Séance Infernale

by Jonathan Skariton

  “This is where I got the idea for the shop,” Whitman told Charlie. “This was my inspiration for the Crypt.”

  “But how? Why? When?” Charlie had so many questions.

  “These are matters best discussed with one’s glass full,” the old man said with a mysterious smile, motioning the group into a room in the periphery of the circular archive.

  30

  Henri listened to their story, stroking his candy floss beard.

  “Remarkable. Truly remarkable. Who would have thought Sekuler was making movies when everyone else couldn’t even construct a working camera?”

  The room was a mess of projectors, reels, books. Henri and Whitman were sitting at a large wooden table. Charlie was plopped on an upholstered sofa, which took up one corner of the room. McBride was kneeling next to him, tending to his injury.

  “Do you make anything of the last bit?” Whitman said.

  “Some kind of riddle or code, no doubt. Doesn’t look too complicated. Not like proper encryption methods. Sometimes things are more complex, of course. Like the Blitz ciphers—ever heard of them?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Pages concealed in the wall of an East London cellar within a wooden box, discovered only because of a German bombing during the Second World War. No one’s ever deciphered them, not even the modern prodigies of cryptography.”

  “What about this elixir vitae?” McBride asked. She opened the first-aid kit Henri had offered them and applied a handful of disinfectant solution on Charlie’s oval-shaped wound, soaking it completely. Charlie winced in pain; she gently blew on the wound.

  “The philosopher’s stone.”

  “Transforming metals into gold?”

  “That’s the part everyone knows,” he said. “But it wasn’t just some medieval cooking recipe. What they were really after was the elixir of life.”

  “Which was?” She turned to Charlie again—“Don’t look”—and inserted the needle downward through the subdermal layer of his skin, leveling it off until it reached the wall of the wound. When Charlie winced again, she said, “It’s going to leave a cool scar,” and winked at him.

  “Immortality, of course,” Henri said. “The whole ‘transforming’ of metals and the idea of gold were merely metaphors. Even though they had their share of charlatans and madmen, some were astronomers and philosophers and chemists. They made world-changing discoveries, even if it was through trial and error. Alchemy and the sciences began to diverge only about a century before this film was made. Those quacks invented many of the procedures and much of the equipment we still use to this day. Hell, even gunpowder, metallurgy, nuclear transmutation. Name John Napier ring any bells?”

  “There’s a university here named after him.”

  “A Scotsman. He gave us natural logarithms and decimal notation. He was also an alchemist.”

  “So what is it? What are we looking for? A stone?”

  Henri fished a hardcover book the size of an encyclopedia from a shelf. “Listen here,” he said, tracing sentences with his index finger, his white pupils fixed on Whitman. Charlie was dumbfounded; the blind man remembered every sentence from the book, word for word:

  The philosopher’s stone is the most ancient Stone, the most apocryphal of secrets; it is incomprehensible in earthly properties, it is celestial, blessed, sacred. It is the supreme and unalterable Reason; to be able to find the Absolute in the Infinite, in the Indefinite, and in the Finite, this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of the Sages, which Hermes Trismegistus called the Work of the Sun. It is the perfect equilibrium of all elements, the materia prima. It is the catholicon of all ailings, the most precious of treasures, the greatest possession in all of nature. He who has this Stone has all, and needs no other help.

  He shut the book. “Arcanum Alchemicum, 1728.”

  “Captain Fantastic,” Whitman said. “I didn’t understand a single word. How can a rock be all of this?”

  “The alchemists,” Henri said, “looked at crystals growing and volcanoes erupting and they believed minerals were alive. Minerals were thought to grow from seeds, deep in the earth, maturing as they rose up. Knowing the secrets to the perfect mineral gold would allow one to understand perfection in the world.”

  He turned to McBride. “Stones were also believed to be sexual, my dear.” He smiled approvingly. “If you don’t believe me, go visit a store selling diamond rings.”

  McBride laughed. “A woman’s best friend.”

  “Indeed so,” Henri said. “Alchemists started from goldsmiths and silversmiths and welders and enamelers, based in Sumeria, ancient Egypt and Greece, and the Near East. They were mixing metals, producing compounds, amalgams of minerals. Hence the sexual component and the concept of fertility: you mix two different things and create a third thing, something new. It’s what they called a ‘holy wedding.’ Listen to this.” He opened the old thick volume and located his place without looking; it was a description of the alchemical operation of making the stone:

  Marrιage, incrεase, ρregnancy, birth and nόurishment are neceςsary to you in the conduct of this operation. For when the conjunction has been achieved, immaterial conception shall follow; and preγnancy άrises froμ conception, and birth fοllowς pregnancy.

  “They married silver with gold, did their tricks, and ended up with more silver and gold than before. You understand?”

  “Midas’s touch,” Whitman said. “Getting something out of nothing.”

  “Also, being careful about what you wish for. Remember, some of them were deeply religious men. Alchemy for them was about harnessing divine energies. You had to destroy in order to create. There’s marriage, passion, death, and resurrection.”

  “Sounds like a soap opera.”

  “Only they talk of killing monsters, hanging men, hunting demons. They created arcane inscriptions and macabre engravings—you’ve seen the crazy pictures in this type of book. Sometimes they depict the stone as a virgin or a child, sometimes as Christ or a phoenix. And the process of producing it was one of purification and redemption. Your original component persists after destruction, but there’s something new out of it, something born out of the ashes. You see?”

  “I suppose so. But I still don’t understand: What is it? Is it a stone? A powder? Liquid?”

  “Hell if I know. Here, this is just to show you how big your list is.” He flipped a few pages, then rested the book on the table, turning it around so they could see. It was unbelievable; he was on the correct page. “Abraham’s wife said it’s something from the tomb of Hermes. Nicolas Flamel wrote it’s a powder. Other sources say it’s a serpent. Fire. Vitriol. A dead body. The blood of saints. It’s the Americas. It’s chaos, a toad, an adder—you name it. It can be anything in the world.”

  “Great. So Sekuler might have hidden a toad. Was he nuts? Maybe from all the fumes from the mineral burning?” Whitman said.

  “Maybe. Maybe it’s something…ineffable.”

  “This doesn’t exactly help us.”

  Henri placed the book back on the shelf with uncanny precision.

  “Perhaps it’s whatever you want it to be. Each era carries its own little forbidden fruit. Wealth, riches, sex, success, immortality. Look at what they’re doing now: virgin births, women having babies without ever having been impregnated by a man…They always said they could do without us; now I guess they’ve gone for broke.”

  McBride smiled. “What about this ouroboros? Is that a snake?”

  “Ah, yes, the ουροβόρος όφις. It’s an ancient symbol, usually a snake or a dragon that devours its own tail. It’s often used in alchemical and religious writings to represent self-reflexivity or cyclicality; especially so in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, and other things perceived as cycles that begin anew as soon as they end. In alchemy, it was also associated with the circular nature of the alchemist’s opus.”

  “The perfection of a circle.”

  “But life
doesn’t work that way,” Whitman said. “In life things are far from perfect.”

  Henri nodded. “Well, let’s consider this idea of imperfection. Think of a person who is ill and near the end of his life. Experience and historical precedent have told him he cannot escape death; we are but the most fortunate of species to know from our birth that we will die. Think about this person: What can he do to extend his being?”

  “Receive some kind of treatment for his illness?”

  “Of course, but there is only so much modern medicine can do. We cannot escape death for long. How do you live on?”

  “Through your children.”

  Henri nodded. “Reproduction. That’s why a brilliant Oxford man called our genes ‘selfish.’ You have a natural tendency and desire to find a mate—preferably one with healthy and desirable traits—so you can pass part of your genetic code to your offspring.”

  “I call that ‘Friday-night clubbing,’ ” Charlie said in a daze.

  “So consider this process of passing your DNA to your children. This is essentially replicating, or rather transferring, as what is part of you now also becomes part of someone else.”

  “Something out of nothing. So Sekuler’s talking about reproduction?”

  Henri stroked his endless beard. “I believe he’s talking about something akin to that. How do you transfer yourself into something else which will outlive you?”

  “Pictures?”

  Henri nodded again. “That’s what I thought. A moment in time has been captured on a piece of glossy paper. However, this lacks a vital characteristic of life: motion. And that, my friends,” he said, pointing at some reels at the side of the room, “you get through film.”

  “Which is essentially a series of pictures shown sequentially.”

  Whitman shook his head. “I don’t buy it. I mean, it’s ridiculous to think you can achieve immortality through film. Sure, I see Humphrey Bogart on the screen every day; that doesn’t mean he’s still out there. Pictures may look like they’re moving, but they’re really not. They’re just that: representations, results of the observer’s persistence of vision. Even when you pool the pictures together and roll them through a projector, they’re still not alive, whether they look like they are or not. If you perceive that they are moving, it’s an illusion; if you believe it, it’s a delusion.”

  “Of course,” Henri said. “But this type of delusion has kept many people going for years.” His white pupils drilled into Whitman. “Furthermore, we don’t have the whole picture here. You say there are more codes?”

  “Riddles,” Charlie said. He struggled to the corner of the table, joining them. He tapped on his notebook. “But we need to figure out the next answer if we want to continue.”

  “The first thing I noticed about this riddle,” McBride said, “is that it contains clear instructions: ‘descend,’ ‘ascend,’ ‘behind,’ and so on. He’s giving us directions to find our way.”

  “But you need to start from somewhere if you want to follow them. Some kind of a starting point,” Charlie said.

  “How about this: ‘Mary Rex has lost her precious jewel.’ ”

  “Jewel could be the elixir—the stone or whatever it is.”

  “Rex means ‘king’ in Latin, right?”

  “Could he be talking about Mary, Queen of Scots?” McBride asked. “Something related to the Palace of Holyrood?”

  “ ‘A cold and cruel place,’ huh? Where does she fit into all this?” Charlie said.

  “Terrible taste in husbands and losing her head on the chopper. I don’t buy the connection,” Whitman said.

  McBride looked at Henri. “Any ideas?”

  Henri stroked his beard. “I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t think he’s referring to Queen Mary?”

  “Perhaps he is, incidentally. But I’m looking at something else.”

  They all stared at him.

  “Figure of speech,” he replied with a grin.

  “What is it?”

  “The other names: Walker’s, Allan.”

  “Tell you anything?”

  He fished another book from the shelf. It was a Victorian map of Edinburgh. He placed his finger near the Royal Mile and traced it near the bridges, toward some alleys (closes) with obscure names piercing the Mile on either side.

  “How the hell does he do that?” Charlie whispered to Whitman.

  “Allan’s Close,” the old man said.

  “Let me see that,” McBride said. “The close where Allan once lived.”

  There was another close, called Walker’s, nearby.

  “He’s giving us directions on how to go through these closes, toward his next clue,” Henri said.

  “But what does Mary, Queen of Scots, have to do with this?” McBride asked.

  “She doesn’t,” Whitman said. “Rex, in Latin, means ‘king’: Mary King. He’s talking about another close?”

  “A very important and famous close, in fact,” Henri said. “During the modernization of the town—seventeenth century, mind you—they built the administrative building of the City Chambers on top of some streets. Mary King’s was one of them.”

  “There was an article in the paper about that place about a year ago,” McBride said. “It said that some company’s bought it and they’re renovating it, turning it into a tourist attraction—hauntings and ghosts and the usual.”

  “We have to get into that close,” Whitman said. “Tonight.”

  “You’re going to need something to force the doors open,” Henri said, looking at Whitman. “And flashlights. After all, it’s dark down there. Hidden things usually are.”

  “Hidden?” Charlie asked.

  “Of course, young man. Mary King’s Close exists only underground,” Henri said. “It’s hidden below the city.”

  Part V

  December 6

  31

  There she was.

  When D.I. Guy Johnson had started trailing her, he could not have expected this.

  Crouched in the shadows, he watched his partner walking on George IV Bridge alongside the two men, both suspects in the fire-and-missing-person investigation at the Archive. She didn’t appear threatened by them, and this alarmed Johnson. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if they could be allies with McBride in some shady business.

  He pulled out his mobile phone and dialed her number. Instantly, he saw McBride fish her mobile out of her pocket. She glanced at the caller ID, then pushed a button. The voicemail broke in on his end.

  Something weird was going on. He had bombarded her with calls and messages, asking her what was wrong, but she hadn’t responded.

  Then there were the three men. He had seen them trailing McBride and the others for some time now. The sudden dread in his soul made it hard to stay still. But he forced himself to; it was not yet time. He would move when he had figured out what the situation was. And that was going to be soon. He decided to stay there in the darkness and watch their every move. Keep trailing until the right moment.

  His partner was in great danger. He could feel it.

  —

  A long wooden spiral carried them down into solid rock. As they corkscrewed deeper and deeper into the vertical tunnel, the sounds from the world outside faded away to nothingness. After a while, the staircase ended; a level passageway snaked off into the darkness. There was only one way to go. The only sound was their echoing footsteps and the drip of water. The smooth, rounded walls of the tunnel structure were high enough for them to walk upright.

  Without warning, the tunnel reached a sharp bend, and for a moment Whitman thought they’d come to a dead end. But then he felt something stirring his hair, a cool breeze coming from their left. McBride raised the flashlight. There was a passage with more steps climbing down.

  Nothing Alex Whitman had heard about this place prepared him for the sight of it. Facing increasing commercial competition from the handsome and spacious New Town, the authorities in 1753 had decided to build their own ba
ng-up-to-date Georgian commercial center, the Royal Exchange. The problem was they built it over Mary King’s Close as well as other alleys. Those streets became the foundation for the building and ended up being a sealed-up time capsule.

  The colossal subterranean hollow stood before Whitman largely unchanged; crumbling walls and small houses lined the sides of the cave-like structure.

  The air smelled lifeless. An awkward grid of narrow walkways wound between the decaying rooms. Like columns of dust, countless pillars of unexcavated earth rose up, supporting a dirt sky, which hung high above them.

  City of the dead, he thought, in a mélange of fascination and dread. They continued deeper along the winding passages.

  Once, he stumbled on a sheet of broken rock and had to grab hold of McBride’s arm. “You all right?” she asked, but he kept quiet. His unease grew.

  He fished the bottle of codeine pills from his pocket and swallowed two in one gulp, waiting for the cold sweat and the trembling of his hands to stop. It could not be any other way. He was going to find the clues. Find his daughter.

  They were deep inside the tunnel now, surrounded on all sides by thousands of tons of solid rock supporting a convoluted maze of timber scaffolding. On their feet, tidemarks from old puddles of water. In the distance, the tunnel ingested the sounds of rats gnawing and scraping at rock.

  “This is it,” McBride said. Whitman looked ahead. Mary King’s Close. The passageway stretched out indefinitely in a steep decline into the darkness, doors to further passages lining one side. On the other, rusted pipework laced the walls all the way down into the blackness. Signs of renovation lay everywhere: bags of cement, scaffolding, pails and shovels. The passageway was wide enough to accommodate a four-wheel drive. The dim light hovered around them, but the corridor surrendered into the darkness farther ahead. A dank breeze rustled out of the blackness—a disquieting memento of being deep below the ground. Whitman could feel the weight of the soil and stone suspended over his head.