Faintly on the air he could catch two smells—one acrid, and one malty and mildly sweet. Neither one seemed unfamiliar in his nose. He let himself relax, cautiously.
Do I live here? he wondered.
An envelope with writing on it lay beside the computer’s keyboard, and he leaned forward to peer at it. It read,
BENJAMIN CAN RETURN—
BUT FIRST YOU MUST CAREFULLY READ THIS BOOK.
The crossing-out lines were heavily scored into the paper, and he considered the letters that remained untouched:
B URN
THIS BOOK
The pen beside the envelope seemed to have been used to write the words, and he picked it up and let his hand copy BURN THIS BOOK below the previous writing. The handwriting was the same.
Evidently he himself, whoever he might be, had written the message. It was seeming more likely that he did live here.
And, perhaps anticipating this loss of memory, he had left this message where he would be sure to see it. At one time he had apparently wanted himself to read the black book, so that someone named Benjamin might return…from someplace…but had then emphatically changed his mind.
He could surely trust himself, couldn’t he?
A flat, glass-covered rectangle on the desk began making a chiming sound. He stared at it in bewilderment, and after a few seconds it fell silent.
He reached out to touch it, then thought better and withdrew his hand. There was no telling what the thing might be.
Like the last few images in a dream, glimpsed for a moment upon waking before disappearing forever, he caught a fleeting impression of a castle falling, and a voice that said, a house, with bent walls…
Then the faintly recollected shreds were gone, like the last swirl of water going down a drain.
He walked out of the bedroom into a narrow kitchen, and looked out the window over the sink; he didn’t know why he was looking at the buildings across the parking lot. Certainly none of them were falling down, if that’s what had been in his mind.
Without thinking about it he reached to the side, opened the refrigerator, and lifted out a can of Coca-Cola; and he had popped it open and taken the first sip before it occurred to him that he had known—or at least his hand had known!—that there would be a Coke in there, on that shelf.
It seemed obvious that he did indeed live here. He should find the bathroom and look at himself in a mirror! See if there might be any sort of toothache remedy, for one of his back teeth had begun throbbing.
B URN THIS BOOK
But first he should probably carry out the order he had left for himself. The big letters, and the forceful lines through some of them, implied that it was important. When he had written that message, he had certainly known more than he knew now.
He walked back into the bedroom and put the Coke down on the desk, and picked up the black book. It was light, clearly very old and frail, and the covers appeared to be about to fall off. Past its time, he thought. He carried it out into the kitchen and pulled open the oven door, and laid the book on a pan that was in there.
He twisted the knob all the way to the left and instinctively switched on the fan over the stove. The old pages would probably catch fire pretty quickly.
But he turned back toward the bedroom—he had noticed other books in there, a row of them on a dresser—and he was suddenly aware of a powerful urge to read them, and then find out how to get more.
He knew nearly nothing, and he had no idea what the books might be about, but he was somehow certain that he would get a lot more out of them now than he ever had before.
◆ ◆ ◆
British writer Liz Williams has had work appear in Interzone, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Visionary Tongue, Subterranean, Terra Incognita, The New Jules Verne Adventures, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and elsewhere, and her stories have been collected in The Banquet of the Lords of Night and Other Stories, A Glass of Shadow, and, most recently, The Light Warden. She’s probably best known for her Detective Inspector Chen series, detailing the exploits of a policeman in a demon-haunted world who literally has to go to Hell to solve some of his cases, and which include Snake Agent, The Demon and the City, Precious Dragon, The Shadow Pavilion, and The Iron Khan. Her other books include the novels The Ghost Sister, Empire of Bones, The Poison Master, Nine Layers of Sky, Darkland, Bloodmind, Banner of Souls, and Winterstrike. Her most recent book is the start of the Worldsoul trilogy, Worldsoul. She lives in Glastonbury, England, where she and her husband, Trevor Jones, run a witchcraft shop—an experience they’ve written two books about, Diary of a Witchcraft Shop 1 and 2.
Here she tells the story of an obscure, quiet-living astronomer and part-time magician who (somewhat reluctantly) answers a call from some unusual petitioners to save the world from an unusual menace in a most unusual way…
◆ ◆ ◆
LIZ WILLIAMS
Sometimes, in the church, I see a fireball eye looking at me from the shadows. It is as tiny as a button, a glowing ember beneath a pew, or lodged like a little joke in the face of one of the scowling Jacobean angels that feature on the end of every row. An angel, made demon. I think it’s a joke, anyway. The eye never seems to appear near the altar: perhaps the power of Christ, greatest magician to walk this Earth, puts it off, or maybe it is simply shy. It is possible, indeed sometimes necessary, to imagine an angry god, but an enraged cherub is just funny. I suspect, you see, that the owner of the eye is in possession of a sense of humor.
I’ve never mentioned it to anyone, not even to my daughter or granddaughters, who have, God knows, enough secrets of their own. Women’s stuff, to which as a man I’m not supposed to be privy and I probably couldn’t see it even if I was supposed to. Presumably more proper these days to refer to it as “women’s mysteries,” but I just think of it as stuff—and before anyone starts complaining, I think of my own practice in the same way. Just stuff: the matter of Britain, the components of the World beyond the world.
Getting back to the eye, it’s unthinkable to speak to the vicar about it: the old boy (he’s younger than me, by the way) would probably have a heart attack. Or exorcise me. Good Lord, Professor Fallow! What a very extraordinary thing to say. Are you feeling quite yourself? No, let’s not tell the vicar. It has always struck me as curious that this little old English church, which has such an odd history, is invariably put into the ecclesiastic hands of the most prosaic clerics, all scones and conservatism and tea. I wonder, though, if the church actually does know what it’s doing and the incumbents are the ballast, the counterweights to the wild swing and sway of the building’s own magic.
It’s definitely not much to do with religion. Hard to say how I know: I do believe in the great Powers, you see, but I’m not entirely sure that all of them are the ones we’re supposed to be worshipping on a Sunday morning. This eye, whatever it belongs to, seems too free range, although I never see it outside the church. Trapped? Possibly. But occasionally it winks at me, and that seems a bit too frivolous an act for something desperate to be free.
And this is the story of that eye.
* * *
—
On one particular Sunday, I had attended church as usual. I’m not an especially religious man, but it’s the done thing in a small community, particularly if one is elderly. I’m not the local squire, but I suppose I’m the next best thing: my family has been here for a long time, in an old house. And I have two professions. One is respectable, if rather unusual: I’m an astronomer. I used to teach, at one of the Southwest universities not far from here and then at Oxford, but I’ve been retired for some years and now live permanently with my daughter and her children. My wife is dead. If you could see me now, you would see an entirely familiar sort of person: British, though not English, wearing an ancient tweed jacket and—outside church—a disreputable array of hats. I carry a walking stick, and I wish a good mor
ning to the people I meet. It’s like a kind of protective coloration: I blend well into my native habitat, like a duck-billed platypus.
The other profession? I’m a magician. You’ll find out more about that in due course.
So, church. On that chilly January Sunday, with a bitter easterly whistling around the gargoyles and occasional thin rain, I did not see the eye. Its lack didn’t really worry me one way or another; it was not a permanent phenomenon. I listened assiduously to the sermon, which was about aid to those less fortunate than oneself—a thoroughly Christian message, hard to disagree with—and sang some hymns. Then I buttoned up my coat, located my gloves—trying to start the new year off by not losing a pair a month like some daft old bugger—and went out into the winter.
Our house, which is called Moonecote, is not far from the church. I never bother to drive. I took the south path through the churchyard, what I thought of as the “river path,” although the little Moone brook which runs alongside the bounds of the church is hardly a river. This is an old place and the graves are old, too, leaning to one side like drunks at a bar and so eroded and lichen coated that the names are scarcely visible anymore. There was a handful of daffodils on one of them now, already frost blighted, but the only other flowers in sight were a tiny bunch of snowdrops, coming up along the wall. No, there was another—I blinked.
It wasn’t a flower, there against the wall of the churchyard. It was a flame.
I gave a quick glance over my shoulder. The rest of the meager congregation was either halfway to their cars or still in conversation with the vicar, who had his back turned to me. Just as well. I sidled up to the flame, which flickered with a deep red glow, most unwintry, and pretended to be fumbling with my hat. In an undertone, I said, “Who are you?”
There was no reply. I should probably explain at this point that this sort of thing isn’t precisely unknown to me, quite apart from the presence of the eyeball in the church. The churchyard, as one might expect, is full of spirits. Most are the residue of the departed, as though a little door has been left open. And usually they’re quite happy to chat, although one has to bear in mind that you’re not always accessing the full force of the soul, which is happily elsewhere—who wants to hang around a damp English churchyard for eternity, after all? Some of them take the form of light: clusters of blue flashes, or a pale, steady glow. But I’ve seen flames before, and once a drop of water, hanging suspended in the air in a tiny lustrous globe. The elements, you see. I’m sure some of them just sink back invisibly into the earth.
This little flame was dancing. No voice answered, but it leaped up onto the wall and flickered, taking sustenance from nothing.
“Who are you?” I said again.
Help him.
Spirits speak like a breath on the wind. You have to learn how to listen.
“How can I help? Who is ‘he’?”
You have to wake him.
“But who is he?”
When we ask, you must wake him.
Then it flickered and died, retreating into the wall. There was a faint glow for a second, like a patch of sunset, and it was gone.
I plodded home, somewhat amphibiously. The brook, swollen with recent rain, was high, brimming over the water meadows, but the path was safe enough. Fire and water, I thought. Water and fire. By the time I reached the house, the sky was stormy, with a single bar of light falling in the direction of the Severn estuary. The house itself, with its long drive, was quiet; it seemed to have retreated in on itself, huddling like an animal made of red Tudor brick. The kitchen garden was tidy and bare; the orchard empty of the crop of white apple sacks that had marked it throughout the autumn. There was a drift of smoke from the chimneys, but apart from that and the bar of light, the day was sodden, the color of lead. No more fire.
Alys, tall and rangy in jeans, was preparing Sunday lunch.
“Hello, dad! How was the service?”
“Went on a bit.” I could have told her about the flickering light in the churchyard, but something held me back. Pretend we’re a normal family, even if we know different.
“Oh, dear. I thought you were later than usual. Hope the church wasn’t too cold.” She bent over the Aga, fiddling with something on the stovetop.
“How was your morning? Can I do anything?”
“Quiet. And no, I don’t think you can. Beatrice has pinched the Telegraph crossword, by the way.”
I laughed. “It’s too easy for me on a Sunday.”
“Tell her that. She’ll be annoyed.”
Leaving her in the kitchen, I hung up my coat, changed my shoes, and wandered off in the direction of my study. As I climbed the stairs I could hear, muted, the voices of my granddaughters from the sitting room, then laughter. The study is at the end of a long upstairs passage, at a sort of T-junction that branches corridors in both directions, the floor uneven from several hundred years of use and subsidence. I prefer to be higher up—perhaps it’s my profession, but I like to be able to see clearly, over the land and the sky.
But as I approached the study door, someone walked rapidly and smoothly across the opening, heading down the corridor and out of sight. I caught a glimpse of a woman in a dark green dress, very long and full-skirted like an Elizabethan gown. She had a little ruff, too, which sparkled like her hair, and she was carrying a long frond of some kind of plant.
For a moment, I thought she was one of the girls, dressed up, but she was too tall—at least six foot, my own height. Heels?
“Who’s that?” I called, but there was no reply. I trotted to the end of the corridor and looked down it. No one was there.
Well, this house is full of ghosts. We do see them, you know. Not just in the mind’s eye, a fancy of the imagination, but really and truly present, just as you yourself might stand before me. I hadn’t seen this one before, but that didn’t mean that no one else had. We’ve all got our own special spirits, the ones only particular people see, and then there are the communal ones. The child by the window, for instance: we’ve all seen him in his Kate Greenaway velvet suit, his sorrowful face, like something out of a particularly emetic Victorian painting. No idea who he is. Alys and I see a doddery gardener in eighteenth-century clothes, and I think Bea might have done as well. Stella and Serena, the middle girls, talk about a pair of ghostly gazehounds, but they’re going through an animal-mad phase, so perhaps they’re tuned in to spectral beasts. Luna’s a bit too little to say for sure: hard to know if she’s seeing people or imagining them.
So a lady on the landing didn’t bother me a great deal. I mentioned her at lunch.
“No, not a clue who she might be,” Alys said, passing roast potatoes. “Elizabethan? Well, the house is old enough.”
“She sounds pretty,” said Serena, who was into fashion. “What was the gown made of? Silk, or velvet?”
“I don’t know. I only got a glimpse.”
“I hope she comes back. She sounds rather nice.”
“Granddad?” This was Stella. “Never mind the lady. Can we see the comet yet?”
Stella had asked this once a day since late November, rather as another child might ask for Christmas. “I’ve told you, Stella. It’s nearly here. Another couple of days and it should be visible.” I said it kindly; I could understand her excitement. The name of the comet was Akiyama-Maki, and it was discovered in 1964 by a pair of Japanese astronomers. It is a Great Comet, a popular name for a very bright visitor to the skies, and it is thought to be one of the Kreutz sungrazers, the remnants of a big comet that broke up in the 1100s. Astronomy was still my job, and I’d been looking forward to this winter visitor for some months—there was something about a comet, a kind of celestial magic all of its own, which had fascinated me ever since I was a boy. So I could see why Stella kept asking, even though the comet wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Other visitations were taking precedence.
�
��So, we’ll see it soon?” Stella pestered.
“Yes. Not long now.”
After dinner we sank into a Sabbath somnolence with the Sunday papers and early nights all around; the girls were back to school the following morning. I wanted to listen to a radio play, which ended about ten; switching it off along with the light, I fell asleep quickly. When I awoke, I was disoriented. It was very dark. I’d left the curtains open, but there was nothing visible beyond the window: no stars, no moon, not even the lights of the farms scattered across the valley. It was that which alerted me to the fact that something was awry with the world. There is always a light somewhere, a small orange token of human life.
I clambered out of bed and went to the window, stood staring out. The darkness was all encompassing. We’re not that close to any big cities, but there’s a faint glow where Bristol lies to the north; that wasn’t visible, either. I thought it might be fog—we’re prone to mist in these parts, especially in winter—so I pushed the window up to see. A thin, curling tendril of darkness made its way into the room, as if questing. I shut the window damn quick after that. And then I heard it again.
Help him.
After a while, in magic, the messages start to stack up; you’d have to be really clueless to ignore them. The flame, the woman, the dark.
“All right,” I said aloud. “All right.”
It’s hard to feel heroic in a dressing gown and slippers, but the voice was whispering, insistent. I went through the door, and the house had changed. Instead of the carpeted, picture-lined corridor, there was a passage of stone, a rough, porous substance like pumice. I touched it and snatched my hand away; it burned with cold. I took a few experimental steps. My feet, in their old man’s slippers, did not freeze, but the air around me felt constricted, as if there wasn’t enough of it. At the end of the passage, encased in rock, stood my study door. I reached it and pushed it open.
The Book of Magic Page 28
