The Valkyries: An Encounter With Angels

by Paulo Coelho

  Paulo held the medallion in his hand.

  "I've already begun talking with my angel," Chris went on, more quietly. "I know that I can, and that's good enough."

  Paulo didn't believe her. But Valhalla knew that it was the truth. She had read it in her eyes when they were outside. She also knew that her angel wanted her to be there with her husband.

  Nevertheless, she had to test her courage. It was the rule of the Tradition.

  "All right," the Valkyrie said. With a rapid movement, she blew out the lantern. The darkness was total.

  "Put the cord around your neck," she said to Paulo. "And hold the medallion with both hands joined, in prayer."

  Paulo did as he was told. He was fearful of a darkness so complete, and he was remembering things he would rather not think about.

  He felt Valhalla approaching him from behind. Her hands touched his head.

  The darkness seemed almost solid. Nothing, not a scintilla of light, entered there.

  Valhalla began to pray in a strange language. At first, he tried to identify the words she was saying. Then, as her fingers moved across his head, Paulo felt the medallion growing hot. He concentrated on the heat in his hands.

  The darkness was changing. Various scenes from his life began to pass before him. Light and shadow, light and shadow, and--suddenly, he was once again in darkness.

  "I don't want to remember that..." he pleaded with the Valkyrie.

  "Remember! Whatever it is, try to remember every minute of it."

  The darkness brought terror to him, the terror he had experienced fourteen years earlier.

  When he woke up, he found a note on the coffee table: "I love you. I'll be right back." At the bottom, she had written the date: "25 May 1974."

  Funny. To put the date on a love note.

  He had awakened a bit dizzy, still startled by the dream. In it, the director of the recording studio was offering him a job. He didn't need a job: The director actually functioned more like his employee--his and his partner's. Their records were at the top of the charts, selling thousands of copies, and letters were arriving from all corners of Brazil, from people wanting to know what the Alternative Society was.

  All you have to do is listen to the words of the song, he thought to himself. It wasn't really a song--it was a mantra from a magic ritual, with the words of the Beast of the Apocalypse being read in the background in a low voice. Whoever sang the song would be invoking the forces of darkness. And everyone was singing it.

  He and his partner had done the whole thing. The royalties they earned were being used to buy a lot near Rio de Janeiro. There they would recreate what, almost one hundred years earlier, the Beast had tried to establish in Cefalu, Sicily. But the Beast was expelled by the Italian authorities. The Beast had erred on many points--he had not gathered a sufficient number of disciples, and he did not know how to earn money. The Beast told everyone that his number was 666, and that he had come to create a world where the strong would be served by the weak, and the only law was that everyone do as they desired. But the Beast didn't know how to spread the ideas--few people had taken the Beast's words seriously.

  He and his partner, Raul Seixas, well, they were completely different! Raul sang, and the entire country listened. They were young, and they were earning money. Yes, it was true that Brazil was in the hands of a military dictatorship, but the government was concerned about guerrillas. They couldn't waste their time with a rock singer. Just the opposite: The authorities felt that rock music kept the country's youth away from communism.

  He drank his coffee standing at the window. He was going to take a walk, and meet later with his partner. It didn't bother him at all that nobody knew who he was, while his friend was famous. What mattered was that they were earning money, and this would allow them to put their ideas into practice. People from the world of music, and the world of magic--ah, they knew! His anonymity with regard to the general public was even rather funny--more than once, he had had the pleasure of hearing someone comment on his work--without knowing that the author was listening nearby.

  He donned his sneakers. As he was tying the laces, he felt dizzy.

  He raised his head. The apartment seemed darker than it should have been. The sun was shining outside, and he had just left the window. Something was burning--an electrical appliance, maybe, because the stove was disconnected. He looked throughout the apartment. Nothing.

  The air was heavy. He decided to go out right away--without tying his sneakers, he started to leave, but realized that he really wasn't feeling well.

  Could be something I ate, he said to himself. But when he ate something that was off, his entire body usually gave him a signal, and he knew that. He wasn't nauseated, didn't feel like vomiting. Just a kind of dizziness that didn't seem to want to pass.

  Dark. The darkness grew; it seemed like a gray cloud around him. He felt the dizziness again. Yes, it had to be something he had eaten--Or maybe an acid flashback, he thought. But he hadn't tried LSD in five years. The delayed effects had disappeared after the first six months, and never returned.

  He was frightened, he had to get out.

  He opened the door--the dizziness was coming and going, and he might get worse out in the street. Better to stay home and wait. The note was there on the table--she would be home shortly--he could wait. They could go together to the pharmacy or to a doctor, although he hated doctors. It couldn't be anything serious. No one has a heart attack at age twenty-six.

  No one.

  He sat down on the couch. He needed some distraction. He shouldn't think about her, or the time would pass even more slowly. He tried to read the paper, but the dizziness, the lightheadedness, came and went, stronger each time. Something was pulling him into a black hole that appeared to have formed in the middle of the room. He began to hear noises--laughing, voices, things breaking. That had never happened--never! Whenever he had taken anything, he knew he was drugged, knew it was a hallucination and would pass with time. But this--this was terribly real!

  No, no, it couldn't be real. The reality was the rugs, the curtains, the bookshelves, the coffee table with the leftovers of bread on it. He made an effort to concentrate on the scene surrounding him, but the feeling of a black hole in front of him, the voices, the laughter, all continued.

  None of this was happening. Definitely! He had practiced magic for six years. Performed all the rituals. He knew it was nothing more than suggestion. A psychological effect that was playing on his imagination. Nothing more.

  His panic was increasing, and the dizziness was more pronounced--pulling to the outside of his body, toward a dark world, toward that laughter, those voices, those noises--real!

  I cannot let myself be afraid. Fear will make it come back. He tried to control himself, went to the sink and bathed his face. He felt a bit better, the feeling seemed to have passed. He put his sneakers on and tried to forget about it. He toyed with the idea of telling his partner he had entered into a trance, had been in contact with demons.

  But he had only to think about that, and the dizziness returned--more strongly.

  "I'll be right back," the note said, and she hadn't come!

  I never achieved concrete results in the astral plane, he thought. He had never seen anything. No angels, no devils, no spirits of the dead. The Beast wrote in his diary that he was able to make things materialize, but he was lying, the Beast had never gotten that far. He knew that. The Beast had failed. He liked the Beast's ideas because they were rebellious, chic. And very few people had ever heard them. And people are always more respectful of those who speak of things no one understands. As for the rest--Hare Krishna, Children of God, the Church of Satan, Maharishi--everyone knew about those. The Beast--the Beast was just for the chosen few! "The law of the powerful," one of his books talked about. The Beast was on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, one of the Beatles's best known records--and almost no one knew it. Maybe not even the Beatles knew what they were doing when they pl
aced that photograph there.

  The phone rang. It might be his girlfriend. But if she had written, "I'll be right back," why would she be phoning?

  Only if something was happening.

  That's why she hadn't come. The intervals between bouts of dizziness were growing shorter and shorter, and everything was turning black again. He knew--something was telling him--that he couldn't let that feeling take him over. Something terrible might happen--he might enter into that darkness and never return. He had to maintain control at any cost--he needed to occupy his mind, or that thing would dominate him.

  The phone. He concentrated on the phone. Speak, converse, think of other things, take his mind off that darkness, the phone was a miracle, a solution. He knew it. He knew that somehow he couldn't surrender. He had to answer the phone.

  "Hello?"

  It was a woman's voice. But it wasn't his girlfriend--it was Argelia.

  "Paulo?"

  He didn't answer.

  "Paulo, can you hear me? I need you to come over to my house! Something strange is going on!"

  "What's happening?"

  "You know, Paulo! Explain it to me, for God's sake!"

  He hung up before he heard something he didn't want to hear. It wasn't a delayed drug effect. It wasn't a symptom of insanity. It wasn't a heart attack. It was real. Argelia had participated in the rituals, and "that" was happening to her, too.

  He panicked. He sat there without thinking for a few minutes, and the darkness began to take him over, coming closer and closer, causing him to step to the edge of the lake of death.

  He was going to die--for everything he had done without believing, for the many people he had involved without knowing it, for so much evil spread about in the name of what was good. He would die, and the Darkness would go on, because it was manifesting itself now, before his very eyes, demonstrating that things really worked, collecting what was owed for the time in which it had been used, and he had to pay--because he didn't want to know what the price was before, thought it was for free, that everything was a lie or just suggestion!

  His years in the Jesuit school came back to him, and he prayed for the strength needed to get back to a church, ask forgiveness, pray that at least God would save his soul. He had to be able to do it. He found that as long as he could keep his mind busy, he was able to dominate the dizziness, at least partly. He needed time to get to the church...What a ridiculous idea!

  He looked at the bookcase, and resolved that he would calculate how many records he owned--after all, he had always put that task off! Yes, it was important to know the exact number of records, and he began to count: one, two, three...he did it! He was able to overcome the dizziness, the black hole that was pulling him in. He counted all of the records--and then counted them again, to make certain he was correct. Now the books. He had to count in order to know how many books he had. Did he have more books than records? He began to count. The dizziness halted, and he had so many books. And magazines. And alternative newspapers. He would count everything, write it down, really know how many things he owned. It was so important.

  He was counting the silverware when he heard the key turn in the lock. She was here, finally. But he couldn't allow himself to be distracted--he couldn't even talk about what was happening; any moment now, it was all going to stop. He was certain of it.

  She went straight to the kitchen, and hugged him, crying.

  "Help me! Something strange is happening. You know what it is, help me!"

  He didn't want to lose his count of the silverware--that was his salvation. Keep the mind busy. Better if she hadn't arrived--it didn't help. And she thought the same as Argelia--that he knew everything, that he knew how to stop it.

  "Keep your mind busy!" he shouted, as if he were possessed. "Count how many records you have! And how many books!"

  She looked at him without understanding what he was talking about. Like a robot, she walked to the bookcase.

  But she didn't get there. She suddenly threw herself to the floor.

  "I want my mother..." she said, over and over. "I want my mother..."

  He did too. He wanted to phone his parents, ask for help--his parents whom he never saw, who belonged to a middle-class world he had abandoned long ago. He tried to go on with the silverware count, but she was there, crying like a child, pulling at her hair.

  That was too much. He was responsible for what was happening, because he loved her, and had taught her the rituals, guaranteed that she could get what she wanted, that things were improving day by day (although he never for a moment believed what he was saying!). Now she was there, begging for help, trusting in him--and he had no idea what to do.

  For a moment, he thought of issuing an order, but he had already lost his silverware count, and the black hole came back suddenly with even greater strength.

  "You help me," he said. "I don't know what to do."

  And he began to cry.

  He was crying out of fear, as when he was a child. He wanted his parents, as she did. He was bathed in a cold sweat, and was certain he would die. He seized her hand, and her hands were cold, too, even though her clothing was soaked in perspiration. He went to the bathroom to wash his face--as he used to do when the effects of the drugs were really strong. Maybe it would work with regard to "that," too. The hallway seemed immense, the thing was stronger now--he was no longer counting records, books, pencils, silverware. There was no place to hide.

  "Running water."

  The thought came from some far corner of his mind, some place that the darkness had not seemed to penetrate. Running water! Yes, there was a power in darkness, in delirium, in madness--but there were other things!

  "Running water," he said to her, as he bathed his face. "Running water keeps the evil away."

  She heard the certainty in his voice. He knew, he knew everything. He would save her.

  He turned the shower on, and they both huddled under it--with their clothing, their documents, their money. The cold water moistened their bodies, and, for the first time since he had awakened, he experienced a sense of relief. The dizziness vanished. They stayed for two or three hours under the spray, without speaking, shivering from fear and the cold. They stepped out only once, to phone Argelia and tell her to do the same thing. The dizziness returned, and they had to flee back into the shower. There, everything seemed calm, but they needed desperately to understand what was happening.

  "I never believed it," he said.

  She looked at him, not understanding. Two years earlier, they had been two hippies, without a cent to their name, and now his songs were being heard all over the country. He was at the peak of success--even though few people knew his name; and he had been saying that it was all the result of the rituals, the occult studies, the power of magic.

  "I never believed it," he continued. "Or I never would have walked those paths! I never would have risked myself, or you."

  "Do something, for the love of God!" she said. "We can't stay here in the shower forever!"

  He left the shower again, checking whether the dizziness and the black hole were still there. He went to the bookcase and came back with the Bible. He had a Bible in the house only so that he could read from the Revelation to John, be certain about the reign of the Beast. He had done everything as called for by the Beast's followers--and, in his heart, he had believed none of it.

  "Let's pray to God," he said. He felt ridiculous, demoralized before this woman whom he had tried to impress for all those years. He was weak, he was going to die. He had to humiliate himself, beg for forgiveness. What was most important now was the saving of his soul. In the end, everything was true.

  He embraced the Bible, and recited prayers he had learned as a child--Our Father, Hail Mary, the Creed. She refused at the beginning, and then recited them with him.

  Then he opened the book at random. The water poured down on the pages, but he was able to read the story of someone who had asked something of Jesus, and Jesus said that he must main
tain the faith. The man answered: "Lord, I believe--help me in my incredulity."

  "Lord, I believe, help me in my incredulity!" he shouted through the sound of the falling water.

  "Lord, I believe, help me in my incredulity!" he said in a whisper, through his sobs.

  He began to feel strangely calm. If the terrible evil they had experienced really existed, then it was true that the kingdom of heaven did, as well, and along with it, everything else that he had learned and then denied throughout his life.

  "The eternal life exists," he said, knowing that he would never again believe in those words. "I don't care if I die. You cannot fear death, either."

  "I'm not afraid," she answered. "I'm not afraid, but I think it's unfair. It's a pity."

  They were only twenty-six. It really was a pity.

  "We have been through everything someone our'age could have experienced," he answered. "Most people haven't even come close."

  "That's true," she said. "We can die."

  He lifted his face, and the sound of the water in his ears seemed like thunder. He was no longer crying, nor afraid; he was only paying the price for his insolence.

  "Lord, I believe, help me in my incredulity," he repeated. "We want to make an exchange. We offer you anything, absolutely anything, in return for the salvation of our souls. We offer our lives, or everything we own. Please accept, my lord."

  She looked at him with contempt. The man she had admired so. The powerful, mysterious, courageous man she had so admired, who had convinced so many people with regard to the Alternative Society, who had preached about a world where anything was allowed, where the strong ruled over the weak. That man was there, crying, screaming for his mother, praying like a child, and saying that he had always been courageous--because he had believed in nothing.

  He turned, and said they should both look up and make the exchange. She did so. She had lost her man, her faith, and her hope. She had nothing else to lose.

  He placed his hand on the faucet, and slowly shut it down. Now they could die; God had forgiven them.

  The stream of water turned to droplets, and then there was complete silence. Soaked to the bone, they looked at each other. The dizziness, the black hole, the laughter, and the noises, all had disappeared.