“Now,” he continued. “A salamander is a dangerous creature with potentially awesome power. Don’t be fooled by its diminutive appearance. It is effectively a demon, in every sense of the word. Its physical size on this plane is only restricted by the size of the flame used to summon it.”
With that, he walked over to the cage and upended the scrambling rat into the bars on the far side.
“Get that stick,” he said. “Try to pin it down.”
I did as I was asked. Looking back, I believe that this was the moment when things truly changed. Though seemingly innocuous, pinning a rat in a cage was in fact my first real act in the realm of magic. Up to that point, I had been but an observer, a student of theory. But as I poked the stick through the bars and struggled to trap it in the corner, I moved from mere student to practitioner. However insignificantly, a small step had been taken.
While I held it as still as I could, Andrew poured some of the chloroform onto the rag, and held it to the rat’s snout. It stopped struggling and was soon asleep. Then, he carried the cage to the center of the room, and emptied the rodent onto the floor near the copper bowl. Leaving the candles and matches nearby, we cleared everything else away. I stood near the door, and watched.
Andrew knelt down beside the copper bowl, and meditated for a minute. When he was ready, he struck a match, and lit both candles. After intoning some phrases in Latin, he held the candles out in front of him, close to the floor, white in the left, and red in the right. He tilted them so that the melting wax dripped off of them, then slowly traced an arc with each arm. When finished, he had drawn a semicircle around the bowl. Then, he stood up and turned one hundred eighty degrees, repeating the process. The completed circle alternated red and white quadrants around its circumference. Next, he dripped wax from the white candle on the ground to the left of the bowl, where the red and white arcs met. There he stuck the still-burning candle in the melted wax, and held it in place until he was sure that it would not fall over. He did the same with the red candle to the right of the bowl. After stepping backward out of the circle, Andrew knelt down with arms held high, and spoke at length in Latin. When finished, he struck a match, and threw it into the bowl.
What happened next would have been impossible to believe had I not seen it myself. The sherry, of course, burst into flame. There was a large puff of white smoke, and the flame immediately went out. Even before the smoke had dissipated, I could see that he had been successful. A red, lizard-like creature had materialized inside the bowl. Only as big as a rat itself, it leaped out of the bowl, ignoring the sedated rodent, and ran on its hind legs straight for Andrew. But suddenly, it stopped—as if shocked—when it reached the wax circle. As it paused, I examined the thing. It looked very much like its namesake, except for a few differences. The skin was rough and dry instead of smooth and moist, with needle-like teeth that were disproportionately large, occupying a great portion of the head. Most disconcerting of all, however: It had no eyes.
Despite this, it seemed to somehow detect my presence. It moved towards me, but once again, its progress was limited by the wax border. Andrew, still kneeling in front of the circle, had been quiet for some time now. Slowly, the creature began to walk around inside of the circle, studying the invisible barrier. It had explored nearly the entire circumference when I noticed the rat twitch. So did the salamander. It watched, eyelessly, as the rat slowly righted itself, and started to hobble away. But the salamander was faster. The creature was a blur as it crossed the distance and hungrily attacked. The rat squealed as the razor-sharp teeth tore into its fur, and flesh, and bone. Most remarkable of all, where the salamander bit into the rat, the wound was cauterized, and the fur smoked. In no time at all, its squeals fell silent. Except perhaps a drop of blood on the floor, there was no evidence that the rat had ever existed.
When it was completely consumed, Andrew spoke a single phrase in Latin, whereupon the creature turned around to face him, becoming immobile as a statue. Andrew breathed a deep sigh, and stood up.
“That’s it,” he said with evident satisfaction. “The sacrifice has been accepted. As long as those candles burn, the creature is under my control.”
I looked at the candles. They would burn for hours.
“You have a task in mind for it?” I asked.
“Yes—I’m going to tell it to eat all the rats in this house.”
“But to do that, it would have to leave the circle.”
“The circle is only needed to contain it until it is under my control. Right now, it is.”
I looked at him with obvious doubt, fear rising in my throat.
“Please trust me,” said Andrew. “The most difficult part is over.”
He retrieved the stick with which I had restrained the rat, and began scraping away a bit of the wax circle. I watched the creature closely as he did so, but it never stirred. The gap ended up being only a half-inch, but that was apparently enough. When Andrew uttered another phrase in Latin, the salamander left the circle and started searching the room with an unnatural speed. It rapidly examined the perimeter of the room, then somehow squeezed its body between the boxes and the wall. Minutes later, we heard muffled cries from somewhere within the wall.
“And now,” said Andrew, “we wait.”
Almost two hours went by. We tracked the progress of the creature through the building by ear, upstairs and down. At times, we might catch a glimpse of a red blur as it emerged from a crack that was plainly too small, run along the floor, then disappear into another tiny crevice. Eventually, we lost track of it. And try as we might, we could no longer hear it. I began to worry that the candles had burned much more quickly than planned, and that there was now a demon on the loose. The thought would have been more terrifying had my brain not found it so ridiculous: demon! But Andrew wasn’t worried. He suggested we return to the storeroom, and to my surprise, there was the salamander, sitting in the same spot from which it had departed on its mission. Despite the fact that we had heard it kill and presumably devour several nests of rats, its own size had not changed at all.
With its assignment completed, Andrew entered the broken circle and knelt down at its center, positioning himself once again over the bowl. He wet the fingertips of both hands with saliva, and reached out so that each hand hovered above a candle. The salamander continued to sit where it had eaten the sacrificial rat, on the left side of the circle near the white candle. With his hand positioned as it was, Andrew’s left wrist was alarmingly close to the creature. One bite from that diminutive monstrosity would sever arteries, veins, tendons. I held my breath as he spoke a short phrase in Latin, then lowered his hands even closer to the flames. But he simply extinguished both candles, simultaneously, and the salamander vanished.
“As you can see,” he said, sitting down on the floor with a heavy sigh, “the conclusion of the ceremony is one excellent reason why not to summon a large salamander. If you don’t get both candles at precisely the same instant…well, you can imagine. There is rarely a margin for error.”
I shuddered at the thought of a man-sized salamander free of the bonds of the spell, with a helpless magician kneeling before it.
“How did you like our little friend?” he asked, with a familiar note to his voice that had been missing. He must have been under a terrific amount of stress for his personality to change so much prior to the ceremony.
“There’s one thing that I do not understand,” I said. “There was no bloating in its midsection, no indication that it had eaten anything at all.”
“Did you see how it squeezed itself into those cracks?”
“Yes.”
“As with any demon, it’s true size is unknowable,” he said, as though it were a concept with which I should already be familiar. “It was merely clothed in a form constrained by me. Demons have certain inherent abilities, one of which is the power to change shape. It performed its task very well, don’t you think? In fact…”
As he stared off into space, a look o
f supreme satisfaction blossomed on his face.
“Both of those spells were magnificent!” he announced. “I must mail Mr. Fenster and compliment him. Perhaps he’ll be able to send another.”
Mention of the name jarred me. It had been buried in my memories, only brought to the surface recently when speaking with Professor Josephson. To hear it actually spoken was strange.
“Fenster?” I asked.
“Yes. Sound familiar?”
“Not really. Just something from my childhood.”
Andrew’s enthusiasm was contagious. I helped him up from the floor, and we went upstairs to open an old bottle of champagne that he had hidden away for celebratory purposes. For the next hour, he gleefully walked me through the subtleties of every step of the ceremony. Despite the length at which he described it, I was excited to see that, even though there were some intricate concepts involved, I grasped all but a few of the details.
On Sunday, I awoke with a slight headache from the champagne. As I lay in bed, the bells of the church rang out soulfully, calling to me. I ignored them. Faith had been a comfortable concept while Elizabeth was still alive, and likely would have remained so had she lived. But faith is passive. The sculptor cannot simply believe that the statue exists within the stone. Action must be taken to remove the excess material and reveal it. I could no longer be passive. I needed to act.
Although the bookstore was normally closed on Sundays, and we had made no plans for me to be there, I walked over anyway. The morning was pleasant, and so I sat down on a bench in a nearby park and watched the shop for signs of life. As I sat there, other church bells rang out. People walked by me, singly and in families. Smiles were exchanged. Greetings. Their faith was their own personal affair, but how strong was it within them? I wondered how many of them would question it if confronted with a crisis similar to my own, or the truth I had subsequently discovered.
Before long, the curtains in the windows above the store were opened, signaling that Andrew was at least awake. I gave him a few more minutes before going over. A few stout knocks on the door got his attention. He stuck his head out of the window over the door.
“I’m sorry, but the shop—oh.”
“Andrew, may I come in?” I asked.
“I’ll be right down.”
The door opened shortly.
“Good morning,” he greeted me.
“Is it too early? I can come back later, or tomorrow.”
“No. If you want to study, please do.”
He waved me in and closed the door.
“I want to do more than study,” I said. “I want to act.”
“The flame spell?” he asked, smiling.
I nodded.
“After last night’s success, I was wondering how long you could restrain yourself. I do need to run some errands today, but have some time to spare. You can prepare yourself while I get ready.”
We went upstairs. He handed me the page with the instructions on it and went into the bedroom. I looked over the paper, but only to verify that what I had previously committed to memory was correct. Even so, I still held onto the sheet as a talisman while I sat at the table, and made an effort to calm myself with some meditation. Mentally, it worked; I could tell that I was focused. Physically, my heart rate barely slowed.
The bedroom door opened.
“Ready?” asked Andrew.
I stood up and went in.
“Please proceed,” he said. “First, get the fire going. Always remember that the magician needs to handle as many details as possible. I could have built the fire for you, but not performing that act yourself could have introduced the smallest amount of doubt in your mind. When the flames are strong, stop and ensure that you have the right frame of mind. I’ll be able to tell if you’re ready.”
“How?”
“It takes time to develop the sense, but a certain tension can be felt. Sometimes, it manifests as an odor.”
I opened the flue, picked out a nice, dry log, and soon had it burning. Right away, I found another reason to start my life as a magician with this spell: The flames provided a very convenient focal point. Time seemed to slow slightly, as I knelt in front of the hearth, and gazed into them. I looked over at Andrew. He nodded once. I took a deep breath, released it, and uttered the words to begin.
The flow of energy was an unmistakable and unique feeling. Some sort of force ran through me, from the unburned wood, into me, then out into the fire. Initially, I performed the same actions as Andrew had: grouping the flames at either end, then moving them around randomly. After that, I moved on to simple geometric figures, all the while pointing with my finger. When I tried to manipulate the flames with just my mind, there was a sputter in the flow. Feeling that hiccup, I tensed up. That choked it off even more. Just in time, I managed to relax. The energy was restored and I began to control the fire with only thoughts. Seeing that the wood was nearly gone, I got inspired to try something creative, though I must admit somewhat childish. Within a flaming heart, I put my initials along with Elizabeth’s:
R A
+
E W
That configuration was only visible for an eyeblink as the flow of energy dwindled to nothing. The log crumbled to ash the moment I ended the spell by uttering the final word. When I looked at Andrew, he seemed to be shocked.
“I…” he began, then paused. “That was impressive.”
I beamed.
“I fully expected you to rely on finger movements for control,” he explained.
“Well, I watched you do it without pointing. It did falter. I felt the control slipping away.”
“Yes, but you regained it. That was an advanced technique to master so early on. You may have a knack for this. But that’s enough for today. I know it doesn’t seem like much, but you need to step back and let the experience sink in.”
It was a little deflating to hear that, but I reluctantly conceded that he was right. I closed the flue, and stood up. My heart bursting with triumph, I needed something to do.
“You mentioned errands before,” I prompted him. “Do you need help?
“If you want to help me retrieve and sort books, you’re welcome to come along.”
“That sounds fine. It will at least count towards beginning to repay you for your time.”
“Nonsense,” he said with a smile. “We’re both helping each other. You’ve given me a goal to work towards. That’s something I never had before.”
For a few days after that, I foolishly reveled in the power I imagined I controlled. But mid-week, guilt, in the form of a man, paid an unexpected visit to the bookstore.
I was sitting in my well-worn chair in the back room when I heard a knock at the door. Growing tired, I was due for a break, and welcomed a short distraction. But it was not Andrew who had come to find me.
It was Professor Josephson.
“Good afternoon, Robert,” he said calmly, closing the door behind him. “I hope that I am not disturbing you.”
I was aghast. At that point, I would have preferred to contend with the enraged spirit of Mr. Hunt, or a ravenously hungry salamander.
“H-h-he-lloo, Professor,” I managed to stutter out. I stood up slowly, trying to regain my composure. “What brings you down here?”
“Robert, as I recall, we had an appointment this past Wednesday for the purpose of reviewing the work on your doctoral thesis. Now, I must admit that I am a doddering fool, growing older every day, so please correct me if I’m wrong.”
“No, Professor, you are correct,” I said meekly. “We had an appointment.”
“And as I recall, you were not there, correct?”
“No, Professor.”
“Good, good,” he said. His expression was difficult to read, and he kept his eyes down as he spoke. “I was beginning to worry that you had been there, and I simply could not remember. Much the same as I had forgotten where I placed the artifact I once showed to you.”
I looked at him, caught completely off
guard, but he still didn’t look at me. Despite the relative coolness of the storeroom, I began to sweat.
“I remember placing it in my safe,” he said. “But poof!” He threw his hands up in the air. “It’s gone.”
I felt my eyes grow huge at that point. I was trapped. He clearly knew my guilt.
“Your friend out front,” he said. “Mister Cooke, was it? He was very helpful when I arrived.”
“Don’t place the blame on Andrew,” I said. “I was the one who took the parchment from your safe. It was my idea. I convinced him to go along with me.”
Now I was the one who would not look up. But when I finally did, I saw him shaking his head at me.
“I would never have thought you capable of theft,” he said. “Especially theft from me. At first, I thought indeed that I had misplaced it, but as the days went by with your presence blatantly lacking…”
He sighed mournfully.
“I stopped by your boarding house this morning, but your Mrs. Bettings told me I might find you here.”
If I had never seen Professor Josephson again, had I simply immersed myself in the study of the esoteric arts and never looked back, perhaps I could have forgotten what I had done to him. But with him standing before me, it was impossible to suppress the immorality of my recent actions. Stealing is always wrong, and always shameful. I tried to form words, but none would come.
“I am not here to berate you, Robert,” he said sincerely. “I’m only here to help you.”
Hearing that, I began to imagine what it might be like to return to my old life: finish my thesis, graduate with a Doctorate, and live a normal life in a world in which magic is the realm of stage entertainers, and monsters only hide under the beds of children.
“Robert, I beg you,” he continued. “Forget this destructive pursuit. Take a few weeks to refocus your energies. You’ll have plenty of time in the summer to catch up on any work you might need to do on your thesis. Just return the parchment to me…”
The Shadow Beyond Page 15
