‘Take it and get out of here,’ Jurczyk went on. ‘Do not come back. You will not be welcome here again.’
I could not speak, could not bring a single word to my lips, whether of protest or denial. I understood my own innocence, but without knowing what crime I was being accused of, how could I find the words to refute it? I got to my feet awkwardly, knocking over the chair on which I had been sitting. Grabbing my still-open briefcase, I made for the door and hurried into the passage. Jurczyk came after me, limping to the opening in order to watch me go, as though afraid I might hide somewhere or leave the book behind on the landing.
At the head of the stairs, I turned and looked back. Jurczyk stood framed in the open doorway, half in shadow, half in light, a look of mingled fear and anger fixed on his face, like an ugly mask. I do not know what made me tear my eyes away and look along the passage to the pool of shadows at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. But as I looked I was certain that something moved there, furtively, without a sound. It was merely the flapping of a shadow within a shadow, but it seemed to fill the darkness with palpable terror. I turned and fled down the stairs.
Back in my rooms, I filled a large glass with whisky and drank until my nerves felt calm again. What had Jurczyk meant by his outburst? The little book had clearly been familiar to him, it or its title, and it had frightened him badly. Thinking of my own experience, I did not have to guess what it was he had found disturbing. And I suspected that there might be more to the volume of spells than I, with my limited understanding of such matters, could possibly know. Given time, perhaps I could convince Jurczyk of my sincerity. But in the meantime, I would have to act alone.
The thought of knowingly spending another night alone with the Matrix Aeternitatis in my rooms was far from attractive. I could not leave it with anyone, possessed no bank deposit box in which to keep it, knew no one with whom I could talk about it. And I was, in any case, certain by now that the book was, in some sense that I could ill define, capable of evil. It went against everything I believed even to admit that such a thing could be possible, that an inanimate object could be capable of anything other than mere existence. But my own experience and Jurczyk’s reaction had convinced me that to keep the book would be to risk consequences I could not as yet even guess at.
It took me a long time to make my mind up. The book sat on my desk, drawing me to itself again and again. I felt a growing urge to open it, to see once more the drawing that had so alarmed me, that had formed the basis for such terrible dreams. But the longer I sat there, the more certain I became that the book must be destroyed. I guessed its rarity and knew it might be almost priceless. But with every minute that passed, my impulse to destroy it grew stronger.
At last I made my mind up. I got together wood and coals, laid them in my bedroom grate and lit them. In a little while, the coals caught, and I soon had a good fire going. I collected the book and hastened to throw it on the flames. It seemed almost to resist me. My hand shook as I held it over the grate, as though a force other than my own will was trying to take charge. But I had come this far and was determined to be done with it. I threw the book onto the coals. It would not catch at first. But then, quite suddenly, it burst into flame, all at once, as though soaked in petrol. Within a matter of minutes, it had been quite consumed. I poked the ashes, breaking and scattering them. Some drifted up the chimney, flimsy white tissues lighter than smoke, others fell among the coals and were lost. I felt a great weight fall from me.
That night, I was kept awake by a constant scratching sound behind the wainscoting, as though rats or mice were scuttling in the walls.
SIX
It took me some days to recover from the incident. The sight of old Jurczyk, whom I had previously known only as a kind-hearted and affable man, shouting at me, telling me never to return, had been deeply upsetting.
I resumed work, but with a heavier heart than I had hoped. As the days passed and I put the incident at the Fraternity library behind me, my thoughts grew less perturbed. The scuttling sounds did not return the second night, nor any night after. The landlord must have put down rat poison, I thought. The shadows I had felt creeping up on me again had all but dispersed. From time to time, in the grey weather, I would feel uneasy walking past a dark opening or as I caught a sight of something moving against a window late at night. But, for the most part, I kept to crowded streets and strayed as little as possible beyond the reach of streetlights.
My research was hampered by my contretemps with Jurczyk. Such was the close-knittedness of the occult network in Edinburgh, I felt sure that word had by now gone round that little world to the effect that I was a thief or worse. I stuck with the more mainstream groups, people less likely to be in touch with the Fraternity of the Old Path, or its members. But I soon grew frustrated, knowing that the richest information would come, not from people like these, but from the true adepts, those most deeply devoted to the magical arts. I thought now and then of contacting Jurczyk again, possibly by letter, in order to explain myself; but each time I put it off until it began to seem too late to retrieve the situation.
I had almost resigned myself to carrying out a less wide-ranging research programme than I had originally envisaged, when matters took another unexpected turn. It was the middle of January, and I was in a pub in Bank Street. Ramsey McLean had asked me to join him for a drink. The invitation had been phrased quite casually – ‘a wee drink and a chance to catch up on news of Stornoway’; but I knew it was really to give him an opportunity to check up on my state of health. I knew that Iain was due to finish his classes later, and I was expecting him to join us when he was ready.
McLean brought two fine malt whiskies to the table, and we sat and talked like old times. He knew almost everyone in Stornoway, and had endless questions to ask about this or that household, about the children and grandchildren of neighbours.
When an hour or so had passed, the doctor finished his third whisky and set the empty glass on the table.
‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Evening surgery starts in half an hour. Andrew, you’re greatly improved. Keep taking the herbal drink. When the bottle’s empty, pop into the surgery for a new one. I’ll give you a once-over. By the looks of you, you’ll be on top form by the spring.’
I said I would stay on to wait for Iain. McLean shook hands and left, and I went to the bar for a soft drink. I had barely returned to my table when a man sat down next to me.
‘Andrew Macleod,’ he said. ‘Where on earth have you been hiding?’
I turned awkwardly, almost spilling my drink. For a moment I did not recognize him, for his face was not one I associated with the place or the time of day. His name was Duncan Mylne, an advocate, like half the other customers in the pub. We were near the Law Courts here.
He and I had met a few times at meetings of the Fraternity of the Old Path, of which he was a long-standing member. I had been particularly intrigued by him, for he did not fit the stereotype of the cult adherent in terms of social class, intellect, education, or anything else, as far as I could see. We had spoken at length once or twice, and I had marked him down as someone I should get to know better. At the same time, I had been a little wary of him, fearing that, with his unusually incisive mind – a mind long practised in sniffing out inconsistencies and nailing lies – he would see through my flimsy cover.
I shook hands and told him I had been ill.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. He was a man of about fifty, in excellent physical shape, conservatively but expensively dressed, and well groomed. He spoke with the upper-class accent of a Scot who had attended Fettes College and taken a first degree at Oxford before studying law at Edinburgh.
‘You were becoming a familiar face at our meetings,’ he went on. ‘The Fraternity can always do with fresh blood, and for my own part, a little intelligent conversation never goes amiss. I had high hopes of receiving you for initiation before long. Are you better now?’
‘Yes . . . yes, quite better,’
I stammered. He made me nervous in some way, I did not know how. As though his gaze penetrated me, as though his thoughts reached beneath my skin.
‘Well, then, I trust it won’t be long before we see you back at Ainslie Place.’
I reddened, not knowing if Jurczyk had spoken to him about me or not.
‘I’m afraid . . .’ I started, coming to an abrupt halt almost at once. I decided there was nothing for it but to confront the matter head-on. ‘Look, I may as well tell you, if you haven’t heard already, that I had a . . . a spot of unpleasantness with your Mr Jurczyk. I think he suspected me of trying to steal a book from the library.’
‘Did you?’
‘No, of course not, I . . .’
‘Then I don’t see why you should make a thing of it.’
‘It was just . . . He was very angry. I thought he might have spoken to other members.’
‘Jurczyk? No, he couldn’t have.’ He paused. There was a trace of whisky on his lower lip. His look was disconcerting. ‘I take it you know about Jurczyk?’
There was something in his voice that made my heart shiver.
‘Know?’
‘What happened to him.’
‘No, I’ve heard nothing. What . . .?’
‘He was found dead a couple of weeks ago. Margaret Laurie found him in the library one Thursday morning when she went in to type some letters. He’d been there overnight, so the doctor said.’
My heart had stopped shivering. I was cold everywhere now, just cold, as if it had become winter inside me.
‘How . . . How did he die?’
‘Heart attack. So they say. Margaret said she thought something might have frightened him. She told me his face was contorted, as though he had tried to cry out. But that’s not unusual in a heart attack. I’ve listened to enough medical reports in my time. Pain, I told her, not fear. That’s what made him look like that.’
I put down my drink. I was feeling sick. He was lying there, Jurczyk, I could see him on the library floor. Crying out.
‘When was this exactly?’ I asked.
He looked at me oddly.
‘When? I’m not sure. Early this month, a week or so after New Year.’
‘Could it have been the eighth?’
‘It could have been. Yes, I think it was. What’s wrong?’
‘That . . . was the day I had the argument with him. You don’t think . . .?’
He smiled reassuringly.
‘Oh, I’m sure not. He was an old man. A sick man. It was just a matter of time. You shouldn’t worry about that. Put it out of your head.’
I looked up and caught sight of Iain on the other side of the lounge, coming towards me. As was usual when he was lecturing, he did not wear his dog-collar. For some reason it relieved me that he did not. As he came up and greeted me, Mylne got down from his stool and picked up his coat.
‘I’ve got to be going,’ he said. ‘I have a big case to mug up on before tomorrow morning. Andrew, you must come to a meeting soon. I’ll pick you up some evening, we’ll go together.’
And then he was gone.
That night, I started dreaming again, and each night after, for a week. Every night the same dream, but always a little more; and with the lengthening of the dream, an intensification of dread.
On the first night, I dreamed I was back on Lewis, in Stornoway, with a great wind and a black sky, the sea in torment, raised high by the storm, leafless winter trees, bent and snapping. I was running through darkened streets, the doors and windows of the houses shut fast, no light shining in any of them, as though I was running through a city of the dead.
Suddenly, at the end of the street, a great black church rose up out of nowhere, grim and vast and silent, like no church I had ever seen on the island or elsewhere. As my eyes fell on it, I awoke with a start, its black shape still before my eyes and the sound of the wind rushing in my ears.
On the second and successive nights, I ran again and again through those dark, silent streets, closer and closer to the door of the black church, a door that reared high above me, dwarfing me. On the third night, I pushed it open and saw for the first time its cathedral-like interior, forbidding and dark, lit only here and there with a few stunted candles. Just as I awoke again, the door slammed behind me, cutting off the wind, and I could hear from within a strange, mournful sound, as of many voices rising and falling in unison.
By the third night, things had begun to escalate. This time, when I opened the door and looked inside, I could hear the sound of deep-throated chanting, rising to fill the vast spaces of the vault. As I listened, I thought at first that what I could hear were the metrical psalms of my boyhood. The swelling voices lifted in dirge-like strains, mournful, filled with a dark yearning, and I was sure I had come upon a great congregation of the people of Lewis, perhaps a gathering of generations of the island’s dead in a dark cathedral beyond the confines of the real world. But as I listened more closely, I realized that the words were not in Gaelic, but in a language I had never before heard.
Night after night I returned to that place in my dreams, listening to the strange chanting, straining to make out the physical details of the vast chamber in which I stood. My eyes seemed to grow rapidly accustomed to the dark, and soon I could make out the figures of the congregation standing with their backs to me, facing a dimly lit altar at the far end of the building. Their voices were deep and sonorous, but they neither swayed nor moved their heads as they chanted. Out of sight, a priest sang out the verses of a liturgy unknown to me. Strange shapes, barely visible in the pale candlelight, lurked in the shadows of the walls all about, statues or gargoyles. Something about their outlines made me glad I could not see them more clearly.
Each night, my feelings of unease mounted. I knew, without having been told, that in the shadows some unknown menace waited. The deeper I was carried into the body of the church, the greater grew my sense of foreboding. The volume of the chanting rose constantly, and with it the certainty that something unpleasant lurked ahead of me. As I drew closer to the congregation, I saw that they were dressed in white robes that fell shroudlike from shoulder to heel, and that at their feet scuttled thin white shapes, larger than rats, and more agile.
One night, as I stood filled with dread at the heart of the black church, the chanting abruptly stopped. A chilling silence filled the dark spaces. For what seemed an age, I stood in the silence and darkness, reluctantly staring at the robed figures in front of me. Then, as if at a command, they started to turn where they stood, to face me where I waited, transfixed, behind them. As my eyes fell on their faces, I woke screaming in pure terror.
I did what I could to avoid sleep the following night. The thought of what I might see made me dread unconsciousness. I drank cup after cup of strong coffee and played music throughout the night. But I could not hold out. Just before dawn, I became drowsy, and in the end, slipped into a deep sleep. When I awoke, it was early afternoon. To my surprise, I realized that my sleep had been untroubled. Untroubled, yet not normal. For I had dreamt no dreams at all.
SEVEN
Duncan Mylne came for me on the evening following the last dream. It did not then occur to me to ask how he knew my address. He arrived unannounced, taking my presence for granted, never questioning that I might not be ready to be collected and taken to the Fraternity. There was a presumption about him, an air of someone who does not even imagine that he may be denied. I made no objection, however. It was raining, and I was grateful for the lift. And, although I did not feel quite easy in his presence, I was sure a better acquaintance with him would prove rewarding.
The meeting was unexceptional. Watching the initiates perform their dreary rites, I could not help letting my eyes stray more than once to Mylne. He seemed bored with the whole business, like someone who goes through a ritual for the sake of habit or appearance, rather than with any inner conviction. Perhaps, I thought, this is no more than the public façade, and there are other rites reserved for an inner circle to wh
ich he and a few others belong. That would explain why a man of his intelligence might put up with the banality of this little clique, and the theatricality of its performances, week after week.
Afterwards, driving back through a slow drizzle that had set in for the night, we chatted of everyday matters, as though returning from a play for which neither of us had much cared. But as we came into the High Street, he turned and spoke in a more earnest voice.
‘Andrew,’ he said, ‘I feel we need to talk. Can you spare half an hour to have a drink? I keep some very good whisky in my rooms. They’re just down here, next to Parliament House.’
I might very well have suspected this no more than a ruse to seduce me. Mylne was, I knew, unmarried, and he had the slightly concealed manner of a homosexual whose first encounters with other men had predated the liberalization of the law; but I did not think he had designs on me, at least not of the sexual kind. I accepted his invitation readily, believing it an opportunity to probe a little more deeply into the nature of his affiliation with the Fraternity, and the extent of his involvement in occult matters.
His rooms were, like his dress, understated and expensive. Above a black marble fireplace hung an oil painting of a man in legal costume, dating from the last century. On either side of it stood two large bookcases packed with richly-bound volumes. The main chamber was more like a living room than working quarters.
He took my coat and hung it in a small closet in the hall. Within minutes he had a fire going in the hearth. I was instructed to make myself comfortable in a deep, damask-upholstered armchair, while Mylne busied himself with glasses and whisky.
‘No ice,’ he said, handing me my glass. ‘Don’t even ask me to add water. This stuff has to be taken neat.’
When I sipped it I understood: any whisky I had had before was paint stripper by comparison.
‘Well,’ he said, settling himself in the chair facing mine, ‘tell me about this business with the book.’
The Matrix Page 5