He had always been fascinated by the strange and the occult, and a long set of tomes on witchcraft and sorcery was among his books. For fun they had even once tried to hold a séance, but except for the nuisance of a poltergeist — all too clearly created by Paul’s knee below the table — they hadn’t been able to get any results. So the group had discarded the supernatural, but it had kept on fascinating Jack. He didn’t exactly believe in the "supernatural" in the popular sense of the word, and he still thought that the general uprising of interest in the so-called "old sciences", in astrology, spiritualism and erotic orgies poorly disguised as witchcraft were mainly a reaction against the materialistic world image, a protest against the real sciences which were being blamed for the kind of world we live in. He knew a few practising witches, and even a medium of two, and he realized that some of them at least really believed in what they were doing. Their belief was genuine… but were the results? Some of them seemed to be, but were they really brought forth by something from the beyond, or was there a more materialistic origin to be found? Jack refused to believe in a heaven and hell, and in a horned and tailed Satan, but he did believe in the human mind, and in its unused potential. He believed in elemental forces, existing in nature since the beginning of time and only waiting to be discovered, elemental forms of energy of which we are yet unaware, and which can sometimes manifest themselves as an "evil" or a "good" force, not because they are good or evil, but because of the way they are invoked and used. It seemed much more likely and logical than imagining some "beyond" where bodiless spirits are eternally imprisoned, waiting from some rich and bored idiots to start playing with fake spiritualism, just to get a few silly messages.
Now it stopped being a pastime, and Jack began studying the occult in dead seriousness. He started by discarding the general works on magic, and began searching for the rare books, the real books that had not been written with a sensation-hungry public of laymen in mind. What he needed were works written by people who really knew what they were doing. He spent a lot of money, and quite some time hunting them down, but obtain them he did, and study them, through the lonely hours of dark nights, while slow rain drizzled down from a leaden sky. He didn’t paint often anymore, there was no time for that, but he kept on seeing Paul and Cenaide, though every second he was close to her hurt him, and every evening after they had separated there was an empty hollowness in his brain.
Then, when he thought he knew enough, and he had obtained all he would need, he drew a pentagram for Cenaide.
First he took an empty canvas, and drew the pentagram on it, with strong strokes of black paint. Then he drew the bigger pentagram on the floor of his study, placing the canvas in the center of it. He made the five marks on the corners, and wrote the formulas, feeling silly all the time. It was the only way, however, he had found of making direct contact with the elemental forces, no matter what form they would take. Much of it was maybe folkloristic and unnecessary for his means, but there was no way to find out what was really needed and what not, except by trying it out. Then he spoke the spells, reciting the difficult words in a soft sing-song voice, and burned the needed ingredients inside the pentagram.
Something came.
Or maybe some "things" came, he couldn’t be sure, except that whatever they were, they were certainly not of this earth. They moved slowly, almost crawling through the darkness which filled the room; and though he sometimes thought something here or there looked vaguely human, he never could be sure, and probably it was his own mind which made it resemble something familiar. He didn’t try to speak to them, for he didn’t think they were really intelligent, or even alive in the strictest sense of the word. They were forces, pure energy, but somehow managed to spread an aura around them which he could only define as purely evil, though this couldn’t really be so. He had prepared himself well however, and slowly began doing what had to be done, putting his own will on the free energy-things, chanting the old words and making the old gestures with his hands. It took a long time, and when he finally released them, and the moving darkness lifted from the room, he was soaked with sweat. The pentagram on the canvas however was no longer black, it was silvery white, and seemed to be pulsating with a strange life of its own. He stood looking at it for a long time, then got his brush and began painting the canvas in grey, until the pentagram was covered completely.
The next day he visited Paul and Cenaide, declared that he had been commissioned for a group of paintings for a future exhibition, and asked Cenaide if she wanted to pose for him. He wanted to try some new ideas, and had decided to stick to portraits for a few paintings at least. She was surprised and flattered of course, and agreed immediately. So the evenings of the next weeks — because she had her daytime job to attend to — were spent in bringing the face, that not so very special face he loved so much, on the grey-covered canvas. He began by sketching her face on the uniform background, as she was posing rather awkwardly. Then he began filling in the background, making it an old wooden table of a country inn, in which she was sitting, looking straightforward. These evenings were heaven for Jack, as she was with him almost all of the time, and as he was painting he drank in her beauty. Sometimes Paul came along also, changing the records on the gramophone, and for the rest just sitting there, watching. But it wasn’t quite as it had to be, there was a strange repellant sensation when he was really close to her, almost as if they were two negative poles rejecting each other. Even when they went out for relaxation, they didn’t seem as close as before. He didn’t sleep easily anymore, it was as if the dark took strange and alien shapes around him, which were always there, mocking him. Weird things began to visit his dreams, and gibbered to him in unearthly tongues which he couldn’t understand, so that he awoke having the impression of not having slept at all, to the contrary, he felt abominably tired.
Then he discovered that it didn’t work. Maybe he didn’t know as much about magic as he thought, or he had done something wrong, but the power of the pentagram didn’t work. The unseen distance between him and Cenaide seemed to be growing, almost as if something was constantly interfering. Anger and bitterness came, and finally, acceptance.
The acceptance was the hardest of all, because it felt as if he was cutting away part of himself, accepting the cold fact that she would never love him. He couldn’t think clearly for some time, it dampened the lights around him, took away the beauty of music, seemed to cover the paintings on his walls with greyness.
Then he began concentrating on the portrait. If he couldn’t have her, he could give to her. The portrait became an obsession, just as the girl had been, as he transferred all his feelings onto the canvas. He made the painted blue eyes cry for him, made the small fresh mouth without traces of lipstick smile for him. He put it all in the portrait, all the months of yearning, the nights of waking, the tears he had never cried, he gave them flesh and blood in his portrait. He was no longer painting a woman, he was painting the image of love, the essence of the phenomena of love, not sexual attraction or desire, and not intellectual contact or sympathy or pity, but the very spirit of unexplainable love, without thinking, without conditions. He painted it with the colours of hope and yet of sadness, with bitterness and melancholy, with dreams and nightmares. The same nightmares which swam through his mind at night, when he was tossing on his bed, trying to get some sleep, and also trying to shut the living darkness out of his sight.