The Book of Lamps and Banners

by Elizabeth Hand

  At the age of twenty, Cassandra Neary is already an expert chronicler of the dark side of downtown. Look at these photographs if you dare. You won’t easily forget what you see.

  There was Dee Dee onstage, pummeling his bass; Leee Childers flashing his Cheshire cat grin; Mickey Ruskin arguing with a drunken socialite at Max’s. My then-girlfriend Jeannie reeled in the aftermath of a catfight with Sable Starr, blood streaming from her nose as she flipped off the camera. Stiv Bators. Jerry Nolan. Jim Carroll. A dozen people whose names I’d forgotten, and even more whose names I’d never known. All of them were dead.

  I turned to a self-portrait—me as Joan of Arc beside a blazing trash can, my gray eyes incandescent with the glory of speed. Leather jacket at my feet, halo of flaming ash around my head. My scuffed Tony Lamas, their steel tips already battered from bar fights. I was nineteen years old and immortal.

  “Ah, here he is,” exclaimed the fat man, William. “Tweet-tweet.”

  I looked up to see a man heading toward the other table. He wore felted boots and a heavy shearling jacket and carried a bottle of Pellegrino. As he drew alongside Malloy, he unwound a long gray scarf from his neck, his head emerging like a turtle’s.

  “Hey, Malloy. William. I came as fast as I could, it’s impossible to get anywhere from the island.”

  His round cheeks had coarsened with rosacea, and his narrow blue eyes now gleamed moistly behind horn-rimmed glasses, but he was unmistakably Gwilym Birdhouse. Same wild thatch of hair, more gray than blond; same ripe baritone.

  William gave him a curt nod and muttered, “Gwilym.”

  But Malloy stood to embrace the newcomer and drew him into the empty seat beside him. “Gwilym! I’m surprised you got here so quickly.”

  Birdhouse shrugged. “Well, circumstances. Can you believe it? I always thought it’d be you, Malloy.” He grasped Malloy’s arm with a fond look, barely acknowledging William. “A sad day.”

  “Nothing to drink?” asked William, taking a sip from his own pint. Birdhouse lifted his bottle of sparkling water, and William snorted. “What about all your John Barleycorn blather? That just for the punters?”

  Malloy slapped his palm on the table. “Leave off, Will.”

  Birdhouse waved as though dispersing a bad smell. “No offense taken. He’s upset. I’m upset.” He looked around the room, glancing from the elderly couple to me. “Where’s Nathan?”

  “Still talking to the police. Just texted he won’t make it. Have you heard from them?”

  “Not yet.” Birdhouse extracted himself from his shearling coat. Underneath he wore baggy black jeans and a long-sleeved black turtleneck. “I’m hoping to avoid that.”

  William picked up his glass and raised it to the others. “‘Shall we never see a picture of “We Three”?’”

  “Should be five,” said Malloy. “To Harold.”

  Chapter 23

  The three men leaned across the table, speaking quietly. Now and then Malloy boomed out an epithet, to be shhhed by William. The older couple with the dog had left. Birdhouse retreated to the bar and returned with another bottle of Pellegrino. He settled back alongside Malloy, joining the conversation in between bouts of texting and reading on his mobile.

  I didn’t hear much other than Malloy’s continued insistence that ISIS was behind Harold’s death. William inevitably rose to the bait, but Birdhouse only regarded Malloy with faint amusement, as though watching the antics of an ill-behaved toddler. I decided I’d give it another fifteen minutes, then split. I’d wasted enough time.

  And if Nathan unexpectedly showed up, I didn’t want to be seen. I’d find another bar and kill the next hour or two, till it was time to meet Quinn.

  Yet I doubted there was enough whiskey to kill my growing dread. I blinked, trying to dispel the spidery black threads that knit and unraveled across my vision. After a minute I realized I was grinding my teeth—the beginnings of withdrawal. I licked my lips, tasting blood, picked up Dead Girls, and opened it to the leaf from The Book of Lamps and Banners.

  I’ve seen reproductions of medieval manuscripts in books. These pictures had the same saturated pigmentation, eerily unfaded by the centuries. Or millennia, if the book was as old as Gryffin claimed it was. Lapis and scarlet; saffron and iridescent green; a delicate lavender that looked like the first flush of spring in a crocus that has yet to fully open.

  Most striking was a flame-bright crimson that resembled a screenshot of an actual fire, not something created with ground pigments. Again, I felt a shiver of the same terror that had sickened me when Tindra unleashed her app.

  My apprehension wasn’t eased by the illustrations embellishing the unreadable text. One showed a woman with the lower body of a squidlike creature. Her face was that of a lamprey, and her tentacles ended in talons that grasped squirming figures that might have been human.

  The illustration was no more than two inches square. Yet its background was meticulously, psychedelically, rendered. Myriad branches grew from a single trunk, each branch crowned with a human head. Multiple suns blazed in the lapis sky, along with swastikas and arrows that, close-up, looked less like arrows than rockets, complete with fins and contrails.

  The longer I stared at the page, the less crazy Tindra’s theory seemed. Symbols and images repeated in a manner that seemed commensurate with some kind of code. But I had no idea what, exactly, I was looking at. One moment, it would all be in focus. The next, an image would blur, or even seem to change shape and color: the lamprey now a crimson poppy, the tentacles folds of a long robe.

  Same with the picture of a decapitated head with too many eyes to count. First it was a head. Then it was the cratered surface of the moon. Then a head again. Then the moon.

  Drugs and booze make me crazy, but not that crazy. I wondered if the papyrus had been impregnated with a hallucinogen, or even a poison. Could a poison still be active after two thousand years? I didn’t think so, but there was definitely something strange and frightening going on, something that seemed to defy the little I knew about medieval illumination, and maybe physics.

  And also history: When this book was written, did anyone, even Aristotle, know there were craters on the moon?

  This is a very advanced philosophical artifact. And I can guarantee you that some of the people who’ve owned it over the years knew exactly what it was.

  I turned the sheet over. Compared with the phantasmagoric images on the other side, the runic lettering here appeared crude and much older—it was easy to imagine someone scratching it onto the page with a sharpened stick.

  And Harold had been right. Unlike the other written text, the runes weren’t inscribed in black, but a very faint rusty brown. If it was blood, the effort to write must have been painstaking, each line barely a hair’s breadth. Harold had speculated that this was a formula, or perhaps a spell.

  Beware, this is power…

  I jumped as someone pounded on the neighboring table.

  “Listen to yourself! That’s shite talk and you know it, Malloy!” the fat man shouted. “Gwilym, don’t encourage him!”

  “Shite? How many white faces did you see on the Tube getting here?” Malloy stood to yank a windbreaker from a wall peg. “White genocide, that’s what this is.”

  He barreled toward the door. William got to his feet and called after him. “That’s right, do a runner.”

  “Let him go, Will,” said Birdhouse mildly.

  “Go back to your bloody sheep,” William retorted. “All you do is wind him up, and you know it.”

  The fat man snatched up his overcoat and stormed out. Birdhouse remained where he was, unfazed by the outburst, sipping Pellegrino as he scrolled through his mobile.

  I looked back down at the papyrus sheet. I knew I should put it away, but the images drew me like a drug. If a single page could have such a powerful effect, what would it be like to look through the entire Book of Lamps and Banners?

  And if Tindra was right, and it really was an ancient manual for mind control
—what would her app be capable of, if she used this to upgrade Ludus Mentis from the beta version?

  I glanced up to see Gwilym Birdhouse watching me. I quickly closed Dead Girls, straightened, and stared back at him, trying to appear composed. Birdhouse’s expression betrayed no sign that he’d seen what I’d been looking at. His narrow blue eyes were watchful, slightly amused. Not the gaze of a man in the throes of grief; more like someone waiting to see if a slightly thick friend had finally figured out the punch line of a joke.

  “Birdhouse, right? Big fan,” I said, and finished my whiskey. “Your friends there seemed upset.”

  Birdhouse nodded. “Yeah. We had some bad news.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “A good friend was killed. Murdered.” He reached to scratch behind one ear, exposing a neck tattoo similar to Malloy’s: a rippling flag, a red cross on a white ground. “It’s quite a shock.”

  “That’s horrible. Did they catch who did it?”

  “Not yet. Not as far as I know, anyway.” He glanced at his mobile, shook his head. “Metropolitan Police are useless. They’d have to bring in Scotland Yard or Interpol. And they won’t do that, not now. Waste of resources with everything else going on.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “Who was he? Your friend?”

  “A bookseller.”

  Birdhouse’s mobile pinged. He read the incoming text, set down his mobile, and again stared at me. His gaze shifted from my face to the copy of Dead Girls. He picked up the bottle of Pellegrino and stood.

  “See you,” he said. As he walked past, I caught a powerful whiff of something redolent of wet dog.

  Other than me, the room was empty. After a minute the girl from behind the register entered and cleared away the empty glasses. She returned to wipe the tables down, and the doggy odor dissolved into ammonia and lemon. I tugged on my leather jacket, got my bag, and went outside.

  The sulfurous haze had deepened to a bruised green. Spatters of rain struck my face. I pulled up my collar and hurried toward the street.

  After a few steps, I remembered the Aran sweater my father used to wear when he was out raking leaves, its strong animal scent when it got wet. Lanolin. Gwilym Birdhouse smelled like that. Unsurprising, given his shearling coat and felted boots, and the fact that he raised sheep. What was it with musicians retreating into country life? Paul and Linda McCartney holed up on Kintyre in Scotland. Ian Anderson overseeing a salmon fishery. Birdhouse and sheep…

  Halfway down the cobblestoned alley, I looked up to see a figure blocking my way. Someone put an arm around my throat and yanked me into an abandoned entryway.

  “Quiet now,” a voice murmured in my ear.

  Chapter 24

  Shush. You’re fine. Don’t make a scene.” Lyla covered my mouth with her palm, looked at Gryffin beside her. “Tell her, go on.”

  “Tindra’s gone,” he stammered. “Sometime last night, she just took off.”

  I grunted in dismay, and Lyla nodded. “That’s right,” she said, and I felt the pressure on my windpipe relax. “You’re not going to shout, are you?”

  I shook my head. She released me, and I turned to Gryffin, fighting to catch my breath. “Took off where?”

  I saw then that his lip was split. Dried blood flecked his chin. “Christ, what happened to you?”

  I reached for his face, and he knocked my hand away. “I told you. Tindra’s gone. Lyla found her. Or didn’t find her. She thought I did something.” He gingerly touched his lip. “I think she did.”

  “You shut your mouth,” said Lyla. She carried a backpack and wore the same clothes as when I’d last seen her—black anorak and trousers, black boots.

  I looked at her, confused. “So where is she?”

  “I don’t know.” Lyla sounded scared. “She’s always up early, five at the latest. Some nights she doesn’t sleep at all. I didn’t see her by six, so I texted her, then again at half past. When I went to her room, she was gone. Her and Bunny.”

  “Maybe she took a walk,” I said. “Did she leave a note?”

  “She didn’t answer my text. Not a word.” Her voice broke, and she clutched her arms to her chest. “Something’s happened to her.”

  “What about your brother?”

  “He’s gone, too. Before I woke. I think he must have heard her leave and gone after her.” Her eyes filled with tears. “If something happens to her, I’ll kill myself.”

  I frowned. “How’d you find me?”

  “She tracked my mobile on the Find My Phone app,” said Gryffin. “You’re a goddamn genius, Cass. Give it back to me.”

  I shoved the mobile at him and stepped away, raising my hands.

  “I’m done,” I said, looking from Gryffin to Lyla. “This is none of my business. Not my book, not my friend, not my brother, none of it. So fuck off.”

  Gryffin blocked me as I started toward the street. “She has a gun,” he warned. “I wouldn’t mess with her, Cass.”

  “I don’t want to mess with her. I just want to get the hell out of here.”

  “You can’t do that. Neither can I. It’s gotten out of control. If Tindra’s gone to the police—”

  “Why would you care?” I retorted. “That’s what you wanted to do.”

  “You were right. It would be stupid.” He removed his glasses, stared at them as though trying to remember their purpose, then shoved them back on. “I’ll be all over Harold’s phone records, his computer. Someone may have seen us. Or CCTV.”

  “We’re innocent. Call a lawyer.”

  “Tindra wouldn’t go to the police.” Lyla edged between us. “She must have gone to meet someone.”

  “Who?”

  Lyla shook her head. “I have no idea. But it’s the only thing that makes sense. Whoever has the book…they got in touch with her, and she’s gone to meet them.”

  I remembered Tindra in her garage. Her mobile had chimed, and she’d seemed agitated by whatever message she’d received. I averted my gaze from Lyla and Gryffin.

  “Look, just let me go, okay?” I said. “You know I’m not talking to the cops.”

  “I’d rather you stayed with us.” Lyla pointedly slipped her hand beneath her anorak. “You were the last person to see her—she came back into the room, she said you’d left, and then she went to bed. Did she say anything to you? I wouldn’t have let you go, you know,” she added, a veiled threat.

  “She seemed fine. We didn’t really talk. She seemed tired, is all.”

  The sound of church bells echoed from the street as a clock tolled two. I was supposed to meet Quinn in an hour. My stomach turned at the thought of losing him again. “Shit! I’ve got to be somewhere and meet someone.”

  “Me too.” Gryffin glanced at Lyla. “I’d rather not deal with the cops, either.”

  I snorted. “You’ve changed your tune.”

  “After everything in Maine, I had to hire someone to scrub my connection to my father online. If news gets out about this, it’ll all come up again.”

  I wanted to point out this wasn’t a matter of if but when. I headed toward the street, trying to ignore the sound of their footsteps behind me.

  Chapter 25

  We rode in the same subway car without speaking. I’d decided against trying to make a break for it. Lyla wouldn’t pull a gun in the Underground, but pointing me out to a transit cop would do the job.

  She dogged my every step, a black-clad phantom. Gryffin stared at the floor. Now and then he’d withdraw his mobile and try fruitlessly to get a signal. When we reached Embankment, Lyla jerked her head toward the door, and we followed her out.

  Yellow mist enveloped us as we left the station. Above us loomed Hungerford Bridge, spanning the Thames. Helicopters circled noisily overhead, and a siren wailed in the distance. I squinted through the haze to see police officers in riot gear among the pedestrians heading across the bridge.

  “What’s that about?” I asked.

  “The Nazis,” said Lyla. “They’re gathering by Mile E
nd.”

  “Is that near here?”

  “No. But that’s South Bank.” She pointed to the buildings that lined the other side of the river. “It’s a huge tourist area. No one’s taking chances.”

  “Are they even allowed to march?”

  “No. But they can gather in a public space if they call it a private barbecue or picnic. Anti-fascists drive themselves crazy, trying to figure out where they’ll pop up—they organize everything peer-to-peer, on social media mostly. But late last night, someone twigged that they’ll be having an outdoor party today, to honor ‘English and Italian friendship.’”

  I laughed. “Honoring what?”

  “Mosley meeting with Mussolini in 1932. They call it ‘the right to offend.’ I think you have something similar in your country,” she added, “only you call it ‘freedom of speech.’”

  Gryffin drew up next to us. “Have you heard from your brother?” Lyla shook her head.

  We walked toward the park entrance, Lyla at my side, Gryffin falling a few steps behind. My jaw clenched involuntarily; needles scratched my retina, leaving black streaks. Despite the steady infusion of Vyvanse over the last few days, I was going into amphetamine withdrawal. Haze reduced the park to a grayish-yellow scrim. I saw no sign of Quinn.

  I slowed to let Gryffin catch up with me. “What do you think is going on?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.” He looked miserable. “I keep thinking I’ll wake up. But then I haven’t gone to sleep yet.”

  “You think Tindra was kidnapped?”

  “How? You saw that place—it’s a bunker.”

  “Yeah, but why is that? The three of them holed up with all those arcade games, it’s like living in a bomb shelter with Oddjob and Gogo Yubari.”

  I looked up as another copter droned above the river. “Wouldn’t a tech lord have better security? I thought all those Silicon Valley gurus have Gulfstreams to escape the apocalypse. Fly them off to New Zealand or some missile silo in Kansas.”