Chapter 29: More Revelations
THE children stirred when they heard commotion outside. Marcos looked up sharply and one of the monks told him something in French. He relaxed again.
“What’s happening outside?” Stephanie exclaimed.
“The emperor just escaped from Elba, my dear,” the former cardinal replied, rubbing his hands together on the book and closely studying Nora. “You know French history, don’t you?” he asked her and she matched his stare without a word. “Ah, a lioness! Lionne,” he enthused, turning away. “I have been following your journey through Judea to China, my dear, and I strongly believe you have the attributes of a historian and can become a renowned one in the future, no?”
“Really?” Nora blurted out in excitement, and then on behalf of the other two kids: “But. . . How? What on earth are you? How did you do that?”
“Remember I control the book, my dear,” Marcos reminded her while ascending the wooden steps of the church’s pulpit. “And through it, I also control whoever claims custody over it.”
“My—My . . . headache?” Matthew sounded surprised.
“Of course, mon ami! A very painful one indeed you have suffered, but . . . this is necessary for keeping watch over the situation! I was using your physical senses to know what was happening at the same time I was trying to manipulate you into doing my bidding through the book.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Xerxes?” the former priest pointed out, leaning over the pulpit as if about to preach. “Ah, you remember! Although your brilliant sisters noted the futility of writing his name in the book and the fact that it was Greek, you still went ahead to do so with the burning anger in your heart! Who do you think kindled this fury within you to deal with an already-dead man, eh?”
“But he—he was alive then! We saw him,” the boy argued.
“You saw him just as you saw Blackbeard and the Roman general, Titus, my dear,” Marcos maintained. “Shurabi can only come into force when one is still alive after the latest death and reincarnation of his soul. The Persian king has reincarnated several times now and could be someone else in some place we might never discover in our present system of things, so you must have personally met this person if you want to deal with Xerxes or Khshayarsha, as he is rightly named.”
“But what about Owen . . . ,” Matthew began, trailing off when he realized that Owen was already under the spell when they met him. “So, one dies under Shurabi and then, what happens next?”
“Guess another reincarnation,” Nora tried.
“Parfait,” Marcos exclaimed in French, coming down the pulpit. “See, I was right about you.”
Matthew was annoyed with this praise. There was no need to give Nora any more reason to think she was a light to the world! “So, we got here through my mistake?” he wanted to know.
“Through my manipulation, monsieur,” the former cardinal revealed. “Besides, remember the blank pages of the book when Conrad opened it in America?”
“Leonard, you mean?” Nora corrected.
“You mean . . . that was you?” Matthew exclaimed.
“Yes, mon ami,” the man agreed. “Had he seen the names on those pages, he would have disrupted my plans.”
“So you helped us? Why?”
“So that I can get you here faster than I would have, no?”
“And enslave us?” Nora asked.
“Yes . . . and take the book as well,” Marcos enthused and turned to Matthew.
“After your mistake, my friend,” he told him, “which I drove you to commit, the Shurabi vested on me total control of your faculties, and you selected my name instead of your fat school enemy’s.”
“And that was how we got here,” Stephanie exclaimed.
“Guess you’re right,” Matthew began. He was downcast and the other two understood his guilt. He now realized why his head had started throbbing again after he’d written the Persian king’s Greek transliteration in the book. Why was the damn word too long and . . . cumbersome? Transliteration! Why not just translation or something shorter?
“Now, back to our story, my dears,” a beaming Marcos resumed before the hopeless children. He mocked them with his eyes and cleared his throat. “When God discovered the treachery of these angels,” he began, “He cast them down to Earth as demons! There they repented of their sins and, although God would not take them back, vowed to stop the Jews from using the book. However, their new father, Satan, or the devil, never supported this.”
“So what happened?” Stephanie asked and the other two frowned in her direction. Their antagonist squatted before her and leaned closer to her, gesticulating with his two hands as the right one tightly held the book.
“These new demons fought a long and bitter war with the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada, mademoiselle, since they refused to give back the book,” Marcos awesomely narrated, “and for a long time into Constantine’s reign, they, the Booklords, were able to prevent the sect from writing the Roman emperor’s name in the black book.”
“Gooooo,” Stephanie responded, completely taken in and wide-eyed.
“Several members of the cult were killed during this time,” Marcos continued. “Stabbed, mutilated, diseased and burned beyond belief!
“And annoyed by the actions of his new servants, Satan provided the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada with a new weapon he intended to punish these fallen angels with.”
Matthew gaped at the Frenchman as he now stood up to step back. It was all starting to fall into place! The mystery behind the book was about to be revealed a bit more! “The . . . harmless flames?” he slowly let out after drawing in breath. “The . . . fiery flames?”
And almost as quickly, angry fire reaped out from the book to everyone’s amazement, engulfing the priest’s right hand as the bald man basked in the euphoria of being in control of this unearthly phenomenon commanding their unalloyed attention in so impressive a manner.
“Behold the Flame of Masada,” Marcos vigorously declared, bringing forward his right hand for all to clearly see. “Behold the weapon of the black book! The unquenchable fire from hell and for hell’s own! The only hindrance preventing the Booklords from taking hold of the book now! The key to man’s survival and my conquest of all my enemies! Long have the Booklords tormented me, but I have finally mastered their nemesis and they will do well to leave me alone now!
“This is the secret weapon Satan blessed the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada with, for he did not want to deal with the Booklords, himself! This is the one thing the sect could not wield effectively before they were almost completely destroyed by those demons from hell! This is the only defense in the hands of mortal man for the book’s protection now! And now, I have raised it up for all to see! Flames that are meant to protect the book from the Booklords and their ugly forms! Flames that will crush them if they ever show me their ugly shapes again.”
Marcos was now shouting and Matthew hoped he would keep it down a bit. “They can never hunt or stop me anymore! They will never tinker with the idea of retrieving the book from me anymore! This I proclaim based on the knowledge given me by those since dead and the power I have over the black book! This I shall swear before every man on Earth if given the chance! This I shall swear before every living thing on Earth if given the chance! I control the book and the book is my servant! And no one, not even God, Himself, can take it away from me.”
Marcos mysteriously doused the flames, sweating.
“What a speech,” Matthew whispered.
“So you were attacked by the Booklords?” Nora softly asked the former priest.
“For eight years now,” Marcos tersely replied her. “Eight miserable years.” He wiped away his sweat and tried to regain his composure.
Stephanie was glad the man had calmed down. He’d freaked her out back there!
“The sect was destabilized before they could learn to control the book’s magical fire and use it to destroy their spiritual enemies,” Marcos resumed. “The secret to the fire�
��s control was in the invisible Hebrew of the Shurabi, but the Sicarii Kabbalah Masada could not discern this before they lost the battle! Very sad, no?”
“What about the book?” Matthew asked. “What happened to it?”
“Before the Booklords could lay hold of it, the Vatican took over the cult’s secret temple and put to death those Bookmakers still alive,” Marcos said. “The black book was confiscated by the Holy See under the orders of Emperor Constantine and placed in a steel box immersed in holy water deep inside a secret chamber in Saint Peter’s Basilica, that is, until some years ago, when I stumbled upon this secret chamber and all the secrets it held within its walls!
“As soon as my actions were discovered by the church, I was unfairly excommunicated, although not until I had replaced the original book with a fake one and had reproduced the literature I found with it inside its holy fortifications.”
“What literature?” Matthew asked.
“The one I got my information from, monsieur,” Marcos replied, turning to eye the boy again. “With this book,” he continued, “I will control world leaders and governments because I will send those who fail to obey me into the past, no?” And he turned to Nora. “This is what you were beginning to see and will now never fully grasp, no?”
“Hah,” Nora scoffed with gleaming eyes. “The world’s governments will hunt you down and seize the book! How’re you gonna control them then?”
Stephanie chuckled at this, but stopped short when Marcos glared at her. The former priest then turned back to her sister with a grin. “What if I tell you I can use the Fire of Masada to make the book disappear?”
The children’s bright faces instantly lost color.
“You – You can do that?” Matthew blurted out, and Marcos simply nodded, grinning victoriously. Had the boy known this during their adventure across time, things might have happened differently! “You – You can do that?” he repeated for want of what to say.
“Yes, monsieur,” the former cardinal replied, still smiling with glee. “I can make the book disappear with the help of the magic fire and some incantations, and no one will know its whereabouts afterwards.” Now he turned to Nora, who was still visibly dumbfounded. “This means, mademoiselle, that even if I’m caught by the government and they search me, they won’t find the book, no?”
“But they can lock you up and make sure you don’t use it by chaining your hands,” Stephanie aired after much thought.
“Good point,” Nora put in, finally finding her voice.
“Yes, but you forget I can also manipulate the book with my mind, little one,” reminded the former priest, “and that means being able to write on it once I have caused it to disappear.” It was his time to chuckle. “Imagine they won’t find the book on me, yet I can still write anybody’s name I so desire on it, even if my hands are shackled.”
Even Stephanie was now crestfallen. The clever man appeared to have adequately done his homework! “Guess. . . . Guess you’re right,” she stammered with resignation. “Can we go home now?”
“No, my dear,” their abductor refused, standing up straight and looking down at their bound figures. “I cannot let you go back because you know too much, but your sister I must bring along with me.”
“No way,” a fiery Nora snapped, her eyes brimming with hatred for the tall man standing before them. “I’ll never let you separate us! Besides, I’ll ruin your plan if you force me along! I’ll tell everyone what you’ve just told us and then our president will find a way to separate you from the book with the help of our scientists, but don’t think it will then be over for you, because you’ll be locked up in a prison within ten other prisons on a remote island and there you’ll spend the rest of your years without seeing your kids and grandkids . . . if you’ve got any.”
Nora’s bewildered sister and adopted brother were staring at her. Where in the world did all that come from?
Marcos wasn’t impressed into changing his mind, though. “No government, mademoiselle, can separate me from the book,” he reiterated, a crooked smile playing on his lips. “I will take over your country and all the others, make no mistake, because no one in your stupid country will be clever enough to demand for my head if their beloved president and all his cabinet ministers are missing.”
The man was obviously peeved by her condemnation and Matthew saw this as a bad sign. Due to Nora’s impromptu judgment, they could find themselves in a worse situation than they already were. “But how did you get here, cuz this is definitely not our time?” he suddenly asked the former priest, trying to reduce the tension between his foster sister and their captor as he looked around the church, which had no bulbs or fluorescent tubing, or any sense of modernity about it.
Marcos suddenly looked forlorn. “I wrote my name on the book’s first page before even beginning to use it, yes?”
The monks tried to stifle their laughter. They fell silent when the bald man glared at them.
“That was a very grave error,” Nora exclaimed, trying to sound nice all of a sudden.
“Yeah,” Matthew agreed. “I know the feeling.”
“But not to worry,” Marcos said, smiling. “I can now get to the present again since I’ve retrieved the book, thanks to you.”
“Don’t bother,” Nora advised. “Thank my adopted brother instead,” and she pointed out the scapegoat with her head.
“You forget your go-ahead order,” Matthew muttered. She was using that word again.
“You tricked me into giving it,” Nora snapped at him, and Marcos came forward, shaking his head.
“No, no, no, mademoiselle,” he berated the girl. “You must always take the blame for your decisions! Never blame another when it’s your fault.”
“But it’s his fault,” Nora cried. “He brought us here in the first place.”
“Maybe your decisions . . . helped his decisions?” the Frenchman suggested. “Maybe you’ve never treated him as your brother, no?”
“He’s not my brother.”
“And she’s not my sister, either.”
“Will you two stop it?” Stephanie yelled. “We’re all in this together.”
“And you both might be wrong about the nature of your . . . relationship?” the former cardinal hinted.
“What do you mean by that?” Nora demanded.
Marcos turned away and went back up the altar, grinning broadly. “Despite my painful ordeal in the hands of those fiends from hell,” he began, “I’ve been able to master the ancient Jesuit art of Demon-Spying all this time I’ve been here.”
“Creeps,” Stephanie exclaimed.
“With this skill bestowed on me by God, Himself, I’ve been able to watch the Booklords deep inside hell and observe their every move whenever they were not after me,” the Frenchman went on. “Hence, I knew that something was afoot when they went after those soldiers whose captain had erroneously written their names in the book, and of course they finally faced him when he also added his own name to that unfortunate list.”
And he paused. Briefly.
“I am not obliged to worsen your stay here by telling you what I found out about this man in those dark journeys I had with these fallen angels of God, but since you will remain here forever, I won’t mind indulging you, no?”
“Forever?” Nora was alarmed. “But you can’t do that.”
“Oh, sure I can,” Marcos noted, exuding confidence. “And by the way, you’ll enjoy the wine here! It’s perfect for dinner, if you can survive the guillotine, that is.”
“But we don’t look rich,” Nora protested. “Do we?”
“What’s a guillotine?” Matthew asked. “Nora?”
She was staring at her richly decorated, white dress with some trepidation. Knowing what happened during the revolution, Nora was right in getting worried.
“I’m sure you remember the story, my dear,” Marcos gently said, shrugging his shoulders as if to shake off Napoleon’s memory. “Now, he has left Elba and we all know what happened n
ext, don’t we?”
“You cannot leave us here,” Stephanie protested. “That is inhuman.”
“But I was left here for eight years,” the former catholic priest argued. “How much worse can it ever get?”
Silence prevailed.
“Eternity?” Nora suggested. The mere thought of it was very troubling. “But. . . . But . . .”
“Why did the Booklords do nothing all the time the book was in your attic?” Marcos correctly helped her with, having read her mind. “That’s because the book was not moving across barriers of time, then.” His darting eyes were laughing at the children. “It was stationary, immobile, and there was no way I could have controlled it, or was there any way they would have discovered it, if your so-called foster brother here hadn’t taken it with him to Dunkerque and commenced the search for his friends across the natural laws opposing the backward movement of time! It was only when I saw you three through their eyes making fools of yourselves that I also found it and quickly moved to prevent them from laying hands on it by using the fire of Masada.”
Again, people started shouting outside and Marcos looked disturbed. “There,” he concluded, finally satisfied with his explanations. “I guess we’re all happy now, no?”
“You’re not leaving us here,” Nora yelled, starting from her haunting thoughts. “We’re coming with you.”
“Of course, my dear! You alone, that is.”
Nora was shaking her head. “No way.”
“Untie her,” the bald man ordered the monks, coming down from the altar. “Leave the others here! Be quick about it.”
“Please don’t do this, holy one,” Stephanie pleaded with him as the monks moved to obey him.
“I happen to fancy your sister, my dear,” Marcos said, grinning, and grabbed Nora by an arm.
“Don’t let him do this,” Matthew urged the men. “He wants to destroy the world we know with the book!”
“You’re wasting your time, monsieur,” Marcos advised. “These are Trappists—they communicate with no outsider.”
“Let me go!” a struggling Nora shouted, but Marcos pulled her up by her arm and flipped open the book’s front cover with his free hand.
“Time to take over the world, my dear,” he hissed. “You’re coming with me.”
The voices outside were getting louder.
“Nora!” Stephanie cried as she was tied up with Matthew.
“Silence!” Marcos ordered her. Expertly holding the book with his free hand, he succeeded in using this hand’s thumb to get to his name.
The four hooded monks were already making for the vestry when the main church doors burst open and a motley crowd of angry-looking peasants and farmers carrying pitchforks and muskets stormed into the church.
“What’s happening?” Stephanie cried, fidgeting.
“The escape from Elba must be part of this,” Matthew snapped, struggling with his bonds. “We’ll be guillotined!”
“Guillo—what?”
“Guillotined! Dunno what that means!”
“So why do you say it?”
“Marcos said it, too!”
“Don’t say it again! It scares me!”
“Steph, they’re gone!” Matthew noted with fright, staring at Nora’s white dress, and the black clerical garb lying beside it. “What do we do now?”
The Black Book Page 66