An Affair of Sorcerers

by George C. Chesbro

  Jake found what he was looking for, drew it out of the file and handed it to me. The paper was heavy bond. In the center were two concentric circles divided into twelve sections by intersecting lines. Each section was filled with what I assumed were astrological symbols. They were meaningless to me. The margins of the paper were filled with more symbols—also meaningless. What did mean something to me was the heavy, block-print handwriting; I’d seen it before.

  The signature at the bottom of the page read Jones.

  “Can you make a copy of this for me, Jake? I asked tightly.

  “Keep that,” the agent said. “I don’t want it. I wouldn’t even have it around if I weren’t such a compulsive filer.” He grinned sardonically. “I guess Harley was right; his horoscope wasn’t so good after all.”

  “Definitely not,” I said, pocketing the paper. “Thanks, Jake.”

  “Hey, sweetheart, I hope you’re going home to bed.”

  “I have miles to go before I sleep.” I was trying to be funny. I promptly banged into the doorjamb and ricocheted out into the hallway.

  It was after six, but Madeline Jones often worked evenings in her lab and I thought I might reach her there. I used a pay phone in the lobby of the MGM Building to call her. The phone rang eight times before Mary Szell, Mad’s assistant, answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Mary, is Mad there?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “Mongo.”

  “Mongo? I didn’t recognize your voice. Do you have a cold?”

  “Something like that. Is Mad around?”

  “You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what, Mary?”

  “Mad’s in the hospital. She’s had a nervous breakdown. She collapsed here yesterday afternoon.”

  A hot flush started somewhere between my shoulder blades, flashed down my spine, then turned icy. I shivered spasmodically. Everyone was full of surprises.

  Someone was banging a gong; I listened hard and it turned out to be Mary’s voice calling my name.

  “All right, Mary,” I said. “Thank you.”

  After hanging up, I sagged against the side of the telephone booth and tried to think. Mad had lied to me about not being in touch with Bobby Weiss, and I wondered why. I was probably the last person in the world she’d want to talk to at the moment, regardless of the reason. On the other hand, Kathy Marlowe was suffering from something a lot worse than nervous collapse, and I had absolutely no time to be considerate.

  I shook off my chill, put another dime in the slot and called the Medical Center. The reception desk informed me that Madeline Jones was seeing visitors, and gave me her room number. My watch read six fifteen, which left me an hour and forty-five minutes before visiting hours were over. I didn’t feel strong enough to walk out the door, but I managed. On the way out I caught a reflected glimpse of myself in a wall of polished marble, and immediately understood why everyone was asking about my health; if not for the fact that I was the only dwarf in the lobby, I wouldn’t have recognized myself. I was going to have to do something about my light-headedness; nausea or no, I had to try to eat something and hope that it stayed down.

  There was a good seafood restaurant down the block. I went in and immediately made my way to the men’s room in the back. I filled the washbasin with cold water and used my good hand to splash my face and neck. I began to feel better. Now all I had to do was manage to keep something in my stomach.

  I sat at a corner table, ordered some fish chowder and broiled shrimp. The food tasted good; I probably could have eaten more, but I thought it was a good idea to wait and see how that settled. I finished off with a cup of black coffee, then went out into the street and hailed a cab; I didn’t think I could handle a car.

  Fifteen minutes later I was at the Medical Center, visitor’s card in hand, on my way up to Madeline’s room on the second floor. It occurred to me that I was spending so much time at the hospital it would save time if I simply opened up an office in the basement.

  Madeline was propped up in the bed, reading a magazine. She looked pale and drawn—older. She was wearing a quilted pink robe with a white-and-pink floral design. The robe looked strange on her, dowdy and unbecoming. I was used to the more severe, tailored look that shaved years off her. There was a vase filled with yellow roses on the night table next to her.

  Madeline glanced up as I entered. “Mongo!” she cried, startled.

  I went over to the side of the bed and kissed her on the cheek. “Hello, babe. How you doing?”

  She smiled shyly, self-consciously patted her silver hair, which was hanging loose around her shoulders. Her blue eyes looked watery and tired. “Oh, I feel so silly being here.”

  “What’s the matter, if it’s not impolite to ask?”

  “Just nervous exhaustion,” Madeline said, a slight tremor in her voice. “Things … just started to catch up with me. I … well, I just passed out in the lab. God, I do feel silly. I’ll be out tomorrow.”

  “To rest, I trust.”

  She nodded. For the first time, she looked directly into my eyes. “You look like you need a—” She suddenly gasped and put a hand to her mouth. “The little girl! How is the little girl?”

  “She’s still dying, Mad; I’m still working on it, and I’m still short on time. Now it may be down to a matter of hours—or even minutes. At the moment, I’m scraping the bottom of the miracle barrel with a psychic healer who’s trying to keep her alive long enough for someone to find out what’s wrong with her.”

  “You shouldn’t have taken the time to come and see me,” she said hoarsely.

  I took a deep breath and started to reach inside my jacket pocket for the horoscope Jake had given me. Mad suddenly reached out and grasped my hand. “What happened to your thumb?”

  “It was gnawed on by a rabid bat.”

  Mad’s eyes widened. “You’re joking!”

  “Nope. It just happened to be winging its way around my bedroom in the middle of the night. I have a strong suspicion that it didn’t mosey in by itself. I don’t suppose any of your mysterious friends keep rabid bats around the house, do they?”

  Madeline looked at me a long time. I watched in horrified fascination as her face suddenly fell apart and she started to giggle in a high-pitched, girlish voice that frightened me. Then, without warning, the giggles abruptly turned to racking sobs. She turned her face away and buried it in the pillow. Uncertain of what to do, I tentatively reached out and touched her shoulder. Gradually her sobbing eased. She groped toward her nightstand and found a Kleenex. She wiped her eyes, then blew her nose.

  “I’m sorry, Mongo,” Mad said in a harsh, strained voice. “I guess you can see why I’m here.”

  “Hey, babe, I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “I shouldn’t be here asking you questions. I wouldn’t be bothering you if I wasn’t running out of time.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “And your question was perfectly reasonable. For the past few years I have been spending a lot of time with some very strange people. It’s—” She started to sob again, but quickly brought herself under control. “It can be so evil.”

  “Is that why you’re here, Mad? Did this occult business finally get to you?”

  I thought she took a long time to answer. Finally she lifted her eyes again and looked directly into mine. “I don’t know, Mongo; I honestly don’t know. I am a scientist, and most of my scientific colleagues consider—or would consider, if they knew about it—my interest in the occult idiotic. After a while, I suppose, the internal pressure starts to build. You begin to doubt, to wonder just what it is you’re doing. You start thinking that maybe it is all superstition, and that you’re a fool.”

  It was time. I cleared my throat, said, “You seem to have been right on target with at least one of your astrology clients.”

  Something like a shadow muddied the surface of her pale blue eyes. “What do you mean?” Mad asked breathlessly.

  I removed the horoscope from my pocket and
handed it to her. Mad glanced at the paper and grew even paler. She slowly crushed the paper in her fist and screwed her eyes shut. Tears oozed from beneath her lids, slowly trickled down her cheeks like tiny, transparent slugs. “Where did you get this?”

  “Bobby’s agent,” I said, touching her arm again. “Believe me, Mad; I wouldn’t be asking you about this if it weren’t for the child.”

  Madeline slowly opened her eyes and stared at me. “What does this horoscope have to do with the little girl?” she asked in a strangled whisper.

  “Bobby’s dead from an overdose of drugs. I found him this morning. He’d been going downhill for months, and it very much looks like he was involved with Esobus. He was definitely into witchcraft, and he had a book of shadows that mentioned Esobus’ name. Bobby may have killed himself, but I’m certain someone gave him a good push to get started.”

  Madeline swallowed hard. “And, of course, you want to know why I lied to you about not being in contact with Bobby since he left the university.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I want to know anything you can tell me—anything you may have left out the last time we talked that might lead me to Esobus. If you’re frightened, I understand; I’ve seen enough of the wreckage Esobus leaves in his wake to understand why people are afraid of him. I’ll keep anything you tell me in absolute confidence.”

  She bit her lower lip and slowly shook her head. “I really don’t know any more than I’ve already told you, Mongo. I was ashamed to tell you about … this. I knew what had been happening to Bobby since I cast that horoscope. I guess I was afraid you’d think … I was the one who’d given him a push. I just wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  I grunted noncommittally. “It looks like Bobby created a self-fulfilling prophecy from that piece of paper you gave him.”

  Madeline shook her head again, this time more vehemently. “No, Mongo. The trend was there right from the beginning, exactly as I interpreted it. Please believe me; I saw how his life was about to change, and I hoped the horoscope would serve as a warning to alter his living patterns.” She passed a trembling hand over her eyes. “Bobby didn’t take it seriously.”

  “Can you interpret that horoscope for me exactly as you did for him?”

  Madeline hesitated, then finally nodded. She slowly smoothed out the crumpled paper. “The inner circle is the natal horoscope,” she said wearily. “It represents the positions of the sun, moon and planets at the time of Bobby’s birth. It shows a strong talent in art or music, with the talent used in a superficial, popular vein. The chart indicates considerable success.”

  Again she swallowed hard. I poured her a glass of water from a covered carafe on the nightstand. She drank it down, smiled shyly. Her eyes seemed clearer. “The outer circle is a synthesis,” she continued in a stronger voice. “It’s the horoscope projected up to the time when Bobby came to see me, and extrapolated into the future. Saturn—an evil, tearing influence—is in the worst possible conjunction with the other planets. There’s a bad grouping in Scorpio—the sign of the occult. And there are a number of other afflictions indicated, including a bad conjunction in what we call the ‘house of the secret enemy.’ Bobby had reached a critical, very dangerous crossroads in his life. That’s what … I told him.”

  She took a deep, shuddering breath, then carefully folded the paper into a small square and dropped it on the nightstand. “It was accurate,” she whispered. “Deadly accurate.”

  “Mad,” I asked quietly, “how did Bobby find out that you were an astrologer?”

  “John Krowl recommended me to him. Bobby had become one of John’s clients.”

  “How long had Bobby known Krowl before he came to you?”

  “I don’t know,” Madeline said softly.

  “Maybe Krowl was the ‘secret enemy’ you saw in Bobby’s horoscope.”

  “Maybe,” she said, staring at the ceiling and blinking back tears.

  “What do you think?”

  She rolled her eyes toward me without turning her head. “Why do you ask me that, Mongo?”

  “Could Krowl be a member of Esobus’ coven?”

  “I’d have no way of knowing the answer to that question. If he were a member, he’d never even drop a hint to an outsider.”

  “What about Bobby? Could he have been a member?”

  Mad shook her head. “That would be impossible. If there is such a supercoven, all of the members would be ceremonial magicians—like Esobus.”

  “So much for your Wizard of Oz theory, Mad. Esobus definitely exists.”

  “The Wizard of Oz is dead,” she said in a dry, quaking voice.

  There didn’t seem any more to be gained by talking to Madeline. In fact, it appeared I’d accomplished nothing but managing to further upset a sick friend. “I’m sorry I bothered you, babe,” I said, placing a yellow rose from the vase on the pillow next to her head.

  “Please don’t apologize, Mongo,” she said, biting her lower lip, obviously fighting back tears. “I do understand. The child is here, isn’t she?”

  “Two floors above us.”

  “You’ll … let me know what happens with her, won’t you?”

  “Yes, babe. I’ll be in touch. Feel better.” I kissed her and left the room.

  As soon as I turned down the corridor, I knew I was in trouble. Searing pain swept around inside my stomach like sloshing waves of acid. My vision blurred, and a silent scream of terror wriggled free from a primitive part of my brain and filled my head with banshee wailing; Joshua had told me that that was how it would begin.

  But another part of me kept functioning in the psychic din; at this point, another day probably wouldn’t make much difference one way or another. If I’d gone over the edge and now had to die, I wanted to do it on my feet, at full gallop. I knew I was going to faint, and I didn’t want to do it in the middle of the corridor. I’d end up with a team of doctors and nurses poking at me, and I couldn’t afford the time.

  I staggered blindly down the hall, running my hands against the wall until I felt a knob. By squinting, I could read UTILITY ROOM on a plate just above my head. I opened the door; in the light from the corridor I could just make out a pile of clean towels stacked up just inside the doorway. I closed the door, sprawled on the towels and promptly passed out.

  Chapter 14

  I woke up groggy and disoriented, and it took me almost a full minute to figure out I was in a hospital bed. The first thing I felt was an immense, warm surge of relief to find that I was seeing 20/20, and wasn’t drooling or belting out the Top Ten to imaginary moons. I sat up with a start and looked at my watch. It was eleven o’clock; I’d been asleep for fifteen hours.

  I got quickly out of bed. A wave of dizziness hit me, and I steadied myself by holding on to the metal headboard of the bed until it passed. I was in my shorts; my clothes were nowhere to be seen, and the wardrobe in the room was empty. I cursed softly, marched out of the room and down the corridor toward the nurses’ station. A group of patients walking in the hallway stopped and stared at the angry dwarf in his Jockey shorts; they looked at one another, then broke into laughter. The reaction of the nurse on desk duty was quite different.

  “Dr. Freder—”

  “Kathy Marlowe,” I said quickly, forcing the words out through lips that felt like stiff leather. “The girl in—”

  “Kathy’s still alive, sir,” the nurse said, smiling.

  I sighed, pressed my face into my hands. “Where are my clothes, nurse?”

  “Dr. Greene left strict—”

  “Nurse!” I shouted, taking my hands away from my face and slamming them against the desk. “I want my fucking clothes! Am I getting through?!”

  The woman jerked her head back as though I’d hit her, sniffed through her thin, aquiline nose. “Dr. Greene has your clothes,” she said archly. “He left specific instructions to be called as soon as you woke up.”

  “Well, it looks like I’m awake, so you can call him wherever he is and tell him to get his ass ov
er here. Got it? Otherwise, I’m going to run out in the street like this, and I’m going to sue! Sue!”

  She sniffed again as she reached for the telephone in front of her. “I’m sure he’ll be right with you, Dr. Frederickson. Perhaps you’d prefer to wait for him in your room.” She surprised me by winking. “I wouldn’t want you to catch cold.”

  I wheeled and marched back to my room, where I sat down on the edge of the bed and fumed. However, the news that Kathy was still alive made it difficult to stay angry. Relief and gratitude soon swept away my rage.

  Greene arrived five minutes later. He was holding my folded clothes in one hand, a huge, familiar-looking hypodermic needle in the other. “Kathy’s still alive,” he said, tossing my clothes on the bed.

  “I heard. How is she?”

  “There’s no improvement, but her condition has stabilized. Under the circumstances, I consider that a minor miracle.” He motioned me backward on the bed. “Lie down, Mongo. The only reason I kept your clothes was to make sure you didn’t run off without getting your injection. Remember: you need one of these every day. I want you back on the street, but I don’t want you returning here through the Morgue entrance.”

  I lay back, closed my eyes and grimaced as Joshua slid the needle into my abdomen. “Don’t you ever sleep?” I asked through the sick, yellow pain.

  “I have a resident’s room here.” He injected the serum, then slowly withdrew the needle. I fought off the impulse to vomit. “Your brother was here asking about the girl,” he continued. “I told him you were here. He didn’t want to wake you up, but he wants you to call him.” He smiled thinly. “I take it you didn’t bother to tell him that you’d been bitten by a rabid bat.”

  “Garth tends to worry about me.”

  “I can see why.” He cleared his throat. “Mrs. Marlowe’s also very concerned. She’d like you to stop by her room before you leave.”

  I tapped my watch by way of an answer. “We’re still on borrowed time, right?” I sat up on the edge of the bed and began dressing. “How the hell did I end up in bed?”