Through the Moon Gate and Other Tales of Vampirism

by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

  Then she saw the antique china bowl on a side table by the door. A huge sign over it, shaped like a hand raised in benediction, read, CROSS MY PALM WITH SILVER AND I’LL REVEAL YOUR FUTURE.

  Oh-my-God!

  She yanked the sign off the table so hard the whole table collapsed. She grabbed the bowl just in time, and discovered the table was just a folding cardboard parson’s table draped with a round cloth. She set it up again and put the bowl back upside down.

  A gypsy woman swirled into the room, beads rattling. Immediately, her hands went out to right the bowl. “Cheesy little tables. You’d think a place like this could afford better props! What happened to your sign?”

  “Excuse me?” Gabby had no idea who the woman could be.

  “I work next door here. Cynthia. Where’s your sign? They did give you one?”

  “Uh, look, I don’t do this for money. Ever.”

  Cynthia’s whole demeanor changed. Gabby retreated a bit, sensing she’d offended the woman. Then Cynthia put one arm around her shoulders and said confidentially, “Look, if you take that attitude, you’ll undercut the trade. It makes us all look bad, especially if you’re any good. Are you?”

  “Well, my clients keep coming back....”

  “So. You are good. Well. You know, it’s all right to take money for a Reading if it’s the only way you can support yourself, which is the way it is for most of us here. And these kind of people, well. They’re not going to listen to free advice. If they have to pay for it, what you tell them will make an impression. You do tell the truth, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” she answered uncertainly.

  “You wouldn’t want it ignored just because you sold it cheap?”

  “No.”

  “So. There. You see? That’s settled. Where did you say that sign was?”

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll take care of what needs to be done.”

  Summoning all the courage she’d ever owned, Gabby ushered the woman out the door. People were milling around in the hall, comparing the readings they’d been given.

  Cynthia disappeared into the throng, and Gabby snatched the little table and folded it up, hiding the bowl underneath the heap of material, hoping it would blend into the décor. Then she asked a blessing and protection for her working space.

  She wouldn’t take money. She had a job, though she might not have tomorrow morning if she just picked up and left the party now. She was behind in her car payments and had no idea how she’d scrape together next month’s rent, but her teachers had warned her repeatedly of the dangers of going commercial.

  A voice asked, “Are you reading?”

  It was a woman with too much makeup and too little dress covering her hips. But other than that, she looked normal. “Yes,” said Gabby, “I was about to start.”

  The woman held her drink away and turned to display the red sequined outfit. “Like it? I’m the Virgin Victim of Dracula. His cape is lined with the same red sequins.”

  “Oh. Very impressive.” She wondered how many “virgin victims” the Draculas had brought. Gabby settled at the round table and spread out her silk reading cloth, then began shuffling her cards. “Have you ever had a Tarot reading before?” There was no alcohol on the woman’s breath. At least there was a chance this one reading would work.

  So the evening began. Before and after each reading, Gabby had to explain that there was no charge, that if the reading proved of value, then the recipient could make a donation to their own favorite charity, but even that wasn’t necessary. She got very tired of that speech.

  Three clients and an hour later, she had to ask for a NO SMOKING sign. After that, she fell into the natural trance in which she did her best reading, and words started to flow as the gestalt pattern of each card layout became perfectly clear.

  Words flowed from her, describing by analogy and anecdote, explaining by parables she originated on the spot, elaborating and embroidering on each card’s inner meaning for those who would listen. And a moment after she picked up the cards to reshuffle, she had forgotten what she’d said.

  The clients made little impression on her. They were patterns in the cards, classic problems in living life, layers and crosscurrents of power struggles in domestic affairs, knotty choices of vocation or job, serious quests for spiritual enlightenment.

  At one point she realized she needed to use two different decks, so she moved onto the floor where she could sit in lotus and spread out the work. taking the most portentous card from the first layout as significator for a second reading, she used the deck she had drawn and colored herself for the second reading. Comparing the two readings, she could penetrate the mists of the client’s subconscious, and finally understand where the anguish was coming from.

  “No, that’s not what you want,” Gabby said. “That’s what others want of you. What is it you, yourself, need?”

  The client, a young, skinny woman dressed as a Dracula, broke into sobs. “You’re right! My God, you’re right!”

  Gabby looked up and realized she had a huge audience peering down at them. “Somebody get a box of tissues.” Then she put her arm around the client and talked her back to composure. It took six tissues. She’d hit a nerve.

  The onlookers had been friends of the client, most of them privy to the actual problem. Gabby, herself, didn’t know and didn’t want to know the personal details. “It’s all right to kibitz, and it’s even good to watch if you’ve never seen this done before. All I can do is describe the general pattern of the seeker’s current life-crisis. I can’t reveal anything really private. I can’t foretell the future. I can only describe the decisions already made, where they might lead, and the options still open. I can’t even tell what’s the best solution. I can only describe the problem in terms of the value system inherent in the Tarot.”

  “Can I go next?” asked someone.

  “Certainly.” It was a young man in a Harlequin suit who folded his long legs tailor fashion and sat next to her.

  After that, she lost track. The crowd around her never thinned, and though many broke into astonished sobs during the readings, there was never a lack of volunteers. As usual with a group, the readings began to fall into a pattern echoing her own most recent pattern, of Hanged Man/Hermit/Lovers laced with varying combinations of 5’s and the themes of the 9 and 10 of Swords.

  As the crowd around her had heard her repeat the instructions to the seeker many times, she eventually left them out.

  It was close to midnight, and she had just organized the people waiting into a line, promising to get to them in order when one of the waiters brought her another Virgin Mary and announced, “Ms. Dean, it’s time for your break.” He raised his voice. “She’s entitled to half an hour now.”

  Suddenly, there was a space around her, and contrite murmurings of how tired she must be. Very quickly, the room emptied. Actually, she felt no strain. She was, however, stiff from sitting so long, and she discovered she’d been sitting in the cold draft from the window. It felt good to get up and move. And then she saw the table by the door.

  The bowl was back in place, and it was half full of currency, tens, twenties, and even a few crisp hundreds. It looked like more than a month’s salary.

  What am I going to do?

  Not even wanting to touch it, she pushed out into the crowded hall where people were milling about or waiting in line at the other doors. Some of the Draculas now wore prize ribbons pinned to their lapels.

  She found the lavatory when someone came out. She went in, glad that her makeup, wallet and necessaries were in a leather pouch tied to her waste, part of the medieval flavor of the witch’s costume. Refreshed, she emerged to find their host was working up and down the hall, making sure everyone was happy. He seemed to be enjoying himself immensely.

  She plastered herself against the wall to let him pass, but he spotted her. “Ah, Ms. Dean, you’ve become quite a hit!” He reached into his breast pocket and produced an elegantly printed envelope which he presented to her.
“Your fee. Only a token compared to what you’ve been collecting.”

  Pushing the envelope away, she shook her head. He drew her hand up and curled it around the envelope. It was a thick package. “I’m so grateful to Tom for getting you to come. You’re worth more than any of the others. I won’t forget the favor.” With a raised eyebrow and a nod, he was gone into the crowd.

  Clutching the envelope, stunned, she felt large, strong hands came onto her shoulders, kneading the tension she hadn’t realized was there. She stifled a yelp, and spun to find Titus behind her. “Oh! You shouldn’t do that!”

  “I think you need it. You’ve been working harder than anyone, and with far better results. Ready to leave yet?”

  “Oh, I can’t.” This man is the temptation I have to resist. But there had never been all that many personable men interested in her.

  “Listen, Gabby,” he said leaning over to speak softly into her ear as he worked on her back, “some people here are dealing. This is a Wall Street crowd, very high class, very elegant, but still, the place could be raided. I don’t want to get caught in anything like that and neither do you.”

  “Dealing,” she repeated, stricken. She turned and noted inanely that the rental tag was gone from his collar.

  She wanted to grab her Tarot bag and go. It was plausible that someone here would be dealing. She’d done many readings indicative of substance and power abuse. Still, she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, and this man was the temptation she had to resist. He’d certainly found her most sensitive button, too.

  He was just the sort of man no sane woman would get involved with; so sexy she could hardly stand it, so insightful he found her buttons before they’d even had a single date, and so manipulative he’d push those buttons shamelessly. What sort of marriage could that lead to? Besides, she didn’t want to get married. She was a career woman on the way up. Wasn’t she?

  “Titus,” she said, knowing she should keep it formal but unable to remember his last name, “I can’t. I promised at least ten more people.”

  “You should make them come to your office.”

  “What?”

  “Good psychologists don’t give away free samples.”

  “Oh, no. You’ve got it all wrong.” She explained she was only a features editor for an Advertiser distributed free to home owners in Bergen County, just across in New Jersey.

  He eyed the knot of people beginning to collect outside her door and the fervent, animated discussions developing among them. “I’d say you’re in the wrong line of work.”

  “Titus, people always behave this way about the Tarot because the results run so completely counter to everything we think we know about reality. The Tarot works. Come on, try it, you’ll see.”

  This time she took his hand and tugged him through a barrier, not shrubbery but people. It parted before them and closed behind them. As she entered the room, she tossed the envelope into the bowl, noticing that there was as much in there now as there had been when she’d left the room. She realized she’d vaguely hoped somebody would steal it.

  The floor had been cleaned up, and her things were set up on the table again. She shrugged. She had, out of habit, put all her cards away and wrapped them, so there was no harm done. Titus went with her as far as the client’s seat, but as she moved around the table, he balked.

  “No, no. This is ridiculous.”

  “Suspend your disbelief,” she suggested.

  “I’m an astrophysicist here for a convention. This just doesn’t fit my concept of reality. Not at all.”

  Maybe that’s what’s so strange about his aura. She realized the queasy feeling was back again. Perhaps it meant he was a heavily repressed psychic, or a deeply disturbed person. There was no denying the rich sexual attraction she felt, but it would be a bad mistake to get involved, especially knowing how incompatible they were. Besides, if he was not from around here, she’d never see him again after tonight. She was glad she’d declined to go out with him.

  Then she looked up at him, and he was looking down at her as if she were beautiful. She had to say something or she’d seem to be staring. “Why aren’t you wearing a prize ribbon? You’re certainly the best Dracula I’ve seen.”

  She was immediately embarrassed at what her mouth had said of its own accord, but he responded levelly, “I didn’t expect to stay for the contest, but I’m glad I did.”

  “Oh, why?” She was enjoying just being near him and despite the cluster of people politely hanging back by the door, she wanted to prolong the experience.

  “I hadn’t realized so many more Draculas would turn up.”

  It wasn’t the flirtatious response she’d expected. “Are you a connoiseur of Draculas?”

  “No, I was just looking for someone. He hasn’t come, and the atmosphere is even worse now. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go somewhere for coffee? There’s a Denny’s up on Rt. 59.”

  She was ready to go simply because he hadn’t invited her to a bar or a dance hall. Temptation. “Titus, I hate to point this out, but I’m part of that distasteful atmosphere. I don’t think you’d really care for the company of someone who interprets the world in terms of occult principles.”

  “No, no!” Leaning closer, he said confidentially, “The atmosphere I referred to was the alcohol and drugs, and the people who need that to have fun or make fortunes trading on others’ weaknesses. It is dangerous to stay here.”

  “Then I guess you’d better go. I did promise the others in line.”

  He withdrew. She was overwhelmed with a sudden regret and had to grit her teeth not to call out to him. He paused and turned back to her, frowned, then said, “I’ll just watch you work for a while. Okay?”

  He wants to protect me! It wasn’t the way most men reacted to her, and it felt oddly thrilling to be so valued. But then she took another look at him as he turned to inspect the crowd. Sideways, he looked like Frank Sinatra in the oldest movies, so thin a strong wind would blow him over. Mafia Muscle wouldn’t even notice him. But even that cynical observation couldn’t erase the thrill warming her inside.

  Then a black woman in a diaphanous ghost costume complete with clanking chains came forward. Gabby remembered the costume and began shuffling.

  The work picked up as it had left off, and she forgot all about Titus. Occasionally, though, as one client left and another sat down, there would be a break in the wall of bodies through which she glimpsed someone putting money in her bowl. She began to wonder if she could take it all home. Maybe, if it was still there at the end of the evening it would mean she was properly entitled to it. After all, she’d never done so many readings in a row, nor worked so hard at them, nor had she ever been so fiendishly accurate.

  She began to enjoy the working a new way. A peculiar gratification swept through her each time she spread out the cards and drew forth a precise statement of the problem. At some point, the queasiness denoting Titus’s presence vanished but she hardly noticed. She’d hit a breakthrough in her skills. For the first time in her life, she felt she was worth any amount of money, praise or respect offered her. And she saw that as she became more accurate, her clients left more money in the bowl. She could see a mound of green paper heaping above the rim.

  Aware of the spellbound awe of her audience, she began to strive to increase the effect. Occasionally, now, she began to miss. One client simply could not make sense of what she said, and with another, she found the cards would not synthesize into a meaning. But even when she had to give up, disappointing a client, others came forward eagerly.

  They were on the third box of tissues, and the crowd had thinned, the dull roar of noise from down stairs having abated significantly, when five burly Draculas stalked into the room. Three of them spread out as one approached the empty client’s chair. Unobtrusively, people drifted out of the room, but Gabby hardly noticed when the last of them left her alone with the four men.

  Through the open window she heard doors clattering and cars starting up, pe
ople laughing and calling to each other.

  The man before her reached in to his breast pocket, fumbling with the ribbon and pendant of a replica of a Royal Order, and brought out six one-thousand dollar bills. He placed three of the bills on the table before her. “It seems you can actually do this witch stuff. So tell me what’s going to happen at 4 a.m. today, and the other three bills are yours, too.” He fingered the bills he still held.

  I could be completely out of debt. I could afford to go back to school. But she said, “The Tarot can’t predict the future.”

  He leaned closer, looming over her. “Now you and I both know that’s not true. You’ve already done it accurately for several people tonight.” He exuded the same kind of quiet menace that her boss and other powerful men did. It didn’t mean he was the one who was dealing. It could be about some insider trading on the Tokyo exchange.

  She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. Suppose I can’t do it? Or suppose I get it all wrong?

  He moved the deck of cards in front of her. “Do it.”

  Hands shaking, she shuffled the cards and set them down for him to cut, muttering the instructions with her mouth while her mind was frantically invoking Protection. The familiar routine steadied her hands and the shroud of the reading trance settled over her. She snapped each card face up on the table in a Celtic Cross. The pattern coalesced as crisp and clear as any she’d seen that night.

  Devil crossed by the Tower, with the Moon beneath and the Page of Swords behind.

  He’s dealing drugs and there’s a spy in his organization who’s set him up.

  Violence, shocking revelations. It was just supposition, but it was the only interpretation that fit both the circumstances and the archetypical meanings of the cards in pattern.

  She exposed the Five Swords above, and Judgment Reversed in front of him. Nine of Wands Reversed in the 9th, and in the tenth, World Reversed.

  He fears failure, is beset on all sides, is pitied and hates it, knows he’s beaten. Deep down inside, he wants to be caught, but is terrified of what will happen then.