This is an occult bookstore, after all, I told myself. The guy probably hears stories like yours all the time.
True, but I was already clamming up, sweating, my heart pounding in my chest. The longer I stared into the man’s alien eyes, the more I felt transfixed.
He regarded me queerly, cocking his head somewhat to the right, his pupils gazing at me like spotlights. Holy shit, I thought, is he reading my mind?
Then he broke into a grin, laughing, belly heaving as he wagged his finger at me. “You want to tell me something, don’t you? You’re afraid. I can see just by looking at you.” He called over to his son. “Sergei. Do you see how afraid?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“Even my son sees!” He stuck out his hand. “There is nothing to be afraid of, sir.”
His sudden gregariousness put me at ease. I laughed and shook his hand. His grip was big and strong, and he used it to pump my hand enthusiastically.
He moved around the counter to join me. “My name is Alexander Maninov,” he said. “This is my son, Sergei.”
“I’m Roger,” I replied.
“Glad to meet you, Roger,” Alexander said. “What can I assist you with?”
I gathered up my resolve. “Well, I have a very strange story I would like to tell, something most people would find crazy. I’m worried you won’t believe me.”
He exploded into riotous laughter. “To think!” he said. “Afraid of being called crazy in a bookstore owned by a Russian warlock who is most arguably insane. Think about that—think about it rationally.”
I thought about it; chuckled. “I see what you mean.”
“’Course you do! Now, tell me everything. I’ll do my best to assist finding whatever you need.”
I didn’t exactly tell him everything. Even his agreeable brand of gregariousness could not put me totally at ease. But I revealed much, including my experiences in college, what I recalled of the strange ritual James and I performed to summon the thing behind reality, and the book where I had discovered the ritual. I told him of James’s brain tumor—how, following a seemingly normal life, he had suddenly consigned himself to terminal illness without so much as a raised finger. I reported that the thing had somehow entered James, was using him to gain access to our world.
Alexander listened with profound eagerness. When I finished, I was certain he would call me a loony toon and tell me to get lost. But instead he showed signs of genuine interest, placing his hand on my shoulder, saying, “You are in terrible danger, friend Roger.” He made a tick sound in his throat. “Things of this nature are not to be toyed with, especially by a couple of college kids.”
He gave me a disapproving but sympathetic glare, then bade me follow him into the rows of books. “Tell me what you remember,” he said, scanning the bindings with his fingers.
“But that’s just it, I remember very little. Most of my memories are resurfacing now in dreams.”
“Perhaps you should hypnotize yourself, ever thought of that?”
“No.” I explained to him how the more I got involved in this, the more memories became accessible, as if the experience was dredging them up. I attempted to recount in fullness that night on the Ohio State campus. Alexander nodded, drawing certain books from the shelves, but each time he showed me a title, I shook my head. None of the books sounded familiar.
We moved farther into the aisles. Every so often Alexander asked his son a question in Russian and they’d hunt down a book. But after an hour, we’d come up with nothing.
I sighed. “I knew this wouldn’t be easy.”
“Just don’t lose hope,” Alexander encouraged me. “I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.”
He yelled for Sergei to keep watch on the store, then escorted me behind the counter, indicating something about his private collection. We passed through the red curtain and down a wooden staircase.
At the bottom was a single room, the size of a studio apartment. It was lit by an antique lamp that cast its glow across a desk scattered with papers, various books, and a glass display case housing peculiar items. Opposite the case, a double bed sat heaped with dirty linens.
“Sergei and I sleep down here,” Alexander explained, almost self-consciously. “But we do have an apartment in the city, too.”
I peered in the glass case, admiring the oddities within: a collection of gems, old crystals, fossilized flora and fauna, a dissected snake, even a shrunken head.
“Katya, my wife, died six years ago,” Alexander said. “Sergei has been motherless since.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Yes, it’s a wound that doesn’t heal, no matter what I do about it. It has become, for me, my personal Chiron.”
He approached the wall, scooting aside a wood cabinet to reveal a metal safe. “This is where I keep my treasured relics.” He dialed in the combination and the hatch popped open. His hands disappeared into the wall, rummaging, and reappeared holding a slender glass bottle.
“Kubanskaya vodka,” he said, unscrewing the top and taking a hearty swig. He passed it to me, then went back to digging in the safe.
The liquor had a cool, pleasant taste, with a mild hint of lemon. Immediately it put me in a sort of catatonic state. I was forced to lean against the wall for support. I capped the bottle and set it on the ground. Too much of that and I wouldn’t be able to make it back to Brooklyn.
“Ah, here it is,” Alexander said, producing a black leather book. He read off the title, which sounded like Latin. I shook my head. It wasn’t the book I remembered. He repeated this process a number of times, the books becoming more sinister, eldritch, and rare, but nothing resembled the book from my past.
Alexander stood quietly, thinking. Then he said, “Did you know I never plan on remarrying?”
The question caught me off guard. “I didn’t know that.”
“’Tis true. After Katya, what’s the use? No woman will be like her. She was an angel, a goddess from above. She was Russian. These New York girls, they are more like demons than women. They’d kill me with their love before nurturing me with it.” He stopped, retrieved the vodka, and started drinking.
“I sometimes think like that,” I said.
His brows rose. “Is your wife dead?”
“No. But she divorced me, so it was kind of like a death. I decided I didn’t want to be with another woman, partly because no other woman would be Jenny, partly because I was so mad she left. I didn’t want to risk getting hurt again.”
He gave me a discerning eye, passing the vodka. I didn’t refuse but I sipped it slowly. He’s reading my mind again, I thought.
“Not quite the same,” he remarked. “But yes, we’re similar. Tell me, do you still feel this way?”
I started to answer when suddenly an image of Annabelle entered my mind. I recalled the night I spent in her bed. The slow dreamy wash of her black hair, the feeling of her skin, how she had gotten into my lap and kissed me. I smiled.
Alexander said, “What’s this? Why do you smile?”
“I just realized something.”
“What?”
“I realized I don’t feel that way anymore. At least, not completely.”
“No? What changed your mind?”
“A woman—Annabelle.”
“The girl with whom your friend is staying?”
I nodded. “She and I have been getting… close. And it feels great. Those fourteen years of isolation and bitterness rinse away each time she touches me. She isn’t like other women, those demons you mentioned. She’s kind, honest, and sincere. I think she genuinely likes me.”
“You sound in love.”
This made me laugh. “Maybe. But whatever it is, it’s… changing me. I can feel that, like I’m becoming… someone else.”
“Interesting. I should be so lucky to meet such a woman.”
“She’s something, all right.”
“And your friend?”
“Who, James? I don’t think he minds. He’s happy An
nabelle and I have gotten together.”
Alexander swigged from the bottle. “That isn’t what I meant. I meant do you think he’ll live?”
“Live?” It was a moment before I could register the concept. “No, I don’t think he’ll live.”
“But don’t you want him to live? Don’t you care?”
“Of course I care. It’s just… well, he himself said he was going to die.” Then I had this sudden thought: What if James could be saved with occult magic? It hadn’t occurred to me to consider that until now. Should my newfound joy come at the expense of my friend’s death? There had to be another way.
“I want him to live,” I said. Then, more heartfelt: “I don’t want him to die.”
Alexander scratched his scruffy chin. His blue eyes burned into me. “That is good to hear. You know, it’s possible you don’t need the book. Words and symbols are of little importance in the realm of the occult. It’s all a big trick. They are the representation of a thing, not the thing itself. They are not the substance.”
“But it was the book that enabled James and I to do the summoning all those years ago,” I said.
Alexander shook his head. “You only think it was the book. The words were just the external trigger. What if I told you the ritual—the actual summoning—you accomplished within yourself? What if I made the claimed that the book was as insignificant as a blade of grass?”
“I see where you’re going, but then how did we—”
“All magic, all otherness, is generated by the self. By the infinite. No books, no spells, no esoteric doctrine—nothing but the self can manifest reality. You could have had a Webster’s dictionary with you that night. You could achieve the same results.”
“I’m not that powerful.”
His gaze became piercing. I thought it might punch right through me. “Yes,” he said, “you are.”
There was a long pause. Alexander drank his vodka. I was thinking about words being symbols for things. It reminded me of what Randolf used to tell me, that images could be granted reality or divested of it, based upon the spirituality of the magician.
The word God began to revolve inside my head. What did a person mean when they said God? Did they mean an old bearded man looking down from heaven? Did they mean emptiness, a void from which all things could manifest? Did they mean a black hole, a star, a sun? My idea of God could never be the same as another’s idea of God. And although they could listen to my idea, and perhaps understand it, they could never know what it was like experiencing my own idea of God. The more I thought about it, the more I understood how immaterial the book really was. I didn’t need words, symbols someone else had arranged in order to convey their own experience. Everything I needed was inside of me.
“You’re getting it,” Alexander said, breaking my train of thought. “Now you see you don’t need books or spells or fancy incantations. You only need your spirit, your soul, your self—your personal experience. No amount of magic can replace that.”
I looked at him, thunderstruck. “You are reading my mind.”
He shrugged. “Told you I was a warlock. But now, what about your friend? You say you want him to live. How will you accomplish that? He is the key. He is the one close to death. That other is using him to access our world.”
“I do want James to live, but he seems resigned to die. I feel like he wants it to swallow him up so that it can eradicate him, like he gets some morbid satisfaction out of it.”
“That’s because he does. For whatever reason, your friend has gone over to the dark side, and the only way he can be brought back is if he chooses to be brought back. In other words, he must decide he wants to live.”
His words hung in the room. I listened to the hollow plink-plunk of Alexander working down the dregs of his vodka. Finally he said, “In order for you to have any success with your friend, you must help him find the will to live. Can you do that?”
I struggled with my answer. “It’s hard to say. He’s always had a better life than me, the life I thought I wanted. He got the girls. He had the happy marriage—at least for a while. He got the successful career. Then—out of nowhere—illness, impending death. Doesn’t make sense.”
“But there’s something there.” Alexander eyed me keenly, betraying the influence of the alcohol. “Something he’s not telling you, some reason he wishes to die. Get him to tell you that, then you’re on your way to inspiring him to live. Once you get that far…” He rummaged through the contents of the safe, handing me a business card—“You call Li Xi.”
I looked at the card—bone-white with black calligraphic script—and three black Chinese characters across the top. Below were the words Li Xi. Below that Esoteric Acupuncturist, Master of Oriental Medicine, Spiritual Healer. There was a number, but no address.
“What’s this?”
“That’s who’s going to help save your friend’s life, once you get him to open his mind a little. Trust me, Li Xi is a wizard of the soul. He can accomplish things that you’d label miracles, simply because there are no words for it.”
“You make him sound like Jesus.”
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes. You call him when you’re ready, tell him Alexander Maninov referred you. But only once you’ve gotten to the bottom of your friend’s disposition, once you’ve gotten him to change the way he’s thinking. Then call Li Xi.”
I stared at the card, entranced by it. It could have been a jewel from a distant alien planet, a fossil from the bottom of the ocean, that’s how fantastic it seemed. Esoteric Acupuncture? Who’d ever heard of such a thing? Not me, not even with my newly remembered catalogue of occult information.
Calmly, I thanked Alexander and slid the card into my wallet. We headed upstairs.
We said goodbye warmly as I made my departure, agreeing to keep in touch. I bought a book on esoteric acupuncture almost as a show of faith, using some of my dwindling pocket money from my teaching job. Then I left the store, got into the car, and headed for Brooklyn.
It was going on five o’clock.
* * *
On the drive back, I decided I would get to the bottom of James’s illness—whether he liked it or not. And I’d start with his separation from Celeste.
Chapter Ten
The house seemed empty and dark when I returned. The sun was sinking behind the buildings, throwing a purple sheet of twilight over the neighborhood. The cars on the street had their headlights on, a zigzag of gold beams.
I stepped inside and called hello, but nobody answered. The house was pitch-dark. When I flipped the switch in the hall, the luminescence felt like an intrusion.
I walked into the kitchen, flipping on more lights, and poured a glass of orange juice after setting my acupuncture book on the counter. Somebody had clearly eaten something since a pile of dirty dishes lay in the sink. I checked my watch: quarter past six.
Annabelle had asked that I return by six to serve James his dinner, which she was going to prepare. I was running a little late, but I assumed she had gotten wrapped up in her work and was running late too; that would explain the deserted house. I saw no sign of James’s dinner set out. Perhaps I’d have to make one for him.
I sat down at the table, drinking my juice, trying to decide a course of action to take. The vodka I’d sampled had left me tired and listless, and I suddenly wanted nothing more than to curl up in Annabelle’s bed and go to sleep.
Then I heard a sound that at first I thought was coming from the window above the sink. It was a barely audible hiss. I tried to ignore it, thinking the sound just some natural noise of nature, odd only because it was isolated in the kitchen. Perhaps it was a car getting a flat tire out on the street or an airplane cruising overhead on its way to LaGuardia.
When it persisted—and more, when it began to amplify—I took an active interest. The hiss filled the room, coming from everywhere and nowhere: from the walls, the window, the ceiling. It grew louder, seeming to funnel inward on itself, becoming more of a word than a
sound—
—“ssss… Roger… sss,” the hiss said. “Ssss… hey Roger, sss, look up here, sss…”
I was stunned. I’d gotten used to some strange shit—dead ex-wives, lucid dreams, mind-reading, cosmic demons—but for some reason, hearing this alien sound utter my name sent me over the edge.
I shut my eyes, flooded with an infantile rage, and threw my head back. “No, I won’t hear it! I can’t take it anymore. Leave me alone!”
But the hissing chuckled, the sound of a machine imitating laughter. “Ssss… Aw, come on Roger, sss, don’t you want to play?”
“No!” I shouted back instantly. However, I found my eyes opening. No matter how much I wanted to refuse, the reality of the situation wouldn’t go away, not until I dealt with it.
James was up on the ceiling. Well, his face was on the ceiling, a distorted version of it anyway, eyes full of mischief and rage, hair the color of iron. A face moving in liquid animation, drifting back and forth like the disembodied Cheshire cat, teeth all a-grin.
Through the racket of electro-interference, he said, “Ssss… I think you’ll want to come up here, Roger, sss… I’ve got your lovey-dovey here, she’s all tied up, sss…” It was James’s voice undoubtedly, but alien, inhuman.
A quick image flashed across the ceiling, projected onto it like the screen of an old drive-in movie. Annabelle lassoed to a chair, gagged, two dark shapes looming around her—Jenny and Celeste—followed by James’s hooded eyes and widening smile. My heart froze.
“Annabelle!” I cried, shooting up from the chair. James’s wicked laughter pursued me out of the kitchen, down the hall, up the stairs. It was like he had possessed the very house itself, all the boards, nails, and drywall. I flipped the hall light and it snapped on with a pop, showering sparks everywhere. I rushed to James’s bedroom and threw open the door.
Inside, it was so dark that at first I imagined I had opened a portal to outer space. Tiny gold flecks hung in the air, revolving in place, glittering like dust motes caught in afternoon sun. I felt a distinctly real presence. The air seemed to breathe, to swell with energy, producing the electricity I’d heard in the kitchen.
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