly that she hardly felt the wound. He drew her hand to his lips and licked the blood.

  Trish gasped as her palm began to ache. ‘Was that the bad deed?’

  ‘No. Bad deeds come a bit bigger than that. And they don’t come in advance; only when you use up the good deed. That was just to attune us.’

  Letting her hand drop, Samathiel stepped back inside the pentagram and raised himself up on tiptoe.

  ‘Wait, Sam!’ Trish cried. ‘Tell me about this Meta-world! Tell me something!’

  However, Samathiel merely waved nonchalantly, and vanished slowly. Bit by bit. His ram’s horns disappeared last of all. Briefly they hung alone in mid-air like some heraldic scroll.

  Helen hauled herself up, and saw Trish but no demon. ‘It’s gone … where did it go?’

  ‘Back to the Metaworld, of course,’ Trish said smugly.

  ‘Your hand’s bleeding.’ Some blood was indeed dripping onto the floorboards. Helen darted forward, caught up Trish’s hand, and stared at the mark cut in her palm.

  ‘What did it do? What … what was it?’

  ‘Oh, that was Sam. Short for Samathiel. He’s my obedient servant. And now, I think I’ll just roll another joint to celebrate. Don’t object to my smoking, will you not, dear? Or I’ll have a word with Sam about you.’

  Three weeks passed, and another female student was found dead and mutilated on waste ground a mile away from the campus.

  Trish didn’t exactly want to see Samathiel again (so she reasoned to herself), but life had become quite intolerable with constant police patrols, extra security guards, restrictions, random checks. A person couldn’t even have a quiet smoke on her own on the Green these days. In fact, a person could hardly get to be alone; and it was just as bad in the Hall.

  So, since Trish possessed the perfect self-defence, maybe it was her duty to make use of it? If only to get rid of the new police state which had been imposed on their lives …

  ‘It’s as if we’re the criminals!’ she protested one day.

  ‘We are,’ said Helen grimly. She wore a brown belt now. ‘We’re women. So first we’re punished by the Butcher because we’re women. Then we’re taken into protective custody by every strutting male. That’s the score.’

  ‘I can’t score. That’s the trouble! Not with all these police around. Dealers won’t come near the place.’

  ‘Good,’ said Helen.

  ‘But it isn’t good.’

  ‘No, I suppose you’re right. It’s just one more ball and chain. One more limitation of our freedon.’

  So Trish began to slip out late at night, through a downstairs window which she gimmicked. She stole out of the Hall where they were locked up as if in Purdah.

  Since her head was clearer these days (and nights), she successfully avoided being spotted by guards or police patrols. To anybody who was lurking in hiding in the neighbourhood in bushes, behind fences, or on waste lots, though, she did her best to advertise her presence, loitering in the night alone.

  This was the seventh such night, and Trish had begun to wonder whether she were acting too much like a decoy. Tonight she hurried across the Green, back and forth in all the most dangerous places, acting scared – like a mouse scuttling for her nest before the hawk could pounce. She hoped she radiated fright and guilt at her rebellious temerity at being out alone.

  Nothing. So she headed for the Agriculture Department’s vegetable gardens.

  Arriving there, she scurried along the gravel paths. The moon was below the faintly lamp-fogged horizon. Star-light exaggerated the threat of rows of onions, cabbages, and kale, tall spooky poles of runner beans, tool-sheds, making everything just that little bit visible, but not enough to see exactly what it was.

  She was seized from behind. A hand clamped her mouth.

  ‘Wicked girl,’ hissed a voice. The man’s other hand squeezed around her throat.

  Her heart pounded. Sam Elohim Jod! she cried out fiercely in her mind.

  She was thrown to the ground …

  As she rolled over, throat aching, a dark figure was lifting the first figure, of her attacker, clear off the ground. Against the stars she faintly saw the great curls of Samathiel’s horns.

  The Butcher – who else could it be? – cried out, ‘No! No! For God’s sake, what are you?’

  She heard Samathiel’s voice reply, ‘I’m the Devil, come to collect you, little man.’

  Then she heard a dull cracking sound, as the Butcher’s back was broken.

  The body dropped to the ground. Samathiel bent over it, tearing the man’s shirt open and apparently fingering his chest.

  ‘What are you doing, Sam?’

  ‘Carving “Butcher” on him. His body is his gravestone.’

  The demon, of whose expression she could glean no hint in the darkness, handed her to her feet, but did not release her hand.

  ‘And now, Mistress Trish, ‘tis time for the Bad Deed that necessarily balances the Good Deed.’

  ‘What … what’s it going to be?’

  ‘I’ve given a certain amount of thought to that because I did surmise that you might go out of your way to attract this creature to you. Power unused is no power at all, is it?’

  ‘What’s it going to be?’

  ‘Ah … I might reach into your brain and make you an epileptic. Or I might wither one of your legs. Or blind you in one eye. The Harm has to be sufficient …’ The demon chuckled. ‘And it must, of course, be unexpected. Unless expecting makes it even worse …’

  Abruptly, Samathiel whirled her … elsewhere. She was dragged through disorienting geometries of light -was this the Harm? – but almost immediately these became the walls and the domed ceiling of a large chamber of polished blue marble. The chamber looked to be hollowed out of marble rather than merely built of it. No door was visible, though there was a single tall mullioned window, without glass panes, giving onto sun-light and blue sky.

  The floor was heaped with hairy rugs, deep as the storeroom of a furrier. Released from the demon’s grasp, Trish stumbled across the soft bounce of the beast pelts, blinking at the sudden brightness. She clutched one of the sun-dappled marble bars of the window, and caught her breath. Below was wild forest and a winding river. Far, far below. The window looked directly down a precipice perhaps half a mile high.

  ‘Here the sun shines bright,’ said the demon voice, ‘when on Earth it’s night. And now …’

  Trish turned. Samathiel had discarded his leather loin-cloth. She stared in horror as he began s
tepping toward her.

  ‘Your Harm,’ he said, ‘is to be raped by a demon in his bedchamber, and to bear his child.’

  As he tore off Trish’s favourite batik dress, she shrieked, ‘Helen’s right! You are all the same! You are, you are!’

  Samathiel just laughed; though his laughter, somehow, didn’t sound entirely satanic.

  Trish had stayed in bed, chain-smoking ordinary cigarettes, imagining the devil life in her womb, the soon-to-be foetus with ram’s horns. She suspected there would be no possible way of aborting it. Days of fear had passed, days of memory.

  The door burst open, making Trish flinch, but it was only Helen with a piece of paper in her hand. A demon didn’t need a door to enter by …

  Helen opened the glass louvres to ventilate the room.

  ‘Well?’ Trish asked wearily. The piece of paper was her certificate of impregnation by a lord of Hell. The result of the home-test kit had been ambiguous; this one had been carried out by a professional clinic.

  ‘Well, nothing,’ Helen said. ‘You aren’t pregnant. The result’s negative. It’s “no”. That’s definite.’

  ‘What? But Samathiel said –!’

  ‘You’re no more pregnant than I am, Trish.’

  ‘Samathiel told me I would bear his child!’

  ‘So he was lying. Or joking. Look, Trish, I don’t deny you were raped. That was pretty obvious when you staggered in in your rags. I think the Butcher raped you out there – and somehow you killed him. Don’t ask me how, when you’ve never been near a self-defence class. But you did. Unless … you escaped – or got interrupted – and the football team zapped him?’

  Indeed, the police were currently hunting, unsuccessfully, for the ‘vigilantes’ who had snapped the presumed murderer’s spine and cut the word ‘Butcher’ into his chest.

  ‘No, Sam did it! Then he took me away to the Meta-world and did the Bad Deed to me. And returned me to the Hall. For crying out loud, you saw Sam that first time. You know he was real.’

  ‘In that case, he knew nothing about pregnancy testing. Read the result for yourself.’

  Trish scrambled out of bed and read.

  ‘I get it!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sam said he’d fertilize me -but he didn’t let himself. He used yoga or something. He wanted to worry me – to make me feel cursed – but he didn’t actually want to harm me.’