“Each time, the student in question was in clear violation of the code.”
Of course, Jim knew a few boys who routinely stole, several more who lied as if their lives depended upon it, and guessed that with one or two, cheating on tests was not the most abnormal pastime.
But he knew, just as well as the next ‘Row student, that getting caught was the thing.
And now, he had delivered himself into their hands.
Stupidly.
He looked over at Fricker, who, out of fear, had turned to face forward, his blue book closed.
The idea of the Honor Council gave him the creeps, too.
No one knew who they were or what they did. There were legends of boys sent packing in the night for various violations, but the tales were tall ones and too numerous to be accurate. Michael-the-Good was asked to escort Jim back to his dormitory to await the scheduling of the honor trial—and it wasn’t even three in the afternoon yet. “I’m screwed,” Jim whispered to him as they walked out into the breezeway.
“No talking,” Michael-the-Good said. “Sorry, Hook. It’s the rules.”
“Damn,” Jim said. “And double-damn. Shit to hell.”
“It’s bad to curse,” Michael-the-Good added, walking ahead of him like a priest with a man headed for the gas chamber.
Walking down West on his way to a class, Old Man Chambers caught him by the scruff of his neck. The old geezer was like a walking corpse, in a black jacket and tie and a rib cage that could be seen right through his starched white shirt, but he was strong like he lifted weights even at eighty. “Boy, I hear you crossed a line,” Chambers said, his voice half cough and half whisper. Jim just looked up at him. “Yeah.”
“Your father would not like this,” Chambers muttered, letting him go. The old man turned and headed back down toward the library, muttering and cursing to himself. Then, briefly, he turned to face Jim again.
“Were you the boy who stole my keys?” Chambers asked.
“Sir?” Jim nearly choked. What new crimes would he be accused of, now that he was marked with dishonor?
“My keys. The master set. They’ve gone a-missing. Did you take them?” Chambers had a look on his face like he already had suspected as much.
It almost wouldn’t matter what Jim said now.
At four, Jim had to sit with Dean Angstrom, the man’s words buzzing around him like yellow jackets, his face red.
He’d been unable to look the Disciplinary Counselor in the eye. Then he’d gone to his two-hour, twice-a-week job in the school library, shelving the day’s books as part of his work-study program, and even Mrs. Finch wouldn’t say a word to him.
Someone had pulled out two books on the occult and left them smack dab in the middle of the magazine racks. One was called, quite simply, The Occult, by someone named Colin Wilson, and the other was a raggedly bound book called The Infinite Ones by someone with the strangest name Jim had run across in a while (and he noticed all oddly named authors).
The name was Isis Claviger, and he imagined some drawn, wizened old lady of seventy scribbling away. Perhaps it was the terrible day, perhaps it was the fact he hadn’t eaten since noon, or perhaps it was because the name, Isis Claviger, sounded either like a cheap French wine or the piss-elegant wife to some custodian, but he began giggling.
The book dropped from his hand—slipped— and when he picked it up, he opened it as he walked over to the shelf where it belonged.
The book was so old that the binding was cracked and sloppily taped, as were some of the pages, which were thin as tissue paper. He glanced through the table of contents: phrases like lucid somnambulism and ectoplasmic manifestations and astral fragmentary hives dotted the chapter headings.
A thin waxy paper covered some frontispiece illustration.
He drew the paper back, and there was a photograph of one of the most beautiful women Jim had ever seen. She had a strong chin, and thick, sensual lips.
She was young when the photograph was taken—he checked the copyright date, which was listed as 1912. Isis Claviger definitely looked like a woman of her time—from the shadows around her eyes to the long curling locks that cascaded around her shoulders. There was something rough and unrefined about her as well; and yet her eyes were compelling and singularly bright compared to the rest of the old photograph. It was almost as if someone had retouched the eyes to clean the whites up, and had also managed to reveal the translucence in the iris. She must’ve been a hot babe of his great-grandpa’s generation. He chuckled to himself, thinking of it. She was, as his grandfather had once said of his grandmother, “calamitously beautiful,” which, to Jim’s mind, meant dazzling. She could’ve been a silent movie star or something. Something like the winsome actresses in those old movies, almost girlish, almost woman-esque, almost radiant.
Beneath her name, a lengthy and curious phrase, scribbled sloppily—some of the lines crossed over each other in an elaborate and messy hand—in faded blue ink:
Thelma without my bidding what comes with the ankle comes from the lurking of (then, two words that Jim couldn’t make out). All the bams within the ratchanger and the Raise is here with his beloved ones I met the one they call the Thousandth One
The rest of the nonsensical phrase had been rubbed out.
He turned the ragged pages, some with yellowed Scotch tape, some torn at the roots, and found some more drawings and photographs in the book. One showed a woman at a small round table, her hands on the shoulders of two men on either side of her. Another woman, more diminutive, stood behind the man with the glaring eyes.
The caption read:
Isis Claviger with Aleister Crowley, Victor Neuberg, and Rose Kelly on the eve of the Anubis Invocation, Cairo, 1904.
Chapter Eleven
Isis Claviger was startlingly beautiful in this photograph—Jim felt a gasp rising in his throat as he looked at her, because she looked more contemporary than the men sitting beside her; the woman who stood behind them looked as if she were trying to disappear in the shadows. The woman called Isis wore what looked like a tunic-like robe, and Jim was almost convinced he saw her left breast falling out the side—but it didn’t look cheap. She looked like a goddess of a woman.
He went and checked the book out, curious that Harrow would even have such a bizarre volume, and then finished reselling for the day.
He took a few minutes, plopping down on a couch, and leafed through the pages, mainly glancing at the pictures. It took his mind off what lay ahead of him: The torment of dishonor. The anxiety of knowing his doom. A picture of the pyramids of Egypt with two figures wrapped up like sheiks sitting on a camel. A picture of a large man with piercing eyes. Beneath this, the caption: The Beast, on a not-so-beastly day.
Another photo was nearly shredded down the middle and then scotch-taped to hell: It was Isis Claviger, the author of the book, holding what looked like a small jewel—it reminded Jim of a stick figure. The caption read, Isis. with her beloved ankh, given to her by Amon Ra in a past incarnation.
Okay. Whatever the hell an ankh is. He flipped through the pages, until he saw something quite stunning: a beautiful house that had some disturbance about it—like an aura, only dark, and Jim figured it was some trick of the photographer, for it looked as if the photo were taken during an eclipse, with the darkened sun just over the rooftop. Something about the house was quite grand, and he figured it was one of those English manors. All the caption said was, “The Place of the Seven Dreamers.” A man stood before the arched doorway; then Jim noticed that part of the house, toward the back left of it, was still under construction.
He drew the book closer to his eyes. Did he need glasses? There were designs along the various gables of the house—what were they? They looked intricate—gargoyles? Some kind of dragons? And symbols—stars? Moons? It was hard to tell, and the more Jim squinted trying to make out the images, the more they seemed to move.
Hold it in. Keep it in, he thought. He had understood how his imagination got out of c
ontrol. He sometimes saw things in the dark, or imagined terrors at dawn—he had never expressed this to anyone, but he knew it was not something the students at Harrow Academy needed to know.
It was almost hypnotic, looking at the photograph of the house—because the more he stared at it, the more he began noticing further detail—how the grass was tamped down in circles to the edge of the driveway to the steps; how the glass in the windows was beveled and swirled in its own circular pattern; how each corner, each edge, each doorway and window, seemed to be slightly off-kilter, as if it had been designed to be not quite right.
Then he had to pull back; look away. His head was starting to ache.
What a day.
He flipped through some other photos—pictures of séances, complete with gauzy spirits in the background, some palace in some city called Pescador, and a French chateau called Barbebleau, and then some monastery somewhere, and there, in the picture, Isis Claviger again, with two men whose faces were blurred by the bad camera work.
Chapters spun by as he got the pages going, and he was about to close the book when he found what at first looked like a piece of tissue paper. He carefully drew the paper out, and saw that it had writing on it. He opened it carefully.
All it said was:
You will find this when you are meant to. We are not gone. We are not free, as was promised. We have been waiting for you to shut the door. Someone must shut the door.
An Excerpt from Chapter One of The Infinite Ones
All who read this book are already adepts and will understand the secrets contained herein. Should someone who is not part of our understanding approach these words, he will only see the descriptions of travels and séances and spiritual pursuits of both the light and dark variety.
I did not come to this world without an understanding, as I am a Natural, yet it took a traumatic meeting with the otherworld to awaken that part of me. It has been estimated that there are fewer than two thousand of us in the English-speaking world at any one time, although I dispute this figure. I believe there are certain high birth rates throughout history, usually after catastrophic wars, in which the number of Naturals increases. Perhaps this accounts for the heightened interest in the spiritual world at the recent century’s end. Perhaps this is what has driven the world to my door, the princes and duchesses and moneyed of Europe and the United States to hire my services. It was in just such a way that I made the acquaintance of the subject of this book.
Aleister Crowley. Called a Devil by some, a priest by others. He is neither, in my estimation. He is a seeker after Wisdom, and with Wisdom comes great price. So, Crow-ley has paid the price with his reputation, but in return he has brought things into the world beyond the reach of even the finest conjurers.
I was with him for the Anubis Invocations, as detailed in the series of articles published in The Occultist during the winter of 1910, some of which are reprinted here, and more recently traveled with him to Jerusalem and then Chinon for the investigation into the sacred Templar wall writings.
This book was written over a period of three years, as I acted as the medium for Crowley’s spiritual guide, and it was during that time that I traveled further along on my inner journey toward illumination in the world beyond this one.
It all began in April one year when I had only just visited the famous murderer in New England whom I shall not name, a woman of refinement who showed me every courtesy. I had a note from an admirer, a man who told me he followed my writings with a fanatic’s zeal, and who wanted me to come see something that he believed would so stir my mind and heart that I would lose all interest in table-rapping and anything so base as communication with the dead.
This is the story of my journey to the place in question, of my studies and travels with Aleister Crowley, and my knowledge of the Other Side….
After setting the book in his hall locker, Jim went to use the restroom—it was after seven p.m., and the corridor was empty. He had to walk down the corridor to East for the fastest way to his room, but he dreaded the events to come. The library had taken his mind off of it all for a short time.
The bathroom door seemed locked at first, but when he tried it again, it opened.
The hall lights flickered a firefly yellow, and the restroom itself had dim flickering fluorescents overhead.
The place was empty, and the lights lit the restroom so poorly that it was as if the electric bill hadn’t been paid.
When he got into a stall, someone switched the lights off completely.
A couple of guys swung the stall doors open, grabbed him, and pulled him out.
Chapter Twelve
They threw him against the tile wall.
Jim felt an explosion inside his skin, and was worried that he’d broken something—but the thought was momentary, as he felt their hands pinching at his wrists—
He tried to shout, but the wind had been knocked out of him, and it was all he could do to keep breathing—
He felt his blood pulse within his body like the pounding of surf against a shore—
Beyond the mottled-glass windows of the restroom, the breezeway was lit with round orbs of white light that created shadows in the darkness of the restroom; he saw their dark forms, perhaps four or five of them, but couldn’t tell who they were.
One of them gave the lowdown while he caught his breath. “Keep your mouth shut, you’ll live. Listen, Hook, if you don’t work the system, the system works you. Now, you can stay and suffer under this shit-eating rule that they have, or you can be one of us, join up, pledge allegiance to us. Once that happens, you'll be a prince among men, and you don’t need to worry your sorry ass about any of this bullshit. Now, Hook, you in, you out? You ready to bend over while they ram a log as big as a redwood up your butt, or do you become superior and work the system? ‘Cause when we choose to recruit somebody, we don’t candyass it, we need to know a yes or a no, and if it’s a no, I’m sorry to say, we’re going to be the ones who make your life more miserable than even those sons of bitches could ever dream of doing.”
He heard his own panting breaths, there in the dark, and it sounded like fear. How many were there? Who were they? How could he make this kind of decision given the massacre he was going to face the following morning?
Jim Hook stood there for a minute, thinking about how his life had changed so quickly, with a momentary and stupid decision.
“Who are you?” he asked the shadows.
“Your worst nightmare,” one of them answered. “Or your saviors. It’s up to you.”
“You don’t know who we are. Not yet. And you’re not going to. Not until we know for sure you’re with us. All you really need to know is that we know who you are. We know things about you that you don’t even know,” one of them said, and the voice was achingly familiar, but Jim couldn’t place it.
Was it Falmouth? Falmouth was a senior from the Midwest. Maybe it was Falmouth. Maybe Falmouth and . . . Captain Joe?
No, not Captain Joe, the other voice that spoke must’ve been Alan McComber, another senior.
Had to be.
Before he could respond, something slapped over his eyes, and then he smelled something that reminded him of pine needles and cedar, and before he had very nearly figured out one of the shadow’s voices, he felt his stomach lurch, and his knees felt like jelly, and he tried to reach for something to steady himself. The dizziness was fast, and he thought if he just held on for another second or two, he could fight them, fight them and get out of this.
As if the world had sliced off from his mind, he stood, a little boy, in front of the attic door and listened to them scratching.
Something’s coming through.
The scratching grew louder, and then he heard what sounded like a chainsaw grinding.
All doors were meant to be open.
The doorknob was rattling, and a chainsaw was on the other side of the door with the wild animal. It was beginning to cut through the wood.
All secrets were mean
t to be told.
The door began to bulge outward, wood splinters flying as the chainsaw cut through, as the doorknob rattled—
Jim began moving toward the door to get closer to what was there, on the other side.
Something’s coming through.
When he awoke, he wasn’t sure if he was dreaming or if in fact he was bound with rope in a room that was so pitch black he didn’t even know for sure if his eyes were open or not. Something—some cloth—had been drawn tight across his lips, hurting him slightly. Breathing was difficult until he realized that he could breathe through his nose without a problem. He began to panic, and he tried to regulate his breathing so that he’d calm down.
Whatever was happening was not as bad as it seemed. He remembered how his brother would always tell him that. Eighty percent of what you’re afraid will come to pass won’t happen, his brother used to tell him. It’s that twenty percent you have to watch out for.
This was the twenty percent.
No one is going to kill you. They’re probably not going to hurt you.
They’re just guys like you.
They’re messed up, but they’re just guys.
In the dark:
“All right, Hook, here’s the deal. You came to Harrow late, basically. You’re at a serious disadvantage here,” one invisible boy said.
Another added, “We’ve followed you since you came. We know all kinds of things about you.”
It was chilly in the dark room. He smelled something like mold. Dampness as well. It was somehow wet where they were. Cold and wet. Another smell—body odor. Someone hadn’t washed in a long time.
Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite) Page 22