“If you think of anything—” he said, and stepped through the doorway. He heard the door shut firmly behind him.
He was three blocks away from her house when he heard quick footsteps behind him. Mrs. Dunning hurried up. “Maybe I can help you. Will you come back and let me talk to you a bit?”
He walked beside her, fearful of getting his hopes up. She had said “might.” And she’d said she didn’t have the strength. And he wasn’t sure he felt very comfortable around her. The murderous fury of her home was unsettling. How could she go on staying there? Was living in the house some sort of penance for her?
He looked down at her to study her face. She was taller than average; her head came well above his shoulder with blond hair faded almost white. Probably in her late forties, she had a flat spare frame, and all her movements suggested considerable strength and great will.
Impulsively he took her hand. Now he understood. Her loneliness was laden with guilt. She was a tormented solitary creature. And when he felt her eyes on his, he knew that she knew he’d read her feelings. And she’d read his. She tried to smile at him. “Am I helping you or are you helping me?”
“Maybe it’s a little of both. You should move out of that house.”
She unlocked the door and led him in. He felt the house’s anger on his face like tropical heat. Her secret was in there somewhere.
She had a maid, Kitty, a young Irish girl, who made them a pot of coffee. Then Brendan sat with Mrs. Dunning at her kitchen table, amid all the plants and the copper-bottomed pots that hung on an overhead rack. She was very thoughtful, with her hands clenched in her lap.
“Well, Brendan Davitt,” she said after a while. “You’ve got a fearful problem. The figure in your dreams is undoubtedly Satan himself. I don’t know what the word purple means. It’s traditionally associated with royalty and benevolence. But it’s quite clear to me that Satan is searching for you; and he means to do you terrible harm.” Then she questioned him further, extracting the minutest details from his dreams. She often shook her head with dismay.
He told her of his birth in Ireland and of the banshee’s wail, of his mother’s second sight, of the black horseman, of the carriage his two parents had ridden off in and about the angel with red hair he had seen several times in his dreams and that his mother had seen in Ireland.
“Did he have a huge white dog with him?”
“I didn’t see one. But my mother did.”
The Magus, she said to herself. Satan’s adversary. She sat back at last and gazed at Brendan. A young man of unusual gifts. He could read her soul at a glance yet she sensed that he disapproved of nothing. His love for the world seemed boundless. In his presence she felt for the first time in years a sense of peace.
What had he done to arouse the persona of Satan himself? What gift or knowledge did this young man have? If she interpreted Brendan’s visions rightly, both Satan and the Magus were seeking him.
And she asked herself the deadliest question of all: If she tried to help this engaging young man, would she draw Satan’s ire too?
She shook her head again. “I think you’re in the greatest danger. So far as I know there’s no one living who can help you. That leaves only the Other Side. Do you know what that means?”
“Yes. I think so. Crossing over.”
“Yes, going into the spirit world. I’ll have to make some arrangements. Mind you. I’m not making any promises.”
“I understand.”
“Brendan, I’m not as good as you are. Part of my reason for wanting to help you is selfish. I want to try to atone for something. And helping you might help me do it. But what I’m proposing is very dangerous. People have died violently from it. Some have never come back. Are you willing to take that chance?”
“I—yes, sure. I mean I don’t feel I have a choice. I’m liable to die violently anyway. But—what about you? You don’t have to take such a chance.”
“Yes. Maybe I do. Let me call someone. Make some arrangements. You stay here and have some more coffee.” She walked off down the hall, almost tottering with emotion.
He heard her voice on the phone in the hallway. She was addressing someone named Felicite. And occasionally he made out a few words. A long time, five years. Time to try again. Make amends. Then she made another phone call in a lower voice.
She came back more thoughtful than ever, wringing her hands and softly clearing her throat.
“I have a friend,” she began. “We used to do séances. Dangerous things. Something terrible happened one night. I lost the most precious thing in the world to me. My friend and I have felt guilty about the whole affair ever since. Anyway, she’s agreed to try to help you. Can you come tonight? Say at ten? There will be four of us. Felicite Tinsman, you, me and Reverend Ardrey.”
He had a better image of why the house was so furious. It had come to him as she talked on the phone. It was a long time ago: a man’s body lying on the dining room floor of the house, a large bald spot on the back of his head. The room was a shambles, the table overturned, pictures on the walls askew, chairs flung about. Four full-length mirrors had been smashed and a sea of mirror shards covered the floor. The walls were red with fury.
When he left, it had begun to snow and already all the cracks between the cobbles had been whited in.
Shortly before ten, the snow had turned the city into a frozen white mausoleum. The ways were empty and the snow fell with a faint pattering. As Brendan went through the streets there was an expectancy in the air, a waiting. He felt as though he was being watched.
Mrs. Dunning had had a fire laid in her fireplace but even that seemed to lack warmth. Kitty the maid was plainly frightened, casting sidelong glances into the living room whenever she passed by. She hung up Brendan’s snowy coat, then hurried back to the kitchen.
Brendan watched Mrs. Dunning stare into her fire. She seemed as cold and isolated as the snowstorm outside and he wanted to reach out to her. The house seemed as angry as ever.
“I can promise you nothing, Brendan,” she said. “I pray that we’ll all see the morning light all in one piece.”
Mrs. Tinsman, who lived only four doors away, arrived next. Brendan could hear her in the vestibule, stamping her feet and shaking the snow off her hat, fluttering like a bird in a cage, and speaking in a stage whisper to Kitty.
She stood now in the doorway, improbably small, thin as a thread with wispy hair that floated in strands about her head. She had a pinched, pointed face and hands just as delicate. She must have been nearly eighty. Brendan could see why they called her Miss Mouse.
She entered timidly. “How do you do?” she said to Brendan. She turned her front to the fire and held out a hand, then whispered loudly to Mrs. Dunning, “I say it’s too dangerous to hold this session tonight.”
“Now, Felicite,” Mrs. Dunning said.
Mrs. Tinsman sighed. “I’m terrified, Roberta. We’re in over our heads. We—” She stopped when she heard someone stamping snowy shoes in the vestibule. A man’s voice was talking to Kitty the maid.
“Reverend Ardrey,” Mrs. Tinsman said. Mrs. Dunning had begun to set up things. She had taken out three straight brass trumpets and laid them on a marble-top credenza. On a small side table she’d set out a crystal ball.
“Ah, Mrs. Tinsman,” Reverend Ardrey said, entering. He had strangely cut blond hair and heavy black eyeglasses. As he shook her hand he removed the glasses. They had no lenses. “Roberta.” Now he removed the blond wig and put them both on the mantel. “My disguise,” he said to Brendan as he shook his hand. “A sop to my blue-nosed Presbyterian church members who do not hold with the occult. My name’s Ardrey and you’re Brendan Davitt. I hope we can help you.”
He stood next to Mrs. Tinsman and turned his back to the fire. “Snow,” he said. “Four inches by morning, they say. Rather pretty.” He was a blithe man in his midforties with an invincibly innocent expression on his boy’s face and a somewhat padded torso.
“Let’s begin,�
� Mrs. Dunning said. “Felicite is very nervous and it might take a while for her to settle down.”
Mrs. Dunning had drawn four chairs toward the middle of the room and arranged them in a close circle. In the midst of the circle, on the rug, she placed a red-shaded glass lamp. Brendan and Reverend Ardrey helped her place a full-length, free standing mirror behind each chair.
“Shhhhhh!” Mrs. Dunning put a finger to her mouth. She put out the lights. “Good luck to us all. Let us begin by holding hands for a moment.” They all sat. And Brendan saw himself between two mirrors, his reflection repeated an infinity of times.
Brendan took Mrs. Tinsman’s hand in his right hand. Ice-cold and trembling, it was contained almost entirely in his palm. He held Mrs. Dunning’s hand in his left. Hers was a large strong hand and it was tensely squeezing his fingers.
Felicite Tinsman slumped in her chair. For some minutes the four of them remained motionless. It was so silent the tick of the grandfather’s clock in the vestibule was audible, and the hard crystals of snow tapped faintly on the windowpane. The only light came from the fireplace and distantly from a street-lamp.
Reverend Ardrey sat attentively, as though listening for something. A draft now flowed around their ankles. A faint odor of roses filled the room. Brendan looked questioningly at Mrs. Dunning. She had her eyes shut.
There was a sense of movement in the room, of someone unseen passing among them. Mrs. Tinsman’s head had fallen to one side. Her right hand was floating somnambulistically as if she were underwater.
Then Mrs. Tinsman spoke. Her voice was so deep and vibrant it astonished Brendan. “I am cold,” said the man’s voice. “I think of warm days with the sun on my back. When I walk the beach, the sand burns my feet. I long to see the sun.” The man must have been huge. His voice spoke in a low, conspiratorial tone and sometimes whispered.
Reverend Ardrey and Mrs. Dunning glanced at each other. “Marco,” he murmured.
“Mrs. Tinsman’s control,” Mrs. Dunning explained to Brendan.
“Marco,” Mrs. Dunning called. “We haven’t spoken to you in five years, since that terrible night.”
“I remember,” he whispered. “Lower your voice.”
“We hate to bother you but we have a young man here who is in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“He’s being pursued from the Other Side.”
There was a long silence. Mrs. Tinsman seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep, almost a coma.
“That’s very bad for him,” Marco said finally.
“Can he be helped, Marco?”
“I doubt it.”
“Why not?”
“It is hopeless. It is too dangerous to try to help him. Tell him to go away.”
“Isn’t there anyone there who can help him?”
They waited for an answer. Mrs. Tinsman’s head had slipped even farther down to her side. Both hands now floated before her as if on puppet strings.
“Marco,” Mrs. Dunning called. “Isn’t there someone there who can help Brendan?”
Mrs. Tinsman’s face twitched. Her hands moved in agitation. “I can!” a woman’s voice said. It was edgy and nervous. “I know exactly how to help him. I can see his future. He’ll fight the black monk.”
“Who are you?” Mrs. Dunning asked.
“I am Cassandra. And I can help him. When he fights the black monk.”
“How?”
“All demons have their vulnerabilities. It’s in Brendan’s future to fight his adversary. I can show him. Let him come to me.”
Brendan felt a light pull on his body. Some force was drawing him out of his chair. He looked at his mirror image above Reverend Ardrey’s head and saw himself leaning slightly forward. He pulled himself back into his chair by the wooden armrests and felt the pulling force increase. As far as his eye could see, he saw images of himself in the mirror settling back in the chair, double heads back to back, an infinity of Brendans. As he watched, deep in the mirror, he saw the black monk slip across his range of vision, a single image with no reflections.
“Don’t trust her,” Marco said. “Her name is Cassandra. No one believes her.”
“Come, young man,” Cassandra said. “Let me help you. Come.”
Brendan was pulled to his feet, and he put his arms out to stop himself from crashing into Reverend Ardrey. He was being inexorably drawn into the mirror.
“Don’t believe her!” Marco ordered. “It’s disastrous to believe her. It’s a trick to pull him over.”
“Silence!” another voice roared. It was deep and preternaturally loud. Its vibrations shook the room. “Silence!”
Brendan was on top of Reverend Ardrey and was being drawn over the back of the chair and into the mirror. He was floating.
Mrs. Dunning shrieked, “Stop him!” She stood and had seized Brendan by an ankle. The crystal ball rose from its base on the side table and floated about the room. “SILENCE!”
Reverend Ardrey held Brendan’s arm. “It’s going to happen again! The mirror! Get the mirror!”
Urgently, Mrs. Dunning stumbled into Reverend Ardrey and tipped him over as she groped at the mirror. Getting a hand on it at last, she pushed it over and it fell with a loud thud on the rug. Brendan lay beside Reverend Ardrey, gasping.
“Send him away!” Marco said. “Quickly!”
“SILENCE!” the voice roared a fourth time. The crystal ball shot across the room and crashed through the living room window.
Kitty the maid rapped sharply on the door. “Mrs. Dunning! Mrs. Dunning!”
Mrs. Tinsman gathered herself from the floor and scurried to the door. She opened it, stepped past Kitty, and seizing her coat, stepped into the snowy night and was gone.
Reverend Ardrey helped Brendan and Mrs. Dunning up.
“Oh, Brendan,” Mrs. Dunning said. “You have powerful enemies. Go. Hurry. I cannot help you. You are not safe here.” And she pushed him to the vestibule and thrust his coat into his arms. The door slammed behind him.
As he stood on the steps, he looked across the street. Reverend Ardrey was standing by the curb, looking at the crystal ball. Several people had come to their doors.
“It’s crazed,” the minister said. “Destroyed.”
The snow was quickly covering the broken window glass on the sidewalk as well as the trail in the snow left by the ball.
Reverend Ardrey looked at Brendan, then at the ball. He didn’t seem to know what to do.
Brendan didn’t go home for some time. He walked the streets in the deepening snow. He had been awed by the great power he had seen. He’d almost been pulled into another world. In the mundane lives of most people there was never a hint that such supernatural force existed. As he passed the homes and apartments of so many others, he felt singled out, confronted with an inescapable fate. It was hopeless to try to cope with the black monk. Even the Other Side seemed benumbed and equally frightened.
Reluctantly, by slow steps, he came to the conclusion that he had no means to save himself. When the black monk came for him, there would be no place to hide, no means of resisting. He was doomed.
If he couldn’t help himself, then in the meantime he might be able to help others. He wondered how much time he had left.
Maybe Father Breen was right. He might need psychiatric care. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if he were only insane?
PART
II
CHAPTER 4
Among the Monks
The old Apennine Mountains descended the peninsula of Italy like a sickle blade, a curving wall that cradles in the north the hill and plain country of Tuscany. Over the Apennines is the way Hannibal came. And the German Wehrmacht of World War II.
And over the Apennines came the black speck at sunset. The prevailing wind carried it up the northern slopes, over La Spezia and the Carrara marble quarries, sped it south toward Pisa. The black hawk rode the wind like a surfer on a great wave.
In the late sunset, none of the people of Tuscany who p
aused in their fields and villages to observe the last tawny rays of the day saw her. Glorying in her great wingspread, her great strength and her great freedom, feeling the enormous power of that wind flinging her into the heart of Italy, she flew with her eyes sweeping the terrain below her. She saw everything and waited to feel certain vibrations, some warning manifestation. She sailed with great speed as darkness descended.
Whenever her eyes saw small game or a flight of bats, she resisted the temptation to stoop and strike. But an early quarter moon rising just above the Apennines showed her a large owl soaring, a fellow predator exulting also in flight, in absolute silence, a death-bringer of great skill and beauty.
It was too tempting in the moonlight. The black hawk stooped, shortened her wing span, drew her wings partially folded to her sides and fell like a rocket. She dropped so fast in the darkness she was nearly invisible even to the many animal eyes of night. Down she came, tilting this way and that, trimming her descent to the moving target below her.
The owl never felt anything. He died instantly in midair in a burst of feathers that fluttered toward earth far below as the hawk’s talons drove through his down, through his bones and skull and pierced to the very seat of his life. She felt the owl’s body go limp in her claws and felt the indescribable joy of he kill. She rowed her great wings to gain altitude.
Her talons closed even tighter, drove deeper into the flesh and sinew of the great bird, squeezed harder until blood flowed from the body, up around the talons, and dribbled away into the night. The moment of victory having passed, she dropped the owl’s corpse and let the night wind carry her higher and higher. Her search continued. She was inescapable, invincible, and she felt the joy of never missing, never losing.
She studied the night lights of the isolated farmhouses and the small walled cities of Tuscany. She looked eastward to the seven towers of San Gimignano perched on its hill, trimmed her wings and flew toward it. And there she circled doubtfully, her unblinking eyes seeing everything, her senses feeling everything. Unsure, she circled again, descended in a spiral a few hundred feet, felt a vibration again and dropped.
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