“The work is going well,” Peter said through clenched teeth.
Laughter. Applause. Reginald bowed, accepting the praise of his sycophants. He held a hand out to Barry Fitzroy, who theatrically pulled out his wallet and handed a dollar to Reginald.
“What did I tell you?” Reginald crowed. “Every year! Word for word! I told you I could get him to say it.”
Peter stormed out of the lounge, leaving behind the shredded mass of his dignity. His head throbbed with anger. His face burned. And the worst of it was that it was true. He had said the same thing last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, going back and back. He had been working on the book for more than twenty years, and it was still not even close to being done.
It wasn’t his fault. The work was too important to be done badly. The stakes were too high. No one in the department, not even Vera, could understand that.
But the fact remained that it was unfinished. It was dozens of notebooks filled with his jottings, and a score of attempted pages of the first chapter. That was all he had to show.
That, and the mockery of his colleagues.
•••
Goaded and frustrated with himself, Peter was in the university’s Orne Library the next day. He was going to make headway today. He was going to end the year in a way that would give him hope for the new one. He looked up at the gargoyles poised over the entrance of the library, and promised them that things would be different now.
He had made them that same promise many times before.
An hour later, seated at a table in the restricted area, leafing through the books the librarian’s aide had brought to him, the energy of the morning had passed, and the morass of inertia had returned. He stared at the pages, but the words that he had once read with the thrill of forbidden discovery were stale. They inspired nothing. All they did was remind him of the monumental scale of the task, of the uncountable tributaries of knowledge and rites that resisted all of his attempts to arrange them into a meaningful system. But he had to find the system, the order that would tame the chaos, and become the bulwark of reason against the threat of the occult.
He slumped back in his chair with a groan and tossed his pen onto the table.
“There is the look of a man who thinks he has read it all.”
Peter looked up. He did not recognize the woman who had stopped beside him. She eyed his books with a look of knowing amusement. “Do I know you?” he said.
“Theodora Marlowe,” she said cheerfully, not put off at all by his brusque tone. “Department of English. You would be Peter Warren.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. Perhaps she was a recent hire. Then again, there were many faculty in the other departments that he didn’t know. Theodora was in her early thirties. Her black hair was in a bob, her nose was sharp, and she wore a black skirt and blouse, giving him the impression of being observed by a raven.
“What do you want?” Peter asked.
“I saw what you were reading. You seemed like someone I should speak with. I thought maybe I could help.”
“Help me with what? Our fields are not the same.”
“No, but there are avenues of research that will draw the disparate together. I should think you would know that by now.”
He gave her a curt nod. He sat forward and took up his pen again, as if he were going back to work.
Theodora didn’t take the hint. “This is a good library,” she said. “A very good one. But there are other books than the ones you can find on its shelves. Even in this area. Books this library should not have.”
Peter put his pen back down. She had his attention. “Why shouldn’t it?” he asked.
“Because knowledge can be dangerous.”
With those words, she struck at the heart of what he was trying to achieve, and why his work mattered more than anyone understood. “No,” he said. “That’s wrong. No knowledge is dangerous in and of itself. It’s how it is used that matters. A hammer is a tool for construction, and it can also be a murder weapon. That is determined by the wielder.”
Theodora pulled out the chair on the opposite side of the table and sat down. “How do you plan to use it?” she asked quietly.
She really wanted to know. She was interested in a way no one else had ever been. For the first time in years, he felt truly respected. Here, finally, was someone who understood the task he had set for himself. She might also understand why it was so important that someone do this. It was the most important thing in the world.
“I have made a study of the occult since my student days,” Peter said. “When I first began the work that has been the object of my professional life, I thought my goal was to dispel the superstition I studied.”
“Then you discovered your mistake,” said Theodora.
“I did. There is real knowledge held by the secret cults that have nestled in the cracks of our societies for all of human history. It has been misused, to our cost. I fear for our continued existence, if that misuse is not combatted. We have already come close to the end.”
“You think the Great War was caused by occult forces?”
“Caused, exacerbated…” He shook his head. “I’m not sure. But can anyone deny that our world trembled during those years? Can anyone deny that so much ended forever?” He shuddered. He had not seen combat, but even from the safety of Arkham, he had felt everything burn. He thought of all the certainties of order and faith that had died in those four years. “If there is even a chance that such forces were involved, then they must be combatted. And I have come to believe that they can only be properly fought with the same powers that they wield.”
“Fire with fire.”
“Yes. If you do not understand how you are being attacked, how can you defend yourself? And a sword will not help you if you are being shot from across a field. You must shoot back. Malefic cults must be combatted by the enlightened use of this knowledge. There is no other way.”
“I agree,” said Theodora.
“You do?”
“What you have just said is nothing less than what I have believed for years. I have something you must read.”
“What is it?” He spoke quickly, already excited, a dog responding to the promise of a walk. He couldn’t help himself.
Theodora stood up. “Give me your address,” she said, speaking even more softly than before. They were co-conspirators now. “I will have it sent to you tonight.”
•••
The knock on his door came after ten that night, when Peter had almost given up expecting anything to come. He had spent the evening trying to focus on other work as a distraction, and trying to choke down a meal, but he was too excited, even though he didn’t want to be. Every enthusiasm for the last decade and more had ended in disappointment, frustration, and the guilt over more failure to move the work forward. He should know by now not to get his hopes up.
They were up all the same.
He ran to answer the knock. There was no one there when he opened the door. His house was on a street that ran along the west side of Miskatonic University. It was a road of old, comfortable homes, favored by the more long-tenured faculty. The yards were small, hidden behind high stone walls that made each house an enclave of shadowed privacy. Peter looked up and down the street. No one in sight. Not even the sound of retreating footsteps. Falling snow shrouded and blurred the streetlights, and the pools of darkness between them were thick with imagined watchers.
Peter grabbed the brown-wrapped parcel that sat on his porch step and went back inside, slamming the door’s deadbolt home so he heard the loud chunk of the night being locked out.
He took the parcel back to his study, cleared a space on his desk, and, in the glow of his banker’s lamp, unwrapped the book.
It was thick, heavy, and old. It smelled faintly of something more unpleasant than mustiness. Peter cou
ldn’t place it, but it made his throat tight. The book was bound in leather that was soft to the touch in a manner he found disgustingly familiar. It felt intimate. He dropped the book on the desk, unwilling to hold it a moment longer. As it slipped from his fingers, he had the sensation of brushing against raised veins.
Swallowing back his revulsion, he opened the cover and began to read. The book was called Devoratio. It was written in a patchwork of Latin, Greek and Middle English. He thought it might be a translation, worked on by many hands, of something older. There were turns of phrase that were odd for any of the languages in which it was written, as if they were being twisted by the force of the tongue that lurked behind them.
Or if some part of the translators was still capable of being horrified by the words they were committing to paper.
Peter was horrified. And he was mesmerized. The Devoratio put to the test the principles he had propounded to Theodora. The knowledge in here was powerful. It was also hideous. There were revelations here that he regretted learning as soon as he read them. Could he really turn what he learned to the necessary ends?
“Knowledge is neutral,” he croaked. “Power is neutral. The ends and the wielder are what matter.” He kept telling himself this as he read. At first, the words seemed like the weakest of rationalizations, a broken shield that would not protect him from the taint of the Devoratio. But the further he read, the stronger the credo became, and the more excited he grew.
Theodora had been right. This was a book he had to read. It was the most important book he had ever encountered. The power here was real. The implications were enormous.
He finished with the coming of dawn. The light through his study window was sickly, gray as bad flesh, as if he had harmed the day in his reading.
Perhaps he had. He had never pretended to himself that the acquiring the knowledge he sought would not have a price. There would be sacrifices. There always were in war.
He was exhausted. He was revolted. He was exhilarated.
He had to know more.
•••
Tucked inside the back of the Devoratio was a card with Theodora’s address. Her street was not far away, though it was one that Peter found, to his surprise, that he did not remember ever having visited before. The houses here were more tightly crowded, their walls more smoke-stained, their walls higher and thicker. Theodora’s home was where the street dead-ended. The building was a deep frown of gray stone.
Though it was barely day, the door opened before Peter could knock. “I thought you would come by,” Theodora said.
She led him to a dark lounge. The air smelled of candle smoke. The windows were dirty with soot, and barely let in enough light for Peter to make his way to the armchair Theodora pointed at. She sat in its twin opposite him, a cold hearth between them. Behind Theodora, a dark, heavy curtain covered the entrance to another room. Peter felt no draft, but the curtain shifted slightly, and he wondered if there were someone else about to join them. The movement of the curtain stopped, and Peter thought he heard the scrape of something heavy against stone. But the sound was faint and brief, and perhaps he had imagined it. He hadn’t slept for almost twenty-four hours. His eyes burned with fatigue, and his mind burned with horror and excitement.
“You read it, then,” said Theodora.
“It’s horrible.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is. I’m glad to hear you say that. That tells me you meant what you said yesterday, when you said there are powers abroad that must be fought.”
“I never imagined…” Peter stopped, his stomach churning at the thought of what he had learned. “Can these things truly be?”
Theodora nodded. “They can be, and they are. The Devoratio is a dream, too. The dream of what some would wish the world to become.”
Peter shuddered. “They must be stopped.”
“Yes.” Theodora said simply, and waited.
“They must be fought.”
“And there is only one way to do that. Only one way to be sure.”
“Yes.”
“This is what you said to me in the library. Do you still believe it?”
“More than ever,” said Peter. “There is power in that book, and it must be claimed.”
“By you?”
“If need be.” Yes.
Theodora was silent for a moment. “You do understand what you read.”
“I believe so.”
“And that there is a price to pay to claim that power.”
He had been thinking of nothing else. “There will be a worse price, paid by many more, if someone does not do what is necessary.”
“Then we are agreed.”
•••
Peter hardly slept for the next week. He spent his nights reading and re-reading the Devoratio, and then tossing and turning for a few, fitful, nightmare-plagued hours. The days he spent with Theodora, discussing individual passages, teasing out their implications, and bracing himself for what had to be done. She gave him more to read, too, old exegetical texts written by devotees of the Devoratio. They were almost as horrifying as the primary source, but they were necessary too. He was learning, and what he was learning was powerful.
The following Friday, it was time to act.
“Are you ready?” Theodora asked.
“I have to be,” he answered.
It was snowing heavily in the late afternoon as he trudged up the street from his house to the home of Reginald Pyx. He paused about a block away. Doubts racked him. Guilt twisted a vise in his gut, and for a few moments he couldn’t breathe. He dragged air into his lungs, forced it out slowly, and fought back his rising gorge.
I can’t do this.
I have to. This is the worst of it. This is the price.
He rocked back and forth, grateful the street was empty of other pedestrians, caught between fear and duty. Finally, he leaned forward until he almost lost his balance, and made himself walk on.
I have to. I have to.
Harriet Pyx answered his knock. “Hello, Peter,” she said. “This is a surprise.”
His smile felt sickly. “I’m just as surprised to find myself here. Is Reginald in?”
In the hall behind Harriet, two children, a girl in her teens and a boy a few years younger, chased each other up the stairs to the second floor. From somewhere else in the house, Reginald bellowed cheerfully at them to keep it down.
“Certainly,” Harriet said. She let him in, and Peter waited in the entrance hall while she went to find her husband. He wasn’t long, and arrived with a grin that was equal parts incredulous and curious.
“Well, well,” said Reginald. “This isn’t a visit I would have predicted.”
“I imagine not.”
“Or maybe I should have. Are you here to berate me for having some fun with you after the department council?”
“No,” said Peter. “I need your help.”
Reginald blinked. After a few moments, his smile grew even broader. “You’re not joking,” he said.
“I wish I were.”
“Now what, in the name of all that is wonderful, could you possibly want my help with?”
Peter took a breath, then plunged ahead. This must be done. “I’ve run into something. I think it’s important.”
“Then, and let’s be honest here, I’m hardly likely to agree that it is.”
“I know. That’s exactly why I want your opinion about it. Because if you do agree…”
“Then it really is important.”
“Quite.”
Reginald shrugged and reached for his coat where it hung on a hook near the door. “You intrigue me. Let’s go see this discovery of yours.”
“It’s not quite ready to show you yet,” said Peter. “I wanted to be sure first that you would come.”
“And I am.”
; “Can you give me an hour?”
“Sure.”
Peter hesitated. “There’s one other thing.”
“And that is?” Reginald sounded really eager now. He was a man looking forward to great personal pleasure in the very near future.
You think you’re going to humiliate me again. You think you’re going to make me a laughing stock. Is that really the reach of your ambition now? It must be, to judge from the drivel you put out as scholarly work.
The thought of Reginald’s anticipation made him angry, and the anger gave him strength. “If this really is something… If this really is important…” He grimaced helplessly, exactly as he had practiced in front of a mirror before heading out.
“You want it to be a secret,” Reginald said, with all the force of his condescension. “You don’t want the unwashed rushing in on it.” He chuckled.
“That’s right,” said Peter. “Secret knowledge has always had to be protected. There are good reasons for this…”
Reginald held up a hand, forestalling explanations and boredom. “Say no more, Peter. Please. Say no more.” He struggled to keep a straight face. “Your secret is safe with me. I’ll find an excuse to pop out, make sure my hat shadows my face, and sneak over to your house in an hour.”
“Thank you,” Peter said curtly. He let his irritation show. It would add to the lure he had dangled in front of Reginald. “I’ll see you then.”
He walked home with a lighter step. His chest still felt tight, but he was committed now. There would be no going back. And Reginald had made his decision easier just by being Reginald.
I can pay this price. I can and I will.
He didn’t take his coat off when he returned home. He didn’t turn any of the lights on. He stood just inside the door for the entire hour, watching through the diamond-shaped window for the department chair. The moment he saw Reginald appear, he went out.
Now comes the moment of truth.
“Here I am,” said Reginald. He stamped his feet, shaking off wet snow. “You certainly picked a night for it.”
“Thank you for coming,” Peter said. His heart was beating so hard, he half-expected Reginald to hear it, and it was a miracle his voice didn’t shake. He strode off. “This way,” he said.
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