The Witching Hour

by James Gunn

  I leafed through the manuscript, glancing at headings: Introduction; Principles; Equipment; Simple Spells; Counter-spells; Teleportation; Illusions; Disguises; Medical and Other Practical Applications. The last section was entitled Ethics.

  I went back to the introduction and began to read carefully. The material had been worked and reworded, simplified, boiled down and fitted into a theoretical framework. Diverse phenomena had been noted, their similarities observed, a hypothesis derived to explain them; the hypothesis had been tested, changed and retested, until the theory was evolved and proved sound. In other words, a scientific mind had been at work and had developed out of discredited phenomena a working science.

  Unfortunately the manuscript had not been written as a text book. Most of the connective and explanatory material had been omitted. It was a notebook filled with personal jottings perfectly comprehensible to the author, who supplies the background material and examples automatically, but only half-meaningful to the casual reader. And the examples that were given led inevitably to mathematical formulations, usually in calculus, which were incomprehensible.

  But the time was not completely wasted. Uriel’s basic theory postulated a store of energy ordinarily unavailable to our world. It existed in a place that was undefinable except in mathematical terms, although it might be inaccurately termed a “coexistent universe,” parallel with ours, or some verbal equivalent which was equally descriptive and equally inaccurate.

  The idea was not absurd. The theory of continuous creation must assume some such energy store. And the theory worked out in practice.

  This energy, then, was available. Not by physical means, which were necessarily limited to this place, this universe, this moment. But the mind was unfettered. It could range anywhere, backward, forward, sideways. It could tap that source of energy and channel it into this world.

  Minds had tapped it, inefficiently, haphazardly, in the past. Myths and folklore gave us gods and demons and fairies and the spirit world and all the rest. The appearance of the energy was fitful and uncertain because it lacked two things: theory and discipline. Where there was no theory, there could be no control, and the wrong theory was worse than no theory at all. And a disciplined mind was seldom found among the warped personalities of priests, witches, and magicians.

  Occasionally desire or fear might accidentally work in the proper manner and call forth what the mind wanted or dreaded. Because the energy was formless. The mind was the matrix.

  Physical or symbolic devices could help discipline the mind. The best of these was mathematics. It expressed relationships exactly without unfortunate connotations or subconscious responses. And modern developments in mathematics had made possible the conversion of a bastard art into a science.

  The extramundane energy could be controlled accurately and exactly by use of such mathematical tools as calculus, which took limits; analysis situs (topology), which was concerned with proximity; and tensor analysis (absolute differential calculus), which constructed and discussed relations or laws which are generally covariant, which remained valid, that is, when passing from one to another system of coordinates. By using the proper equations, the mind could be directed toward channeling the desired amount of energy into the desired function.

  I looked up from the book, my mind churning with speculations. If this was true, anyone could be a magician. Anyone! Even a novice like me.

  Aluxury hotel is a self-contained city. Anything can happen in one, from rape and murder to conventions of sorcerers, and the outside world need never know. But it has its advantages. All things are possible, not by magic but by the expenditure of strictly mundane energy on the part of the hotel employees and strictly U. S. money on the part of the guest.

  I picked up an interesting little device that is not too far from telepathy and asked for room service. And I gave the girl what was perhaps the oddest order in an interesting history of unusual requests.

  “I want a book on the history of magic and witchcraft,” I said. “Also texts on higher mathematics, specifically calculus, analysis situs and tensor analysis.”

  “Yes, sir,” the girl said. She didn’t even ask me to spell anything. “Anything else, sir?”

  “A fried ham sandwich on white bread and a cup of coffee.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “Is that all, sir?”

  “Oh,” I said, “and a box of chalk.”

  The first thing I tackled was the ham sandwich. The second was the history of magic, since it looked to be the easiest of the lot. Hunger appeased, a trifle more alert, I skimmed through the book and came out with some orientation and the answers to a few questions.

  The Magus, for instance, had taken his name from the great symbol of medieval magic, Solomon. The Biblical king enjoyed a posthumous reputation as the greatest of wizards. The angel Raphael, it was believed, had brought him a magical ring from God, which wielded control over all demons. Some of them Solomon put to work building the Temple; the more intractable he imprisoned in a brazen vessel and threw into a deep Babylonian lake.

  Solomon was wise and powerful, and there was a certain darkness about his later years. Only magic could account for it. The great search for his secret books was on.

  The most important to turn up was the Key of Solomon, which contained detailed descriptions of the preparations and ceremony for summoning demons — and for dismissing them, which might be even more important. The instructions were so detailed and so difficult to follow exactly that it was little wonder the magicians did not succeed. They could try until they died of senile decay without losing hope or faith in “Solomon.”

  Christianity brought in other, darker elements. What may have seemed a search for knowledge (and hidden wealth) became a dedication to evil. Magic became witchcraft. The summoning of demons became a pact with Satan.

  Ariel and Uriel, like Gabriel, were angels, but Catherine La Voisin was a professional palmist and clairvoyant during the reign of Louis XIV. She secretly sold love and death charms to her clients. Besides being a witch, she was a poisoner and was involved in a lewd, bloody Amatory Mass said over Madame de Montespan, the king’s favorite, and eventually in an attempt to poison the king.

  What a lovely namesake, I thought, for the red witch.

  They swirled turgidly through my mind: Amatory Masses and Mortuary Masses and Black Masses; Cabalas and Schemhamphoras; covens and Sabbaths and dark rites; obscene ceremonies and violent trials. I turned with relief to the sanity of mathematics.

  I plowed my way through differential and integral calculus, and Uriel’s formulas became a little more meaningful. With a briefer perusal of the elements of analysis situs and tensor analysis, I surrendered to a feeling of mastery.

  If Uriel’s manuscript was what it pretended to be, I was now qualified to work magic. Was I? I decided to try. What should I start with? I remembered how one of the speakers had summoned a cold drink. I thought thirstily of a nice, cold mint julep, but I pushed the idea back hastily. I wanted nothing so complicated for my first attempt. I settled for an ordinary highball. Bourbon and soda.

  I leafed through Uriel’s manuscript until I came to the section headed “Simple Spells,” studied it for a moment and turned to “Equipment.” The only essential, it said, is a piece of chalk, and that is only an aid to concentration in jotting down equations. But it is also helpful to have an element of similarity if the mind is not accustomed to thinking in mathematical terminology.

  I got a water glass from the bathroom, ran a few drops of water into the bottom of it and placed it on the desk. Beside it I chalked a small circle and jotted down the prescribed equation.

  Would it work? No, that was the wrong attitude. Without belief, the mind cannot function properly. It did work. I had seen it work. I could make it work.

  I repeated the equation aloud, linking the unknowns to the object I wanted and the place I wanted it.

  “In the beginning,” the manuscript said, “verbal equivalents are sometimes helpful.”<
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  “Highball, highball,” I chanted, feeling more than a little silly, “come to me, come to Casey Kingman, who is in room seven o seven of — ”

  There was a glass in the circle. An instant before, it had not been there. Now it was. I stared at it, wide-eyed. I had done it. I had worked magic — or maybe I had practiced a new science.

  I picked up the glass with a trembling hand and raised it to my lips and let a little roll over my tongue. Phew-w-w! It sprayed over the room as I spat it out. The bourbon was lousy, and the soda was water, and the water was hot.

  I put the glass down feeling greatly chastened. Obviously I was not yet an adept.

  I paced the floor restlessly. The speaker had summoned something else. He had summoned a girl. Or maybe he had teleported her.

  I needed somebody, somebody to talk to, somebody to answer questions. The only one I knew who would talk to me was Ariel. I had no idea where she was, what room she was in or whether she was staying in the hotel at all. Could I bring her here? I shrugged. I could try.

  I had to have a link. I thought about it for a moment before my eyes saw the coat on the bed. Girls always left hairs on flannel coats. Sometimes makeup, too. But always hairs.

  I picked it up. There were hairs. One was long and red. I rolled it up between my fingers and was about to throw it away when I had a second thought. I straightened it out carefully, folded it, slipped it into a hotel envelope and put the envelope in my inside coat pocket. There were some short, blonde hairs, but they were mine. Finally I found one that was long and dark.

  I held it in my hand thoughtfully. Could I do a better job of it this time? Was there any danger to Ariel if I muffed it again? I decided that there wasn’t. The worst that would happen would be the summoning of some other girl, Catherine La Voisin, say. I shivered. That would be bad enough.

  This time I wasn’t leaving anything to chance. I got a cake of soap from the bathroom and started to work on it with my penknife. In fifteen minutes I had a surprisingly good model of a reclining nude. Not Ariel, of course. But I could take care of that. I moistened the top of the figure’s head, coiled the hair by drawing it between two fingernails and stuck it to the damp soap.

  I referred to the section on teleportation as I knelt on the floor. I drew a circle on the rug, placed the figurine inside the circle and chalked an equation around it.

  I stood up and compared it with the instructions. It checked. “X is for Ariel,” I muttered. “Y is this spot in my room.” I recited the equation aloud. “Wherever you are, Ariel, come to me. Come to this spot. Appear in this circle. Ariel, come to me … “

  Air fanned my face. My eyes, fixed on the circle, saw a pair of small, bare white feet. Somebody gasped. I looked up quickly. It was Ariel, all right. All of her and not much more. Her eyes were wide and blue and startled. My eyes, no doubt, were startled, too, because it was obvious that Ariel had just stepped out of a shower.

  The “not much more” was a towel, which she draped hastily in front of her. She let out her breath, and it sounded like relief. I sank back in the chair speechless and suddenly weak but oddly satisfied by the fact that my earlier impressions of her charming figure had been vindicated.

  I wished fervently for a breeze. The wind whistled past my head and whipped the towel aside.

  Ariel clutched at it desperately with both hands, looking annoyed. But it was slowly replaced by a wisp of a smile. “Naughty, naughty,” she said.

  And she stooped, picked up the soap figurine, muttered a few words and disappeared, towel, figurine and all.

  Belatedly I found my voice. “Ariel, Ariel,” I called after her. “Where can I find you? Where — ?”

  But it was no use. She was gone. And with her she had taken my last hope of getting the answers I needed.

  Fifteen minutes later I remembered the handkerchief. I pulled it out, remembering how it had wiped her tears away as we sat on the stairs that led nowhere. I stared at the orange smears. All my ventures into magic had been bungled. It would be just my luck to summon the carnivorous Catherine La Voisin. And this time she might have her poison with her.

  But I had summoned Ariel once, I thought with growing determination. I could do it again.

  The circle and the equation were still on the floor. They had worked before. I saw no reason they wouldn’t serve a second time. I dropped the handkerchief in the center of the circle, took the glass of water that stood on the desk and sprinkled the handkerchief gently.

  “Ariel, Ariel,” I said, “by the tears you shed into this handkerchief, come now to claim it, come here to me once more … “

  This time I was not so surprised when Ariel appeared. She was more modestly clad in a nightgown — but not much. Her hair was brushed dark beauty around her shoulders. I took a deep, quick breath. Perfume. She was infinitely desirable. She was almost beautiful.

  Did she always wear so flattering and revealing a night-gown? Did she always put on perfume when she went to bed? I chided myself for my suspicions.

  Ariel put on a frown. “I don’t know how you’ve become adept so quickly, Gabriel, but this business has got to stop. It’s very disconcerting being whisked around, not knowing whether you’ll be here or there the next moment. Besides, what will people say? What will the house detective say?”

  I began to laugh. I couldn’t help it. There was witchcraft in the Crystal Room, witchcraft and werewolves, magic and murder, and she was worried about house detectives and indiscretion.

  Her frown twisted as she tried to keep a straight face, but then she was laughing, too. I noticed that she was looking down at her feet, and my laughter died.

  I jumped to my feet. “Stop! Don’t go away! I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “Well,” she said, “I’m not going to talk standing in the middle of the room. Let me out.”

  “Let you out?” I repeated blankly.

  She pointed down at her feet. “The circle,” she said impatiently. “I can’t get out until it’s broken.”

  I rubbed out a chalked arc with my shoe, and she brushed past me in a delicate cloud of black lace and fragrance. I breathed deeply and turned toward her, but she was looking back toward the circle, her eyes on the handkerchief. I leaned over quickly, picked it up and started to stuff it in my pocket.

  She held out her hand, snapping her fingers meaningfully. Slowly, reluctantly, I pulled the square of linen out and tossed it to her. I shrugged as she spread it flat and stared at the orange smears. She frowned for a moment and then her face crumpled.

  “Oh,” she wailed, turning blindly toward the bed. “You’ve been with that redheaded witch, kissing her, making love to her. You’ve gone over to their side!” She fell on the bed, sobbing.

  “But — but,” I spluttered. “I can explain it. I didn’t have anything to do with it. She backed me into a corner — ”

  “Oh, it’s always the woman,” she got out between sobs. “The man’s never to blame. If you could only see her as she really is, you would-n’t get within ten feet of her.”

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and patted her shaking shoulder. It was a very nice shoulder. I liked patting it. “I wouldn’t get within ten feet of her anyway,” I said, shuddering. “Once is too much. Besides, she isn’t my type.”

  She moved away from my hand. “Don’t touch me,” she said savagely. And then, more softly, “What is your type?”

  I thought about it, and it came as a revelation to me. “A girl with dark hair,” I said, “and blue eyes, about your size — ”

  She sat up, brushing her tears away with the back of her hand. If I could have kept my eyes off the nightgown and kept from remembering what the towel had failed to conceal, I would have thought she looked like a little girl. But there was no chance of that.

  Her eyes were bright and blue, undimmed by tears. “Am I, really?”

  I nodded. “Yes,” I said.

  There must have been conviction in my voice. She smiled. “Did she really back you into a corner?
”

  “So help me!” I said, raising my hand. “Tell me. What’s happened? What is Uriel going to do?”

  “He’s staying. He’s going to help. He swears that he’ll strip Solomon of his powers. The werewolf was a terrible mistake.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If that attempt to kill Uriel hadn’t been so obvious, I don’t think he’d ever have done anything about the situation. He’s just a mild little man who wouldn’t hurt anything. He’s always gone out of his way to avoid trouble. As long as he could convince himself that things weren’t too bad, he was willing to let them go along any way they would. All he wants to do is to continue his research. But now he’s made up his mind, and he’s the best of the lot. None of them can touch him.”

  “But there’s just the two of you?” I asked. “Just you and Uriel?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s tough odds,” I said slowly.

  “And Uriel’s not well,” she said. “He scoffs at the idea of the Mass of St. S≥caire. ‘Superstition!’ he says. But he knows that he could do something similar if he wanted to. He’s tried to protect himself with counterspells, but they’re most effective when he’s concentrating on them, and he has to sleep sometime.”

  “Well,” I said, “now there’s three of us.”

  I was rewarded with a glance of pure gratitude. “Thank you — Gabriel,” she said. “Did you — did you have any luck in finding out Solomon’s name?”

  I shook my head. “All I found was this,” I said. I pulled the railroad ticket out of my coat pocket. “And I can’t swear it was Solomon’s.”

  She took the ticket, looked at it carefully and shrugged as she handed it back. “That doesn’t seem to be much help, but keep it. It might fit in with something else.” Suddenly she stiffened. She was staring at something across the room. I turned. She was looking at the back of the mirror I had leaned against the wall.

  I walked over to the wall and started to turn the mirror around. “I stepped on it when I came into the room. It gave me the oddest feeling.”

  “Careful,” she said. “That’s enough. I’ve heard of black mirrors, but I never saw one. Someone wants to get rid of you.”