The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller

by Richard Long

  I rehearsed various prayers all the way to Paul’s place. Most variations began with “Dear Angel.” That was way too corny to say with any degree of passion, but I felt confident the right words would come to me when I was kneeling, yes, kneeling in front of the angel.

  Paul was waiting for me in the chapel. I was about to ask him if I could have some “private time” when he gave me a hard, blank-faced stare and left me alone without saying a word. What happened to the big speech? The Gospel according to Paul? Did he know what I’d been thinking about all day? Was he inside my head without my even knowing it? Honestly, I was just happy to be left alone, so I didn’t give it another thought.

  I kneeled on the pew-like stand behind the lectern, staring at the golden rays emanating from the angel’s heart, his gently smiling face, the hundred or so spikes driven into his wings and torso. I hadn’t even started to pray when I felt a warm glow come over me, like the angel was calling out, beckoning. Like it wanted to share a secret.

  I closed my eyes and started praying. My prayer was simpler than I thought it would be. Only three words. A question I asked over and over. Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?

  Soon a vision flooded my eyes with such clarity I felt blinded. I think I fell and hit myself. There was blood on my forehead when I got up. But my head didn’t hurt and my fears had melted away. When Paul came in, he gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

  “You saw it, didn’t you?”

  “The angel? Yes, but I still don’t understand about the cross and…”

  “Never mind that,” he said dismissively. “What did else you see?”

  “I saw this place. I don’t know how to describe it. It was so amazing. Everything was swirling. It felt like I was being crushed…dying. Then we must have passed through something. There was a temple.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, nodding eagerly.

  “I saw two people in robes, turning a wheel…” I continued, my eyes focused far beyond the wooden creature nailed to the crucifix above me. Then I asked the only question that seemed to have any true importance: “Is it real?”

  Paul lowered his head, resting his ruddy chin on the tripod of his knuckles. “Real…” he said softly. He paused for more long seconds, then spoke haltingly, as if the precision of every word was critical to even the remote possibility of comprehension.

  “The Wheel is…a construction…of intent,” he said finally. “The power is in the intent…the will…of the Master. In the creation of the most powerful ritual objects, the Master molds his intent, with the guidance and participation of the angels and the Intelligence. True creativity is within the purview of the Master, occasionally even the gifted initiate. Such abilities are the luminous heritage we share with the angels of the divine realm. Those beings of the twin universe use that power effortlessly, as humans do in the realm of dreams. But to do so fully in the material realm takes extraordinary energy.”

  He paused, longer this time. I assumed he was searching for the right words again, but he did not speak. He cupped his hands in front of him like he was holding a delicate invisible vase. He closed his eyes, lowered his head and became completely still. A true flesh-and-blood statue. I stared at his face. It was smooth and waxy. The mask revealed nothing. What was he doing? I thought he was in some kind of meditative trance. Instead, he did the most extraordinary thing I have ever witnessed. I looked in his hands and a golden light began hovering above his calloused palms. I stared in wonder as the glow took shape: round, then elliptical, then ovoid, becoming more solid with each passing moment. As it gained mass it settled downward, finally resting in his palms, fully formed. A golden egg.

  Slowly he opened his eyes and looked into mine. His face remained blank, but I could sense he wanted to smile or make some expression to share the moment with me. He did it in a way I never could have imagined and still can’t comprehend. He held the golden egg between his thumb and forefinger, placed it in my hand, then closed my fingers slowly around it. I felt the heavy weight of it in my grip. It was so smooth, so warm. Living?

  “It’s real,” I gasped, wanting to applaud, cry, hug him. It felt that intimate. He nodded, the hint of a smile finally forming on his lips. With that simple movement the egg began to disintegrate in my hand. I opened my palm and it turned into a bright, golden glow again, hovering, as if releasing its spirit to heaven. An ascension of sorts. Then, like a single birthday candle blown out by a child, it was gone.

  “It takes too much energy to hold the form in our world,” he said, breathing deeply, sounding almost apologetic.

  “So the Temple, the Wheel, it’s all…”

  “The elementals were created eons ago, after the completion of the Sanctum Santorum of the Temple. They were forged jointly with the intent of the Masters, the Nous and the angels. Together they form the Wheel. It is a replica, a balancing counterpoint, a mirror…of The Great Wheel in the Maelstrom…the Axis.”

  “All this still exists?” I asked, my heart pounding.

  “It exists now only in the divine realm, as you saw. A mirror of the mirror we made. It can still be used, very sparingly, but only by those with the greatest mastery and the strongest intent. The Temple was destroyed in our dimension but not the elementals. Soon it will be rebuilt. Then the words of the Book will make it come alive in both universes. The Wheel will turn. The gateway will open. The glory will be fulfilled.”

  He opened his shirt and showed me the key hanging from his neck and the scars on his chest. They were the same shapes as my implants, but much more horrible. He reached beneath the altar and placed the Book on top of the blood-caked wood, turned the key, opened the binding. He stood with me facing him, the angel looming over his head, and began reading. It was a very long and very sad tale. I listened raptly to every word, memorizing every intonation and gesture, putting my photographic memory to good use, for a change.

  I’m going to keep it simple, but it’s like whittling a five-act Shakespeare play into sound bites:

  In the fifth century CE, after much persecution by the Christian Roman Empire, the Master (his name is never spoken) gathers his disciples and all the manuscripts he’s managed to salvage from the book burning bonfires. They sail to Erin (his homeland, which was unexpected) and take over a ruined abbey built on top of a hallowed Druid site by early Christian missionaries. The Master poses as an abbot, his disciples as monks. They make copies of the codices and scrolls they’ve hidden in caves below the chapel and begin construction of an underground temple, because the time of the prophecy is finally at hand.

  Under the light of the full moon, the Master spies Morgana, the Queen Matriarch/druid high priestess of Clan Something-or-other (Paul’s Gaelic was incomprehensible), performing a magic ritual atop the abbey tower. She’s naked, beautiful and happens to be Sophia incarnate, his syzygy. Naturally, they fall in love. He breaks his vow of celibacy. She cuckolds her husband King Bradan and immediately becomes pregnant. This is a big problem because a) she hasn’t had sex with Torcan in over a year; b) she can sense it isn’t a girl, and as a Matriarchal monarch with no successor, she’s getting antsy; c) if he’s found out, The Master will lose face with his disciples and incur the wrath of her entire clan.

  When her belly starts to swell, Morgana takes a sabbatical at the monastery, where she maintains silence and solitude until she’s ready to deliver. A son is born with the mark of An Té atá Tofa. He is named Ceallach. Pronounced KELL-ahk. As in KELL-y.

  Paul stopped reading so he could explain the true meaning of the name. He said Ceallach means “Temple.” In Gaelic ceall means church or monastery, though Paul said the more proper translation was temple, not merely a place of worship—the literal House of God. “Ceallach was the vessel and the tabernacle of all that came before, the perfected union of Hermes and Sophia,” he explained. “‘Bright-headed’ is a frequent and related interpretation, referring to both his golden hair and the light of the Intelligence residing within him. Later, his name became synonymous
with war and strife, for reasons that will soon be clear.”

  Paul returned to the book, explaining how they hid the secret of the baby’s parentage with a classic baby-left-in-a-basket-at-the-monastery cover-up story. The Master loved the child more than life itself. Morgana took more sabbaticals at the abbey to be with him. They both made the best of a difficult situation, declining to reveal Ceallach’s parentage until he came of age at the time of the Becoming.

  Then they get a disturbing message from the great beyond. The angel appears to warn them that the Becoming may fail (due to unspecified reasons), so they better make use of the time they have left by coming up with a good Plan B to ensure the continuation of their lineages, because the next crack in the Becoming window wouldn’t open for a long, long time. The Master, a sworn pacifist who has been on the lam from Christian zealots, knows they will never stop hounding him, so he begins work on a very special codex to preserve all the teachings, should everything go to shit.

  Paul paused to breathe in deeply, laid his hands upon the parchment leaves and simply said, “The Book.”

  Wow. What a chill I got when he said that. Collectors are always looking for treasure—and this, this one-of-a-kind, immaculately preserved fifth century codex containing the compiled knowledge of all Hermetic and Gnostic teachings, perhaps all sacred teachings from the time of ancient Egypt or even earlier—this was more priceless than any object I could even imagine. The almost physical lust I felt for the Book made it difficult to concentrate as he continued with a very detailed description of how the Book was made and consecrated (the one part of his story I was forever forbidden to tell or record by any means).

  Paul spoke more vaguely about Morgana preserving her heritage. He didn’t say a second codex of druid lore was created, and when I asked him, he gave me such a baleful glare that I kept my mouth closed for the remainder of his narrative.

  Whatever she’s doing evokes a very bad dream about the Master and Morgana’s daughter—even though she doesn’t have one. Hearing her terrified screams, Bradan comes into her bedroom to comfort her and bingo, she’s pregnant again. This time, she knows it’s a girl. She doesn’t tell the Master, but it’s a small island and news travels quickly. The Master is not pleased. He’s even less pleased to hear that her baby also bears the mark of the chosen one. She names her Róisín Dubh (Little Black Rose). Uh-oh.

  Years pass. The temple and the Book are near completion. The Master gains popularity teaching some of the locals, mostly royals and druids, since they’re the only ones who can read. Ceallach is growing into a fine young man, Róisín, a lovely lass. Then Bradan, in a rare display of kingly assertiveness, declares that Little Rose must begin studies at the monastery. Morgana, who’s been trying to keep her far away from the Master, has no choice but to agree, or else risk a chance of Bradan getting wind of their affair because she doth protest too much.

  This is where things get really interesting, not so much in the story as in Paul’s telling of it. He started out talking in the measured phrases of someone who has recited from the Book verbatim for a gazillion years—then he suddenly goes off-script, fumbling, looking at me intently to see if I noticed any glitch, while I keep my best poker face on and act like I’m oblivious. The context of his edited version is this: Morgana tells the Master about her dream —where he kills Róisín—and she demands a blood oath of protection. Paul said that a very powerful ritual was conducted (details omitted), then he immediately went back to the rote incantation, picking up where Róisín begins her studies—and Morgana seems a lot less nervous about it.

  Her peace of mind doesn’t last because Róisín gets a huge crush on Ceallach and vice versa, neither of them the least bit aware they’re skipping through the incest minefield.

  More time passes and Ceallach and Róisín prove very adept at their studies, including Advanced Magick and Alchemy, and are initiated into the Gnostic/Hermetic/Druid club, vowing their commitment to the Way and the Great Work. During the ceremony, the angel is invoked and dramatically appears on the temple altar. Even more dramatic is the angel’s declaration that Ceallach and Róisín will join with him in the Becoming, instead of M&M. Morgana accepts it gracefully, since her line has always passed on the torch to the next generation. The Master…not so much.

  Knowing their remaining time together is short, the Master and Morgana reveal themselves to Ceallach as his good ole Mum and Da. Predictably, his reaction is a mixed bag. Nice to know, wish you told me sooner. Tears are shed and hugs shared. Róisín is not to be told so she doesn’t get all cranky with the adulterous Queen in front of Bradan who will certainly bar her from ever returning to the monastery. Ceallach, who is now head over heels in love with Róisín, is also warned not to consummate their passion, because well—she’s his half-sister. For good measure they guilt-trip him, saying the angel will “glorify your purity.” Very Catholic. Regardless of their admonitions, Ceallach wants some private time with Róisín, so they can express their heartfelt emotions before the big event. Does he heed his parents’ warning? Unspoken—at least in the section Paul read—but there are a lot of sacred oak groves around.

  Then, because you can’t tell any Irish story without a war popping up, Eoghan, a clan chief from Hy-Many, decides to make a land grab in the peaceful kingdom of Morgana because…why not? They’re pussies!

  He’s got a sizeable army, thirsty for blood and backed up by none other than Bishop Patrick, who is travelling with them because he’s heard rumors of an abbot in the neighborhood that sounds suspiciously like public enemy number one on the Church’s hit list. Eoghan sends an emissary to Bradan, saying he can either cede the territory, or fight and die. Instead, he chooses door number three, offering Princess Róisín’s hand in marriage to Tormac, Eoghan’s mean-as-a junkyard-dog son. Bradan kicks in a nice-sized parcel of land and many goats and cows as a dowry if he’ll take the deal. He takes it, because less bloodshed and more land mean bigger and better wars to come.

  A messenger is sent to the abbey to pick up Róisín and drag her back to the castle. Morgana learns that not only has Bradan sold out her Queendom, he’s pimped off their daughter too. She sends the messenger away empty-handed and keeps Róisín under wraps, preparing her for the ceremony that afternoon which will hopefully silence the war drums in the Glory of the Becoming. All of this is occurring on Good Friday, by the way, in honor of Yeshua’s “needless” sacrifice (Paul editorializing again).

  Meanwhile, back at the castle, Eoghan and Tormac are tapping their toes wondering when the bride-to-be will make her appearance. Patrick is anxious to prepare his own Good Friday celebration, stirring up trouble at another druid megalith site, with Eoghan’s soldiers in attendance to quell any protests. But Tormac’s messenger returns and announces that Róisín and Morgana are refusing to leave the abbey.

  “Abbey?” Patrick’s ears perk up, and they march off after our heroes, while everyone in the abbey marches into the Temple cave. The Master and Morgana invoke the angel while two disciples turn the Wheel. Everyone flies through the Maelstrom to the Axis, where the angel is waiting. The Master, acting very humble about being left out of the ascension party, bids his son a teary farewell as Ceallach, Rosie and the angel unite.

  Then everything goes to shit. The Master returns to terra firma. The kids get cold feet and follow him. Unfortunately, Ceallach has already begun morphing into a human/angel hybrid. He comes back monstrously crippled to find Eoghan and his clan waiting. Patrick fires up the lynch mob and Tormac takes great pleasure in crucifying “the demon” Ceallach, while the Master is helplessly chained and Morgana is nowhere to be found.

  So concludes the story of the crucified angel.

  “And the beginning of the New Way,” Paul declared, closing the book.

  I asked him to tell me what happened after Ceallach’s death, but he shook his head and said, “Come, receive your legacy.”

  I walked up to him as if I were in a dream. He opened the Book to the middle. There were two blank
pages. He told me to lay my hands upon them. Then he opened his sickle and slit my throat.

  I gurgled in horror, clutching my neck to stanch the flow. I felt the size of the gaping wound. My throat was sliced all the way to the trachea. Paul whispered that he could save me, but only if I could write my name on the pages before the life drained out of me.

  I remember looking into his eyes as if asking for a pen. He laughed as the blood spurted from my neck in six-foot arcs, covering both of us, the book, the altar. Everything. I’d never seen so much blood. It was so red. By the time I lowered my finger to the pages, my hand was trembling, my legs twitching, about to collapse. I wrote my name from that river of red cascading from my open-hinged throat. It looked like a finger painting. But as soon as I finished, the pages soaked up all my blood. Blank pages again. Blanker than blank.

  Paul told me to press my palms on the parchment, and I felt a warm glow suffuse my whole body. The bleeding stopped. I felt my neck. I didn’t need a mirror to know the ragged wound was gone. Gone like my ink. With my hands on the Book I was told to make a vow to honor the angel and guard the secrets of the Book “for a thousand Aeons.” If I did not, then the Book would take back my blood. If I did, and betrayed my vow…

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  Paul smiled and locked the book, placed it on the lectern, then jumped on top of the altar, holding out his hand. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it just as much. When he took me to that terrible, wondrous place, then farther still, to the realm of the Golden Temple and back, I knew who I was, what I was, what I’d always been.

  I was a Kelly.