An Affair of Sorcerers

by George C. Chesbro

  Janet came later, as I’d asked her to. April cried some more, then began to talk of her and Daniel’s childhood in a witch family and community. Some of the stories were funny, others sad; all were fascinating.

  April finished by saying in a firm, proud voice: “My brother was a good and strong man who understood the ways of the human heart. Struggle was his life. He lost this battle, but he will always live in the hearts and memories of those who loved him. So mote it be.”

  The ceremonial magician had received his memorial service.

  An hour after returning to my apartment, I received a phone call. The voice on the line was clipped and heavily muffled. The message was brief and to the point.

  “Be at The Cloisters at midnight. Esobus wishes to speak with you. Don’t contact anyone. Come alone. The lives of the child and her mother will depend on your following these instructions to the letter.”

  Every word had struck me with the force of a blow, dazing me and making me short of breath. I was more drained of feeling than afraid; I moved like an automaton, forcing myself to eat some steak and eggs for strength. The food stayed down, and I stretched out on my bed to rest. I didn’t think I’d be able to sleep, but I set the alarm for ten just in case. Then I closed my eyes and breathed deeply and regularly, trying to empty my mind of everything; I knew I would need all my energy and concentration in the long night ahead.

  At ten I rose and dressed. I took out my Beretta, checked the firing mechanism and magazine, stuck the weapon into my belt by my spine. I planned on being early, so I started to leave at ten thirty. I hesitated, walked over to the telephone and stared at it. I desperately wanted to call Garth, clearly aware that in most situations like this it was a sucker play not to bring in the police. But this case had some unusual, deadly wrinkles; their numbers and the place they’d chosen for the meeting gave the coven members all the advantages. There was no doubt in my mind that I would be walking into a trap; I was liable to end up staked to the ground and whittled on, like Daniel. Still, it seemed I had no choice but to play this round by their rules. There were thirteen members of the coven, and the entire area surrounding The Cloisters would be easy enough for them to cover. Even if the police did manage to catch whoever might be lying in wait for me, the others would certainly find out about it and act accordingly; they’d demonstrated that they didn’t make idle threats. I had no qualms about blowing the brains out of my hosts, but I wanted to make certain April and Kathy weren’t casually killed by default; there was no guarantee that the police could make anyone they captured talk before some kind of action was taken against the mother and daughter. But I was certain I could; I had a few spells of my own to cast.

  Traffic in midtown and on Riverside Drive was almost nonexistent. It was a clear night illuminated by a full moon. The Hudson River, on my left, had taken the cold light, shattered and rewoven it into a brightly spangled robe that stretched, swelled and glittered to the New Jersey shore on the opposite bank.

  It took me only fifteen minutes to reach the north entrance to Fort Tryon Park, where The Cloisters is located. It struck me as I drove slowly up the lower driveway how appropriate the setting was for communing with a bunch of witches. The Cloisters is one of New York’s landmarks, an enormous castle structure which is a museum housing prime examples of Medieval European art and architecture. There is a great deal of church art, and the very name conjures up visions of pious, ascetic men and women devoting their lives and talents to their Deity. And, of course, the witch in the Middle Ages carried as much weight as the priest. Now, in the twentieth century, the church had revered landmarks and the occultists had sidewalk scam parlors. It looked as if Esobus were trying to turn the clock back a few centuries, at least symbolically.

  I didn’t want any cruising patrol cars to spot my Volkswagen and come looking for me, so I parked the car on the shoulder of one of the parking areas, between two trees. There was always a chance that my reception committee had arrived even earlier, but I doubted it. I walked in the darkness up toward the Medieval castle. The Cloisters had always been one of my favorite places; now, at night, it was different and threatening, like a gentle friend who has without warning turned neurotic and vicious. In the night, under the full moon, it looked eerie, haunted, with its stone balustrades jutting like blunt teeth chewing a sky bleeding midnight blue.

  I had no idea who was supposed to find whom, but I wanted to make certain that I saw my hosts first. To that end, I climbed up on one of the ramparts circling the vast lawn and walked up to the museum. Then it was Circus Time. I managed to human-fly my way up the rough stone wall of The Arcade until I was on the roof of the building. I walked across the pebbled surface and positioned myself behind a balustrade above the Fuentiduña Chapel. That gave me a view of the main approach road. I crouched down, gun in hand, and waited.

  And waited.

  By twelve fifteen I was anxious. Staying low so as not to show a silhouette, I’d already been around the perimeter of the roof several times, checking out the surrounding area below. There was no sign of life. Twenty minutes earlier a patrol car had cruised up, turned at the head of the drive, then headed back. By twelve thirty, I was soaked with nervous sweat. It occurred to me that they could be watching, waiting. If they thought I hadn’t followed their directions …

  I clambered back down the side of the building the way I’d come. Once on the ground, I began making a circuit of the museum. My stomach was beginning to cramp again—not only from the antirabies serum, but from fear and tension. I started whistling to attract the attention of anyone who might have trouble seeing a dwarf in the dark. I was convinced that if the coven had said they intended to kill April and Kathy if I didn’t show up, they’d do it.

  One circuit completed, I sat down on the stone wall near the entrance and whistled some more, louder. By one thirty, I knew no one was coming. I walked back to my car, distracted and tormented by the thought that Kathy and April could now be in jeopardy because of my game-playing. If I was lucky, the night’s exercise had been only a run-through to see if I would show up alone; if I was lucky, they hadn’t noticed that I’d spent two hours holed up on the roof trying to get the drop on them. If I was lucky.

  Bad luck to one you love, Krowl had said.

  With my state of mind what it was, my senses and reflexes weren’t quite what they should have been. Also, I was suffering from a bad case of the stupids not to have thought of where else they might try to ambush me. I was seated in my car, turning the key in the ignition, when I felt the skin on the back of my neck begin to prickle. But it was too late. I tried to twist away, but the man in the back who’d picked the lock on my car door reared up and sapped me expertly. There was a loud thud inside my skull, which kept ricocheting around inside my head. I tried to follow the sound’s bounces, and suddenly one echo became a white ball of fire that rushed at me. I tried to duck away from it, tripped over another echo and plunged down into a sea of red-tinged darkness.

  Chapter 17

  I seemed to be trapped in some strange, nonvisual dream; there was no light, no images—only lucid thoughts. What I was thinking was that I had to get up and go to the hospital for my daily shot. Without my injections, I would go mad and die in agony. It occurred to me that something had happened, a problem had arisen, which could prevent me from going to the hospital. I tried to remember what it was, and couldn’t. I decided it was nothing; I wasn’t hurt, and I couldn’t imagine anything aside from injury that could keep me from going for my medication. That would be suicide. It was simply a matter of waiting to wake up.

  Something was tapping softly on the inside of my head—not painfully but persistently, with a sound like a pencil eraser bouncing on soft wood. Then I realized with astonishment that it was only the blood pulsing through my veins. I listened for a few minutes until it faded away and I was once again left alone with only my thoughts. I couldn’t move, which seemed to reaffirm the fact that I was dreaming after all. That was all right; I was resti
ng, as Joshua had told me to. I would rest a little while longer, then wake up and go to the hospital.

  I didn’t seem to be able to wake up. I kept waiting for the phone to ring, or Garth or someone else to come and wake me up. No phones rang, and no one came. Time lost any meaning; after a while I couldn’t tell whether I was awake or asleep. My thoughts were my only companions, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something terrible had happened to me. Or was happening. I fought against a growing sense of panic by carrying on long internal monologues, telling myself old jokes over and over again, laughing without sound inside my mind. The line between sleeping and waking became increasingly blurred, then seemed to disappear altogether.

  I remembered. A low moan started somewhere in the back of my mind and exploded in a silent, breathless scream punctuated by terror-filled images: My attacker had fractured my skull and I was in a deep coma. Or I was paralyzed. I had no head, no toes, no legs, no fingers—no body at all. There was only the theater inside my mind, and I wondered how long that was going to stay open. Or perhaps what I was experiencing was but a split-second journey that all men must travel between life and death.

  I choked back my terror and tried to think. Obviously, I wasn’t dead yet. I felt no hunger or thirst, and it occurred to me that I could be in a hospital, being fed intravenously. Garth, Joshua and April could be at my bedside. Janet might be there, praying for me.

  Maybe the doctors didn’t know my mind was working; maybe they’d pull the plug on whatever machine was keeping me alive. Or, maybe I was simply lying in a ditch at the side of some road.

  Maybe I’d be buried alive.

  Waiting; silence; a constant struggle against a terror that, once out of control, would devour my mind before the rabies that was now coursing unchecked through my system. I tried to think of other things, but “other things” always ended up April—and I knew I loved her. I longed for her. That made me cry. I couldn’t feel tears, couldn’t hear my sobs, but I knew I was crying—at least, inside my mind. Every thought was filled with emotion, and emotion was my only link with reality. Suddenly my mind screamed again, and I backed down into myself, away from the terrible need to see and touch someone I loved, and who loved me.

  My mind blinked, and I found myself on a gray plain stretching endlessly off to—nothing. There was no horizon, only a black pit directly in front of me. I backed up … and the pit moved forward, like some living thing stalking me. It yawned before me like a dark hole on a silent planet. There were sounds in the hole—wailing winds, screams, groans; and I realized the hole was myself, the deepest part of me. It was an abyss, a tear in my psyche I knew I must, at all costs, avoid falling into; at the bottom was madness.

  I was crying again. I thought of April, then of my mother—a beautiful, willowy woman who’d loved me, and who, with Garth, had kept me whole during the nightmare years of my childhood and adolescence.

  Still waiting; still locked in combat with my fear. At the moment, that battle was a standoff. I kept waiting for something to happen.

  Once I must have fallen asleep, because I found myself slipping like a slab of molten plastic over the edge of the hole; the hole was closing over my head, and I struggled desperately to pry open its jaws and climb out. The sides of the hole were dotted with faces; lips curled menacingly, baring long fangs and froth-specked teeth; there were large red holes where the eyes should be; hands studded with thousands of snakelike fingers curled around my throat and tore at my eyes.

  Madness. I wondered how many seconds, minutes, hours, days had gone by since I’d been hit on the head. Perhaps rabies was percolating in my brain tissue, carrying me along its foaming crest into the terrible dark hole. I could stay in a coma indefinitely, until my brain became totally infected and I died screaming—to myself.

  Suddenly my mind blinked again and I found myself out of the hole, my mind cast adrift on a vast, eerie sea of quivering rubber. I wept again; not as a man weeps, but as a child caught in the grip of nameless, nighttime terror.

  My mind was closing in on me, eating itself; there were other things in my mind with me, and they were alien. The whisper of snakes that poison and crush; a world of giants that laughed and mocked; things that would hurt a dwarf and not even notice.

  It suddenly occurred to me that the fears were somehow familiar, like a scarred rocking horse uncovered in the corner of some dusty attic of the mind. In this case the terrors were old, half-forgotten memories from the storage bin of my childhood. My mind had turned cannibal and was gnawing through the protective membrane of the subconscious.

  “Hello, Bob.”

  The voice was soft, and seemed to originate from some alternative universe inside my head. It came from everywhere and nowhere, starting from somewhere behind where I thought my eyes should be, then undulating out to fill my skull. I waited desperately for something else to be said, but there was only the terrible silence—now even more maddening.

  After a while I decided I’d only imagined the voice.

  “Hello, Bob. This is a friend.”

  The voice was definitely real. For one long, terrifying moment I was afraid it would go away, as it had before. But the voice came again—very soft and soothing, with a slight accent. I couldn’t place the voice, but its owner had made a mistake—perhaps spoken too soon, or for too long a time. My mind paused in its self-destructive feast, looked around, and growled with anger as it struggled desperately to make connections.

  “You have been with us … some time now. I am going to help you. I know how lonely you are. I know you are sick and need medicine. I know … you need love. I can give you all these things, but first you must be alone a while longer so that you can think. You will learn to love my voice. Then you will learn to love me.”

  There was a prolonged, aching silence. Then:

  “Goodbye for now, Bob.”

  Suddenly I knew where I was, and who had put me there. In that moment my breathing stopped as countless pieces of thought and memory fused together to form a conscious idea that burned somewhere behind my eyes with whitehot, searing certainty.

  I was being subjected to sensory deprivation.

  It meant my old friend Vincent Smathers and his buddy Kee were charter members of Esobus’ coven. They’d arranged a special demonstration of their work just for me. After my initial reaction of mindless shock, I felt almost relieved; the realization of what was happening to me gave me a frame of reference, eliminating the horrible fear that I was in a coma and paralyzed, buried alive inside my own mind.

  All that was left was the equally horrible reality. I was a helpless captive of the scientists, who, for their own arcane reasons, were keeping me alive simply so that they could drive me crazy. The irony was that, without my daily shots, the strain of rabies in me would be bubbling away, cooking me toward madness and death. Smathers and Kee were competing for my mind against the disease in my body; it was a race I couldn’t win, and perhaps had already lost I had no idea how many shots I’d missed or, if I’d missed a lot, what was keeping me alive. It was all enough to depress me.

  I tried to keep my terror at bay by concentrating on what I’d read about sensory deprivation. I thought I could visualize my surroundings; I’d be floating in a large, water-filled tank. The saline solution would be warmed to body temperature; my arms and legs would be restrained by straps, loose enough to allow for circulation but sufficiently tight to restrict any kind of movement I imagined my head was encased in some kind of hood which was wired for sound and into which oxygen was pumped. There were probably tubes stuck into my body through which I was begin fed intravenously. I didn’t feel any pain in my thumb or stomach—indeed, I had no physical sensations whatsoever. It could have been the cumulative effect of the womblike environment, or they might have given me just enough of a paralyzing drug, like curare, to damp down my nervous system.

  The next thought that occurred to me was that I’d be in the tank until I died, living like a mental mole in absolute darkness.
Smathers and Kee would never take me out, even after they’d squashed my will and mind; the tank was my stakes in the ground, Kee’s voice my ceremonial sword.

  I was only a floor above dozens of people who knew and cared about me, yet they had no way of knowing where I was, or what was being done to me. My captors would one day grow tired of the madman they’d created; the ritual would be completed, and they would go away and lock the steel doors of the laboratory behind them. I would be left suspended in the water—floating forever until I died and rotted and my bones sank to the bottom of the tank.

  That image unleashed my panic; it pounced on me like a huge, shapeless beast. I shrieked soundlessly under its weight and gnashing teeth. I kept shrieking until I passed out, or slept, or simply short-circuited.

  “Hello, Bob. This is your friend again. I know how you’ve missed me; I know how terribly lonely you are, and how badly you need to hear a human voice. But you must be left alone still a while longer to think things out. There has been a great misunderstanding on your part. You hate Esobus and his servants. You have spoken to people and said incorrect things. You have done me a great disservice. But you will become a servant of Esobus, and you will do his will. You will love me and want to undo the damage you have done. Listen to my voice, and you will understand. I will leave you alone now, Bob. You should give a great deal of thought to what I have said. I am Esobus, and you will learn to love me as you love the sound of my voice.”

  I seriously doubted that, but I waited for more anyway. There was only silence. For the first time, I tried to speak out loud. I cursed slowly, methodically—or imagined that I did. It seemed to me that my voice came back to me muffled, as from a great distance.

  Through the timeless silence I clung to my rational thoughts like a finely spun life raft; they were all I had. I’d accepted the fact that my situation was hopeless, and an unexpected benefit was the temporary suspension of my terror and frustration. Now I was involved in a ritual of my own. The idea of a bunch of witches killing me when cholera, a psychotic Russian and the Iranian SAVAK had failed made me angry enough to want to hold out as long as possible. It had become a matter of pride.