“It wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t,” Selma said at last. And then, hesitantly, “It can’t have been.” They stared at each other, Selma’s jade eyes faded and spoiled from crying. “It wasn’t a trick. He told me, when we first started, that it was all real; he told me wonderful things. But then after that first seance, he was strange; he changed everything he had said, and he began talking about the organization and about making people believe, how if you could make them believe they would do anything.”
“But he saw the Zagdesha, how could he—?”
“He laughed,” Selma said. “He said it was shadows, and people wanting to believe. But Bethany,” she said, looking very young and disheveled, “he was pale from it.”
“But curing people,” Bethany said. “He says he can cure people.”
Selma shook her head. “I don’t know. Sometimes— sometimes they want to be cured and it makes them— Oh, I don’t know, Bethany.”
“But he—the money! You mean he was just taking the money?”
Selma gulped and nodded. “All of it, just— He just laughed at me.”
“But the Zagdesha, whatever we saw—” Bethany was furious now. “He was afraid of it!”
Selma nodded.
“And he won’t admit it,” Bethany said, incredulous. “He won’t admit it was there. And he laughed at you.” She put her arm around Selma. How slight boned she was. “He was afraid of it.” An elation, a triumph, was rising in her; she turned to stare at Jack. “Get him, Jack. Get him, and open up the church.”
“It’s unlocked,” Jack said, excitement darkening his eyes. The bandages on his left arm and side, under his sweater, made him look lopsided and lumpy, and there was a red jagged patch down his neck. He took Bethany’s hand and smiled an evil and charming smile, then left them. Colin, pale with anticipation, went to hold the door open nervously.
Blinded from the sun, Bethany thought the room was totally dark, but then the gray wash of almost-light that seeped through the black curtains began to pick out shapes; and when Selma lit the candles, the room swarmed around her, red symbols undulating in the flickering light. Selma brought two cowled robes from the back and held one for Bethany, pulling the cowl up for her so her ice-cold hands lay for a moment against Bethany’s cheek.
“What was in the chalice before?” Bethany whispered hoarsely.
“Blood. Lamb’s blood.”
“I won’t drink that again.”
“There isn’t any, it doesn’t keep. I’ll use wine.”
Bethany was almost too numb to feel shocked at the idea of wine in the chalice like in church. At another time, she might have refused it—wine in a chalice would be Christ’s blood. But of course it would not, not without a priest. Here it was only a crude blasphemy, a crude mimicking. She shuddered though, watching Selma pour it out. Her bravado and anger were fading. She wanted to run out into the sunlit street, into the hot, open street, out of this threatening room. Oh, why had she come? Why had she started this?
Then Claybelle came, a hulking dark shape in the open doorway against the swath of sunlight. Jack was there behind him, and they came directly to the table, Claybelle walking heavily and scowling at Bethany; he sat down abruptly, his annoyance and disdain making a tight pressure in the room. He gave Selma a superior look, as if she were about to make a fool of herself and he intended to enjoy her embarrassment.
Bethany turned her back on them all, torn between her sudden loss of nerve and her hate for Claybelle. If she didn’t start, she would lose her nerve entirely; she turned to face them at last and made herself take up the chalice from between the candles. She tried to be calm; and when she began to say the ritual, it was with a deliberate slowness; but suddenly and inexplicably she wanted to bring the dark presence, wanted it very much. As she began the ritual, her words seemed to make an echo in the room. She had no idea whether she was getting the words from Selma’s mind, or whether she remembered them, but they came to her almost as if she were hearing them. “Arise, Serpent. Arise and come forth upon this plane as the sea rises and the winds tear at the heavens—” Her palms were beginning to sweat, and it was with shaking hands that she traced the signs across the candles; the disturbed, heated air warped and distorted the room, and she felt her blood stir and an eagerness take hold of her, a sudden heady thrill of power; her voice lifted:
“Take this blood as my blood and the blood of my sister, and make of us one blood—” She raised the chalice to her lips, “Bid the spirit which awaits reveal itself to me—” She tasted the wine, and the feeling of power rose within her, and almost at once, as if something had been waiting, the air began to darken; the benches became indistinct, the air drew in, gathered in, the darkness was swift, and she felt a dizziness as if she were floating. She heard Dr. Claybelle catch his breath, rasping and quick—and she was staring at a figure so black it was like a hole cut in cloth, a hole into negative space, into utter emptiness. No detail could be seen, only its outline, and that was the outline of a girl; the curve of her body was clear. Bethany stood frozen. The shimmer of something hovered, and was lost as if a wind had passed. Was it the quick shimmer of thoughts that were not her own? Then the black shape became suddenly more than the outline of a girl; her hands became visible against the void of her body; young hands with smooth skin, holding a wooden jewelry box with two birds carved across its front. As the figure turned, the outline of her hair swung slightly and her profile was clear, arms outstretched as if she were placing the box on a table; and the edge of a dresser shimmered before her, and a gold framed oval mirror hung suspended for a moment… .
Then it was gone, the figure, the glimpse of the room, all gone. But still the feeling of power surged in Bethany strong as a tide, and she yearned after the figure, wanting it to stay almost as if it were part of her. She turned at last to observe the others, the image still so clear in her mind that the four who faced her seemed as unreal as faded posters; they were staring, frozen, at the spot where the figure had formed.
Selma raised her eyes first, and the wonder in them caught Bethany off guard so the two shared a moment of rapport; and then their looks were shielded.
Dr. Claybelle turned a long look of white hatred on Bethany. Then he rose and left them abruptly, etched in sunlight for a moment before banging the door.
Colin spoke at last. “Did you see her face?”
“There was nothing, only darkness,” Bethany said, suddenly and unaccountably annoyed.
Selma drew in her breath. “Her face, her profile. It was yours, Bethany. It was your Zagdesha,” she whispered with dry excitement.
“There was only blackness, there was no face,” Bethany hissed. “She—it only turned for a second, you couldn’t see anything.”
“I saw it,” Colin breathed.
Jack, strangely tense, said nothing.
“There was only blackness,” Bethany repeated, and the power welled up in her in a throbbing pressure. She met Jack’s green gaze once, coldly, pulled off her robe and threw it on the floor, and went slowly and silently out, carrying within herself a storm of terrible violence.
She surveyed the street with disgust. Disgust for her aunt, for stupid gullible Colin-—disgust mixed with humor when she thought of the fat, unimaginative Claybelle pale with fear. Disgust for the seedy village that she faced, with its ragged trees and the sickening smell of eucalyptus and salt. Then she knew Jack was standing behind her. She felt his hands grip her shoulders roughly, and he forced his arm around her. “I’ll take you home,” he said, and there was a tension in him, too. When he had her home, he would not let her go in, but pushed her brutally against the porch rail. “Aunt Bett—” she began, confused.