"Your card? What are you talking about?"
"You didn't get it? Well... I didn't have much room to write anyway. We'd still have to explain everything."
"Do you mean you—you flew out here just to see me?"
"Flew?" Michael said. "No, man. We drove."
"My God, that fast?"
"I don't know for sure what day it is. I haven't had much sleep since we saw you."
"Well... here's my apartment. Door's open."
Lenore stopped at the threshold, and he looked her over as he beckoned her in. Her hair was greasy, falling over her smudged face and forehead, into her eyes. She pushed it back with grimy fingers, and he saw with dismay the mandala reproduced on her forehead. He didn't say anything, hoped his face hadn't betrayed him, but his thought was: Oh, God, another fanatic.
Could her life really have been so empty that she'd embraced the mandala cult after one hour's mediocre lecture?
"Why don't you come in?" he said, since she seemed to be waiting for an invitation. She smiled back at Michael, then went inside.
Derek locked the door after them. Michael surveyed the living room with plain disappointment, as if he had expected to find a museum of occult artifacts, tribal masks, ancient ritual implements. There were no visible clues to Derek's occupation.
Lenore's eyes drifted about, finally coming to rest on Elias's box, which had been sitting out near the sofa; he'd been unable to bring himself to haul it away, to make a decision about the thing one way or the other.
"Let me clear some room," he said hastily, stooping for the box. He carried it into the bedroom and shoved it back into the closet, feeling vaguely embarrassed. He came back to find Lenore stretched out on the sofa watching TV, her eyes borrowing vigor from the reflected glare of advertisements.
"Can I get you something to drink?"
No answer from Lenore. Michael followed him into the kitchen.
"I know this is really unexpected," Michael said, "I mean, really unforgivable. I wouldn't have done it if things hadn't gotten so serious. I was pretty scared, on my own. It seemed like you're the only person who can help us, the only one who knows what's going on. And Lenore really wanted to come."
"She did? But why?"
"It was the Rites, " Michael said. "The night we met you. We did a ritual and ... and they came through. Through Lenore, I mean. They didn't talk through her, not at first—except she recited parts of the keys she couldn't have known. But we had a very intense ceremony, and they sort of got in and got out of control. Then Lenore started getting weird. She must have some sort of natural, you know, psychic talent. She's been channeling them. Speaking their language, seeing things I can't explain, doing things ... well, I've seen some pretty strange stuff in the last few days myself."
"Have you?" Derek said. It didn't surprise him that the boy was delirious; but was it true that Lenore too was cracking up? Or was the kid projecting his own occult fantasies on his wife, using her as a way of getting closer to Crowe? Queasily, Derek wondered if Michael were using his wife as some sort of offering to him.
"What did you want me to do?" he asked.
"Well, you're the mandala master. There's nothing in the Rites about this."
Derek found himself checking to make sure Lenore couldn't hear them. The TV held her hypnotized. He kicked out the plastic wedge that kept the door from swinging shut and went to the refrigerator to busy himself with milk and coffee, anything to give himself time.
I have attracted not one but two lunatics, he thought. I did this to myself, by pretending to be an authority on something that does not even exist except in the minds of the mentally ill (including Elias Mooney and Etienne and all the rest—even down to that stone-age tribe in Cambodia). And now he expects me to enter his madness on a rescue mission. By accepting his story, and acting on it, he supposes that I will verify the complete reality of his delusions.
I can't have these people in my house, he thought.
"I don't know quite how to approach this," Derek said after a few moments, choosing his words carefully. Preparing coffee was a ritual, and he took his time about it, setting up the filter, grinding the beans, measuring scoops into the cone. "I thought I was clear in the Rites that the mandalas don't come at my beck and call. In fact, they didn't really come to me at all. They came to—well, Ms. A. I just happened to be there. Neither of us could summon them unless they felt like coming; and once they'd said what they'd come to say, they went away, and that was that. Basically, Michael, everything I know about them is in my book. If we were going to find out anything else—I mean, some way of dealing with your wife's condition—we'd have to get them back again, wouldn't we? And there's no reason to think they'd come. It's not like Ms. A and I haven't tried calling them back to tie up some of the loose ends. In fact, my publisher recently begged for a sequel, more of the mandalas' philosophy, but I doubt they'll ever oblige us."
Michael began to gnaw on his thumb as the gravity of Derek's disclaimers began to make clear the futility of his cross-country trip. "But ... but, Mr. Crowe, they are here. Lenore's channeling them now. You can—you can ask her."
"And you think they'd tell us how to banish them? Why would they do that?"
He heard the door creak. Lenore stood in the entry. "Michael, can we go to bed soon?"
"Lenore, we've got—" Michael turned desperately to Derek. "I'm sorry, Mr. Crowe, we've just totally barged in on you. We've got to find a place to stay. We're completely wiped. Even if you can help us, it's not going to happen tonight. I saw a motel just up the street; we'll see if they've got rooms and ... and maybe we can talk to you tomorrow, when we've had some rest."
Lenore looked disappointed; her eyes fixed on Derek, and he found himself saying "Look, why don't you two stay here for the night?"
"What? Seriously?"
"That's a sofa bed in there. I've got extra blankets. You just—you've come all this way to see me, I'm not going to send you out so soon. Tomorrow I'll take you somewhere you might be able to meet people who can help you. Friends of mine, whose advice I'd trust. As I say, I really can't tell you more about the mandalas than I've already written—but maybe that's not the only possible solution."
"Wow," Michael said. "That's incredibly kind of you."
"It's the least I can do," Derek said, with a little nod to Lenore. She rewarded him with a slight smile.
"I've got to get our stuff out of the car—there's not much, but I don't want it to get stolen."
"Do you need help?" Derek asked.
"No, it's not much. I'll be okay."
When Michael was gone, Lenore came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The coffee was brewed; he poured her a cup and she sat warming her hands on it, inhaling the steam.
"I guess Michael told you what's been happening to me," she said. "It must sound pretty insane."
"Well ... no ..." he said weakly. His eyes caught on the mandala tattooed in the middle of her forehead. She went crosseyed trying to see it herself, and smirked.
"I can explain that," she said, rising and walking slowly toward him.
'I'm sure you can." Relief...
"The mandates gave it to me. And they brought me to you."
She brushed past him, into the living room, as he stood dumbfounded. "Where's the bathroom? Wait, I see it." She walked out of sight.
Derek groped for his own cup, sloshed coffee into it, and drank it down. He had scalded his mouth so much recently that he hardly felt a thing. The caffeine hit his nerves in a concentrated burst. He paced around the kitchen, listening to the water running, thinking of her in there. Jesus. This was trouble, all right. And he had just asked it to spend the night.
Obviously she was the one behind their jaunt. What had drawn her to him?
What if she saw my photo on one of my books and started fantasizing? It's common enough. Unhappy people are constantly forming attachments to people of reputation, stalking them. I'm an occult celebrity. She could have heard I was coming to to
wn. Long before the lecture night she could have memorized some of the Rites, planning her possession, scheming to convince Michael that only I could help her.
But, my God. If she would really go to all that trouble, she must be even more unstable than her husband. Yet ... how focused, how elaborate her plans, and how successful she had been.
She had come to see him.
This is crazy, Derek thought, suppressing a thrill. I can't be so hard up that I would dream of getting involved with a neurotic, manipulative fan. Not to mention a married one.
And you hypnotized her, he thought. You've already planted yourself deep inside her mind, you idiot.
He realized he could hear the shower running, then a steady toneless murmur that sounded like Lenore gargling. The sound grew louder, droning on and on, rhythmic and monotonous, familiar.
She's reciting the Rites, he realized.
And for a terrifying moment, he believed everything Michael had told him, every word of Elias's story, every syllable scrawled in the ledgers. He believed in the power of a dead skin and the existence of every demon haunting the old books he'd studied to concoct his own volumes.
He clenched his eyes and held his breath and waited for the moment to pass.
The belief went away, but the fear—not quite.
30
"You know what drives me crazy?" Michael said, striking his fist into the palm of his other hand. He sat in Derek's kitchen, slurping coffee, while Lenore slept in the darkened living room. Michael looked as if he should have gone to bed days ago; but apparently he had been awake so long that it was habitual. Soon Derek would beg exhaustion and crawl away.
"What's that?" he asked, as politely as he could manage.
"I get jealous that... that they used Lenore instead of me. I spent years preparing myself, learning rituals, purifying myself in body and spirit—and nothing real, nothing definite has ever happened to me, nothing I couldn't explain away, until Lenore invoked that mandala. I'd never seen any phenomenon I couldn't interpret as coincidence or a stray draft, you know? But Lenore ... Lenore, who couldn't give a shit about the occult, who does drugs, all those things that are supposed to make you unclean—they come right through her. The preparation, the discipline, those things don't even matter. They're a crutch for people who don't have the aptitude and never will. You can take piano lessons from day one and you'll never be a Mozart, you know, unless you're born Mozart. The mandalas ignored me. They went straight to Lenore. All I am now is, like, her fucking chauffeur."
"Maybe you have some kind of inner strength or stability she lacks," Derek said, humoring him.
"So? I mean, I know that—but is that so great? Isn't the direct experience worth more? I mean, she's seeing things, living things I can only imagine. Why her?"
"If it's any consolation," Derek said, "you're not the first to ask. It's been this way through history."
"What do you mean?"
Derek felt himself warming to the subject, which drew on research he'd never been able to find a use for in writing The Mandala Rites. He'd never had a moment's conversation with anyone who might have appreciated all the invisible work he'd done; he hadn't felt able to discuss it with Lilith, because it would have made him appear too sincere in his work, and then she would have ridiculed him further for his hypocrisy.
"Well, apart from my own case—and remember, I got the complete mandala texts secondhand, rather than by direct revelation—you must be familiar with John Dee."
"Sure. One of the great wizards of all time. Queen Elizabeth's astrologer."
"He was also an accomplished mathematician and cryptographer. An intellect, I mean."
"Well, magic was an intellectual field back then—natural law. Plenty of great thinkers were involved in the occult."
"Plenty were burned for it too," Derek said. "But what I'm saying is that Dee could never put aside his intellect and simply experience the mysteries. He was obsessed with divination, but he lacked the talent for it. He had to hire someone else to use his 'shew-stone.'"
"Edward Kelly!" Michael's eyes brightened. Derek saw that Michael was equally proud of his arcane research. "Aleister Crowley thought he was Kelly's reincarnation!"
"Yes, and Kelly did all John Dee's scrying for him. He was the channeler, like Lenore and my friend Ms. A. All Dee did, like me, was write down what Kelly saw. Kelly had the visions, but he didn't have any understanding of them. To Dee, it was a miracle; to Kelly, it was a job."
"That's what I'm saying. It's unfair!"
"Then there's William Butler Yeats."
"The poet? Yeah, wasn't he an initiate in the Golden Dawn?"
"And a great enemy of Crowley's. He once changed the locks on the temple headquarters to keep Crowley out."
Michael broke out laughing. "Really? I didn't know they knew each other."
"Yeats got himself into a situation similar to our own. Have you read A Vision? He and his wife were experimenting with automatic writing, when suddenly the spirits began writing to Yeats through her. They gave him an entire cosmology for his poetry, a whole set of symbols linking the personality of man to the phases of the moon."
"Really? So you're saying he was like too intellectual, so they had to go through her to get to him? Like, he was too hard to reach directly. ..."
Sure, Derek thought. You're so intellectual ....
He said, "Perhaps it's the same with you and me. We're too—too much in control, too controlling. Maybe it's in the male ego, the way we're wired."
"That reminds me of another theory of mine," Michael said suddenly, rising from his sulk. "Sometimes I think we're like the left and right hemispheres of brains. We're incomplete on our own. Say I'm the logical left-hand sort, and Lenore is the intuitive right-hand type. She experiences everything directly, then I analyze it. They possess her and fill her with energy, but I have to work out their instructions. Maybe we're supposed to form bonds with other people, a single consciousness made up from two. We're like separate cells, but we can't exist without each other. Maybe that's the lesson of the mandalas—that's what they're trying to tell us. We have to all come together. Maybe I shouldn't be afraid of what's been happening. But when Lenore goes away and they come around, I can't help being frightened. This is the sort of thing I always dreamed would happen, but somehow I never imagined it would be so ... well, dark."
"Are you afraid of them, Michael?"
Michael stared at him, red-eyed, embarrassed. "I hate to use the word evil; I never believed in it, really. But I've started to think I know what it means. Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Crowe, that the mandalas might have lied?"
"What do you mean?"
"They say they're all sweetness and light, working for the good of humanity, but what if that was just meant to sucker us in? Build a big cult and then—and then turn on us. I mean, how would we know? There's no way to check on them. But I'll tell you, what I've seen of them so far—it's sort of at odds with everything they told you to write."
Derek was beginning to grow uncomfortable. "I don't know if we need to suspect them of outright lying. Maybe we just don't understand them."
Michael considered this, and Derek began to scream internally. Tell him, went the scream. Tell him the truth.
But once he confessed, there would be no way to contain or control the truth. He was not prepared to sacrifice his reputation. Not yet.
He nodded toward the living room.
"She seems quiet enough now," he said. "I don't know her, but there's nothing unusual in the behavior I've seen."
Michael nodded. "They're taking it easy. I haven't really sensed much activity since we got to California. Maybe they're afraid of you, and they're lying low; maybe they know you're going to help Lenore." Michael surely saw that this statement made Derek uncomfortable, for he quickly added, "Or maybe they know she needs rest. They don't want to burn her out." He sighed, looked around. "Speaking of which, I think I'd better get to bed."
Derek rose to take his cup and rinse it
in the sink. "Sleep in as late as you like. If you need anything, just knock on my door."
He left Michael undressing in the dark living room. He stumbled into his bedroom and sank down on his bed, feeling absurdly like a prisoner in his own home. He desired Lenore, he realized, but also feared desiring her. It wasn't her husband that frightened him. If something happened between them, and Michael were to discover, it would be merely pathetic. What he feared was any dramatic change, anything that might catalyze a crisis. Fear had entered his home in the form of two obsessed fans who had tracked him all the way across the country, coming to haunt him with his own incantations.
What did they really want from him?
31
Michael woke unhappily, uncertain of the hour, wishing he could sleep at least as long as he had driven. It was novel not to wake up cramped and stiff in the front seat with the sound of other cars rushing past. For days his first act upon waking had been to twist the key in the ignition. Now that he found himself with no immediate purpose, he felt aimless and hollow. And last night's conversation with Derek Crowe had not heartened him or given him much hope either.
The blinds were pulled to keep the living room dim, but judging from the sounds on the street outside it was already late in the day. The bedsheets were rumpled where Lenore had lain, but she was gone. He rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen, and found her heating last night's coffee. She gave him a sleepy smile.
"Good morning. Can you believe we're here?"
"Believe it? I remember every inch of that fucking road." He put his arms around her, absorbing some of her warmth, putting his face against her neck though she turned away as if his breath were wretched. "How are you this morning?"
"I'm good," she said. "I really slept last night. I feel almost human."
"You don't... you're not having trouble, then?"
She looked around, at the air above them, and shrugged. "I don't feel anything this morning. It's almost as if it never happened."
"Why?" Michael said. "Why would they force us out here and then just leave?"
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