I finished my drink and went outside. The box of books was still where I had left it; I had almost hoped that someone might have stolen them. I found the bicycle and brought it round to the cul-de-sac. Looking more closely, I could see that the air of desolation extended beyond the shop, touching in varying degrees the houses on either side of it. Curtainless windows and neglected paintwork suggested that several flats were empty. None of those above the shop seemed occupied.
I was desperate now, sensing that I had been outmanoeuvred at every step. It was not yet clear to me why the book should be important, but I associated its presence with a measurable sense of threat. If I could not get rid of it, I would remain in greater danger than ever.
On an impulse, I rifled through the box until I had found the copy of the Matrix. Leaving the books against the wall of the shop, I cycled to a corner grocer’s shop I had passed on my way. He sold me a small pocket torch and batteries. Properly equipped, I went back to find the rear alley that served the culde-sac. It was a narrow, dingy lane smelling of garbage and dog shit. I found it hard to believe that sunshine ever entered it.
Finding the rear entrance to the shop was a simple matter of counting from the end. There was a rickety gate with a lock that would not have kept a toddler out. A sharp kick and I was in the back yard.
The door to the shop itself proved more difficult, but a window next to it had been broken. I slipped my hand inside and found a catch. Moments later I was crawling through the open window. Switching on the torch, I saw that I was in a tiny room that seemed to have served as a kitchen. There was a sink, and near it an electric ring. Everything was coated in a thick film of dust, as though preserved for the next tenant. A grimy milk bottle stood on the draining board, there were cans on a shelf, their labels faded and peeling.
I stepped through the open door and found myself in a larger room lined with empty shelves. This must have been where my vanished bookseller kept his better stock. I played the beam of my torch along the shelves, wondering if I dared leave the Matrix Aeternitatis here. Thinking it over, I knew it would not be enough: he had to take it from me personally.
It was much colder here than it had been outside. My breath lay on the torch’s beam like mist. The floor was white with a carpet of undisturbed dust. The curtain that had been there on my first visit, separating the front of the shop from the rear, still hung in its place, grey and threadbare. No one had been here in a very long time. And I knew that I had made a mistake in coming, that something was very wrong.
It was growing palpable now. What had started as a vague feeling of unease was turning rapidly to a choking sensation, and an acute awareness of the presence of real evil. Not only the room in which I stood, not just the shop, but the entire building was saturated with it. I had the sensation that my body had turned to felt. I was limp and immobile, a rag doll equipped with sight and hearing.
As I stood there, perfectly still, struggling for breath and fighting to regain volition, I became aware that a low sound had started in the front of the shop. It was at first impossible to identify. At one point, I almost thought someone had switched on a radio with the volume turned down. But the sound grew a little at a time until, in a moment of horrified recognition, I realized what it was. Someone was playing a violin, and the piece they were playing was the largo from Bach’s concerto for two violins in D minor.
No, not ‘someone’: Catriona. How did I know? Because I had heard her play that piece time and time again until I could anticipate the exact fingering, the pauses, the fractional errors that she always strove to eliminate. Her playing was like a glass with her fingerprints smeared all over it. And I knew there was no recording, that there never had been.
The playing continued. I remained standing in that same freezing spot, unable to stir, sick at the thought of what might be in the next room, revolted by the thought of what Duncan Mylne had done, terrified by what he planned to do next.
The playing stopped. The last notes lingered in the air for a few moments, then faded and were gone. I was trembling, but still I could not move. The music continued to play in my head, bar after bar, like a record. And I knew that, if I closed my eyes I would see Catriona standing with her violin pressed under her chin, her eyes catching mine as she played. I was sick with tension, wondering if it would begin again, the same or another piece. And all the time I knew that the force that held this place together was growing in strength.
I kept my eyes fixed on the curtain separating the front from the rear. The light of the torch lay on it, as though it were the curtain in a theatre, about to be raised or drawn aside. Each time I breathed, a thin coat of dust settled in my mouth. There was a foul silence throughout the building.
The curtain rippled suddenly, as though a current of air had passed through it, and then grew still again. I could not move, and I wondered if this was another dream. But even in the most vivid of my dreams I had never felt so frightened. This was reality.
I am not sure that I can easily describe what happened next. It still sickens me to think of it. I remained standing in that same spot, expecting at any moment to see Catriona materialize beside me. Had I not just heard her play, had I not seen the curtain move? A moment later, I grew more certain of it: the air around me filled with an unmistakable perfume.
She did not materialize; that is to say, I did not see a figure appear. But out of the darkness I felt something touch my cheek. It was a hand, the skin soft and warm, though I could see nothing. The hand continued to caress my face. I stood there rigid, wanting to scream, to pull away, to run. And then she stepped closer, and her arms were round me, pulling me to her, embracing me. I could feel her body, invisible yet disturbingly real, pressing against my own, and her lips kissing my cheeks, my nose, my forehead, and at last my lips.
It was Catriona, not a simulacrum, not a doppelgänger. I could not mistake the very special physicality of that embrace, the movements of her hands, the teasing and surrender of her lips. I might almost have succumbed, might have given in to the embrace and put my own arms round her: dear God, I came so very close to that. Reason screamed at me to run, my eyes told me there was nothing there, that, whatever it was, it was not Catriona; but my body, so unexpectedly caressed, had its own responses.
It came to me that I had once read in one of the books lent to me by Duncan, that if a succubus came to a man, whether waking or in a dream, he should turn to it and ask its name. I pulled my lips away from the mouth that was kissing mine.
‘What is your name?’ I asked. And then in Latin and Hebrew and Arabic, ‘What is your name?’
The air, that had been so sweetly perfumed, changed suddenly, and I started coughing as though ashes, newly burned, had been pressed against my face. Instead of lips, I felt a tongue licking my skin; not a human tongue, but longer and rough to the touch.
Whether it was my sudden revulsion, or the mere effect of the question I had asked, I found myself capable of movement. I turned and ran for the door. Behind me, a voice started calling. Catriona’s voice.
‘Andrew, come back. It’s me, I need you, Andrew . . .’
I carried on running and did not stop until I had reached the alleyway. My bicycle was waiting where I had left it.
TWENTY-FOUR
The Matrix Aeternitatis was still in my coat pocket. There was no point in going back for the other books: the old man would stay out of my way to be sure he gave me no opportunity to palm the volume on to him.
I sat alone for a long time, trying to regain my composure. My nerves were in shreds, and even though I downed three or four glasses of whisky in a row, I could not calm myself. It may sound trivial to write of it, but to be embraced so materially by what was less than air had filled me with a sense of loathing as though, making love to a beautiful young woman, I had opened my eyes to find myself bedded with a bare corpse.
Since I could not now rid myself of that hateful book, I decided to look at it more closely and to see if I could determine why it
had been forced on me and why its presence seemed to bring such horrors in its wake. I got up and took the copy from my pocket.
I could see straight away that it possessed two titles. The first, Kalibool Kolood, meant ‘The Matrix of Eternal Life’. The second title, Resaalatool Shams ilaal Helaal, meant ‘The Epistle of the Sun to the New Moon’.
I reread the short prologue by the English translator, Nicholas Ockley, but nothing in it shed any light on my dilemma. Ockley did not, in fact, seem to know much about either the book or its author beyond their evil reputation, and, as I read his translation, it gradually became apparent to me that he had worked, not from the original Arabic, but from the Latin, and that the Latin itself was by no means always faithful to the original.
Confused by these misreadings and the uncertainty they provoked in me, I determined to try my hand at the original. I still had my dictionaries and grammars, and I thought I could make good progress with what help the translations might provide.
I discovered two things straight away: the author’s identity and the period when he had lived. Both the Latinizer and Ockley called him ‘Avimetus’, but in the exordium to the Arabic version the author had written out his name in full, together with that of his father, as was the custom: ‘wa min ba‘d. Hakadha yaqul al-‘abd al fani . . . To begin: thus says this evanescent servant, Abu Ahmad ‘Abd Allah ibn Sulayman al-Fasi al-Maghribi . . .’ Abu Ahmad ‘Abd Allah, the son of Solomon, the man from Fez, the Moroccan . . .
I set the book down. A horrid truth had started to dawn. Of course, I could very well have guessed the first part of his name from the Latin form: Avimetus would have come from the old spelling, Aboo Ahmet, thus Avoo Ahmetus, thus Avimetus. But the rest would have meant nothing even had I read them that first time. Now, however . . .
I leafed to the back of the Fara’id, the dictionary of classical Arabic I had used while in Morocco. During my sessions with Sheikh Ahmad, I had sometimes jotted down notes on the blank pages at the back. In the course of one lesson, he had explained to me something of his lineage. I had written the details down dutifully, without giving them real attention. Now, I looked more closely.
He was, he had said, born Ahmad, the son of ‘Abd Allah. That meant that his father would have been called Abu Ahmad ‘Abd Allah – ‘the father of Ahmad, ‘Abd Allah’. I looked at my notes again. Ahmad’s grandfather had been called Sulayman, his great-grandfather ‘Abd al-Rasul, and his great-great-grandfather ‘Umar.
I picked up the Matrix again and leafed through the first few pages. There on the third page was what I was looking for: ‘I learned these things from my father, who learned them in turn from his father Sulayman; and Sulayman had them from his father ‘Abd al-Rasul, who had them from his father ‘Umar.’
It did not seem possible that this, a book whose English translation had been published in 1598, could have been written by the father of a man I had spoken to only a few months earlier. But Duncan Mylne’s voice echoed repeatedly through my head: In the account he left of their meeting, he wrote that the sheikh was already an old man then.
But when had the author of the Matrix himself lived? I turned at once to the colophon, a brief passage at the end of a text where the author would give brief details of the date when he had completed his task or the scribe the day he ended the labour of transcription. I was not disappointed. Sheikh Abu Ahmad had followed convention to the letter:
‘Completed by the hand of this wretched servant in the imperial city of Fez on the fifth day of Rabi‘ al-Awwal 585, in the reign of the just and benevolent Caliph, Lord of Spain and Morocco, Sultan Ya‘qub ibn Yusuf al-Mansur.’
It could not have been clearer. The Kalibool Kolood had been finished on the twenty-third of April, 1189.
The purpose of the letter was not hard to find. In it, Abu Ahmad claimed, he had passed on to his eldest son the secret of all secrets, the key to mastery over life and death. Anyone who wished to conquer death should recite the spells and perform the rituals detailed in the text.
The purpose of the Matrix Aeternitatis, then, was to teach men a method for attaining everlasting life, not through religion or mysticism or alchemy, but by magic. The book itself was to be the matrix for survival. But by the time I had finished reading, I was certain that there was something more to it than that, and I was reasonably certain what it was: the power to return to life those already dead.
TWENTY-FIVE
It was dark, and I was frightened. I had not realized until now quite how ancient was the evil that had been wrapping me in its cloak for so many months. I thought of d’Hervilly in his cold mansion above Tangier, paying homage to gods older than the city. Of faces glimpsed by fire- or candlelight, old faces, heavily wrinkled, with the scent of death on them. And that terrible old man in Fez, sleeping death’s sleep each night, veiled like the new moon in darkness, ready to rise and grow again. Sheikh Abu Ahmad had promised eternal life: but what sort of life, and on what conditions?
I could not bear to stay in my flat. Remembering my promise to ring my mother every night, I went out to the phone box. She answered straight away and sounded more worried than before.
‘He had another attack today. It’s still with him, poor soul; he’s in terrible pain. The doctor says he’s to be flown ashore as soon as possible. They’ve reserved a bed for him at the Royal Northern Infirmary in Inverness. I’ll be going with him, of course. No doubt if he needs to go to Edinburgh they’ll send him there. Do you think you could manage to come up?’
I hesitated. There was no real excuse I could give, and I could not begin to tell my mother the true reason.
‘I’ll do what I can,’ I said. ‘Give me a day or two to clear things here.’
‘He’ll not be in that long, Andrew. He’s only to stay a couple of days, just for them to run their tests. A scan of some sort, the doctor said he’d have.’
‘I’m sure that’s right, though I daresay they’ll find nothing. No tumour or anything like that.’
‘You sound very certain, Andrew. I wish I could be as sure as you. Even Dr Boyd says he doesn’t know what they’ll find.’
‘Let’s say it’s an instinct I have.’
‘Do come up, son. He’ll be pleased to see you, I know. He’ll only speak in Gaelic now. Every night he has bad dreams, but he won’t say what they’re about. Maybe he’ll talk to you. It would do him good.’
We talked a little longer, and I promised I would ring the following night. I said nothing about Catriona’s grave or the dead child found there. If my mother had read the newspaper reports, she would not have guessed the identity of the grave, and it was better for her to remain in ignorance.
When I put down the receiver, I saw that it had grown even darker outside. It was late now, and the pubs were either closing or closed. I had nowhere to go except back to my rooms. The thought curdled inside me like sour milk. I picked up the phone again and asked for enquiries. They gave me the number of Harriet’s hotel. I rang reception and asked to be put through.
‘Yes, who is it?’
‘It’s me, Andrew. Please don’t put down the phone. I have to speak to you. I wasn’t to blame for what happened this morning.’
There was a long pause. I expected her to slam the receiver down any moment, but she did not. Finally, she broke the silence.
‘I’m sorry about what happened, Andrew. It was rude of me. But . . .’
‘You didn’t stay, you didn’t give me a chance to explain.’
‘I’m sorry, but after . . .’
‘You treated me like someone who would deliberately play a trick like that on you. Didn’t you think about it afterwards? Didn’t you ask yourself why I would want to do a thing like that?’
‘I thought maybe you . . . I don’t know. That you were sick . . .’
Her voice tailed away. She did not want to be more explicit.
‘The book was put there in place of a copy of Desperate Remedies. I bought it for you in a shop near Tolcross yesterday afternoon. It
cost me four pounds. The bookseller substituted the book you saw for the one I bought. Do you believe me?’
‘I . . . Andrew, I just don’t know. The whole thing seems so incredible.’
‘It is incredible. I can’t take it in any more than you. But it is happening. Iain is dead. My father has started to have the same symptoms. Catriona’s grave has been tampered with twice, and a child has been killed. Do you believe any of those things?’
‘Of course I do, but . . .’
‘Then believe me when I tell you I did not know that book was in the package. If you’re willing to listen to me, I can tell you more about the book and why it was placed there.’
There was a short pause.
‘Very well,’ she said, ‘I’ll come in the morning.’
‘No, tonight.’
‘Andrew . . .’
‘Please, Harriet. Tomorrow may be too late. I can’t take the risk of falling asleep on my own. He’s close, I know he is.’
‘What is it, Andrew? What are you frightened of?’
‘Mylne, don’t you see? He’s looking for me. He’s getting desperate. He needs me to bring back Catriona from the dead. It’s what he chose me for, why he trained me, why he revealed so many of his secrets to me. Come tonight, Harriet. It may be too late in the morning.’
There was a long pause.
‘All right,’ she said. Her voice sounded very far away. ‘I’ll need your address.’
The streets were abnormally quiet. I walked back past tall grey buildings, pursued by echoes. My footsteps were magnified. Once, I thought I heard scurrying at my back, but when I looked round the pavement was empty.
I let myself in and made my way upstairs nervously. My neighbours on the first two floors had gone away for the weekend and would not be back till morning. The house, like the streets outside, was dark and silent. Nothing moved. Yet.
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