The Book of Lamps and Banners

by Elizabeth Hand

  “Beats me.”

  “You know some Swedish—what does it mean, ‘Svarlight’?”

  Quinn stared at the album, shrugged. “I think svar means ‘reply’ or ‘answer,’ something like that. But ‘light’ is English. It’s a made-up word. Svarlight, starlight…”

  “So it’s a pun?”

  “I guess.” He examined both albums. “Looks like they put out the same kind of music as Heathen Harvest. I bet most of their business is streaming downloads. I doubt they make much money.”

  “What’s Heathen Harvest?”

  “Indie label, mostly an online presence. European nationalist music, some of it—you know, updated folk music about the good old days and the old ways. The rest is heathen-related stuff.”

  “Black metal? I hate that shit.”

  Quinn reached to touch the scar beside my eye. “I remember. But Svarlight is more postindustrial and neo-folk. Post-rock. And definitely DIY—the studio’s probably a laptop in this guy Erik’s basement.”

  “So this is neo-Volksmusik? Like what’s played on Valî’s Hour?”

  “Maybe. I don’t listen to it much. Some of it’s okay, just not my taste. But just because a band’s on a label like Svarlight doesn’t mean they’re white supremacists. If you listen to the lyrics, yeah, sometimes there are code words and racist dog-whistle shit. But most of the bands are just, you know…”

  He moved his hand back and forth, mimicking a rocky boat. “Kinda woo-woo. Like, fire up a bowl and go out and dance naked around a bonfire. Good old-fashioned pagans. Like those guys,” he added, indicating the folkies by the window.

  I picked up the Jötunn’s Egg album, Stone Ships, and examined the back cover. At the very bottom, beneath the photo credit, were two lines of very small print. I read the first:

  Recorded at Kalkö, Sweden

  Photo Credit: BDW

  “Where’s Kalkö?” I asked.

  “Little island in the Baltic Sea.”

  “Erik and his wife were going to take a ferry somewhere. Can you get to Kalkö by ferry?”

  “Not from here. But from Stockholm, sure. Takes a few hours.”

  He looked past me toward the jukebox, one of those thousand-yard stares I knew better than to ask about. He shook his head. “Kalkö’s a long way to come to sell a couple of CDs at a fringe Nazi rally. Expensive, too, if they took the ferry to Stockholm and then flew from there. Why would they bother?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question. I think they were here for Tindra. And the book. Though this is the thing…”

  I felt my synapses burn as though I’d just done another bump. “I’m not sure this really is about the book. I told you she designed an app. She showed it to me on her mobile—all these colors and weird symbols, like in The Book of Lamps and Banners. Hieroglyphs, things like that. When I looked at it, all of a sudden I had a flashback to when I was raped. Not just a flashback—it was like I was actually there. It freaked the hell out of me.”

  “Jesus. What the hell kind of app is that?”

  “She calls it Ludus Mentis, it means ‘mind game.’ She told me it’s supposed to control PTSD. She was abused when she was a kid; I assume that’s what got her interested. And her bodyguard, Tommy—he was in Afghanistan. Sounds like he has PTSD, too. I think she wanted to help him.”

  “So this app is like therapy? Biofeedback?”

  “Tindra says it can rewire your brain. All I know is when I looked at it, I thought I was going crazy. It’s like it induced PTSD.”

  Quinn gently grasped my chin in one of his scarred hands. “This old world really fucked you up, didn’t it?” he murmured. “I wish I’d been there. I should have been there.”

  “You were in jail.”

  His expression hardened. He turned away, drank what was left of his rum and Coke, and got unsteadily to his feet. “I’ll be right back.”

  He headed toward the men’s toilet. I finished my whiskey, held up my empty glass to Derek. He refilled it and watched as I took a sip.

  “Don’t take him down with you,” he said.

  “I’m not taking him anywhere.”

  “Let him go back to Reykjavík. He was safe there. Whatever you’re up to, keep him out of it.”

  “Quinn’s a big boy, he can make up his own mind.”

  “Not with you around. You’re like heroin to him.”

  “Fuck you,” I said.

  I looked up to see Quinn approaching. Derek busied himself with cleaning a tap. I picked up the Bloodwinter CD and scanned the personnel info on the back.

  Two acoustic guitars, one a twelve-string; female singer; drums; something called a nyckelharppa. I searched for the photo credit—again, BDW—then swore under my breath.

  “Check this out.” I handed the CD to Quinn, pointing to the final credit line:

  Album produced, engineered, and mixed by Gwilym Birdhouse at BDW and Svarlight Studios

  Chapter 36

  Gwilym Birdhouse.” Quinn rapped his knuckles on the bar counter. “The eighties singer?”

  He hummed the opening of “No One Knows Me but the Rain,” and I dug my nails into his arm. “Ow! What the hell?”

  “I hate that song.”

  “Everybody hates that song.” He stared at the CD, musing. “So, he’s producing stuff for a shoestring label. So what?”

  “It’s a link, right? Nathan told me that Birdhouse collects esoterica—old manuscripts, shit like that. So it’s possible he’d have at least heard of The Book of Lamps and Banners. But I can’t imagine him killing Harold Vertigan for it. Or kidnapping Tindra,” I added. “He’s a vegan.”

  “Vegans—you’d be surprised.” Quinn withdrew a cigarette from a crumpled pack. “But yeah, it seems a little extreme. And if somebody killed her, where’s the body? That’s always the challenge, what you do with the body. It’s harder than it seems.”

  “Okay, so they kidnapped her.”

  “Then where are they keeping her?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The three folkies turned to me in disapproval. I ignored them and stared into my glass of Jack Daniel’s. I thought about Ludus Mentis tapping into the memory of the one experience I’d devoted my entire life to blocking, the chemical wall I’d erected since then between myself and the dark. I raised my head to look at Quinn.

  “What if she went along willingly?” It was an effort not to slur my words, but Quinn stopped playing with his cigarette and waited for me to go on. “Or not willingly, but because they have the book and her app. That’s what the real hostages are.”

  “A book’s not alive.”

  “An app is. This app is.”

  I finished my whiskey, but it no longer warmed me. Quinn stuck the cigarette behind his ear.

  “But why would someone want it?” he asked. “It sounds horrible.”

  “Yeah, but think what something like that could do if it went viral.” I talked way too fast, trying to keep up with my thoughts. “Like if some fascist got hold of it and used it like a weapon. Or if a whole bunch of people used it. White supremacists, nationalists, politicians, terrorists—whoever. Like in Rwanda, they did all those radio broadcasts and brainwashed people into committing genocide. I mean, look at Fox News. Or Stormfront, or Herla. This thing could be all over the Internet in a day.”

  “Huh.” Quinn contemplated this. “Seems like a long shot, unless someone knew what they were doing.”

  “Tindra knows what she’s doing. She just might not want to actually do it. Unless she’s forced to.”

  I took out Dead Girls and set it on the bar. “And there’s still this.”

  I opened it to the page from The Book of Lamps and Banners. Quinn didn’t even register the illuminated leaf: he reached for the copy of Dead Girls. “Hey, wait—that’s your book! I want to see—”

  “Fuck that.” I snapped the book shut. “It’s not worth a million dollars.”

  Quinn bared his teeth, more menace than smile. “Why are you like this, Cass? Every tim
e you have a chance to pull yourself out of the hole you’ve dug, you fuck it up on purpose. You could do something with your photography again.” He gestured at Dead Girls. “Take more photos instead of getting wasted.”

  My face grew hot. “You gave me that crank.”

  “I know I did. I’m an asshole. But look at yourself—” He reached for my hand, but I pushed him away. “You’re a walking skeleton. You don’t eat, you’re either tweaking or drunk, twenty-four seven.”

  “What?” I laughed in disbelief. “You’re telling me to straighten out?”

  He leaned back on his barstool. “Yeah, I am. Until I hooked up with you again, I was keeping it together. I have the vinyl business, I have a place to live. I have a life. I can’t afford to be shit-faced all the time, Cass. I can’t afford to be a fuckup.”

  My eyes stung. I waited till I could talk without my voice shaking. “If we find the book. Or Tindra, and the app—”

  “Cass, listen to me—nothing is going to happen with that app. The only thing worth pursuing here is the book, and I don’t see us finding it. I say we call the game and split. Come with me back to Reykjavík. I have the vinyl business, we can get by. I’ll get you another camera.”

  “I already have another camera.”

  “So what the hell are we waiting for?” He stared at me, his expression torn between fury and pleading. “You’ve still got that Swedish passport you nicked from Dagney, right? We can get the red-eye. Or leave early tomorrow.”

  I turned to look at the Seeburg, its flickering ice-blue aurora imprisoned in glass and Bakelite. “I can’t stay in Iceland,” I said. “Not permanently. You know that.”

  “So we’ll work something out. All this time, we can figure something out, right?”

  His big hand covered mine, and I nodded, thinking of his place outside Reykjavík: a shell of rusting corrugated metal and plywood nestled beneath a hive of cell towers, furnished with thousands of vinyl albums and not much else. Not much different from my place back on Houston Street, when you came down to it.

  I leaned toward him till our foreheads touched. “I’d still like to go to Greece.”

  “Maybe we can do that.”

  “If we had the book, we could sell it and buy a place there.”

  Quinn sighed. “Christ, you just don’t give up. You don’t know about this kind of stuff, Cass. I do. This kind of thing never ends well. It hasn’t even begun well. We need to leave London. You’ve already got a footprint here the size of a truck. Let’s go to Reykjavík.”

  “I can’t stay in Reykjavík.”

  “So don’t stay. Go back to New York on your own passport, you can come see me in a month or two.”

  “We’ll be three thousand miles apart.”

  “It’s the twenty-first century, Cass. People live in different places.”

  “I don’t want to live in a different place. I want to go somewhere warm, together. I want to go to Greece.”

  “Greece costs money,” he said. “I need to get back home so I can take care of business there.”

  “Business.” I sneered.

  “That’s right.” He reached for his backpack and dumped its contents on the counter. Vinyl records, their cardboard sleeves wrapped in clear plastic. “My legal business. Because if I get involved in something else and I’m caught, I’m fucked. I owe money, and this is the only way I can make it legally.”

  He grabbed one of the albums, a limited pressing of a band I’d never heard of. For a moment I thought he’d hit me with it. Instead he tossed it onto the others.

  I said, “That’s chump change.” Quinn’s mouth tightened, but I couldn’t stop. “If we find this book, I can cut a deal with Gryffin. I’ll give him the book, he can transfer money into my account. You and me can be gone in a heartbeat, Greece or anywhere else we want to go.”

  “‘If we find this book,’ ‘if we find this book.’ Cass, you have no fucking clue where that book is.”

  “Yes, I do. We go to Kalkö and look for Erik or Gwilym Birdhouse. Or Tindra’s father, whoever he is. You said it’s a small island—all we have to do is find one of them.”

  “And then what?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll think of something. You’ll think of something. That was your job, right?”

  “Watch it, Cassie.”

  “It’s worth a shot.” I swiveled to stare out the Banshee’s rain-streaked windows. “But you’re right. I need to get out of London. The weather sucks.”

  “Kalkö’s not going to be an improvement.”

  “I don’t care. You speak a little Swedish, right? From your junkie girlfriend.”

  “Ex-girlfriend. You oughta thank her, you’re using her passport.”

  He stared at the Seeburg. “We could go to Kalkö,” he said at last. “I went a few times with Dagney—it’s a big tourist place in the summer. Right now, not so much, so probably it wouldn’t be hard to find these people, and probably I could convince them—if they have your book. If the girl went with them of her own accord, it could get tricky. Like if she’s somehow in on this. But we can try.”

  “Will you be able to leave London without trouble?”

  “Leaving’s not the problem—it’s the other end, them letting me in. But I got here, right? I have a Scandinavian travel card, I’m a legal resident of Iceland, I’m white. I think I’ll be okay. But…”

  He stroked the hair at my temple, pushing it behind one ear. “You need to do something about your hair. Too many variables—at least you need to look like that passport photo. Can you make it blond again?”

  I nodded, and he traced the barely healed gash on my cheek, adding, “And you need to cover that with makeup or something.”

  “I know. I just need a few things from Sainsbury’s.” I pushed away my empty glass. “So now what?”

  “Keep moving. If we’re gonna do this, we need to do it fast. Not tonight—only a few flights a day from Stockholm to Norderby, we don’t want to be on the same one with your friends. I’ll find a hotel at the airport, we can leave first thing tomorrow. Go buy your stuff and meet me at the Tube. I’ll settle up. And listen to me, Cass—”

  He grasped me by the wrists, his gray-green eyes icy. “This is it. Last dance. You fuck it up, I’m done.”

  I glanced over to see Derek standing at the jukebox. He punched in a song, turned, and stared at me as the ringing chords and sledgehammer drums kicked in. The Gun Club, “She’s Like Heroin to Me.” I gave him a sardonic smile. He didn’t smile back.

  Chapter 37

  Three hours later we were at a chain hotel near Heathrow. Quinn checked us in, using a credit card and Irish driver’s license, both featuring a name other than his own. I waited till we were alone in the elevator to comment.

  “Nanker Phelge? Are you kidding me? How many fake IDs do you have?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Our room came with a view of a freight company garage. I had my overloaded leather bag, Quinn the worn L.L. Bean backpack that held some vinyl records, a change of clothes, and his laptop. He pulled out the computer as soon as we arrived and settled on the bed to book our tickets.

  I went into the bathroom with the supplies I’d bought at Sainsbury’s: a large box of baking soda, a bottle of the strongest dish detergent I could find, and some expensive hair conditioner. I made a paste out of the baking soda and dish detergent, then spent the next forty-five minutes working it through my hair and rinsing it out, a trick a stylist friend had taught me on the Lower East Side back when Limelight was in its prime. By the time I was done, my hair was the color and consistency of shredded October leaves. I went through all of the conditioner before I could stand to touch my scalp.

  But I was blond again. I showered, dressed in clean drainpipe jeans and a boatneck shirt, and went to sit on the bed beside Quinn. I pulled out Dagney Ahlstrand’s passport and stared at her photo, compared it with my own pallid face in the wall mirror.

  “What do you think?” I asked Quinn.

 
; He glanced up. “Better. You look like you.”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “Good, if it keeps you from getting stopped at border control.” He swiveled to look at me properly. “No, it’s good.”

  I turned away, pulled the stolen Nikon from my bag, and raised it to my face, adjusting the lens.

  “That your new camera?” I nodded. “Nice. What is it?”

  “A Nikon.” I stared at him through the viewfinder. “It’s a good rig. Expensive.”

  I flicked the shutter release and Quinn stiffened. I lowered the camera. “Don’t worry. It’s not loaded.”

  I set the Nikon on the bed and went through the rest of my stuff. I sorted my few remaining pills into prescription bottles with my name on them, doling out three Percocets for later. I’d need something to offset the crank if I was going to get any sleep.

  Last of all I opened the cosmetics case I’d nabbed in the hair salon and removed the little enameled compact. I pried open the empty compartment designed to hold face powder, tipped most of the contents of the ziplock bag of crank into it, and snapped the compact shut.

  “Okay, I’m good,” I announced.

  Quinn put his hand around my bare ankle and squeezed. “You sure you want to do this, Cassie?”

  “What else are we going to do?”

  “Jesus, I dunno. Act like normal people?”

  “Normal people don’t do what we do.” I peered over his shoulder at the laptop. “What’re you looking at?”

  “Trying to track down your friends in Kalkö. Svarlight has a post-office address in Norderby, but I think they may live by Slythamn. Norderby’s the tourist deal, it was some kind of trading post for thousands of years. Baltic amber, stuff like that. The northern part of the island is more industrial. There’s a big quarry and a cement plant. That’s where Slythamn is.”

  “What makes you think they’re there?”

  “Not too many other places they could be on Kalkö. Plus, there’s an old listing for a Bergstrand in Slythamn.”

  “Have you been there?”

  “I drove through once. It’s pretty grim.”

  He gestured at his laptop: a photo of dun-colored factory towers and dark clouds billowing from smokestacks, with a row of small, barn-red buildings in the foreground. “The main cement plant cut back its workforce a few years ago. There’s a lot of unemployment, even though officially no one in Sweden is unemployed.”