by Anne Rice
I realized I’d raised my voice. It seemed brazen. I was confused. Was I talking to an angel?
He stared at me, and I got lost suddenly in studying his face. His eyebrows were high placed and dark and straight, and his eyes themselves very large and clear. His mouth was soft, full and smiling as though he thought me entertaining, but he didn’t seem scornful or disdainful at all.
“Are you the answer to their prayers?” he asked gently. He seemed so very concerned. “Are you? Do you really think that is why you’re here?” He seemed to be speaking very softly, too softly for this immense place, and too softly to be heard over that urgent and beautiful music coming from both sides of the hall. But I could hear every word he said.
“What if I told you that you were not the answer to anyone’s prayer, that you were the dupe of spirits who would have you believe this for reasons of their own?” He appeared worried, and he laid his warm hand on my left wrist.
I was terrified. I said nothing. I just looked at him, at the soft thick waves of his long hair, at his steady eyes. I wasn’t terrified of him, but of what he had just said. If that was so, the world was meaningless and I was lost. I felt it keenly and instantly.
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“That you’ve been lied to,” he offered with the same tender solicitude. “There are no angels, Toby, there are only spirits, discarnate spirits and the spirits of those who’ve been alive in the flesh and are no longer alive in the flesh. You weren’t sent here to help anybody. The spirits who are manipulating you are feeding off your emotions, feeding as surely as the people in this room are feeding off these plates.”
He seemed desperate to make me understand this. I could have sworn tears were coming to his eyes.
“Malchiah didn’t send you here, did he? You have nothing to do with him,” I said.
“Of course, he didn’t send me, but you must ask yourself why he can’t stop me from telling you the truth.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said. I tried to rise, but he held fast to my arm.
“Toby, don’t go. Don’t turn away from the truth. My time with you may be shorter than I hoped. Let me assure you, you’re locked in a belief system that is nothing but the stage machinery of lies.”
“No,” I said. “I don’t know who you are, but I won’t listen to this.”
“Why not? Why does it make you so afraid? I’ve come here out of time to try to warn you against this superstitious belief in angels and gods and devils. Now let me please try to reach your heart.”
“Why would you do this?” I asked.
“There are many discarnate entities like me in the universe,” he said. “We try to guide souls like you who are lost in the belief systems. We try to urge you back on the path of real spiritual growth. Toby, your soul can be trapped in a belief system like this for centuries, don’t you realize it?”
“How did I get here, how did I travel back five centuries in time if this is all a lie?” I demanded. “Let go of me. I am going to leave.”
“Five centuries back in time?” He laughed the softest, saddest laugh. “Toby, you haven’t traveled back in time, you’re in another dimension, that’s all, one your spirit masters have constructed for you because it suits them as they harvest your emotions and those of the beings around you for their own pleasure.”
“Stop saying this,” I said. “It’s a ghastly idea. You think I haven’t heard such ideas before?”
I was afraid. I was shocked and afraid. My intellect rebelled at every word he’d spoken but I was shaken. A cold terror might get the upper hand in me at any moment.
“The terms you’re using, they aren’t new to me,” I said. “You don’t think I’ve read theories of multiple dimensions, stories of souls who travel out of body, who find earthbound spirits trapped in realities they need to escape?”
“Well, if you’ve read these things, for the love of yourself and all you hold dear, question these awful beings who are manipulating you!” he insisted. “Break free of them. You can get out of this grotesque trap, this elaborate bubble in time and space, simply by willing it.”
“By what!” I scoffed. “Clicking my heels and saying ‘There’s no place like home’? Look, I don’t know who you are but I know what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to prevent me from getting back to Vitale, for doing what I’ve come here to do. And your urgency, my friend, does more to undercut your anemic theories than my logic can do.”
He seemed heartbroken.
“You’re right,” he confessed, his eyes gleaming, “I am trying to deter you, to turn you back to your own growth and your own capacity to seek the truth. Toby, don’t you want the truth? You know the things this so-called angel told you were nothing but lies. There is no Supreme Being listening to anyone’s prayers. There are no winged angels sent to implement His will.” His mouth lengthened in a sneer. But then his face formed the expression of utter compassion again.
“Why in the world should I believe you?” I asked. “Yours is an empty universe, an implausible universe, and I rejected it a long time ago. I rejected it when my hands were bloody and my soul black. I rejected it because it made no sense to me, and it makes no sense to me now. Why is this belief system of yours more plausible than mine?”
“Believe, believe, believe, I ask that you use your reason,” he pleaded. “Listen, your spirit bullies may be back at any moment to collect you. Please, I beg you, trust in what I have to say. You are a powerful spiritual being, Toby, and you don’t need a jealous god who demands worship, or his angel henchmen sending you to answer prayers!”
“And for whom did you come here, and with so much passion, and so much effort?”
“I told you. I’m one of many discarnate entities sent to help you in your journey. Toby, this is the lowest and most draining sort of belief system, this miserable religion of yours. You must get beyond this if you are ever to evolve.”
“You were sent, sent by whom?”
“How can I make you understand?” He seemed genuinely sad. “You’ve lived many lives, but always with one soul.”
“I’ve heard that one a million times.”
“Toby, look into my eyes. I’m the personality of a life you once lived long ago.”
“You make me laugh,” I said.
His eyes filled with tears. “Toby, I am the man you were in this time, don’t you see, and I’ve come to awaken you to what the universe truly is. It has nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. There are no gods demanding worship. There is no good or evil. These are constructs. You’ve fallen into a trap that makes spiritual growth impossible. Challenge these beings. Refuse to obey.”
“No,” I said. Something changed in me. The fear was gone, and the anger I’d felt was gone. A calm came over me, and once again I was conscious of the music, of that same lovely melody playing that I had heard when I first came. There was something so eloquent of justice and beauty in the music, so expressive of a virtue that it could break one’s heart.
I turned and looked at the assemblage. People were dancing, men and women in circles, holding hands, one circle revolving one way, the outer circle another.
His voice came right by my ear. “You are beginning to think about it, aren’t you?”
“I’ve thought about it, the ideas you’re offering. As I told you, I’ve heard them before.” I turned and looked at him. “But I don’t see anything convincing in your argument. As I said, you are describing a belief system of your own. What proof have you that there are other dimensions, or that there is no God?”
“I don’t have to have proof of what is not,” he said. He appeared distraught. “I appeal to your common sense. You’ve lived many times, Toby,” he said, “and many times spirits like me have come to help you, and sometimes you’ve taken that help, and sometimes not. You come back into the flesh over and over again with a plan to learn certain things, and your learning cannot progress if you don’t realize that this is so.”
“No, it’s a be
lief system all right, everything you’re saying, and like all belief systems it presents a certain coherence and a certain beauty, but I rejected it long ago. I told you, I find it empty and I do.”
“How can you say such a thing?”
“Do you really want to know? Do you really truly want to know?”
“I love you. I am you. I’m here to help you move on.”
“I know because deep in my soul, I know there is a God. There is someone I love whom I call God. That someone has emotions. That someone is Love. And I sense the presence of this God in the very fabric of the world in which I live. I know with a deep conviction that this God exists. That He would send angels to His children has an elegance to it that I can’t deny. I’ve studied your ideas, your system, as it were, and I find it barren and finally unconvincing, and cold. Finally it’s dreadfully cold. It’s without the personality of God and it’s cold.”
“No,” he protested, shaking his head. “It’s not cold. I’m pleading with you. You’re wrong. You’re putting a god at the center of your system that never existed. Only the child in you insists on this god. That child must yield to the man.”
I got up from the table, bringing the lute with me. I stopped, unbuckled the sword and let it drop to the floor. I let go of the cloak he’d given me when we met.
Suddenly my head began to spin.
“Don’t go, Toby,” he said.
He was standing next to me. No. We were walking together through the milling crowd. I was dizzy. Someone pushed a goblet of wine at me, and I waved it away.
He threw his arms around me and tried to stop me.
“Let me go, I warn you,” I said. “I do not care for what you’ve offered me. I don’t know whether you’re evil or simply lost on some journey of your own. But I know what I have to do. I have to return to Vitale and help him in any way I can.”
“You can be free,” he whispered, his face very close to mine. “Defy them, curse them!” he said, his face reddening. “Denounce them and repudiate them. They have no right to use you.” His whisper had become a hiss.
He glanced from right to left. He released me but then placed his hands tightly on my shoulders, and I could feel the pressure of his fingers growing very strong.
I hated this. It was all I could do not to hit him and try to knock him aside.
“Will you believe me,” he said, “if I make all this disappear? If I hurl you back into your bed in the Mission Inn? Or should I set you down on the leafy street in New Orleans where your lady friend lives?”
I felt the blood rise in my face.
“Get away from me,” I said. “If you are what you say you are, then you know no harm can come from me going back to Vitale. From my helping another human being in dire need.”
“The hell with Vitale!” he snarled. “The hell with him and his filthy entanglements. I will not let you be lost.”
His fingers were digging into my flesh and it was plainly painful. The sound of the crowd and the music had become louder and louder and now it seemed deafening to me, just as the lights had become a kind of engulfing glare.
I was struggling with all my senses to know the moment, to know my thoughts, to know what to do.
A great riot of applause and shouts from the crowd shocked me. And at this moment, he locked his arm around me and started to drag me across the floor.
I drew back. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” I whispered. And I drew back my fist, and then struck him with one fine blow to the face that sent him flying backwards away from me, as if he were made of nothing but air.
I saw his form rushing away, as if down a huge tunnel of light. Indeed the very fabric of the world around me was ripped, and his body exploded in that rip into huge splashes of blinding fire. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t help it. I fell down on my knees. The light was volcanic and searing. A huge cry filled my ears that became a kind of howl.
A voice spoke, “Tell me your name!”
I tried to see but the light still blinded me. I covered my face with my hands, trying to peer through my fingers, but all I could see was this rolling fire.
“Tell me your name!” came the voice again, and I heard the answer, like a hiss, “Ankanoc! Let me go.”
The voice spoke again, in unmistakable denunciation, though I couldn’t hear the words. Ankanoc, go back to Hell. He’d been banished, and the force that had sent him fleeing was still near.
There was a rolling roar, which grew louder and louder, and even though my eyes were closed, I knew the light was gone. Ankanoc. It was reverberating in my mind and I had the sense I would never forget it. I thought I knew the voice that had demanded this name, that had demanded that the being leave, and it was Malchiah’s voice, but I wasn’t sure. I was shaken to the bone.
I opened my eyes.
I found myself kneeling on the flags. The crowd was close around me, same laughter, voices and dim soaring musical notes. My head throbbed. My shoulders hurt.
Malchiah was kneeling next to me, supporting me, but he wasn’t really visible to me. I felt his hands steadying me. In a soundless voice, he said, “Now you know his name. Call him by name, in whatever guise he comes to you, and he must answer! Remember this, for now and for later and for always. Ankanoc. Now I leave you to do what you must do.”
Lies, belief system, beings, feeding …
“Don’t leave me!” I whispered.
But he was gone.
A man stood beside me, a sweet, round-faced man in a long flowing red robe. I saw his hand reaching down for me as he said, “Here, let me help you up, young man, come on, it’s only just past midnight, and that is far too early for you to be stumbling about.” Other hands helped me to my feet.
Then, patting me on the shoulder, the man smiled and went on with his companions into the banquet room.
I was before the open doors of the palazzo. And I could see it was raining outside.
I tried to clear my head. I tried to think on all that had happened.
Just past midnight. I’d been gone that long.
What had I been thinking to let this happen, and what did I think had happened? The fear took hold of me again, the fear gradually accumulating until I couldn’t think or feel. Had Malchiah really come? Had he driven the demon away? Ankanoc. Suddenly all I could visualize was his pleasing face, his seemingly solicitous manner, his undoubted charm.
I realized I was standing in the rain. I hated the rain. I didn’t want to be wet. I didn’t want the lute to get wet. I stood in the darkness, and the rain was pelting me and I was cold.
I closed my eyes and I prayed, to God in whom I believed, to the God of my belief system, I thought bitterly, asking Him to help me now.
I believe in You. I believe that You are here, whether I can feel it or not, or ever know for certain that it is true. I believe in the universe that You made, constructed out of Your love, and Your power. I believe that You see and know all things.
I thought silently, I believe in Your world, in Your justice, in Your coherence. I believe in what I heard in the music only moments ago. I believe in all that I can’t deny. And there is the fire of love at the center of it. Let me be consumed heart and mind in this fire.
Dimly, I was aware of making a choice, but it was the only choice I could make.
My head cleared.
I heard that melody from within the palazzo, the one I’d heard when the musicians had first begun to play. I didn’t know whether I was shaping it out of the distant raw threads of the music, or whether they were really playing it, so faint was the song. But I knew the melody and I began to hum it to myself. I wanted to cry.
I didn’t cry. I stood there until I was calm again and resolute and the darkness did not seem to be a fatal gloom enveloping the entire world. Oh, if only Malchiah would come back, I thought, if only he would speak to me some more. Why had he let that demon come to me, that evil dybbuk? Why had he allowed it? But then who was I to ask such a question of him? I didn’t set the rules for this world. I
didn’t set the rules for this mission.
I had to return to Vitale now.
Malchiah was giving me the opportunity to do this, to fulfill the mission, and that is exactly what I meant to do.
I saw, far to my left, the alleyway through which I’d come to this place, and I hurried towards it, and then down the long alley towards the piazza before Vitale’s house.
I was running with my head down when, just before the gate of the house, Pico caught me and threw a mantle over my head and shoulders. He brought me inside the gateway, out of the rain, and quickly dried my face with a clean dry cloth.
A lone torch blazed in its iron sconce, and on a small table was a simple iron candelabrum with three burning candles.
I stood shivering, hating the cold. It was only a little warmer here, but gradually the sharpness of the chill was going away.
In my mind, I saw the face of Ankanoc and I heard his words again, “a belief system,” and I heard the long sentences he’d spoken and all the familiar phrases that had spilled from his lips. I saw the passion in his eyes. Then I heard that hiss when he’d confessed his name.
I saw the fire again and heard the deafening roar that came with it. I rested my weight against the damp stone wall.
A growing awareness came to me: you never know anything for certain, even when your faith is great. You don’t know it. Your longing, your anguish, can be without end. Even here, in this strange house in another century, with all the proofs of Heaven given to me, I didn’t really know all that I longed to know. I couldn’t escape fear. Only a moment ago an angel had spoken to me, but now I was alone. And the longing to know was pain, because it was a longing for all tension and misery to end. And they do not really ever end.
“My master says for you to leave,” said Pico desperately. “Here I have money for you from him. He thanks you.”
“I don’t need money.”
He seemed glad of that and put away the purse.
“But Master,” he said, “I beg you. Do not go. My master is locked up now in Signore Antonio’s house. Fr. Piero has demanded that he be locked up until more priests come. They are holding him on account of the demon.”
