Lenore tried to suppress her growing frustration, to keep it from turning to anger. “Michael thought you were the expert. He thought you’d have the answers for us.”
“I’m very sorry, Lenore. I tried to explain to your husband my part in all this. And… I had the impression that you had your own reasons for coming here.” He gave her a sly look, one with a variety of possible interpretations. She did not like most of them.
“I was drawn to you,” she said. “Coming here was part of the solution to a puzzle I’ve been working out. Now I’ve done that part and I don’t see where it fits in. It’s not finished yet.”
At that moment the buzzer sounded.
“There he is now,” he said, and jumped up with obvious relief. A minute later Michael came into the kitchen, breathing heavily. He looked worse than ever, as if by admitting her fears she had brought them into sharper focus. If only he could see the things that slashed the air just behind him, spiny mouths opening, poison tongues, all of them pricking and stabbing his mandala. The thing shivered and recoiled and clung to Michael with pitiful desperation; no more coherent than a cloud, it could scarcely hold itself together, let alone shield Michael from attack.
Michael’s face had grown silvery and transparent, so that she could see the veins beneath his skin and the tumbling of mercurial corpuscles; the squelchy sound of his bones sliding and sloshing in lymph-soaked tissue sounded loud as a radio turned up full blast. She sickened to think of her own bones trapped and smothered in flesh, except for teeth standing like outcrops of rock, small peaks protruding from a thick red sea. The hairs on his skin were like seared trees clinging to a wasteland, their bark and foliage like hardened excrement. He metamorphosed further before her eyes, evolving into something ratlike and sickly, timid and malnourished. He looked… used up. His usefulness just about exhausted. His head seemed wrapped in a clotted, crumbling fog, a dry yellowing brittle mass like a tide-pool creature left too long in the hot sun—a fragile pod about to burst.
She flinched when he touched her but instantly regretted it. She still loved him, didn’t she?
“Got us a room at the place up the street,” he said. “We won’t have to bother you again tonight, Mr. Crowe.”
“You’ve been very little bother,” Derek said. “But I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable with some privacy and a place to spread out.”
“We should get out of your hair right away. You ready, Lenore?”
“I guess so,” she said. “But what are we going to do all day, Michael? We can’t just sit in a room.”
“Mr. Crowe said he knew a place where we might meet some people who could help us.”
“That’s right,” Derek said. “It’s a big occult shop, Hecate’s Haven. They have a bulletin board and roommate listings; a lot of people just come in and hang out. You might find someone who can help you. And a place you can stay. If you like, I’ll come along. I can introduce you to my friends, and we’ll see what they can do for you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Michael said.
“I think it’s a good idea,” said Lenore. She was trying to figure out some way to stay near Crowe, despite his pretense that he knew less of the mandalas than she did. At least he already believed in the mandalas and knew something of their power. If something started happening to Michael’s mandala, he wouldn’t automatically think they were crazy.
“I think we’ve been enough trouble. Mr. Crowe probably has plenty of work to do on his books.”
“I’m between books right now,” Derek said. “And I—I owe an old friend a visit over there. If you’re anxious, we could leave any time.”
“I’m just… I’m worried that the car might not make it. It’s on its last legs.”
“The bus runs right to the place,” Derek said. “Or we could take a cab.”
“Come on, Michael,” Lenore said, “don’t be ridiculous.”
“All right then,” he said. “Are you ready?”
Lenore scurried to make sure she had all her things, but there really wasn’t much. Michael stood in the hallway, urging her to hurry. He rushed down the stairs ahead of them. Lenore lingered with Derek as he locked the front door’s deadbolts.
“You see what I mean?” she said. “He’s not himself. Something’s getting to him.”
“Probably exhaustion. Well, I’ll take your word for it. I imagine his mandala can look after him. Even if it is sickly, how long could something that ancient take to die? How many human lifetimes?”
The thought made Lenore shudder. What if the deterioration was only beginning for Michael? What if it went on and on, worsening gradually; what if it had been well under way since long before she’d been able to see his mandala… before she’d even met him… before he’d been born?
“Michael!” she called out suddenly, wanting the reassurance of his presence. She chased him down the stairs, catching hold of his hand on the street in front of the building. Michael paused at the corner, holding her back for a moment as he peered around at their car.
“Okay,” he said, “hurry up.”
“What’s going on?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
Michael drove nervously in the city’s frantic traffic. She could see his nerves were as brittle as his mandala. “I’m used to the highway,” he said after nearly colliding with a city bus. “Everything happens slower there.”
Last night, as they emerged from the Treasure Island tunnel and began to climb between the light-strung girders of the westernmost span of the Bay Bridge, Lenore’s eyes had gone from the glittering lights of the San Francisco skyline to a huge wheel of cloud that had gathered in the midst of the stars like a black whirlpool. The only reason she could see it was because the city lights cast a bluish pall on the belly of the low cloud, illuminating strands of vapor dangling down like tendrils, swaying in the high wind as if groping through the tops of the jeweled pylons, reaching toward the car.
Michael hadn’t seen it. To him, it was just another cloud. He hadn’t seen how it whirled and clenched; how the swaths of enfolding vapor slowly sloughed away, revealing the hard black tegument beneath; how the irising teeth, gleaming in the city-glow, snicked open and shut as it wheeled above the towers like a whirling crown.
It’s like the city’s guardian, she had thought. Presiding over everything. This is what called me here—this is what’s drawn us all this way. My own mandala, a smaller version of this….
Beneath it, she could see myriad other mandalas soaring and flitting about, smaller but brighter, swirling in as if drawn by the mass of the greater. They spun between the skyscrapers, spiraling in like satellites gently drawn to earth.
And closing her eyes, she had known herself as one of them. One of many drawn in on the spiral path to some gathering she could not quite imagine.
Why? What were they all doing here?
Derek Crowe guided them to Market Street, which was a straightaway. The sky this morning was gray, low and oppressive, as if they were living just beneath a lid of fog. Pedestrians hurried about with heads bowed into the wind, holding their coats closed at their throats. After traveling a mile or so, Lenore saw specks of blue above. The fog thinned as they went on, until she saw twin peaks ahead of them, two mounds like pale-brown breasts, one of them topped with a skeletal red and white tower that seemed to sway in and out of the mist. Nearer, looming up suddenly, was the crest of a hill with loose reddish rock piled atop it like a tumbled Stonehenge. Derek pointed out a parking space near an ornate building with curved oriental eaves, like an Asian temple.