“Congratulations, Derek. You’ve finally got yourself a cult!”
“You know,” he said, feigning slowly dawning comprehension, “they’re from somewhere in the South. I think that’s a North Carolina license plate on their car. You know, I… I might have seen them at the lecture I gave in Cinderton.”
“Are you serious?”
“My God…” he said quietly. “Lilith, what if it’s them?”
“Then I suggest you call the police. You should call them anyway, and volunteer your services. Say you heard about the murder, offer to tell them everything you know about the mandalas. Convince them you don’t believe a word of the stuff you’re pushing, that you made it all up, and you’ll be off to a good start. Tell the truth for once!”
That, undoubtedly, was exactly what he should do. But Derek hesitated.
“Of course,” Lilith added, “you’ll have to live with the fact that this cult you invented, on the spur of the moment, has been responsible for at least two deaths so far. I say ‘at least’ because there are other stories going around.”
“I didn’t—” He stopped himself.
“Didn’t what?”
Didn’t invent it, he’d almost said, but that was the one thing he could never say.
“I didn’t tell anyone to kill,” he said. “Nothing in the book says anything about sacrifice or murder.”
“How do you know what it says, Derek? Half of it is gibberish. When people do invocations like that, the words mean what they want them to mean; they conjure whatever’s inside them.”
“Can you call me a cab?”
“Call it yourself,” she said sharply. “I have to get back to work. You need to make a plan, Derek. If I can help you, in some reasonable way, let me know; I’ll think about it.”
“Thank you, Lilith. You’re a good friend.”
“Too good for you, I know.”
“Well…”
“I’m pissed at you, Derek, for bringing this down on me—on all of us. The world doesn’t need this right now. If you’d only held your tongue, stayed in advertising. I’d have respected you then. But what you’ve been doing, it’s just wrong. I don’t know why I humored you for so long. I guess love blinded me a little.”
“Love?” he said.
She scowled and rolled her eyes. “It’s too late for that. For us. Maybe you’ll get yourself together. Find someone else. I hope so.” He stood with his mouth open, hands hanging. Lilith turned into the kitchen where the phone was. He heard her dialing.
I deserve this, he thought.
He had been waiting all his life for the bad thing to happen. For the cosmic vengeance. For what he deserved. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that it ever would come, since on a rational level Derek didn’t believe in the sort of universe that would stoop to notice the transgressions of a pathetic little grub like himself—as if the morals of a grub would overlap with the morals of the universe, which after all was nothing but particles and waves, infinite cold prickled by radiation, space-time warped and puckered by forces he would never understand, but which he took on faith to be completely devoid of moral character, completely lacking in interest in him as an individual, grown man or young man or small boy.
And yet… and yet…
The unreasoning part of him still cringed and cowered, still waited for judgment, still waited to pay (with interest) for the death he had caused as a young man and for the horrible manner of that death, whose worst aspects were a secret he had carried in him forever, since the only other person privy to those moments of shame was herself the one he had killed.
So, yes, he had always expected trouble, vast and unbearable trouble, trouble on a scale beyond reason and centered exclusively on himself. He had gone looking for it, you might say. And now it was on its way, winging—no, whirling—swiftly toward him. It knew where he lived. It was his and no other’s; he had made it his own.
He was almost relieved to know it was finally here, and he was in the middle of it, sink or swim. At last, he was going to pay.
34
Pushing the car over the cliff was easier than Michael expected, but as soon as it began to roll away from him he doubted the wisdom of it. He’d have been better off ditching it in a bad neighborhood where it would get stripped or stolen. Sending it over a cliff in broad daylight was bound to attract attention. At the very least he should have removed the license plates. But the car was gone, even as doubts came up with the sounds of the crash. The same inner voices that had made the decision now hung around mocking him. You fucked up big time!
He turned to Lenore, but something stopped him. It was like a different person standing there—someone he didn’t know. A stranger stared out from Lenore’s eyes.
He said her name, but she didn’t seem to hear it. She looked around as if she didn’t see him, then turned and moved off through the shrubs. He watched her go, unable to move. “Lenore!” he called. She was gone. He took a few steps toward the springing branches into which she had plunged, and then the world lurched out from under him.
Even on all fours, crawling, he felt unstable, as if he were about to go spinning away. He threw himself flat, dug his fingers into the earth, and held on; but pressed flat like that, with his eyes closed, the sensation of whirling was even stronger. He could not lie there for long. He must rise. He should follow Lenore, hard as it seemed. She shouldn’t be alone, in her condition.
A storm ripped at him with invisible fingers; it felt like a maelstrom tugging him into its center. He looked up, wondering how to regain his feet, and saw that somehow he had slid or crawled closer to the cliff’s edge, in the very tracks of the Beetle. He was close enough to see how the weeds and brush had been crushed and snapped by tires; how the sandstone edge had crumbled under the car’s weight. He could see the ocean, gray as the fog, ruffled up by the wind—but it was not the wind he felt dragging him toward the edge, hauling him over.
He squeezed his eyes shut again, though it made his dizziness worse. Blind, he could no longer tell which way he was facing, or where he was being pulled. In a way it was better not to know.
He made a conscious effort to calm himself, to clear his mind. It was obvious that if things went on this way, he was going to die very soon. He must be sure he understood that and kept his thoughts calm, so he could meet his death face-on, fully conscious, bringing to it everything he knew, everything he had learned, everything he could possibly manage to hold onto.
Michael believed in no particular god. He didn’t expect any divinities to come running if he put out a psychic SOS. Prayer was calming but too complicated. And desperate prayer would only add to his anguish and terror and confusion. He didn’t have salt or water; no athame, bells, or chalices. He could chant mantras or visualize the Clear Light or rack his brain trying to remember some Sufi songs. But none of those things came naturally to him.
Instead, he cast a circle.
He had only to think of it and it was there, surrounding him. A circle of white fire, like the ones he had drawn in his temple room. Those had failed to keep the mandalas out, but then, keeping things out was not the true purpose of a circle. Magic circles were meant to keep things in, to concentrate and focus whatever energy was summoned. And right now Michael was concerned with keeping himself together, in one psychic piece, so that if the worst happened he wouldn’t be scattered all over the place at the moment of transition.
He felt remarkably calm. He felt, in fact, like a compass needle: bobbing, floating, weightless. The circle spun around him, a thin white wire, severing him from whatever force was trying to murder him. He felt detached from everything, as if sitting on a high rock in the midst of a raging current.