“He and his wife”—I fumbled, pulling the notebook out of my pocket—“were apparently members of a group”—it took me a moment to find the reference—“called”—flip, flip, flip—“the Order of the Golden Sunset.”
“Oh,” she said, curling her lip in distaste. “That bunch.”
“You know them?” I asked, leaning eagerly across the table.
“I know of them, that’s for sure. We all knew of them. William Thorne. Lots of bad energy there. You know about the scandal?”
I shook my head.
She reached for another cookie. “Well, I suppose you could look it up, but the short version is that around 1920 or so, police raided Thorne’s house, found a very young woman being held prisoner, along with her daughter. Thorne was arrested, but the woman refused to testify against him, and went back to him as soon as he was released from prison. The papers all said that he had her under his spell.” She shrugged.
I had been making notes as she was speaking, and when she stopped, I flipped back a few pages. “Well, Took was apparently a member of the Golden Sunset.”
She thought for a moment. “The name isn’t familiar, but I’m not an expert. What’s your interest?” She looked at me suspiciously.
God, how to answer that question.
“I’m doing some research on Lazarus Took, and I think he started an order of his own after he left the Golden Sunset. The Brotherhood of the Stone?”
Glancing between the mother and the daughter, I could see that my answer was not to their liking.
“You know the Brotherhood of the Stone?”
Nora nodded gravely, but didn’t speak.
Time for fuller disclosure. “I think that Took, and maybe that order, are the source of some problems I’m currently facing.”
“Well, that wouldn’t surprise me,” Nora said briskly, taking another bite of cookie. “That bunch was nothing but trouble. Set the course of true magic back twenty-five or thirty years, they did.”
“How?” Sarah asked.
“Well, they had that estate …”
“Raven’s Moor?” I said, checking the notebook.
“Right, Raven’s Moor. Apparently it was a family home, but when the new master got his hands on it …” She shook her head. “The stories that came out of that place. Rituals, orgies, drugs … A lot of the stories that circulate today about Crowley I suspect actually referred to that bunch. One mystical order is the same as another to most people. Especially after what happened.”
She took a sip of her tea.
“After what happened?” I prompted.
She waited a moment, as if she didn’t really want to talk about it. “Well, no one knows what really happened, that’s the thing. The police and newspapers just referred to it as ‘the mysterious happenings at Raven’s Moor.’ People disappeared, ran, went underground. Not just …” She struggled with the words. “Not just that crew, but everyone of a magical bent. That’s what my mother did, went underground. Kitchen witch to kitchen witch in three generations. One brief, shining moment of semi-respectability brought crumbling down because of those people.”
In my notebook I wrote, went underground = > America?
“Do you have any idea what happened to the Brotherhood after that?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“They disappeared,” she said.
“Some of them probably turned up in other groups, but no one ever saw the master again. At least”—she paused—“not anyone who admitted to being the master.”
“So was this a particular type of witchcraft, or—”
“No,” Nora said sternly. “Not witchcraft. Witches had nothing to do with this. You’re doing what the newspapers did, lumping together things they didn’t understand.”
“Wicca is an earth religion,” Sarah explained. “Its rituals are built around the seasons—observance of and communion with the natural world. The first tenet, the guiding principle, is to do no harm. It’s a sympathetic magic, do you see? Guided by harmony and accord. The magics that the Raven’s Moor group believed in, the rituals they performed, were something much different. Completely concerned with power, and with the individual possessing it and increasing it by drawing more from his followers. They sought to conquer death, to control time, to bend the world to their will.”
“And sometimes they succeeded,” Nora said, her tone one of finality. She was clearly not interested in discussing it any further.
We sipped at our tea in silence for a few moments.
“I’m curious, Mr. Knox,” Nora said at length. “You mentioned that you thought this order, the Brotherhood, might be at the root of some problems you are facing.”
I took a deep breath, not sure of how much to give away.
“Why do you believe that?” she asked, setting her cup on its saucer.
“I recently … An object has come into my possession,” I explained slowly, trying to keep it vague. “An object that I’m sure once belonged to Lazarus Took.”
“And strange things have been happening since you’ve had it,” Sarah continued on my behalf.
I nodded.
“You have the object with you,” Nora stated. “In your bag.” She cocked her head toward my shoulder bag.
“Yes.”
“May we see it?” Nora asked.
A momentary uncertainty rose at the thought of revealing the book, but I started to take it from my bag. Nora stopped me. She took the plate of cookies to the counter and opened a drawer. When she came back she pushed the cream and sugar containers to the edge of the table and spread out a square of green silk.
“There,” she said, centring the fabric. “You can put it there.”
“It’s a book,” I said, setting David’s book on the cloth.
“So it is,” Nora said, staring at it.
Almost a full minute passed as she leaned close to the table and studied the book. She didn’t pick it up, didn’t even touch it.
“It always amazes me,” she said thoughtfully. “Just how much passes most people unaware. It’s like they’re living in a black and white world, completely unaware of the colours all around them.”
“What—”
“You can feel it, can’t you, Sarah?”
Sarah had gone pale.
“Feel what?” I asked.
“Sarah?”
“Cold,” Sarah said. “Powerful, but cold.”
Nora looked at me. “This is indeed an object of great power, and it bears the touch of a very dark magician.”
Her words should have brought me a sense of relief: I wasn’t going insane. It really was the book.
But magic?
“What does it do?” I asked, my voice dropping to nearly a whisper.
“Why don’t you tell us?” said Nora. “What has it done to you?”
I didn’t even hesitate. I told them everything—not the vague story I had told John, but the whole story, from giving David the book to his suspension to his collapse.
When I finished, Nora laid her hands on the table and said, in a flat voice, “Well, that’s that then. It needs to be destroyed.”
I shook my head. “No, we can’t.”
I explained about the soothing effect that the book had on David. She looked at it again, thoughtfully.
“Well,” she sighed as she stood up. “The first thing we can do is get a better sense of what this book actually is.” She walked over to the sink and turned on the water. “Sarah, be a love and pass me the Plexi cake pan, would you? In the drawer under the stove.”
A few moments later, Sarah carefully placed a clear Plexiglas baking pan partly filled with water on top of the book, taking care not to spill a drop.
“What’s that?” I asked, craning to see.
“A baking pan half full of water,” Nora said, sitting back down. “What does it look like?”
She fumbled at her neck and lifted away a necklace, heavy with a large clear crystal. “We seek not to change, but to see.” She slid the stone
off the silver chain and held it up to me. “Quartz,” she said. “For clarity.”
Clutching the stone in her fist, she brought it to her mouth, whispering words that I couldn’t quite hear. When she was finished she nodded decisively and, reaching out, let the stone tumble softly into the pan of water, near the edge closest to her.
“What is this supposed—?”
“Shh,” Sarah said, gazing intently at the pan.
The water, which had been clear a heartbeat before, now shimmered with a slight iridescence, a faint glow along the surface. Through the water, I could see the cover of the book, wavering a little with distortion from the pan and the water, the golden lettering of the title and the author’s name, the faint shadow of the stamped shape in the middle of the cover.
As I watched, though, something happened. The gold of the letters faded, the colour becoming a dull grey-brown, almost disappearing into the leather. The symbol, however, began to glow a tanzanite that shone brightly through the water. I could see symbols within the points of the star, and odd characters between the points. The circle around the star symbol was not, as I had thought, a simple line: it too was made up of tiny, unfamiliar letters or symbols.
I started to speak, but Sarah hushed me again.
Another series of letters began to glow, the purple gradually intensifying in a wide band that followed the edges of the cover, a broad line of characters that formed a frame around the cover and the star image.
I picked up my pen and started to copy some of the figures, panicking when I realized the colour was starting to fade.
“Dammit,” I muttered, racing to get something, anything, down in the notebook.
“Don’t worry,” Nora said. “That which has been seen cannot be unseen.”
She was right. Although the purple colour lost its intensity, the symbols remained plainly visible, in the same faded gold colour as the title and Took’s name.
I sat back in the chair, trying to catch my breath.
“Sarah,” Nora said. “If you would be so kind.”
Sarah started at her mother’s voice, and looked away from the book.
“Could you please?” she gestured at the pan.
As Sarah picked up the pan of water and carried it over to the sink, Nora and I gazed intently at the book, at the new letters and symbols that had appeared on the cover.
“Do you have any idea what it is?” I asked.
“A spell, I’m guessing,” Sarah said as she sat back down. She was holding a dishtowel, rubbing it between her fingers, and after a moment passed the crystal to her mother.
“A spell,” I said, turning the thought over in my head.
“Or spells,” Nora added, as if that would make it easier. “It’s not the sort of magic we do.” She glanced at her daughter. “Our rituals and spells are very open, and reciprocal, based on agreement and trust. This, this is …”
“It’s a trap,” Sarah said flatly.
Nora nodded.
“I still don’t understand.”
“Look,” Sarah said, turning the cloth so the book was facing us. Neither of them had touched the book directly. “This sigil”—she pointed at the star—“is a fairly common magical symbol. It’s got hundreds of variations, hundreds of uses, hundreds of contexts. Based on the symbols within this particular star, though, I’m guessing that it’s setting the parameters for the spell. Look, here, that’s the symbol for male, governed by”—she shifted her finger—“this symbol, which stands for youth. These two symbols together refer to a young boy. Do you see?”
I nodded, trying to keep up.
“My best guess …” She looked at her mother, who nodded her agreement. “… is that this is a proscription. The spell will only work on someone who matches all of these criteria.”
“You said you’d been reading the book?” Nora asked.
I nodded.
“No sign of seizure?”
“Not so far.”
“Exactly,” Sarah said. “Without the proscription of this sigil, the spell would work on anyone.”
“Or no one, more likely,” Nora said. “It’s very difficult to create a universal spell. Especially one that has to work on its own.”
“So what are these letters?” I asked, pointing at the frame of characters that had appeared under the pan of water.
“I’m not sure,” Sarah said. “It’s not a language I’ve ever seen before. It bears a superficial resemblance to Celtic runes, but there are too many characters. Probably it’s an invented language.”
“So you can’t tell what it does?”
“Oh, I think I know what it does, in general terms. I think it’s an invocation, perhaps. Or an invitation. It’s hidden on the cover, like texturing. It might be a super-conscious thing, or perhaps it registers by touch.”
“Only those who are susceptible to it. Young boys …” I said.
“Yes, that’s right. And then with this in place, the rest of the spell is probably scattered through the book, hidden in plain sight. Is there a dedication?”
They both flinched as I reached out and opened the book. “I’ve spent the last two weeks reading this book, carrying it around with me. If it was going to affect me, I think it would have already—Here’s the dedication,” I said, and they both leaned forward to read it. “ ‘For Cora, the greatest gift.’ Cora was Took’s wife.”
“And here,” I said, flipping forward, “is what I think David was reading when he had the first seizure.” I glanced at Nora. “Even to me, that looks like a spell.”
Sarah nodded as she read. “That looks like the final step,” she said. “By the time David got to here, he would already have been mostly enthralled. This would have done it.”
“Done what? What does the spell do? Did someone go to all this work just to give seizures to some kid?”
“Without being able to decipher the language …” Sarah began.
“How can we do that?” I asked. “How can we decipher the language?”
“We can’t,” she said. “Not without a lexicon. A code key. This Lazarus Took probably invented a new system of runes for precisely this purpose: to keep people from figuring out how the spell works. To keep people from figuring out ways to counter it.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. I wanted to pound my fists on the table, to throw something at the wall, to burst into tears.
“I’m sorry, Chris,” she said, using my name for the first time. “Without a lexicon …”
“Sarah, love,” Nora said, still staring at the printed text. “Can you bring me a fresh pan of water, please? And make sure the bottom is completely dry.”
We both looked at her, equally puzzled.
“There is more here,” she said, “than meets the eye.”
Sarah repeated the process with the pan of water, this time setting it carefully atop the open pages of the book. Nora dropped her crystal into the pan and I watched in silence, waiting. Time slid by as the three of us sat, staring at the words on the page.
“I’m not seeing anything,” I said carefully.
“It’s not just you,” Sarah said. “Mom?”
“Watch.” With what seemed like exaggerated care, Nora flicked the side of the pan.
As the water moved with the impact of her finger, I sucked in my breath: the lines of text, refracted through the water, seemed to waver, and as the black lines shifted, flashes of brilliant purple appeared where they had been hidden by the text. Purple letters, words, sentences.
“It looks …” Nora said, still staring into the water as it gradually stilled, as the purple lines settled back under the black print. “… like there’s more than one text here. There’s more than one book to your book.”
She tapped the pan with the back of her knuckles. Harder, this time, the water sloshing. Again the moving black lines revealed the purple letters underneath, but this time, with the greater motion of the water, the purple lines also wavered, revealing more purple lines. And more. And a fourth laye
r. And more.
“By the Goddess,” Sarah whispered.
“How many are there?” I asked.
Nora shrugged and looked at me, her face pale, her eyes dark. “There’s no way to tell.”
In the silence that followed I thought back to my conversation with John, the words I had written, the clues my subconscious had left for me. I hadn’t wanted to say anything before I had heard them out, to be sure they wouldn’t dismiss me as a madman.
Still, it was difficult to finally put my question into words. “If the book is a trap, do you think it’s possible that my son’s consciousness, his soul or his essence or whatever you want to call it, has been trapped in this book? That he’s somehow in there?” I gestured at the splayed pages. “While his body is in the hospital?” I almost cringed, but there was no other way to express my suspicion. My own words: While I was reading, I ceased to be little Christopher Knox. I became someone else entirely. It was the only idea that made sense.
Once I got past the fact that it was insane.
Nora didn’t even hesitate. “Yes. I think that’s exactly what’s happening.”
I was so relieved, I almost wept. If I was crazy, at least I wasn’t alone.
“From what I know of the Brotherhood,” she continued, “it sounds like exactly the sort of thing they would do.”
Sarah looked stunned. She didn’t seem entirely convinced, but clearly had too much respect for her mother’s wisdom to disagree. “And what’s more,” Nora said, reaching toward the pan and rapping it with her knuckles again, so hard that the water almost spilled over the pan’s edges. The black and purple lines swayed wildly. “I think one of these purple lines is your son’s story, the life that he’s living within the book.”
“David,” I whispered.
“If his consciousness, and his soul, are trapped within the book, then his free will is trapped in there as well. There would be no way for the author to control his actions. He’s within the world of the book, but able to react autonomously. Independently. Within its strictures, of course.”
“The ultimate character with a mind of its own,” I muttered.
“And his storyline would have to be present within the book as well as the author’s storyline. Hidden by it, but present nonetheless.”
Bedtime Story Page 21
