“And you think they’d tell us how to banish them? Why would they do that?”
He heard the door creak. Lenore stood in the entry. “Michael, can we go to bed soon?”
“Lenore, we’ve got—” Michael turned desperately to Derek. “I’m sorry, Mr. Crowe, we’ve just totally barged in on you. We’ve got to find a place to stay. We’re completely wiped. Even if you can help us, it’s not going to happen tonight. I saw a motel just up the street; we’ll see if they’ve got rooms and… and maybe we can talk to you tomorrow, when we’ve had some rest.”
Lenore looked disappointed; her eyes fixed on Derek, and he found himself saying “Look, why don’t you two stay here for the night?”
“What? Seriously?”
“That’s a sofa bed in there. I’ve got extra blankets. You just—you’ve come all this way to see me, I’m not going to send you out so soon. Tomorrow I’ll take you somewhere you might be able to meet people who can help you. Friends of mine, whose advice I’d trust. As I say, I really can’t tell you more about the mandalas than I’ve already written—but maybe that’s not the only possible solution.”
“Wow,” Michael said. “That’s incredibly kind of you.”
“It’s the least I can do,” Derek said, with a little nod to Lenore. She rewarded him with a slight smile.
“I’ve got to get our stuff out of the car—there’s not much, but I don’t want it to get stolen.”
“Do you need help?” Derek asked.
“No, it’s not much. I’ll be okay.”
When Michael was gone, Lenore came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The coffee was brewed; he poured her a cup and she sat warming her hands on it, inhaling the steam.
“I guess Michael told you what’s been happening to me,” she said. “It must sound pretty insane.”
“Well… no…” he said weakly. His eyes caught on the mandala tattooed in the middle of her forehead. She went crosseyed trying to see it herself, and smirked.
“I can explain that,” she said, rising and walking slowly toward him.
‘I’m sure you can.” Relief…
“The mandates gave it to me. And they brought me to you.”
She brushed past him, into the living room, as he stood dumbfounded. “Where’s the bathroom? Wait, I see it.” She walked out of sight.
Derek groped for his own cup, sloshed coffee into it, and drank it down. He had scalded his mouth so much recently that he hardly felt a thing. The caffeine hit his nerves in a concentrated burst. He paced around the kitchen, listening to the water running, thinking of her in there. Jesus. This was trouble, all right. And he had just asked it to spend the night.
Obviously she was the one behind their jaunt. What had drawn her to him?
What if she saw my photo on one of my books and started fantasizing? It’s common enough. Unhappy people are constantly forming attachments to people of reputation, stalking them. I’m an occult celebrity. She could have heard I was coming to town. Long before the lecture night she could have memorized some of the Rites, planning her possession, scheming to convince Michael that only I could help her.
But, my God. If she would really go to all that trouble, she must be even more unstable than her husband. Yet… how focused, how elaborate her plans, and how successful she had been.
She had come to see him.
This is crazy, Derek thought, suppressing a thrill. I can’t be so hard up that I would dream of getting involved with a neurotic, manipulative fan. Not to mention a married one.
And you hypnotized her, he thought. You’ve already planted yourself deep inside her mind, you idiot.
He realized he could hear the shower running, then a steady toneless murmur that sounded like Lenore gargling. The sound grew louder, droning on and on, rhythmic and monotonous, familiar.
She’s reciting the Rites, he realized.
And for a terrifying moment, he believed everything Michael had told him, every word of Elias’s story, every syllable scrawled in the ledgers. He believed in the power of a dead skin and the existence of every demon haunting the old books he’d studied to concoct his own volumes.
He clenched his eyes and held his breath and waited for the moment to pass.
The belief went away, but the fear—not quite.
30
“You know what drives me crazy?” Michael said, striking his fist into the palm of his other hand. He sat in Derek’s kitchen, slurping coffee, while Lenore slept in the darkened living room. Michael looked as if he should have gone to bed days ago; but apparently he had been awake so long that it was habitual. Soon Derek would beg exhaustion and crawl away.
“What’s that?” he asked, as politely as he could manage.
“I get jealous that… that they used Lenore instead of me. I spent years preparing myself, learning rituals, purifying myself in body and spirit—and nothing real, nothing definite has ever happened to me, nothing I couldn’t explain away, until Lenore invoked that mandala. I’d never seen any phenomenon I couldn’t interpret as coincidence or a stray draft, you know? But Lenore… Lenore, who couldn’t give a shit about the occult, who does drugs, all those things that are supposed to make you unclean—they come right through her. The preparation, the discipline, those things don’t even matter. They’re a crutch for people who don’t have the aptitude and never will. You can take piano lessons from day one and you’ll never be a Mozart, you know, unless you’re born Mozart. The mandalas ignored me. They went straight to Lenore. All I am now is, like, her fucking chauffeur.”
“Maybe you have some kind of inner strength or stability she lacks,” Derek said, humoring him.
“So? I mean, I know that—but is that so great? Isn’t the direct experience worth more? I mean, she’s seeing things, living things I can only imagine. Why her?”
“If it’s any consolation,” Derek said, “you’re not the first to ask. It’s been this way through history.”
“What do you mean?”
Derek felt himself warming to the subject, which drew on research he’d never been able to find a use for in writing The Mandala Rites. He’d never had a moment’s conversation with anyone who might have appreciated all the invisible work he’d done; he hadn’t felt able to discuss it with Lilith, because it would have made him appear too sincere in his work, and then she would have ridiculed him further for his hypocrisy.
“Well, apart from my own case—and remember, I got the complete mandala texts secondhand, rather than by direct revelation—you must be familiar with John Dee.”
“Sure. One of the great wizards of all time. Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer.”
“He was also an accomplished mathematician and cryptographer. An intellect, I mean.”
“Well, magic was an intellectual field back then—natural law. Plenty of great thinkers were involved in the occult.”
“Plenty were burned for it too,” Derek said. “But what I’m saying is that Dee could never put aside his intellect and simply experience the mysteries. He was obsessed with divination, but he lacked the talent for it. He had to hire someone else to use his ‘shew-stone.’”
“Edward Kelly!” Michael’s eyes brightened. Derek saw that Michael was equally proud of his arcane research. “Aleister Crowley thought he was Kelly’s reincarnation!”
“Yes, and Kelly did all John Dee’s scrying for him. He was the channeler, like Lenore and my friend Ms. A. All Dee did, like me, was write down what Kelly saw. Kelly had the visions, but he didn’t have any understanding of them. To Dee, it was a miracle; to Kelly, it was a job.”