by Adam Dark
Ben scowled at the Boston University library copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon there on the coffee table. “Let me guess,” he said, then flicked his gaze up toward Peter. “You got this on Thursday.”
His friend’s eyes widened. “How…”
“Dude.” Ben closed his eyes for a minute and shook his head. “Could have saved myself a lot of time if I knew you had this. Pretty sure that librarian thinks I’m nuts.”
“You tried to find it at the library?”
“Yep.”
“You put a hold on it?”
Ben rolled his eyes. “Yep.”
Peter snorted out a laugh. “I got an email saying somebody put it on hold and was waiting for me to return it. I thought that was weird. But it was you, so… not really.” He shrugged and finally seemed comfortable enough now to collapse onto his own couch.
The irony wasn’t lost on Ben, and he decided to cram his reservations into a bag and shove that into a dark closet somewhere so he could sit down and talk to his friend about what was in the damn book. “So, you read it?” he asked, slinging his arm over the couch’s armrest and shifting comfortably into the corner of the couch—but not too comfortably.
Peter reared back from the book on the coffee table and looked at it like it was a coiled snake. “In four days? No. I mean, not all of it. But there’s a lot in there, man. Names of demons, good and evil spirits, their sigils, I guess you’d call ‘em. And like… really detailed instructions.” He nodded at the book, then looked up at Ben with a wary expectation bordering on sheepish apology.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “That’s why I was looking for it.” Then the last piece of the puzzle he hadn’t known was missing fell into place. “Wait. So you grabbed this book before I even told you about that party. The day before anything happened.”
His friend took a deep breath, blinking back down at the book like looking at Ben’s face hurt his eyes. “Yeah.” When Ben didn’t say anything, Peter seemed to take it as an invitation to keep going. Of course, it was. “Look, I know I lost it on you yesterday. I’m… sorry.” He rolled his eyes when he said it, but it seemed less because he didn’t mean it and more because he probably realized that apology was pretty necessary. “It just freaked me out that right after I found this book and decided to check it out, which was random and weird and not something I really planned on, you come over and start talking about demons again and the voices and almost dying. And then Ian…” He picked at his lip and stared at the book.
“Yeah, man. I know it’s a lot.” That was an incredible understatement, but Ben hadn’t seen his friend this bent out of shape in a long, long time. And he felt more than a little responsible for it. “Trust me, I thought all this stuff was over, too.”
“Guess we don’t really have a choice in it, huh?”
Ben shrugged. “Well, I dunno.” He gestured to the book, and Peter just raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. “You didn’t… try anything already—”
“Definitely not.” Peter looked terrified by the thought of it, and then Ben found them both smirking awkwardly at the ridiculousness of this conversation. College students didn’t typically hang out together on a Sunday afternoon to talk about their probably-but-maybe-not-dead childhood friend and entertain the idea of trying to summon demons from a book that had been around for hundreds of years and had been relatively easy to get their hands on, all things considered. “No,” Peter added. “If I’m gonna summon a demon and get blasted by evil or have my soul eaten, you’re doing it with me.”
“I’m flattered.” Okay, so maybe their friendship wasn’t as broken as he’d thought.
“About that house, though. And Ian.” Peter wiped his nose again. “I really don’t want to, but I think you’re right. Maybe it was a just a dream. Maybe it was something else. But we have to try, right?” Peter looked at him like he expected Ben to freak out in the same way, to get up and pace around and start yelling about how crazy this was. Like it would make him feel better about having done it himself the day before.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “That’s what I’m thinking.” His friend’s head bobbed up and down, and he thought he knew exactly what was going on inside it—this could either be the best or the stupidest thing they’d ever done. Probably both. And it still didn’t make a difference.
9
Their main goal was to be able to step back into that house with as close to an arsenal of knowledge and a semblance of protection as they could get. But they definitely didn’t want to rush it.. And they didn’t want to just go in there completely blind without knowing whether or not any of the stuff in that book actually worked. So they had to plan a test run.
The first part of the book, which turned out to be five different volumes combined into one—presumably for the first time, according to the editor’s note—was a lot. Seventy-two major evil spirits were listed, each described as having dominion over a range of odd topics, from warfare and physical love or lust to the vast and complete knowledge of astrology. A few of them apparently even held the power to “make a man invisible”. But these were the top dogs of the spirit world, named as presidents and knights, dukes and earls. And the list of ingredients needed to invoke them was more than a little intense—the blood of a black rooster that had never copulated with a hen, which apparently would be used for drawing smaller symbols in addition to the giant, sprawling seals they guessed would be written on the floor; calfskin parchment and virgins parchment, whatever that meant, for drawing certain other figures; pendants and seals and a silver ring created with various images upon them; raisins and grapes and alum and cedar. The lists went on and on, specifying with incredible detail which things could be designed on which days of the week or month and under which phases of the moon.
They read these things together, and Ben found himself with a headache; he guessed it was either from the overwhelming number of precise rules or from the effort of trying to read and understand the text. It was written in something not unlike old English but with so many notes and footnotes and odd spellings that it took forever.
So they moved on to the next section, which laid out only thirty-one “kings or princes”, apparently all with thousands of “lesser duke spirits” at their commands, who all took the same form and did relatively the same thing under each of their prospective rulers. And quickly, they found one with the name of Pamersiel. There was a brief warning with this one, that all this demon king’s underling spirits were “by nature evil and very false and not to be trusted in secret things but are excellent for driving away spirits of Darkness from any place or house that is haunted”.
“I mean, that could be useful, right?” Peter said, clearly not really looking for a definite answer, because neither of them had one.
“Probably should start with one of the smaller guys under him,” Ben said. He felt only a little ridiculous for talking about it like this, like it was real—but wasn’t it? Maybe the monstrous thing that had possessed and murdered their friends that night was somewhere mentioned in this book. Maybe even the creature he’d seen churning in the blackness of that guy’s eyes at the party two nights ago was there as well. Maybe the things this King Solomon had conjured and then catalogued in his book of practical demonology was only the tip of the iceberg, and not even this guy knew what he was doing. But they were real, they did exist, and if any of this worked, he and Peter would finally have a leg up in this craziness.
Plus, somewhere far in the back of his mind, Ben thought one of these lesser forces “excellent for driving away spirits of Darkness” might be able to get rid of the voices. That in and of itself would be a major win. Yes, the voice he’d heard on Friday night—the first after two years of nothing and the only one to ever come to him alone and not screaming at him from among a raging chorus of other incomprehensible voices—had been helpful. Even then, he didn’t think they all would be, and he expected them to return in droves again to bombard him unexpectedly, like they had for so many years after that night.
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After that, they decided to go with one of the lesser “dukes” under Pamersiel’s domain; Ebra was the name that sounded the least ominous. Now they just had to grab a few things, namely a “crystal stone or glass receptacle” that had to be four inches in diameter, obviously, for binding the spirit. Then they had to make the seal with Ebra’s conjuring symbol, draw the Table of Solomon to put the crystal on, and make some kind of belt with all these kings’ names written on it.
“Lion skin?” Ben asked, shuffling back and forth between the pages of the book to make sure he’d read it correctly. “Seriously? We need a three-inch-wide belt of lion skin?” He looked up at Peter with a grimace. “Do you think it would seriously mess things up if we just went with a regular belt?”
Peter shrugged. “Probably about as much as it would to not use rooster blood. I’m not really down to go looking around for someone with a black rooster for sale. Especially if we have to ask whether or not it’s gotten frisky with a chicken yet.”
Ben chuckled at that; his head swam from all the neatly laid-out and still somehow jumbled information in this book and the fact that they were at least planning to attempt one of these rituals. He knew Peter wasn’t joking about the rooster thing; the guy was almost as sensitive to what other people thought of him as Ben was. But every conversation they’d had that remotely touched on demons or what they’d been through in the last eleven years—well, really the last seven, seeing as they’d stopped mentioning it right after high school—had been solemn, forced, and honestly pretty depressing. For the first time, they were talking about all this in specific terms, with something of a plan, and without ducking and diving around what they actually wanted to say for fear of shattering what was left of their already fragile realities. And they could joke about it.
He couldn’t help but wonder how much better they might have been able to handle that night if it had happened to them as adults. Then again, he probably would have believed all the doctors, taken all the meds, never gone off them, and written himself off as a diagnosed schizophrenic, certifiably crazy, and without any hope of changing a thing. That was what really mattered—that he could do something about it now, assuming this hundreds-of-years-old ritual worked for them. What people thought of him wasn’t nearly as important as it had once been, when he’d just wanted to hide and forget everything. Now, he had a chance to take control of his life, fight the demons, summon them and order them to do what he said—according to the book—and maybe even do something for Ian still in that house. That was, if Ben’s dream hadn’t been a dream and was in reality their friend’s spirit trying to reach out to him from … somewhere else.
“I’ll ask Dr. Montgomery about that,” he muttered before he realized he was thinking out loud.
Peter looked up from the book’s pages and frowned at him. “You really think that’s a good idea?”
Leaning back into the couch again, Ben stretched his neck from side to side. “Dude, it’s not like I’m gonna just walk up, dump the whole truth on her, and then ask if she thinks we can substitute for lion skin and rooster blood.” His friend just raised an eyebrow. “Come on. I’ve spent three years with her building my major. I’m pretty sure I know how to frame it in the least suspicious way possible.”
“For what it is. It’s still pretty out there.”
“Yeah, maybe if she didn’t have a PhD in the same field.” Peter just shrugged, and Ben tried to bring his irritation down a notch. He hadn’t ever really spoken to Peter about his curriculum supervisor except to mention her name now and then; Peter hadn’t asked about his classes or what he was studying, probably because he didn’t want to hear Ben spouting off about all the things he’d dredged up for a college degree that pretty much revolved implicitly around what had happened to them as kids. And he understood that. He also realized, talking about it now, that one area of his life gave him more confidence than any other—his ability to disguise his desperate search for answers and self-preservation beneath the pretext of academic study. If the truth had to become a lie, he’d grown up to be a pretty decent liar.
“Well, good luck with that, I guess,” Peter said. It wasn’t meant as sarcastically as it sounded, Ben knew. They were both in this now. “I can start looking for this four-inch crystal.” He leaned down again toward the open book on the coffee table, squinting despite his eyesight being the one thing about him that had never needed a doctor’s appointment or a trip to the ER or a prescription. “This stuff is so specific…”
“Makes it harder for us to screw it up.”
Peter’s squinting eyes flickered toward Ben. “I guess.”
Then they just sat there for a minute. “So when do you want to do this?”
Peter slid a pale, bony index finger along the open page. “Well, our recipe calls for summoning this Ebra guy during the day. I mean, I have class, dude.”
“Yeah, I should probably be working on my own stuff too. And I have a meeting with Montgomery on Tuesday to give her a status report.”
“Saturday?”
Ben shrugged. “Why not?” Then he thought about April and the fact that she might want to do something again over the weekend. If he and Peter were successful with this summoning—he couldn’t believe how quickly he’d taken to thinking about it like this—he could take April out Saturday night feeling brave and empowered and the luckiest guy alive for still being alive. And if they failed … well, it wouldn’t matter at that point. He wouldn’t be worrying about dates if he was dead.
10
Ben showed up at Dr. Clarissa Montgomery’s office the next morning twenty minutes before her office hours started to make sure he didn’t miss her. She was very punctual; he waited nineteen minutes before he saw her walking briskly down the halls of the Faculty Office Building, her tight brown curls bouncing over her shoulders. She didn’t pause when she saw him standing outside her door and barely even slowed down to put her keys in the lock and open up her office.
“Good morning, Ben,” she said, her huge brown eyes regarding him with something like restrained amusement.
“Morning. Do, uh… do you have a minute?”
Dr. Montgomery pulled her keys back out of the doorknob, pushed the door open, and finally seemed able to give him a little more attention with a wide grin. “That’s what office hours are for, you know.” She nodded into her office. “Come on in.”
He liked meeting with her in her office. It wasn’t particularly large, but it seemed to hold so much stuff. The bookshelves were crammed with so many books, just the thought of trying to read all the titles made him dizzy. She had two computer monitors on her desk; in three and a half years, he still hadn’t asked her why. Almost every inch of wall space was covered with an eclectic mix of Tibetan prayer flags, a still-life painting of a menorah, Bible verses printed on painted ceramic tiles, a wall-mounted shelf holding statues of the Buddha in eight different renditions, a glaringly colorful poster of Vishnu. He recognized something from every religion he’d been studying decorating the walls, shelves, and filing cabinets, and he’d been able to quickly recognize it whenever she added something new. Plus, her PhD hung in a frame behind her chair, and she had a neat stack of books on the corner of her desk, all with her name on the spine. Being in here was both wildly intimidating and more inspiring than he’d ever expected from a tenured professor in the Religion Department. The woman was good at what she did, and she guided students like him toward being even better. He hoped.
Dr. Montgomery stepped around her desk, set down her keys and her giant purse, then sank slowly into her chair. When he took just a little too long to say anything, she wiggled her head and gestured to one of the chairs across from her desk. “You can sit down.”
“No, that’s okay,” Ben said, trying to keep the words from falling out of him all at once. “I just have a quick question.”
“Sure.” She nodded at him, then laughed when he still didn’t jump into it. “Fire away.”
“Right.” Ben all but sla
pped his palm to his forehead. “Have you heard of The Lesser Key of Solomon?”
His supervisor sat back in her chair with a slow nod. “Oh, yeah. Hugely influential text, back from before everyone started labeling that kind of magic, even theoretical, as part of the dark arts and devil-worship and supremely evil.” She smirked at her own skepticism of either the items she’d listed or the thousands of people who believed in their power and therefore shunned it all.
“Well I found a copy of it in the library, and I was going through some of it. Just curiosity, mostly, but it gave me a new idea for something I might want to add to my thesis…” He hated the way his voice curled up at the end, like he was asking her permission.
She tipped her head back and smiled, her eyes wide. “Go on.”
“Something about detailing the different rituals laid out in the religions I’m focusing on right now. Their instructions for how to summon spirits or talk to them or ask them for stuff. And then doing something almost like rewriting them for the twenty-first century and tying them into the universal sociological effects of religious rites and practices on modern society.” It definitely sounded like he was making this up on the spot, which he was. But his advisor apparently took the bait.
She stuck out her bottom lip in consideration and tilted her head. “That’s interesting.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Was that your question?”
“No. No I was actually wondering what you thought about some of the details in these rituals.” Boy, he was really taking the scenic route on this one. “One of these I’m looking at calls for a girdle made of lion skin and the blood of a very… specific kind of black rooster for drawing the sigils to set up for the whole thing. Obviously, these aren’t really everyday household items available for the modern practitioner.” A flare of confidence moved through him when Dr. Montgomery smirked. “Is there some kind of substitute I can use for stuff like this? I want to make these modernized instructions as true as I can to the original without making it seem completely impossible.”