by Rex Baron
Lucy stood next to him, motionless.
“She's taking my life,” she said aloud, after David had gone.
It was nothing as obvious as murder but rather a slow process of dissolution, eroding away at each person in Lucy's life, crumbling the foundations of her world beneath her, casting her into a torment of helplessness and uncertainty, while Helen slowly wove the fibers of Lucy's talents and success into a garment, tailor-made for herself.
Lucy retreated into the violet shadows of the late afternoon, as she walked the covered portico to the old music room at the end of the garden. She unlatched one of the long windows, the aqua paint faded and peeling from around the glass, and stepped down into the great vaulted chamber.
There was no point in arguing with David about the madness of his decision to cast Helen in the opera. He was charmed by her, in more than the conventional sense. He was powerless to refuse her anything and lacked the good judgment to see her thin voiced warbling as anything other than the lofty presumptions of a cunningly little chorus girl.
But Lucy could no longer dismiss Helen so easily. Helen held great power now, controlling first Paulo and now David, and potentially her career as well. She must do something to release them from enchantment to this evil creature and save the last tatters of her own life before it was too late.
She paced the length of the great room, her thoughts echoing in her head with the resounding clatter of her footsteps on the stone floor.
It was a moment before she realized the presence of Miss Auriel, who sat huddled in the corner staring upward, the very picture of a pure-faced postulant transfixed in adoration. She was copying the angels and cherubim on the ceiling in watercolors.
“I hope I'm not disturbing you by being here,” her small voice expanded in the empty space.
She had spoken to make Lucy aware of her presence more than in deference to her privacy as she had indicated.
“Not at all,” Lucy answered, somehow respectful of the perfect picture of religiosity she saw before her. “In fact, it would appear that I am disturbing you.”
She stepped closer and appraised the drawings spread out on the flagstones.
“They are remarkably good,” she said honestly. “I had no idea you were so talented.”
“I should like to be an artist one day,” the young woman said, pulling herself up into a more comfortable posture. “That is, if I can ever get to Europe to study.”
“I think I shall be going back soon,” Lucy said with a distant expression. “This place of illusion and sunlight has turned cold for me.”
“Shall I get you a jacket?” the girl asked innocently.
Lucy laughed.
“No, not just yet. There, you see, you make me laugh. Perhaps you might like to come back with me when I go to Germany.”
“Oh yes,” Ellen said, jumping to her feet. “Salzburg and Dresden are two of the loveliest cities on earth. Oh please remember me when the time comes.”
Lucy patted her arm as if she were in the presence of an excited child. They were nearly the same age, this birdlike creature and herself, but she could not remember ever feeling so young or having such hope for the future in her heart. She glanced down at the watercolor angels on the floor.
“Would you like one?” Ellen asked hesitantly.
Lucy stooped down and lifted the faithful copy of Saint Michael blowing the trumpet, which had appeared in her dreams since she had come to the house.
“He's lovely,” she said.
“At least you recognize it as a man. The driver, Jesus, was in here yesterday and thought they were all women. I told him that people always think all angels and all witches are female, but they aren't. The four Archangels are all males, or at least angelically neuter, but not just women at any rate.”
The power in the image was comforting to Lucy. It evoked the surrender of resurrection, the giving up of weariness and the burden of struggle. How odd, she thought, that religion had been designed to promise so much at the end of one’s life, a full pardon as it were, a redemption from sin, while it had done so little during the living years to relieve suffering or empower one with the proper forces to combat injustice and evil in the world. She sighed wearily.
Miss Auriel's voice broke through her pondering.
“There are some remarkable things about this chapel. Do you remember when we first got here, and the driver was telling us about the ley lines of power converging under this very building. I was talking to a neighbor who came to do the laundry. She told me that around here they’ve called the currents of electricity in the ground, worms or serpents since pagan times. That's why Saint Michael is painted on the ceiling killing a dragon. According to her, Michael, like Saint George, is a wrangler of sorts, famous for directing and taming these serpents. He's the god, or angel, that directs and interprets the serpent’s wisdom, like the serpent protecting the tree of knowledge in the Bible. Isn't that interesting?”
Lucy nodded, only half listening to her words, but taking in their meaning as if through the surface of her skin.
“And look at this mosaic on the floor,” the girl said with excitement. “I reckon it's from the original building, or temple or whatever it was. But it’s a lot older than the walls… and they're centuries older than anyone around here can determine.”
She led Lucy to a great spiral of mosaic tiles spattered with irregular shapes, like footsteps in blue and red. The tiles were positioned in a random way but insistently led toward the center, where a double-headed figure sat enthroned on a sea of fire.
“Doesn't look like the catholic school stuff I grew up with,” Ellen laughed. “According to this old woman, this spiral had a purpose. It was a kind of maze, designed to alter the patterns of the physical brain.”
Lucy looked directly into the girl's face to be certain that she was not joking.
“The way it works is this. The probationer or initiate, for whatever it was they used to do here, would place their feet on the footmarks around the circle. Then, they would move in a rhythmic pattern, turning the body slowly again and again, facing first this way, then that, all the while spiraling toward impact with the force of the god on the lake of fire at the center. The laundress said that the fire is the wisdom of the gods, and whoever completed this ritual of walking the maze possessed the knowledge and power of the real use of the mind.”
“The maze puts you into a trance, to be able to see, to call upon the forces and the angels and demons of eternity to help you,” Lucy said in a small voice.
“That's almost exactly what this woman said,” Ellen added with robust enjoyment. “She called it a mesmerizing pool, to focus the brain up into the mind of the gods. Isn't that a romantic way of putting it?”
Lucy nodded her agreement. As Ellen’s chattering voice drifted away into a constant din of soothing vibration, Lucy heard a new voice from somewhere deep inside herself, telling her that at last, she had found the place of power she had been looking for.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Old music room, Lucy’s villa, Los Angeles
Lucy sat in the drawing room of the villa until long past midnight, trying to gather some sense of how to go about it. She had decided that Helen must be stopped, and the only way to do it was to fight with the weapons her adversary had chosen, namely the power of the Kraft and its magic.
She had changed into a white dressing gown, and had scoured the drawers of the pantry and bedrooms, collecting candles of various colors, along with sea salt, a white-handled knife, a piece of parchment and a writing quill, made from a goose feather. She gathered dead flowers from the garden under the light of a crescent moon, and secured a large metal serving tray from the kitchen.
She had no idea why she had been compelled to collect these specific things, except that the names of the items came to her as she searched throughout the house. Like the wands of glass and bits of precious metal lying innocently around her grandmother’s lunarium, ready to be called into service at a moments noti
ce, so too, these harmless articles seemed to call out to be included in the spell casting.
She could feel that somewhere, deep inside her consciousness, she knew the Kraft, even though it had been consciously withheld from her. There was an ancient programming in the blood itself that allowed her to call up the power inherent in things, the elemental forces in simple everyday objects that let them be transformed into instruments of magic with full knowledge of their place in the ritual.
“I'll gather the things together,” Lucy thought to herself, “and when the time comes, they will tell me what to do.”
She placed the contents of her scavenger hunt into a large white shawl and tied them together in a bundle. Barefoot, she retreated to the eerie solitude of the chapel on the other side of the house.
The door shut behind her with an echoing ferocity that resonated within her soul, as if a door had been willingly closed on innocence and godliness.
With firm resolve, she set about placing the candles in concentric rings, the innermost being black, followed by a ring of red, then at the outermost edge, a ring of white. In the center, she placed the serving platter laden with dead flowers, along with the parchment and quill.
The smell of the burning candles blessedly staved off the rank odor of mildew and the dampness of the closed room. The trembling flames cast frightening shadows around the walls, making them seem alive with hundreds of half-formed beings, caught dancing by the corner of the eye, or passing overhead, momentarily illuminating then obscuring the dark angels on the ceiling.
Lucy stopped in the midst of her work, aware of the eyes overhead observing, and looked up at the stern mouths of the ancient sorceresses who had been surreptitiously painted over in the guise of saints, to clothe them in more modest service for the gentle nuns and their church.
When she had finished laying out the implements, following the unspoken instruction that her intuition supplied, Lucy rested for a moment and listened to the deep silence within her mind, awaiting further instruction. It was to be a cleansing, she was told, to purify the world of evil acts. She rubbed her hands with the sea salt and scattered it generously around the circle of candles, in the time-honored practice of purification.
Lucy was aware that she was alone with the forces she had stirred in her own mind. Miss Auriel slept soundly at the opposite side of the house, too great a distance for even a scream to be heard. But even then, she had made her choice to continue.
A half silence followed, filled with an almost inaudible tone in the atmosphere. Like the whining of some distant engine, it moved faster and faster, rising in pitch as it accelerated. A tangible yet unseen presence drew closer, as if her own breath hung in the air around her and took shape into mournful beings, demanding a life of their own.
When she felt it was time, she stepped nearer the maze laid out on the mosaic floor before her, and pondered its mechanism until it told her how to begin.
She let the white dressing gown drop from her shoulders and stood naked before the two-headed god in its center of flames. She closed her eyes and envisioned the ritual. She cried out, making a sound that was round at the beginning and trailed off into a sustained hum, then stepped forward with her left foot, placing it lightly on the first marking of the design.
Cautiously, she moved about the maze, placing her feet, first this way, then in reverse, turning her body as she went. She found her arms churning the air, thick with consciousness, in a rhythmic pattern, duplicating the movement of her feet.
Her mind focused first on the paintings of the angels on the ceiling, then, on the god at the center of the floor, shifting perspective, losing any understanding of the relation of space and time. There was no up or down, no walls and ceiling, only the faces of the angels and the two-headed god… first one, then the other, until they merged into a single being who occupied all space and time.
She heard a strange music, like the howling of the wind in the trees, the pipes of Pan, playing out a low repetitive tune. All at once, she realized it was her own voice in song, offering an ancient chanting homage to the god.
When the music stopped, she found she was standing squarely at the center of the maze, impervious to the cold and damp of the room, fired with an energy that glowed with blue-white electrical heat.
She was shocked to find that she had the white-handled knife in her hand, for it had not been there when she first approached the maze. Without hesitation, as if she always knew it was the way of the rite, she drew the blade of the knife across the palm of her hand and watched with total detachment as the bright red of her blood filled her palm and seeped through her fingers.
She stepped from the center of the maze and bent down into the circle of candles to retrieve the parchment and the quill. As she rose to her feet, she was aware of a flank of nuns passing along the far wall. Their heads were lowered and their hands hidden in the sleeves of their vestments. They sang the song she had just sung, but in Gregorian rounds, as a tiny bell sounded the vespers.
With the blood of her hand, she used the quill to write the names of Helen and Paulo and David on the virgin parchment. She chanted a phrase that came to mind, then, recanting it, began again, searching her unconscious mind for the correct combination to open the secret of the spell.
She folded the paper into a triangle and placed it in the flame of a red candle. A surge of excitement warmed her as she watched the parchment curl and blacken, and she saw the names change colour from red to a ghostly white between her fingertips.
She thought of Helen and saw, in her mind, the severing of her hold over Paulo and David and the dispelling of the threat to herself.
“Evil must be destroyed,” she said aloud. “Paulo must be set free from the terrible enchantment.”
As she watched the last of the paper burn, leaving a black smudge on the silver serving platter, she could not help but cry out for Paulo. She loved him and wanted him to be as he was when she first met him. She wanted him to love her as she now loved him.
Mesmerized by the black ash, caught by a draught and borne to an unseen corner of the room, Lucy heard a great rustling overhead, a sound like a bellows hard at work, used to start a fire. With dread, she gazed upward as the Angel overhead opened and closed his enormous dark wings, enfolding himself, then opening into a full displayed span, which arched over her like the vault of a great cathedral.
The ominous face glowered down at her disapprovingly. She looked away and hid her face in her hands, as the blood from her palm smeared across her features.
A glowing light drew her face from its hiding place, manifesting in the center of the maze. A figure slowly revealed itself, becoming more distinct with every heartbeat. It was her grandmother Christina, holding out her hand in a welcoming gesture.
Lucy became aware of her own nakedness and crawled to the place where her robe had dropped. Pulling it to her, she covered herself and waited in stunned silence. She awaited the chastisement for attempting what she had been expressly told not to do. She had no right to the Kraft, no acceptance to its numbers by initiation. She was an intruder, a blasphemer.
The mouth of the specter moved out of sync before the words could be heard. Then, came the familiar voice, which she remembered from long ago and from her dreams.
“You were once dear to us… when we were in form,” her grandmother’s voice reverberated around the great space of the music room. “But, you have sinned against the Kraft. It is a serious transgression against the code of our Coven… not because you presumed to carry out a spell without authority, but because you have twisted the intention of its outcome to suit yourself. You failed to remain dispassionate in your work. All else might have been forgiven, but when you summoned the forces to request a counter spell to combat the evil doing of your adversary, Helen, you allowed your mind to stray to thoughts of human love. Asking, silently, that this Paulo, this mere man, be bound to you for all eternity was a distortion of the request, a corruption for selfish ends. I’m afraid your emo
tions have got the better of you… just like when you were a child,” her grandmother observed with a measure of disgust.
Lucy stared out at the glowing apparition that was her grandmother, the High Priestess of her Coven, and she rose to her feet, as if to receive her sentencing.
“I have done what I could for you,” the voice whispered softly. “I have protected you all these many years, but it is my time to come into physical reincarnation again, and I must leave this place. There is nothing more I can do for you.”
The light form faded, slowly blending with the blackness of the cavernous room.
Lucy folded the dead flowers in her arms and drew them close to her. Like a drug taking effect, she was suddenly overcome with drowsiness. She pulled the robe tighter around her, and laying her head on the stone floor, her eyes fluttered open for one last glimpse of the circle of flames before she drifted into sleep.
Morning sifted through the long windows, casting a cool blue light over her naked flesh. Lucy awoke, stiff and cold from lying on the bare stone floor. It was finished. She had done all she could, calling up the power to assist her, and now the outcome lay in the hands of fate.
Around her were scattered what seemed the ludicrous vestiges of a night of madness, circles of colored wax, where the candles had extinguished themselves against the coldness of the flagstones, dried flowers strewn all around, and somewhere, beyond the pool of dried blood in the center of the maze, in some hidden corner of the room, the charred scrap that held the names and the keys to the secret of her request.
She gathered up the pieces of the ceremony, now nothing more than ordinary household implements, returned to harmlessness, robbed of their enchantment with the coming of dawn and light and reason.
The sun was rising over the hillside. Lucy stood in the window of the chapel, and remembering the vision of the Angel, glanced upward to be certain that he was as she had seen him. The faded painting glowered down implacable in its pagan secrets.