by Paul Neuhaus
The girl was wearing sweats. “My diamond shoes are at the cleaners.”
Darren nodded. “Gimme a hand with this, would you?”
Quinn came forward and began helping with the box transfer. “What’re we doing exactly?”
“We’re moving a stack of boxes from this part of the floor to that part of the floor. Duh.” With Henaghan standing closer, Taft got a better look at her face. “Holy shit. What happened to your eyes?”
“Violent vomiting.”
“Is it contagious?” the heavy-set man said, taking one step back.
“I doubt it,” Quinn replied. “Looks like I was poisoned.”
Taft nodded. “Right. The tincture…”
“About that…”
“After the boxes.”
Finally they’d transferred the entire stack from one part of the room to the other. Where the stack had been, there was a wooden trap door. “You have a basement?” Quinn said.
“‘Basement’ is a generous word. More like ‘murder pit’.” Darren said with a grin.
Henaghan glared at him. “You first.”
“I think that’d be wise.” Taft went down the wooden ladder into the space below. “Don’t come down yet. I gotta find the—” A fluorescent light came on. “There it is.”
Quinn went down the ladder carefully. “Should I close the trapdoor?”
“I dunno. Are you a fan of stuffiness?”
“I’ll leave it open.”
“The store’s closed. No one will bother us.”
The girl looked around. Bare concrete walls. Concrete floor. Overhead light strip. For a moment, the “basement” reminded her of the one from her dream-vision. The one where the man had carved his signature into a girl’s abdomen. She shivered from revulsion. “What will no one bother us doing?”
The space was tiny. Ten foot square. Taft pulled two stools away from the wall and put them in the center of the room. The center of the room also had a circle painted onto the floor in red paint. Technically, two painted circles, one inside the other. In the gap between the two circles were characters in an alphabet Quinn didn’t recognize. “We’re gonna do two things,” Darren said. “First we’re going to sit and I’m going to tell you about what an asshole David Olkin is. I mean, seriously. If you’re mad at him now, you’re gonna be a lot madder when you leave. After that, I’m gonna do what Olkin asked me to do. I’m gonna… give you some context.”
Taft indicated one of the stools. Looking down at the painting on the floor, Quinn stepped over it and took a seat. “What’re you, some kind of wizard?”
Darren sat and the stool creaked under his weight. “Yes,” he said.
Henaghan grinned at him. “Right.”
Taft shrugged. “Wizard’s as good a word as any. Here…” He raised his left hand and, palm up, a ball of fire appeared above the skin.
Quinn stumbled backwards off her stool and the stool went spinning away toward the wall. “Dah fuh?”
The little sphere of flame illuminated Darren’s face. He was smiling. “Oh, settle down. Did you or did you not vomit fire and blow up your own toilet?”
The girl couldn’t take her eyes off the fireball. “I did,” she said. “How did you know that?”
Taft made his voice spooky. “Magic! I did it with magic!”
“Really?”
“No, Olkin told me. Sit back down.” He pointed his palm back down and rested it on his knee. The pretty ball of flame disappeared.
Still jittery, Quinn recovered her stool and put it in front of Darren’s. She sat.
Taft watched her, the ghost of smile still on his face.
“You’re being so nice to me,” Henaghan said.
“So?”
“It’s not your way.”
“I know. Don’t get used to it. As soon as I get you on your feet, I’m gonna go back to being a dick.”
“Okay. Good. It’s creeping me out.”
“Can we move on from the small talk?”
“Yeah.”
“Cool,” Darren said. “Let’s run down the list… First of all: yes, Olkin stabbed you, and yes, he poisoned you. There was a substance on the points of that knife.”
“A tincture?”
“Correct. Their term, not mine. I think it’s a froufrou word. Might as well call it an ‘unguent’. Anyway, it’s a catalyzer. An accelerant. It takes a thing that’s dormant or latent and excites it to where it either emerges or kills the host.”
“Wait… ‘Kills the host’? Are you saying it could’ve killed me?”
Taft grinned. “Yep. Told you you’d leave wanting to kick Olkin’s ass. Just wait… There’s more.”
Quinn took a deep breath. Her mind roiled. “What was he catalyzing?”
“Were you not paying attention before? With the fire and the hand and the panic and the de-stooling?”
“He was… turning me into a wizard?”
Darren nodded. “He told me about your mom. What she tried to do to you while you were growing up. Let me make a guess about something: Your whole life you saw weird little thingies swimming around in your peripheral vision. Probably right around bedtime.”
“That’s right,” Quinn said.
“Those are… How do I put it? They’re like familiars. Do you know what a familiar is?”
“You mean like when a witch has a black cat?”
Taft snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Exactamundo! Like when a witch has a black cat. Only it’s not really a black cat, it’s a demon or a supernatural entity that takes the form of a cat. Those weird things you saw—”
“I called them phantasms.”
“That’s a good word. Those phantasms you saw were familiars in their raw form. Familiars that hadn’t bothered cosplaying as felines. Or rats. Or ponies. After Olkin stabbed you, they entered you through your wounds, right?”
“They did.”
“See if you can get your head around this… You had a latent power sleeping inside you. Your mother tried to wake it up, but she didn’t have the resources. The tincture Olkin used is expensive and hard to synthesize, so she took the old fashioned route. She stabbed you over and over again. Not a way I would’ve gone, but that’s off-topic. Anyway, the power is sleeping, and the phantasms know how to wake it up. The phantasms are aloof and lazy so they need to be enticed. The tincture was bait to get them into you and get your engine running.”
Quinn sat for a moment rolling what Olkin and her mother had done to her around in her head. “Is that what happened to you? Were you… tinctured?”
Taft shook his head. “No. Typically, this gift we have is hereditary, and it doesn’t need waking up. I had it—without prompting from phantasms—at an early age. Others need a little help. Women need help.”
Henaghan cocked her head. “Are you saying this magic or whatever it is is misogynist?”
Darren snapped his fingers and pointed again. “That’s exactly what I’m saying! And there’s a good reason for it, but I feel like you’re gonna need a little more back story first.” He stood, moved his stool a foot or two behind himself and held out his hand for Quinn to take.
Quinn stared at the hand in a way that made Taft laugh.
“I know what this looks like,” he said, and then he switched to a passable impression of Darth Vader. “‘Join me and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!’ Don’t worry. I’m not going to Dark Side you.”
Henaghan sighed, got off of her stool, pushed it back and took Darren Taft’s big hand.
The tiny basement room melted away.
Taft and Henaghan floated in a void. But not an empty void. A void full of stars and a black tapestry broken by burning, multi-colored nebulae. Their hands were still joined and, since they hung suspended in space, their toes pointed down.
Quinn did not take it well. Every rational part of her brain told her she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be. Someplace without air or gravity or any of the other comforts of home. She panicked, pulli
ng at Taft’s hand and tried to wriggle away.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey.” Darren held her hand tightly, his voice dopplering around him, growing and shrinking at random. “You’re safe, you’re safe. I promise you’re safe.”
Henaghan was unable to break his grip. She looked into his eyes and saw both compassion and surety. This wasn’t a trick. He wasn’t trying to kill her.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “There was no way to prepare you.”
Quinn stopped wriggling and caught her breath. “Not so tight,” she managed at last.
“Right,” Taft said kindly, loosening his grip on her hand.
“Where are we?”
“This,” he said. “Is Bhuva. Also known as the Astral Plane, also known—if you’re a fan of H.P. Lovecraft—as ‘Outside Space’.”
“What… What kinda word is ‘bhuva’?”
”Sanskrit. Depending on who you talk to, there’s a lot of Sanskrit. ‘The Language of the Gods’, supposedly. Some of us prefer the cooler sci-fi-y terms, but to each his own. Those things you called ‘phantasms’, they’re known as the Vidyaadhara. Say that three times fast.”
Quinn was relaxing, coming back to herself. She was able to listen more closely, though she did her best not to take in too much of the infinity around her. It was overwhelming.
“The Vidyaadhara are native to bhuva. So is magic. Magic (or maya) is a force—like electricity or magnetism—that flows through the membrane between the Astral Plane and the Physical. The membrane is porous. A magic-user—if I can use that term without sounding too D&D—is someone who Channels maya and shapes it, producing a designed result—be it healing, destruction, or Jedi Mind Tricks. Make sense?”
Henaghan nodded.
Taft continued. “Stop me if this gets confusing. Today I’m doing what sci fi authors call an ‘info dump’. I’m dropping a lot of 411 on you all at once. You’re gonna need it to survive.”
“Wait. What do you mean ’survive’?”
“Put a bookmark in that. It’s gonna involve still more Olkin-bashing.”
Quinn nodded.
”Try and look around. I realize this is overwhelming at first, but I wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t important. The Astral Plane is metaphorical. By that, I don’t mean that it doesn’t exist or it’s a stand-in for something else. I mean, by it’s nature, it’s representational rather than literal. I’d even call it capricious. Let me make another guess: Since you got stabbed, you’ve been having dreams, haven’t you? Or visions?”
Again, the girl nodded.
“Those are a side effect of the tincture. And they’re the best example I can think of of the way the Astral Plane operates. The tincture brought the phantasms, the Vidyaadhara, into you. The phantasms are Astral creatures so they’ve put you in closer connection to this plane. What kind of visions are you having?”
“Crazy shit,” Quinn said. “I was inside Bettie Lyman.”
“The Silver Lake Doll?”
“Yeah. I was inside her—I saw her killer—and I was inside David Bowie, and I was inside a girl I think might’ve been a victim of Rosebud.”
“Let’s focus on Lyman’s killer. Don’t put too much stock in what you saw. The Astral Plane is, like I say, fluid when it comes to what’s real. This is where possibilities converge. There’s this thing called the Multiverse Theory where there’re infinite alternate realities stacked on top of one another. Only it’s not a theory. You could go to the cops tomorrow with what you believe is ironclad proof of who killed Bettie Lyman. But it might be who killed Bettie in a reality, not necessarily your reality.”
Quinn looked at him with crossed eyes.
Darren laughed, a weird sound in the Astral Plane. “Look, don’t worry about it right now. Just know that, a) dreams and visions aren’t always what they appear to be, and b) dreams and visions can be influenced. Ya dig?”
Henaghan nodded, not sure that she did, in fact, dig. She was willing to let it go for now.
“Okay. Strap in. Time for a history lesson.” With that they drifted forward and a portal of light (like a luminous vagina) appeared in front of them. They went through it.
The background went from black to white. Quinn raised her arm and put it in front of her eyes to avoid retina burn. When her pupils adjusted, she saw a huge white sphere, its illumination filling space as far as she could see.
“This is the Cauldron,” Darren said. “The Gharma. It’s in the center of the Astral Plane. If the Astral Plane has a center.”
Henaghan squinted. There were black streaks orbiting the glowing ball. “What’re those? They look like phantasms. Really big phantasms.”
“Good eye,” Taft said. “Those are the Asura. They’re like phantasms—there are only so many ways for life to evolve in the Astral Plane—but they’re much more complicated. Those critters you have in you right now, they’re more single-purpose. They don’t do a whole lot, nor do they care to do a whole lot. They are what they are. The Asura, on the other hand, they’re more complicated than you or I. They’re intellectual, they’re conniving, they’re suffused with magic. They’re terrifying. So just be happy they can’t see us right now.”
Quinn shivered. “Why did you bring me here?”
“For illustration purposes. Eons ago, there was a schism. A group of rogue Asura left not just from the Cauldron but from the Astral Plane altogether.” Another luminous vagina appeared next to Taft. “Come on,” he said, and he pulled the girl with him. Before they emerged, he spoke and his voice echoed through the nothing. “This…,” he said. And then they emerged, above a primordial Earth. Lava scored the surface, glowing so brightly they could see it from space. “…is where they ended up.” The duo descended through a thick cloud layer. Quinn could not feel temperature nor could she smell smells. She sensed that was for the best. The duo burst through the bottom of the clouds and looked down upon a verdant valley. A bowl in the mountains with a forest surrounding a veldt. On the veldt was a city. A city Quinn recognized. She gasped.
“I’ve seen this place,” Henaghan said. “In a dream.”
“Have you?” Darren said, pleased. “Do you understand the significance of what I’m showing you?”
Quinn didn’t know, but one word came unbidden to her mind: “Aisling,” she said.
Taft nodded.
They descended into the streets of the city; into the war that ravaged there. “The Asura built this city. They were cut off from the Astral Plane but they were not cut off from magic. They had no builder class so they took the humans they found and raised them up and, in a way, they enslaved them. The most gifted among us were taught how to use magic and a priest class was created—mostly to help the Asura control the masses. After thousands of years, there was a break. Some humans decided they didn’t want to be lapdogs. A rebellion grew out of control and the Asura were overwhelmed. They fled, taking with them their loyalists, the human priests who decided they’d rather stay with the Asura.”
As Taft spoke, Quinn saw the events of her forgotten dream unfold again. The rebel general with burning eyes. The tall gray beings fleeing certain death. “That woman…”
“Aisling. A savior of mankind. One that history’s forgotten. If not for her and her armies, we’d still be subjects of the Asura.”
“What happened to the Asura?” Quinn said.
The duo rose out of the streets of the burning city and the world turned beneath them. As it turned the seasons sped up and the clouds moved past in a pageant of passing time. They descended again onto another continent. Two- and three-story buildings. Wide streets with early motor cars. Orange groves on the periphery.
“Hollywood,” Henaghan, her head filled with wonder. They were in a train station. A train, steam leaking from its undercarriage, had just stopped. The doors opened, and passengers spilled out. Quinn and Darren hovered near a particular door as two men exited the train. One man was tall with a gaunt face and intelligent eyes. The other was shorter with a squarish head and t
he face of a killer.
The girl recognized the second man. She’d seen him outside Musso & Frank on Hollywood Boulevard. “Those men…” she said. “They’re Asura?”
Taft nodded. “Shaped like men. The taller one is Reginald Verbic. Have you heard that name?”
Quinn regretted not reading The Devil’s Garden cover to cover. “I’ve heard it,” she said. The duo rose above the crowd high enough to watch Verbic and his companion navigate the station. “I saw the other man,” she said. “On Hollywood Boulevard. He was watching me.”
Darren’s eyes grew wide and he lost concentration. In an instant, they were no longer floating above the crowd at Union Station, they were crashing into the concrete floor in the basement of Taft’s Books.
“Ow,” Quinn said, massaging her hip.
“Hollywood Boulevard where?” Taft said.
“Across the street. Outside Musso & Frank.”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Positive.”
Darren pulled himself up into a seated position and said, “Fuck.”
“That’s bad?”
“It’s real bad. It means they’re aware of you already.”
“By ‘they’re’ you mean Verbic and his friend?”
“That’s exactly who I mean. Fuck.”
“Slow down. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Verbic is thousands of years old. Maybe millions, I don’t know. He keeps himself going with magic and it puts a strain on him. He has to hibernate in cycles. He’s usually out of it for a couple of decades. When he’s awake, really bad things happen in L.A. He… influences the whole mood of the city. Now it looks like he’s awake again and he’s putting out feelers. He’s already sensed your presence and he won’t be happy with it. Women who can use magic are rare. By design, the fairer sex isn’t predisposed. Again, that’s by design. The Asura made sure mostly men got the power to use maya. No one is sure why, but the theory is that the Asura were already patriarchal before they came here. No one’s ever met a female Asura to ask her. Anyway, when women do pick up magic, they’re generally badasses.”
“Like the general. Aisling.”