The Malice Box

by Martin Langfield

  ‘I will not.’

  Suddenly the chanting stopped. The Ma’rifat’ fell silent at the same instant. The change was so absolute that the absence of sound hit Robert like a blow to the eardrums.

  The tallest of the three black-cowled figures spoke from within his own darkness and shadow. ‘A Unicorn. At last. We are honoured.’

  Robert recognized the leader of the three men Horace and he had fought at Grand Central.

  ‘Free Katherine and Terri. Release Terri from her pain,’ Robert said. ‘Reverse her cancer. Then perhaps we can talk.’

  The Iwnw leader laughed drily, removing his cowl from his head. ‘No, that is not satisfactory. Let me explain a few things. You may think that you are in the right, because you have been initiated and moulded by a member of the Perfect Light. The rightful masters of the Path and its powers, though, are not they but we: the Brotherhood of the Column. Iwnw. Consider your own situation. You have faced death, not once but several times, in order to attain your remarkable set of powers in a very short period. We tried hard to kill you a few times ourselves.’

  ‘I thought you needed me.’

  ‘If we had been able to succeed, it would simply have shown that you were not the being you were reputed to be. Indeed, our efforts helped to activate in you the powers that brought you through the trials. Very few could have survived sucha series of ordeals. We love Horace’s work, sometimes. You are a member of an elite, and a chosen one even among that elite. Should you not… rule? Wisely, of course, and fairly, but look. Look at the world.’

  As the black-robed figure spoke, Robert sought Katherine in his mind’s eye. Adam had spoken the truth – she was unhurt, and recovering consciousness now. She was more alert, already, than she was letting on. Then he tried to reach again towards Terri. Carefully shielding his action, he tried to see into her belly. What he found there filled him with bleakness. Massive, racing cell division. The cancer had metastasized rapidly. He kept his overt gaze on the black-robed man. The other two Iwnw men resumed their chant in the background, and the Ma’rifat’ responded to them, shifting its own rhythmic pulse in time with them.

  ‘Look what the human race has done with the world, while the transformative powers of the Path are with held, kept secret, by the high-minded fools of the Perfect Light. A planet poisoned, thrown perhaps permanently out of vital balance, perhaps already doomed if strong leaders do not act very soon. Massive overpopulation, draining the resources of the planet, billions of people piled into decaying cities that spread like blight over the surface of the earth. Chaotic international relations. Constant war. Unceasing brutality. Millions of children dying horribly of preventable diseases. You may have been led to believe that we are planning an act of horrific evil. But look at the world as it is now. One would think such an act had already taken place.’

  Robert stood completely still, drawing from deep within himself the powers of earth and water, fire and air, ether and mind and spirit. He made his mind a perfect mirror, reflecting back the rising tide of black venom the Iwnw were pouring towards him. And he poured the most powerful healing energy he could summon towards Terri, wrapping the cancer cells in white light, trying to reverse the evil wrought upon her. He had to play for time.

  ‘What are your intentions? What do you want?’

  ‘Human beings have become a disease. Most do not deserve to live. Most do not even live at all. They are asleep to their own potential their entire lives, and then they die. They eat, they rut, they kill each other, they defecate, they dream of something better but don’t really want anything different to what they have. They are lazy. A vast reservoir of psychic power, almost entirely untapped.’

  ‘So, enslave them and rule? Modern-day pharaohs? Farm their minds?’

  ‘You mock, but you would be one of the rulers. One who steers the flock. In any case, as you know, the Iwnw follow all the facets of the Path, not just the pretty ones. There is great power and strength in fear, in hatred, in contempt. It is from those emotions that we derive our own power. The Ma’rifat’ can destroy Manhattan, certainly. It would already have done so if the pathetic creature entangled with Adam had managed to carry out his original plan. That alone would enable us to destroy, at one fell swoop, the world’s leading financial centre, the babbling incompetents at the United Nations and a city that exemplifies the collective illness known as democracy.’

  Robert felt Terri respond, felt her embrace the power he was sending her. He poured all the light he could covertly send into her body’s own healing systems.

  Still he listened, stone-faced, to the leader of the Iwnw.

  ‘But a true soul bomb, a true alchemical engine geared to exploding in the consciousness of perhaps a billion people within a few seconds… that would be a far more effective tool. An instantaneous psychic collapse, driving everyone to the lowest, rawest, darkest levels of human possibility. Nation fearing nation, village fearing village, unable to abide difference of any kind – of language, of skin colour, of accent, of smell. Missile launches, quite possibly nuclear. First strikes. Retaliation. Round-ups of all those who don’t belong to whichever tribe you happen to belong to. Children denouncing parents. Parents betraying children, neighbours handing over neighbours to concentration camps. Killing, and more killing. Rwanda in America. Srebrenica in America. New Dachaus and Belsens and Auschwitzes across the world. Those are the energies we wish to unleash. So that we may feed, and in feeding grow so powerful as to be unstoppable. And, after feeding, we will impose order on those who remain. We shall save the planet for our own kind, and rule!’

  Silence fell except for the thrumming of the Ma’rifat’, which had deepened in tone and grown in strength as the intensity of hatred in the arched chamber had risen.

  ‘Go to hell,’ Robert spat in disdain.

  ‘We are already there.’

  The image broke into Robert’s consciousness, again, of the eye of death propagating massively from Lower Manhattan out into the world, the hateful, magnetic ball of blue fire flaring across the Atlantic Ocean and down the mountain spine of the Andes, the dead black hole at its core feeding on hatred and fear in an ever-widening circle.

  Breathing hard now, Robert strained to maintain his shield, his mirror-mind. They were stronger than he had expected. Far stronger. Still he fed healing power to Terri, unable to tell now whether it was working.

  Adam drew near and whispered into Robert’s ear: ‘You’ll even take out a US president. He’s at the Waldorf-Astoria. He won’t get to give his big speech at the Convention tonight. You’ll appreciate this: they used the hidden old railway siding under the hotel to bring him in.’

  He heard Katherine stir. He had to get her out. For the first time, Robert was truly beginning to fear he might fail. Though there was something he still didn’t understand.

  ‘If the Ma’rifat’ explodes, do we not all die?’

  Again the dry laugh of the Iwnw leader echoed from the vaulted arches of the ticket hall. ‘No. We will be shielded, and can shield others if we choose. The Ma’rifat’ is a true alchemical device, which is to say it opens up a gateway between worlds. There is a world of pure consciousness that rarely incarnates. You have seen it, if you have passed the Trial by Mind. You have seen, perhaps, consciousness and matter in their true relationship, their timeless dance of each flowing into the other. Those of us who are Iwnw in this world ultimately serve the discarnate Iwnw in that world, the insatiable hunger, the dark intelligence that needs human fear and pain to live. The eye of death. The Iwnw found us, their three servants. The Iwnw found the maker of the Ma’rifat’ and fed upon him. Through him, the Iwnw fed upon Adam. Through Adam, the Iwnw reached Terri, and tinkered with the structure of a certain cell. Life to death. Future child to cancer.’

  He paused for breath, then spat out his words with violent hatred. ‘Through Terri, on the day you people know as the Blackout, the Iwnw reached even into Katherine Reckliss, into her baby-to-be, and sucked its life force into that very same
cancer.’

  Suddenly a human form flew past Robert from behind him, arms outstretched, and grabbed the throat of the white-haired man. It was Katherine. At the same instant Terri launched herself from the steps and grabbed another of the black-robed figures from behind. She swung him round and slammed him into the wall, then leaped for the steel pipe Adam had taken from Robert after knocking him unconscious. As she grabbed it, twin snakes of spitting energy flared into life along its shaft. She jammed one end into the man’s belly, then spun the staff and slammed it into his head.

  Reacting a split second later, Robert leaped at the third Iwnw member, summoning all the raw power of his desire to live into a single punch to the chest that sent the man flying backwards against the rear wall of the chamber. Tiling cracked and smashed behind him where he hit the wall, yet he walked straight back at Robert and punched him powerfully in the belly. Robert doubled over in pain.

  As he fell, Robert saw Adam stride to the Ma’rifat’ and insert the remaining keys, one by one. Then Adam took the core, the smaller Malice Box, and jammed it into the top of the greater Malice Box.

  With a deafening crack of energy and blue-yellow flame, the Ma’rifat’ spat a twisting, swirling column of fire six feet into the air from its upper rim. Red filaments flared within the flame and spread along the curves of the arched dome, crackling and spitting as the eye of death gathered and formed above and all around them.

  Everywhere Robert looked, the eye was there, staring into his soul. It wanted him. It wanted them all. It wanted millions of souls. The seductive flowing colours of the eye flared red and yellow as he felt blows raining down on his back and head. The Ma’rifat’ was preparing to detonate. Out of the corner of his eye, Robert saw Adam standing with his arms thrust directly into the twisting white column of fire atop the Device, his face contorted in agony.

  Robert forced himself to his feet and drove headfirst into his assailant’s ribs, again driving him back against the wall. Forks of yellow light shot from the tiles and propagated into the eye of death. Before Robert could hit him, Terri stepped forward and slugged his man with her staff. The black-robed figure fell awkwardly and lay still. Then Robert turned to see Katherine struggling at the top of the steps to break a stranglehold by the leader of the Iwnw. Before Robert could reach her, the man lifted her by the neck and threw her down the stairs towards the darkened train platform below.

  Terri was on him a second later, driving her flaring staff into his back below the left shoulder blade. The steel pipe pierced him right through the chest.

  ‘That’s for Jay, you fucker,’ she shouted. The man teetered on his feet for a moment, an expression of sheer hatred frozen on his face. Then he fell, and Terri ran down the steps to Katherine.

  ‘I’ll take care of her,’ Terri shouted. ‘What’s Adam doing?’

  Robert turned to face the Ma’rifat’ and Adam, who pulled his hands from the column of fire and advanced towards Robert.

  ‘You have killed three of the Iwnw. That means the Iwnw now work only through me. It makes me stronger.’

  ‘You don’t have to do this. I’m here to disarm the Ma’rifat’. That is all.’

  ‘That is not all. We have come to single combat. The simplicity is appealing. I kill you, and a billion people die, in the blast or in the soul corrosion that will follow. You trigger Armageddon. But I live, Terri lives, with her pregnancy restored, under the protection of the Iwnw.’

  ‘Does she want that?’

  ‘Consider the alternative. She has none.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. Don’t hide behind the idea of saving Terri. She would never accept that. There’s no deal. It’s just a figleaf for the fact that the Iwnw own you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be so sure. But if you kill me, you disarm the Ma’rifat’ and vanquish the Iwnw, who with draw to fight another day. All those people are saved. But Terri dies of cancer.’

  Robert still couldn’t see whether he’d been able to heal Terri. He still felt he could.

  ‘I am a Unicorn,’ Robert said. ‘And I will die if I have to. But no one else will today. Except you.’

  He lunged at Adam and locked his hands around his throat. Adam almost lazily unhooked him and sent him spinning back against the wall. ‘I don’t think so, Robert.’

  Adam seemed to grab the air in his fist and twist it. Robert’s head exploded in pain. Black waves broke over him. The eye of death shimmered yellow and blue, staring at him from all directions.

  The black tinged to red. The Ma’rifat’ spun, faster and faster, spitting off shards of blue lightning. A deep, thrumming vibration filled the air. It was the slow thunder of impending detonation.

  Robert lunged again at Adam. They locked hands around each other’s throats.

  ‘You’ll break, and you’ll die, Robert,’ Adam spat, the bilious yellow light of the Iwnw spilling from his eyes and mouth. ‘Just like they broke me.’

  Adam threw him against the wall. The Ma’rifat’ screamed as it spun, the very stones around them shaking with its thunder, lightning bolts flying from it in red, blue, green. Robert felt himself losing. His strength was falling away. He closed his eyes.

  In the blackness there was a still blacker light. His retinas were raw, his brain was crackling and mushing like a radio near a power line. His skin had all but vanished; there was almost no membrane left between him and the world. He was jammed open. His insides and his outsides were flowing into each other. Wherever he looked, the black hole at the centre of the eye of death was draining his powers, his very will to live.

  ‘Horace,’ he whispered.

  ‘Horace is an old man,’ Adam sneered. ‘He can’t help you any more.’

  Blackness closed in. He saw the irresistible, beautiful, terrifying eye form a microcosm of itself around Adam’s head. It was calling to him.

  ‘Time to die, Robert.’

  Adam pulled Terri’s staff from the body of the Iwnw leader and swung it in the air.

  Terri raised her head, sensing what was happening. She ran up the stairs.

  ‘No,’ Terri shouted. ‘You can’t kill him!’

  Adam brought the staff crashing down towards Robert’s neck. Terri leaped into the path of the weapon with a scream, taking its full force on her own head with a sickening crunch. She fell down at Adam’s feet, her skull fractured.

  Adam stood for an instant in paralysed horror, then dropped to his knees, flinging the steel stave to one side with a roar of pain.

  ‘No!’

  Adam cradled her head in his arms. She was dead. He screamed in inarticulate rage.

  Robert stared in disbelief as he climbed to his feet. She’d given her life for his. She’d seen Adam about to finally lose his battle with the Iwnw, about to kill Robert, and she’d chosen to die rather than to let that happen. She looked so small in Adam’s arms. A great wave of tenderness broke over him. She had given Robert the strength to survive the trials. He owed her his life twice over.

  The raw scream of the Ma’rifat’ began to modulate. Barely perceptible harmonic tones began to sound.

  Then Adam lay Terri gently down and got to his feet. He advanced towards Robert, a look of crippled grief on his face.

  Robert looked deep within himself and sought the resources for a last battle. Die to live. He would abandon any hope of survival, if only he could stop the detonation.

  Then he felt his limbs begin to glow. Arms and legs and then his whole body. He opened his eyes and looked down. He was a body of light. He was the swirling angel Terri had shown him at the beginning of the hunt, clad in a garment of spiralling light that slowly absorbed itself into his skin. He felt Horace’s protective energy surrounding him.

  Adam leaped on Robert with a cry like a wild animal. They both fell and rolled down the steps to the platform, past the unconscious form of Katherine.

  Robert hauled himself to his feet and grabbed Adam by the throat. Adam twisted from his grip and punched Robert on the jaw. Robert grappled with him, and they bot
hoverbalanced and fell on to the subway tracks. He pulled Adam to his feet.

  The eye formed again around Adam. The face of death. It spoke: ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Robert Reckliss.’

  ‘We are Iwnw.’

  ‘You are the devil.’

  ‘If you wish. You cannot win.’

  ‘Free my friend.’

  ‘No.’

  He dug deep into his memory. Found his last possible weapons. He saw the words that Lawrence and Adam had meant to communicate to him.

  ‘I learned these words from Adam and from two friends, Horace and Lawrence Hencott. A man you tortured and killed.’

  ‘What words?’

  ‘The words of power. The words used to gain mastery of the red gold, and the Philosopher’s Stone.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘For the red gold: quaero arcana mundi. “I seek the secrets of the world.” ’

  Now he remembered the phrase that Lawrence had so clearly wanted him to remember. Vile, Intense Torture Reveals Impossibility Of Living. It was the same word Adam had given him at the very start of the trials.

  ‘The answer is vitriol.’

  ‘Stop.’

  Then he began to quote from Newton’s Papers. From the words Adam had made Newton speak at the climax of the play. The words that had appeared on the typewriter in Katherine’s room, the night of the fire.

  ‘For the Philosopher’s Stone: Flamma unica clavis mundi.’

  ‘Stop.’

  ‘“The key to the world is a single flame.”’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I accept Adam’s evil and take it into myself. He is part of me, and I am the stronger part.’

  ‘No.’

  The eye flared with blue light, shrinking back from him. More powerful harmonic tones issued from the Ma’rifat’. It was stabilizing, feeding on his mind. On his soul.

  And then he saw the final line that Adam had been going to pronounce at the end of the play, when the tree and the drum of light had ignited. He realized he had known it all along. Adam had hidden it in plain sight.