The 37th mandala : a novel

by Laidlaw, Marc

  I am certain that an Occultist of your stature receives many letters from all over the Globe. Even I myself, who have no Books to my name, receive a great deal of literature (most of it unwanted Trash!) and letters from people who know me by Reputation. Although I am unpublished, I am considered somewhat of an Authority in certain Circles. You may have come across my Name in the course of your Studies.

  But in case you have never heard of "Elias Mooney," let me tell you a little about Myself.

  I was born early in this Century, the victim of a congenital Deformity. I have been confined to a Wheelchair for my entire Life. Yet do not Pity me, for despite my confinement, and occasional fits of Epilepsy, my Health has been better than might be expected and I have lived a completely full and active Life, wedding three Wives and having children by two. (I am a Widower currently, choosing not to remarry a fourth time, as I feel my life's Course nearing its End. My Enemies may say this is long Overdue.)

  As you might Imagine, given such restrictions, I have lived largely a Life of the Mind, though not one given over unduly to Phantasy. Very early on, before any Adult could Pollute my Will with discourses on what is and is not Possible, I mastered the art of Astral Projection, with which I am quite sure you are familiar. This Skill—for I believe it is a skill anyone can develop, and not a Talent or Gift as the Old Biddies who write for Fate Magazine would have us believe—enabled me to travel far and wide, not only on this Earth but throughout the Cosmos and even Beyond, into what are quaintly and inaccurately called "Other Dimensions," so that long before I could speak the Language of my Terrestrial family, I was conversant in the tongues of no fewer than two dozen Alien civilizations presently unknown to Modern Science. Some of these Species are already Extinct, others have yet to Arise; such are the properties of Space-time—stranger than Einstein or Hawking can Conceive—that the Astral Body can travel into Past and Future as easily as it penetrates Distance.

  As a Child, I instinctively kept this Knowledge to myself. I was already considered a Freak by many outside my immediate family. But I roamed the country astrally and so grew acquainted with the Lives of my neighbors, gathering Information no one thought I should have. Sometimes even my family Feared me, although this fear was more Painful and Frightening to me than I can possibly convey, and in response I grew more withdrawn than before. At the age when most children are Free to run in the fields and climb Trees, I was closeted in darkened rooms. My only Friend was my Teacher, a very gentle Woman who showed great concern for me and whom I grew to Love tenderly. I often attended her regular schoolhouse classes in the Astral, watching her unobserved, and learned the day's Lesson before she brought it to me. Once I followed her home to her Husband, and—with very little Comprehension—perceived their most Intimate acts in great detail and with such absorption that I felt my Astral body being sucked into their Passion like a Mote swirling down into a Whirlpool. I shrank to a mere speck of Consciousness, weak as a tiny filing of Iron before a great blind Magnet; thus the disembodied Soul, wandering between Lives, is drawn down to Earth and Rebirth. (I have felt the same Vertiginous suction on the Battlefield, where the Astral body is irresistibly drawn to fresh Blood, to the passion of Death as well as that of Birth.) I loved my Teacher so much, with a Child's Love, that I almost surrendered my Deformed body to be reborn as her child. Only as Sperm penetrated Egg did I truly realize my great Danger, and like any Animal whose Existence is threatened, fought my way free again, struggling back to my body along a thin silver Thread, to lie Sick in my bed for many days afterward. This was a great Turning-point in my life. I could never again face my Teacher; I used to Scream and Weep when she came near. Soon afterward she gave up teaching and bore a Child, and I did not see her again until I was much older, and her son—who had nearly been Myself—full Grown.

  I say it was a turning-point because it taught me the powerful Danger of Truth. It is not an easy thing to Witness that which we cannot understand—and are not ready to Behold. I saw too much. Fortunately, I had already discovered for myself the existence of those Psychic Allies which you describe so well in your book. I called on them to Shield me from things I was not meant to Know until the time was ripe. I understood that I was not like Others; that the Goals and Dreams and Ambitions of the world were less than Useless to me. I had an entirely different Destiny. I thus devoted myself completely to mastery of the Mysteries.

  I cannot of course write much of these Here, as you certainly know that letters may be Intercepted. I have good reason to believe that my mail and telephone are monitored by certain geometrically unstable Forces and their human Agents. They cannot physically block my letters for fear of alerting us to their Presence, but they certainly do Scan the contents in search of my supposed Weaknesses. We live in a Dark Configuration, you see, when it is all but impossible for the tiniest flame of Truth to burn in secrecy. That Flame needs Air for fuel, yet some days I hardly dare open a window because of my neighbors and their Suspicions. I think these Days are worse for Us than the Burning Times, for in the Past communities were small and there were many places to work in secret outside the isolated Webwork of Rumor and Betrayal to which the Inquisitors had access; but today the Web extends everywhere, even over the very Computer and telephone lines that are supposed to have Freed us. The tools of Surveillance are so ubiquitous that we are literally Irradiated with aetherial waves of Suspicion and Paranoia, forced to consign our heartfelt messages to channels which by their very Nature Distort and Obscure our intentions with statistical hiss, not to mention the Government's deliberate manipulation of wave forms. This Perversion is the cause of every modern War, and even most Domestic misunderstandings. You will understand when I say there are Things I can tell you in Person that I would not trust to the postal "service" or telephone company, just as there are Things you cannot print for wide distribution, things I see you skillfully hinting at, and all but defining by their Absence from your Work. Cunningly done! You may rest assured that some few of your Readers can indeed Decode the Cryptograms you bury in your Text; those who can do so are Initiates sworn to put the knowledge to Good use. Others, the Unclean, no matter how hard they search for these Clues, remain constitutionally Blind, forever Ignorant—at least until they admit their Evil and Reverse their Ways, so that etic truth may permeate the shells of their emic reality.

  Please forgive me if I wander. I have little occasion these days to Unburden myself to a Sympathetic ear, and I am straying beyond my Original intention in writing this letter.

  I have lived an uncommonly full Life in the pursuit of the Mysteries, a life which I think would be an excellent example to others of like inclination. I know the World is full of such Souls, few of them as fortunate as myself in Uncovering their Latent powers, many Abused since childhood, victims of Rape and Incest, in dire need of Healing. They are Alone and frightened, seeking solace in Drugs and books of the so-called Occult, which you and I both Know are largely compendia of Stupidity and even outright Lies, more Harmful than Drugs to the Minds of those poor, vulnerable Souls who encounter them.

  I therefore propose a Remedy to some of this world's Ills. I have long had it in my Mind to compose an Autobiography, detailing all but the inmost Secrets of my Wisdom, and pointing the way to acquiring even these for the Brave souls who wish to follow the Path I have blazed. While it is true that I have not traveled extensively in the physical plane, my Mind has encompassed the Universe, and I have concrete experience of things most people consider purely Illusory. There is more than enough in my life to fill a thick volume—certainly more than I can write. It is very hard for me to hold a Pen. This short Letter has taken me One full Week to write, and has nearly drained my writing abilities. You will notice that the script—once my pride—deteriorates greatly from one page to the next. Yesterday my hand was so Swollen that I could not write at all. I could not be sure if you possessed a Cassette tape player, nor that you would ever Listen to such an Unusual correspondence from one whose name no doubt means Nothing to you.


  My intentions were Great when I set out to write this letter. I meant to tell you how I met my first Wife (she Saw my Astral Body quite clearly on a Summer evening and followed it home to where I lay abed!) but I must cut it short now, in the hope that you will contact me at the address above and we may discuss these Matters further, without so much Formality and discomfort.

  Yours in the Brotherhood of Truth,

  —Elias Mooney

  "Eli," Derek muttered. "You started it all. It's too late. I can't take it back. I can't stop it now."

  Fatigue was finally creeping up from within, insidious enough to alter the world he thought he saw. The room looked softened and blurred at the edges, part of a drifting dreamscape; he couldn't believe it was dawn already.

  Goddamn you, old man, he thought as he threw himself down on the mattress. I wish I'd had a crackpot file back then; your letter would have gone straight into it. It was your fault, writing to me. You should never have let me near you. You should have known what would happen, if you were so psychic.

  As he fell into sleep, he dreamed he opened his eyes and saw a mandala following him down. It hung above like a leprous chandelier, a gray wheel covered with a hundred crawling mouths. It was falling faster than he—gaining on him. A hundred mouths opening, tongues lashing out to catch a taste of him.

  I know you, Derek thought. You're in my book.

  Small comfort.

  8

  It was a slow day for Lenore. She had one class at eleven, a course in number theory, and then she worked from one to seven as a waitress at the Cutting Board. Math kept her mind sharp; the job kept her grounded in reality. The rest of her life, the domestic part of it, was vague and confused, its limits ill-defined. She never knew quite what to do to fill the hours. She did not do well with a lot of free time on her hands—time to think, to remember, to dredge up things she would rather forget. Especially now that she had few means of blotting out those memories. She couldn't drink—couldn't and wouldn't. Shouldn't, anyway. Even when she had pot, she didn't let herself smoke it before going to school. Maybe some of the discipline she learned there was seeping over into the rest of her life. She'd never had a schedule before, not one she'd chosen for herself. There had been plenty of curfews and house rules in the foster homes and halfway houses. She needed structure in her life, she admitted that now—but those had been poor excuses for it.

  Facing herself in the bathroom mirror, she had a moment of queasiness. There was a huge scabby bruise on her forehead, right in the center. It didn't hurt. She couldn't remember for the life of her how she might have gotten it; she only knew it must have happened sometime during the night. Had she fallen out of bed, gotten a slight concussion? She must have hit something on the way down to make such a mess. No wonder Michael had kept staring at her all morning before he left for work. Why hadn't he said anything?

  She leaned close for a good look, but it was just a moist scab. Capillaries had burst in her skin, forming delicate red filigrees under the oozing crust, like the tendrily bodies of bloodworms, wriggling.

  Get a grip, she told herself. It's just a scab. It's not moving.

  She was dizzy, though, and a little nauseated as she stepped into the shower.

  She found a black wool cap and pulled it low on her brow; anyway, she needed it in the unheated classroom high in the old math building. It wasn't a crowded class, not at all like the crammed survey course she had taken her first term, before she found she could pass a few aptitude tests and skip entire courses. The other students were mostly younger than she, or seemed that way—if they were older, they'd hardly lived her kind of life, and might as well have been children. Geeks and nerds and quiet, plain girls. She felt like a barbarian among them, except when she was working, and then her mind seemed to whisper along in cool efficiency, and she knew she was as good as any. She knew she intrigued them, but she kept aloof.

  The textbook they were using was off-the-wall, she thought; the young, acne-scarred professor had written it himself. He was taking them now through a discussion of the prime numbers represented as visual images, as groups of points. He chalked one dot on the chalkboard, then two, then three, then five, seven, eleven. The dots fell into irregular patterns. Each cluster elicited a running commentary; each had its own quirks and characteristics, its distinct personality. The professor's voice was monotonous, but it didn't lull her. The pictures fascinated Lenore. Thirteen: the professor couldn't resist a short talk on the historical significance of the set, touching on the obvious associations of bad luck, thirteen loops in a hangman's noose, Judas as the thirteenth disciple, and so on. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three.

  Thirty-seven.

  The professor kept on, drawing his figures, making his dry remarks at which most of the class chuckled knowingly, their furtive secret little math jokes. But Lenore's mind hung back at thirty-seven.

  37.

  Suddenly a circular pattern hung in her eyes like the afterimage of a camera flash, an ornate sun-fleck. It was something she'd seen in that Derek Crowe book—one of the mandalas. She hadn't really paid much attention to how the things looked, not consciously anyway, but apparently it had seeped into her unconscious mind. She was already bent over her notebook, scribbling notes with one ear cocked to the professor's voice, but now she flipped to a fresh page. She saw the mandala hanging there as if projected from a slide. Fascinated, she set her pencil at the very center of the wheel and began to trace the lines, wondering at the optical illusion, marveling that her memory could be so sharp.

  You see how clear your mind can be when you're not fucking it up with drugs? she told herself.

  She traced quickly, deliberately; if she blinked, she wasn't aware of it, but she didn't think she blinked at all. She couldn't wait to get home and compare it to the book, find this particular mandala and see how accurate she was. The pencil spun and twirled; she rolled it in her fingers to keep the tip sharpened. The professor was wrong. Thirty-seven wasn't an ill-formed cluster of dots. It looked like this—like thirty-seven little eyes around a serrated center.

  It was then she remembered the feel of the knife in her hand, Michael's knife, carving liquid light in the wounded air.

  Her breath drained out of her and hung in space where she couldn't reach it. She was suffocating. Sparks tingled in her eyes, and she remembered something coming toward her, wheeling about, a whirling vastness placing her at its center.

  Lenore dropped the pencil. Several students glanced over, kept gazing when they saw she made no move to retrieve the pencil, but only sat there trembling slightly. Finally a boy in the next aisle reached down, picked up the pencil, and set it back on her desk. He did it with a slight smile, and turned away blushing after a few seconds when she offered no thanks.

  Her hand went to her forehead, fingering the scab.

  The mandala, incomplete, seemed to burn on the page as if angry, insistent that she finish it. Instead she shoved her pencil into her purse, slapped the notebook shut, and slid out of the seat. The professor gave her an irritated look. She fled the room, thudding down the square spiral stairs of the central tower in her heavy boots, then out into the sun where it was almost warm. Pines cast cold shade on the parking lot.

  As she drove home, her nervousness increased. She kept glancing at her forehead in the rearview mirror, picking at the scab. The skin was bright, raw pink beneath it; she tried to stick the scab back in place. Another blackout, she thought. But she hadn't done any drugs yesterday. It had been, all in all, a dull day, unremarkable except for Derek Crowe's lecture—and why that had stimulated her, she still didn't understand. For a few hours she'd thought she finally understood what Michael saw in all this occult stuff—a way of seeing into the darkness that always surrounded her. She had thought maybe there was some way to get back to the source of her troubles, and undo the harm. As if she could ever escape her depressions, her addiction not to any particular drug, but to
oblivion.

  She felt like a fool today.

  And she had done something foolish last night.

  That would teach her to let her guard down. She always had to learn these things the hard way.

  The Cutlass was banging and groaning by the time she pulled up in front of the house. It was the only car she'd ever heard of that could overheat in freezing weather. She stumped up the driveway, hearing Tucker's music. The stereo played perpetually. She checked her watch—she had plenty of time to get to work, but she was already thinking she might call in sick. She felt sick.

  She stood in the kitchen, anxious for a little hit of something, anything. She brought down a plastic film canister she kept in a high cupboard, plucked off the lid, found it empty of even the green dust of last summer's homegrown.

  Blackouts when she was drinking, those she could understand. Blackouts for no reason, with no explanation, were another matter. They suggested some sort of chemical or physical problem—brain damage ... maybe a tumor. Some long-term effect of the designer drugs she'd tried in New York City—dirty, untested stuff.

  She could smell incense from Michael's temple. She almost gagged at the odor, which brought traces of memory. Again she remembered carving the mandala sign in the air. And something else—an impression of something enormous sharing the room with them.

  She went down the hall, pushed open the door to the library, and stopped. She felt suddenly dizzy, almost stoned. Optical illusions flickered in the dark room, coiling and uncoiling like tendrils of ghostly ferns. She shut her eyes. Was this some kind of flashback? Had Michael slipped her something last night—some sort of ritual drug, like peyote?