That sent him into heaving paroxysms of laughter.
“Joseph?” This was odd. In all the videos I’d watched he’d never lost that fake earnestness. This was a serious breach, and it made me uneasy.
He snorted, wiped at his own eyes, and leaned across the table. “I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore.” He laughed again, his face reddening.
I felt suddenly light-headed. “What do you mean?”
He whistled and shook his head. Spread his arms. “This. All this.”
I realized I was holding my breath. I started to speak but he interrupted me.
“I know who you are. Your name isn’t Peter.”
The shock on my face was real. God damn it. He was onto us. The bastard had somehow got wind of the sting. Which meant someone had tipped him off. “I don’t know what you’re—”
He held his hand up to silence me. He fixed me with his sharp blue eyes. “No more fucking around, James. Okay?”
The room seemed hotter. Sweat beaded on my forehead and dripped from my armpits. He was holding me over the fire. It was his turn now.
“Who do you serve, James? Who is your master?”
I wiped sweat from my eyes. How much to tell him? At least we had hard evidence that he had used the fake profile to make up the messages from beyond. But this turn of events was messing with my head, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to play out. But as I sat, bewildered, looking at his perfectly made-up face, I got mad. “I serve truth,” I said. “Rationality, not superstitious nonsense. Not lies. Especially not lies that exploit sad, messed up people.”
For a moment, I thought he might lunge at me. Could I make it to do the door before he did? For all his soft-spoken gentleness on stage, he was well-muscled beneath his tailored shirt. Would he really be foolish enough to assault me? Adding criminal charges on top of being exposed as a fraud?
He burst out laughing again, even louder than before.
“How is this funny, Enoch?” I was pissed now.
He stood, one hand on his stomach, and waved for me to stop. “Please, James.”
I stood and grabbed my bag. “You think this is funny? This is the end of your career. This is the end of you ripping off gullible people. You’re done, Enoch. It’s over. You’re ruined.” It felt good to say it. It was true. But why wasn’t it upsetting him?
He stifled his laughter in his fist. “Okay, okay. James, please. You got me. Mea culpa. Just sit for a moment. You can keep recording—that’s fine by me. In fact, I’d prefer it.”
I sat down. Let him tighten the noose—this was turning into high entertainment.
He dropped into his chair and put his feet up on the table. “First, you never answered my question. Who is your master, James?”
The cat was out of the bag, so why not. “Voices of Reason magazine. Surely you’ve heard of us.”
He seemed puzzled. “Oh, I know who you work for, James. That’s not what I’m asking. I want to know—who is your master?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
He waved away my answer as if irritated. “I think you’ll understand very well in due time. But first indulge me. Since you’re ending my career with this little trick, can you give me one last chance to prove I’m not a liar and a con man? To prove that I can talk to the dead?”
I snickered. He was desperate. “Sure. Be my guest.” The writing was on the wall, but this could be fun. And the tape was still rolling. I imagined Barry listening in while sitting in his car, punching his fist into the air. We would all get a fat raise out of this.
Enoch lowered his head, and when he raised his eyes they again had his trademark alien, affectless gaze. “An older woman is coming through. Two names. Mary. Mary Elizabeth.” He paused. “No—Mary Ellen. Your mother.” His eyes seemed to be looking through me, as if I wasn’t even there.
“Impressive,” I said. It was hot as hell in the room. His assistant must have cranked up the heat. “Did it take you three minutes to find that online?”
He ignored me. “She wishes you had come to see her more when she was sick. After the operation. When her breasts were removed. Instead of running around and drinking so much with your friends.”
“Seriously?” I rolled my eyes. “That’s all you got?”
Enoch’s brow knotted. “And she’s still upset with you about that thing you did when you were a boy. What you did with her underwear.”
I froze.
“Rubbing yourself with it. And while she was at church. How mad you got, and how you never admitted it even though she caught you. The language you used with your mother.”
“Shut up,” I said. This was impossible.
“Wait—there’s a little girl coming through now. Her hair in braids, blond hair. A blue and white dress. She’s showing me a shed. With peeling paint.”
I felt a tightness in my chest. It was getting hard to breathe and I was starting to hyperventilate. Enoch leaned over me, his arms clutching the edge of the table, muscles taut.
“She’s mad at you, too, James. She didn’t understand what you were doing to her, but you hurt her and told her she couldn’t tell anyone. She never got over what you did. Never got over the shame. The feeling of being dirty.”
“Shut the fuck up,” I hissed between heaving breaths.
“Did you know she tried to kill herself twice before she finally succeeded? No, because you moved away when you were thirteen. She’s showing me how her mother found her. In her bed, with her father’s gun. Her blood and brains splattered all over the wall.”
“Stop it,” I said. I tried to stand but I could no longer breathe, and my chest felt like someone was squeezing it in a vice.
“She has been watching you. All the time. And she wants you to stop. She knows what you did to Sarah’s daughter. Your boss’s little daughter. When you had ten minutes alone with her.”
I sucked vainly for air but it wouldn’t come. It was as if my lungs were plugged with concrete.
Enoch reached over and picked up the tarot card. Held it in front of my face. A leering, goat-headed creature with the black wings of a bat. Number XV. A man and a woman chained below the demon, seemingly resigned to their fates. “This is who you serve, James. You don’t serve reason. Or truth. You are a tool of the Disenchanter.”
The edges of my vision began to melt into white. Enoch pushed the card closer to my face, and the image enveloped me.
“You serve him,” Enoch continued louder, his hot breath in my face. “The Deceiver who severs the spirit from the flesh, the Father of Lies and Abominations. You are a thief of innocence, an idolator, and your judgment will be swift and merciless.”
I don’t remember losing consciousness, or Barry rushing in the room to find me sprawled on the floor, or anything before waking up in the ICU with two cops standing in the doorway.
*
My new cellmate is a white supremacist with a shaved head and an inverted cross and three sixes tattooed on his neck. He’s an Odinist. He likes to tell anyone who will listen—he got religion in a state prison in Tennessee. Before he burned a bunch of churches and synagogues, he was a grunt in Iraq at the Abu Ghraib prison, where he learned to hurt people without leaving marks. The Norse gods hate weakness, he says, so what he does to me is his holy duty.
Yesterday, he told me the gods gave him the gift of prophecy. Says he had a vision of me sliced up real good and bleeding out in the cell. “Right there,” he said, pointing to the floor by the toilet. “I was laughing at you and your guts all hanging out.”
If I believed in anything at all, it might be his gods.
You’re probably not surprised that Voices of Reason killed the story. No one at the magazine, much less in the wider skeptical movement, wanted anything to do with me, and Sarah told me she would kill me herself if I didn’t die in prison. So they basically erased me and everything I’d written over the years. Swept up my tracks and paid to have me cleansed from the search engines.
I got something in the m
ail last week from the Joseph Enoch Foundation. I didn’t have to open the envelope.
I knew exactly what was waiting for me inside.
17
the tower
rebecca paisley
Upright: Misery, distress, ruin, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception
Reversed: The same to a lesser degree, also oppression, imprisonment, tyranny
Once upon an era no one has ever heard of, there lived a man who believed the finest things about himself. He bragged about his mesmerizing handsomeness and proclaimed his intelligence was unequaled. Of course, he also professed his physical power could never be bested either. He was of the assumption that treetops rustled in adulation. Lightning paid its homage with slashes of fireworks, and mighty thunder applauded his very existence.
He had never received any votes that would have won for him a seat of power. Such a ballot or show of hands never happened. Nor had he inherited any sort of right to rule. Nevertheless, his pompous demeanor frightened the folk who lived in the village. Oh, but he was a vainglorious man. Superior to all, he believed, and he appointed himself grand enough to be called The Grandiose.
He demanded money from the people. Bows and curtsies. He required the villagers to plant and tend grain fields or sew beautiful clothing for him. Children brought food to him, meals that kept their mothers at the hearths for many long hours.
It didn’t matter what The Grandiose required. The villagers met each of his desires because they feared the wickedness his enormous conceit could possibly bring about. Many longed to escape, but where would they go? There was nothing beyond the woods that encircled the town. No life, no anything. So they lived each day in servitude to The Grandiose, who one day ordered far more than money, food, clothing or genuflections.
He’d determined that no one except himself had the right to be happy. And so he forbade joy. He stopped all music and dancing and singing. Children could no longer play, and he forced adults to go through their days without so much as a smile toward anyone. If he noticed as much as a hint of some inner pleasure in anyone’s eyes he would deny that person rest until the rule-breaker finally collapsed with appalling exhaustion.
And The Grandiose always knew when someone felt a bit of peace. Not a jot of content escaped his notice. The villagers came to believe he knew everything, and their anxiety and misery fed the fire of cruelty that flamed inside him. Yes, The Grandiose rejoiced over having erased all manner of delight in the town.
Until he witnessed how very much the people loved their pets. This could not be allowed, he decided. He would put an instant end to it.
It was with horrendous grief that the townspeople took their precious animals deep into the woods, where The Grandiose had ordered a stone enclosure built. Sobbing and wailing filled the forest as the people left their pets within the rocky pound. Their dear animals would be hungry and thirsty, they cried. Surely their beloved pets would not understand why their owners had left them to suffer and die.
The Grandiose laughed wholeheartedly while enjoying the people’s torment.
And over the days, the villagers’ sorrow continued to grow and deepen. It roared and rumbled over the land, through the air, and up into the sky.
Until it finally awakened a sleeping magic.
Chapter Two
Iva poured a bowl of milk before she remembered her cat, Pillie, wasn’t there anymore. Her tears splashed into the pitcher, causing white ripples in the creamy liquid. “Pillie,” she whispered. “Pillie.” She wrapped her arms across her chest, closed her eyes and saw him. White, he was, with one blue eye and one green. His fur was softer than the softest thing she could imagine, and she missed its comforting silk.
Was he still alive? But how could he be? Weeks had passed since The Grandiose had ordered all the village pets to be abandoned in the woods. And it was cold now, too.
Shivering, Iva looked at Pillie’s blanket by the tiny fireplace and swiped her wet cheeks. She sat down by the little window and watched the rain turn dirt into mud. The small village square had once been covered with thick green grass and beautiful flowers. Filled with laughter and songs and happy chatter. Now it was brown and sad.
Iva reached for her sewing basket. Inside was the cloak she was making for The Grandiose. He was waiting for it, and she was already a day late. Would he force her to stay awake until she could no longer stand? Oh, if only she could somehow poison the thread so that when he put the garment on, its venom would kill him!
But she dared not even ponder such a thing. The Grandiose would know. He always knew. He declared himself all-powerful, and maybe he really was. He might as well have lived like a king in a castle with a tower. A tower from which he could observe the hamlet and all its fearful people. A sky-piercing tower made of very cold stones that would freeze him, she thought. At the very least a tower somewhere in the village. If such a thing could be true, maybe the tower would fall on him, crushing him to death. As it was, however, he lived in the biggest house in the town. His own village palace, filled with lovely furniture. And rugs. And a real bed with heavy quilts and full pillows.
Unlike her tiny one-room cottage with her straw mat on the chilled floor.
She made herself stop longing for the death of The Grandiose. His eerie knowledge would alert him to her violent thoughts.
Night had come, and she sewed, and finally made the last stitch in the cloak. Trepidation made her hands shake when she folded the cape into a sack. The Grandiose was abhorrent during the day and even more so at night. She dreaded having to see him this evening. Lately, he had been staring at her in a way that made her feel naked and panicked.
She slipped into her old shawl. While The Grandiose clothed himself with the most wonderful garments the village women could sew for him, they themselves wore rags. The family that lived in the dilapidated dwelling next to her own didn’t even have shoes.
Casting one last glance at Pillie’s empty blanket-bed near the measly fire, Iva left her hut and set out for the biggest house in the town.
When would this end? she wondered. This day in and day out of wretched existence? How could this be all there was? Nothing and more nothing.
And poor Pillie and the rest of the adored village pets. All the sweet creatures who counted on their owners to take care of them…
“Please,” she whispered to no one. Her memories of Pillie made her ache. “Please—”
She stopped suddenly. A noise. An intimidating sound. Something strong and alarming. She peered all around where she stood, trying desperately to understand what she had heard.
She saw bits of blue in the blackness. Circles of blue. She blinked, but the blue sparkles were no longer there.
Like always, there was nothing. She began to hurry to the big house of The Grandiose, doing her best to avoid the holes in the muddy ground.
She didn’t see the glint of the blue eyes of the man who watched her run. Nor did she hear the terrible noise as it sounded again.
“Settle, Rewot,” Basque said as he continued to watch the girl race away. Iva was her name, he knew. From within the shelter of the woods, he’d seen her. The people who lived around her had called her Iva. “Settle,” he said again.
Rewot growled once more before disappearing into the forest with his master.
Chapter Three
The Grandiose lounged upon a blue velvet settee big enough to accommodate his large form. Fingering the folds of the silk robe he wore, he looked through the window. She was coming tonight. Iva. Pretty Iva, with her long gold hair. Tonight he would enjoy holding fistfuls of it.
She was the most comely wench he’d ever seen, and he’d seen all the village women. He’d used many of the hags while waiting for Iva to become the beautiful woman she’d finally become.
He picked up his wine glass, sipped the blood-red liquid, and licked his lips when he heard a barely-there knock on the door. “Open the door and get out,” he told the young boy whose night it was to serve him. Vicio
usly, he slapped the child’s face once, and then again.
When the terrified lad did as bade, Iva stepped into the spacious room and held out the bag. “It is finished, Grandiose.” She heard the apprehension in her own voice and wished her fright was not so blatant. Fear nourished his black soul.
She doubted he even had a soul, black or otherwise. “Here.” She lifted the bag a little higher.
“You used the pearl buttons?”
“I did.”
“You did…” He waited for her to address him in the proper manner.
“I did, Grandiose.”
He watched as the glow of many candles and fire flames gleamed through her yellow tresses. “You’re a day late. What shall I do with you, sweet Iva?” He toyed with her feelings, liking the way she stiffened as she sensed his mood. Gazing at her luscious breasts, he realized she’d tried to hide them with her frayed wrap. The tattered cape did little to cover what he wanted to see and touch.
“Well?” he demanded. He tapped his fingers on his wine glass.
“Forgive me, Grandiose.” Iva closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his hot, unnerving stare. “The days of rain have darkened my room, and I couldn’t see well enough to—”
“Did I ask you for a reason? An excuse?” He felt true irritation with her now. “And how dare you force me to strain my eyes in order to see you. Take off that ugly scrap of a shawl and come closer to me.”
Iva pulled at the wrap, dismayed when it fell onto the sumptuous white carpet beneath her feet. She started for The Grandiose, but something inside her, some force, stilled her. “My shoes are covered with mud, Grandiose. I don’t want to soil your rug.”
He pitched his glass at the wall. It exploded into hundreds of shiny bits. “I said come here.”
She felt naked again, but she walked slowly toward him. His little black eyes seemed to touch her like tangible things. Shuddering, she held out the bag again.
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 35