It was empty.
ANY WAR
It seemed so vague, but that’s how it is. In the heat of battle many things are not defined. Your attention is upon the kill, the only real experience.
I hold my weapon prone, ready, my eyes searching deep into the bush. I know my enemy is there, and I will get him.
A crack of a twig. My eyes dart to the side. Searching.
Gone. But I could smell him now.
I’m not one of your normal soldiers – not one of those kids who play at war, until the shock causes them to shatter. No, I live and breathe it, feel only whole when there is a war to fight. I suppose, if I was a civilian, I’d be a psychopath. But here, I’m a hero.
But enough of contemplation. Must keep my attention.
A shadow – not so much physical, but instinctual. A knowing that he is in front of me. And sure enough, he lunges!
I spray hot lead, but he doesn’t fall! I don’t understand. He turns and darts back under cover.
It is then that I notice his body lay broken on the ground. And it is then I realise I’m searching for something more spectral than a mere soldier.
It was a whole new experience for me, hunting a ghost. Adrenalin pumped; I felt as light as air. I felt …
… my own body by my feet. And then the realisation. We were free to fight for eternity.
A LOAD OF SUPERSTITIOUS TWADDLE
The scientist sat down, exhausted. A mathematician and theoretical physicist, he had worked on abstract concepts most of his life, but his latest detour into the enigmatic universe had left him totally drained.
‘You’re doing too much,’ said the man before him.
The scientist nodded his head lethargically. ‘Yes, you may be right.’
‘And what for? That’s what I want to know.’
‘You know why. To increase our knowledge.’
‘Well I know all I need to know. The universe is a place of magic and gods and wonder.’
‘What a load of superstitious twaddle you speak.’
‘No it isn’t. Just look at your work. What is science? It’s just concept and delusion.’
The scientist lost his temper then, began to shout. The man simply ignored him, a grin on his face.
By and by, the scientist’s colleague entered the room. Said: ‘Who are you shouting at?’
The scientist looked around in wonder, before burying his face in his hands.
THE SPIRIT
I've never believed in those idiots who say we shouldn't dabble in the occult because it is dangerous. It is a generalisation, similar to saying we shouldn't drive because it can be dangerous. I can't see many people accepting that because it would be too inconvenient. But the analogy is the same. It isn't a car that is dangerous, but the particular driver. And it isn't the power of the occult that is dangerous, but the adept and how he uses it; how he relates to it.
Yet it is so hard, once you have the power, to hold your whims at bay.
I practiced the occult fanatically, usually to the disregard of my wife's warnings.
'I know what I'm doing,' I'd say. 'There's no need to worry.'
'But can you handle it?' she would say, 'can you keep it in perspective?'
Worry lines crossed her otherwise beautiful face when she said it, and I'd hold her, reassure her, make love to her to prove my mind is in the right place. But whether she was eased by this, I doubted it.
The system was quite simple, really. It began with potions and ceremony and tools such as the wand and the Tarot.
I knew these were not supernatural aids, but ways of focusing the mind in preparation for the real magic. For real magic was all to do with the mind; enslaving your unconscious to your conscious whims. For in the unconscious you touched the storehouse of occult oneness that allowed you to tap the universal powers.
It took me two years to do it - two hard years of frustration but a magnificent determination. And as my quest drew close, even my wife realised the benefits.
I suppose, as the adept in me came out, I became more a charismatic, sexual being; and our lovemaking became increasingly daring and exotic.
'I'm yours,' she would say, 'Do with me what you like.'
The occult and sex is closely related. Indeed, all religion is closely related to sex. They share a spirituality, an ecstasy, a submission and a oneness. And when I finally contacted the powers beyond, it was sex I had very much in mind.
My personal demon was a bald headed, manic eyed individual dressed in flowing robes who I called Aleister. Whether he was a real demon from the supernatural or just an image I hallucinated in my mind, I don't know. I do know my wife couldn't see him, for I was so excited when I conjured him up I called her.
'Do you see him?' I said.
'See who,' she replied. 'Come to bed. Give me sex.'
She was so insatiable; it was almost as if she was possessed by the thoughts in my own head.
I conjured up my demon every day after that; spoke to him; practised the powers he gave me; feasted in the occult knowledge he imparted. And after a week or so, I decided to try my own magic.
Obviously, I decided to keep this secret from my wife, because I was determined to conjure up the most passionate woman in the universe.
As soon as she appeared it was, of course, ecstasy. Never had I seen such a beautiful face, such golden hair, such a perfect, satin covered body. And the way she moved, the way she pouted, the way she made love - nothing in the world could ever have been so perfect.
'I don't see you so much,' said my wife within a few days, 'we never seem to make love any more. You just lock yourself up in your study, talking to your demon.'
Her complaint irritated me. 'Go away,' I said. 'Can't you see I'm busy.'
And I went and had perfect sex with my spirit; perfect in every way.
Whether the occult is as powerful as the green eyed monster of jealousy, I do not know. But in time, my wife began taking steps to see what was going on. And when she walked into my study and found me apparently writhing naked on the carpet, her anger consumed her.
Eventually I sat her down and confessed to my love making.
'Oh, really,' she said, 'so show me this perfect spirit.'
I conjured her up.
'Well, I'm waiting.'
I told her she was with her.
'So she's so insubstantial as to not exist.'
What happened to the spirit at that point, I am not sure. But a change came to her. She appeared, momentarily, to become demonic. And her hand came down on my wife.
Blood spurted from my wife's head and she fell to the floor dead, her dead eyes wide open and staring into my soul.
What had I created in my lust for the ultimate passion?
Was this why the occult can be so dangerous, pandering to our whims to such an extent that we cannot control the forces we unleash?
The spirit became increasingly angry with me as I refused sex. And it soon became clear that a psychic battle was going on between us. I buried my wife in the cellar in quicklime, and went about the house despondently, except when I caught sight of the spirit.
When this occurred, I concentrated all my psychic, negative energy upon her. She would counter-attack in my dreams, sending demons to drive me mad, but I persevered, and slowly, so slowly, she began to age.
Eventually, when I had sapped her energy and reduced her to an old hag, I destroyed what spark of existence she had, and in an agonising metamorphosis, she turned to air and was gone.
It was so lonely in the house after that. My wife was dead, my spirit turned to ethereal afterthought. Even my demon seemed reluctant to come to me. I couldn't understand why my powers seemed to be deserting me. My experiment may have gone wrong, but the occult is amoral. What you do with it is up to you.
Or so I thought.
'Come to me, Aleister,' I would wail long into the night.
Then, one day, my mirror seemed to beckon me to it.
What was this, I wondered, and reluc
tantly I went to the mirror, and Aleister stared back at me, and suddenly I knew it was I who was the demon.
This knowledge seemed to mortify me. Had it all been an illusion, or do we gain what we grasp for?
I vowed to leave my occult practices from that moment on. But in my last occult thought, I wished to repair, in part, the damage I had caused.
That night, my dreams were realised. For in spirit at least, my wife was back with me. And throughout the night we would make love. Whilst during the day, a deep depression came over me as I waited for night to fall, for my wife to return. But can I continue to live this terrible life of daytime, or does the ultimate answer lie in the gun I now have pressed to my head?
THE OVER SHADOW
He was balanced on the edge. ‘You’ll fall.’
‘Don’t care,’ he said.
‘All you have to do is say sorry.’
‘Won’t!’
‘But you know it was wrong.’
He put his fingers in his ears. Sang: ‘Da, da, da, da, da …’ over and over again.
‘So it’s like that is it?’
He took out his fingers. ‘It just isn’t fair,’ he stormed. ‘Always you try to stop me, like this big shadow always over me. “Don’t do this, don’t do that,” well I’m fed up of it. You’re always overshadowing me.’
‘Maybe that’s because you always do wrong.’
‘Says you!!’
‘And I’m right.’
‘Don’t care. If I want to do it I will, so there.’
‘Oh well; going to have a little tantrum now, are we?’
And he did. He jumped up and down on the edge, and it was inevitable that, this time, he fell off. He fell down and down through the sky, and hit the ground with such a force that he continued down and down, and it took him a thousand years to get out of the pit.
Of course, little Lucifer was the first to fall off the cloud. And we’ve all been falling ever since.
THE FULL MOON
When the full moon comes I know he’s going to change. I know with more certainty than I’ve known anything before. A gentle man, kind, almost without fault, he is popular in his community. Although often keeping himself to himself, he always has a smile and a word for anyone he happens to meet on his rare excursions out of his house.
I met him on one such excursion. A bit of a loner myself our eyes seemed to meet naturally as we passed on the street. And although we exchanged pleasantries, I had a deep sense of despair should this liaison continue.
The next day, I waited at the same spot, but he never came. However, the day after that he did, and we got talking, all the while a depression seeming to hang around us.
I could sense the danger with great acuity, yet despite this, I was drawn to the man, and it wasn’t long before a kind of friendship developed. And when it was pointed out that I was homeless, his natural kindness offered me shelter.
I know I should have refused. I have an instinct for such things, you see, and I knew without a doubt that this man would eventually change. Indeed, it was so absolute a conviction that a fear began to replace the depression. I even tried to get out of the liaison, go off to some park bench or other rather than be there when the full moon came and he changed.
But he was insistent, and it seemed that there was little I could do, for now I had begun to feel the empathy, the mesmeric bonding that surely had to be a precursor to the inevitable change.
Well the day of the full moon came with an air of trepidation in every thought I had, and as twilight turned to the dead of night, irrationality seemed the only mind state I could grasp.
I looked upon him, sat before me, waiting for the inevitable change to come, as I knew it would. My breathing became heavy, at first with worry, but then a kind of primeval instinct emerged, and bit by bit, he began to change, no longer my friend, but now the source of my growing frenzy. And even as I could feel the madness rising I felt an urge to warn him before it was too late. But …
… it already was.
THE THIRTEENTH STEP
He approached the staircase with a sense of foreboding. So many stories had been told about it – where it led; what accidents had happened on it. Of course, he dismissed it all as mere superstition – at least, that’s what he said. But as he placed his foot on the first step, I could see how tentative it was.
And it did, of course, only increase the more he ascended. Indeed, by the seventh step you could see the shake of the shoulders – and by the ninth, his sense of fear was palpable, sweat upon his brow.
I began to doubt he would continue. As to whether there was anything to it, or it was just a story, who can say, but he seemed to stop, dead still, on the twelfth.
Ah, that dreaded thirteen – the most unlucky of numbers. How it affects even the rational. But did he have the courage to continue?
I watched him intently. Several times he raised his foot, his knuckles white as they clung to the rail. And just as I thought he would retire, he brought out a Herculean effort and he placed his foot on the step.
Standing there, you could see the sense of victory on his face. His entire stature improved and you could only be happy for him. A huge release of pent up energy poured forth, and with a jolly, hurried movement, he ascended to the fourteenth, tripped, and fell to his death.
ABSENT THOUGHTS
The power of control. As individuals, living in a material world, we don’t understand just what it means. We go through life, the real impulses going unnoticed. I know this because I used to think like everyone else. Until I met HIM.
I’m a psychiatrist, and he came to my attention when he was referred to me by the police. In his mid-twenties, he had lived a moral, law-abiding life until some six months ago, when for no apparent reason, he went on a crime spree. Finally caught, he had no idea what he had been doing – indeed, it was as if the last six months had been totally wiped out of his mind.
Time and time again I tried to access those unconscious thoughts – try to work out what had motivated him. But I’m sure if I’d hypnotized him a million times, it would have been no good. So eventually I decided to look into his life instead.
I did, of course, confirm that there was no possible reason in his past why he should have turned like he did – and obviously no reason why he had suddenly become the man he was before his black-out. But when I discovered the mystery concerning his birth, I felt I had at last a lead to follow.
He was an orphan and it took a great deal of time to track down the circumstances of his birth. And when I discovered the ‘secret’, I knew exactly where I had to go.
I found Reggie Brown two days later. He was, in a way, a pitiful sight. It was some eight months since the accident that left him crippled – a car crash following one of his many burglaries. And in his early twenties it was even more tragic.
I suppose you could call him a paranormalist, perhaps even a medium, although he didn’t contact the dead. He had had an interest in the subject for many years, ever since he began to have feelings that he was not quite himself. Researching the subject, he wondered, first, if he was picking up telepathic thoughts from someone else, and soon learnt how to use the ability himself.
And it was then that he saw, in his mind’s eye, someone else identical to himself. And once the accident had happened, and he could no longer live his own life, he decided to live it psychically through his twin – until he got bored.
Well, I’m back from my interview with Reggie, writing down my thoughts before telling his twin – and possibly trying to convince the police, but I don’t hold too much hope of success there. The twin is sat down before me, but wait … what? …
There is a strange glint in his eye. He is moving forward, menacingly ….
A NARRATIVE OF LIFE
Life is the greatest mystery of all - the way it weaves and turns, forever bringing the unexpected. We use words such as fate to explain our progress through life, but it is an empty word, not really grasping the way our lives u
nfold.
When I met Annie, I was sure my life had taken a turn for the better. She was beautiful, she was sexy - she was everything I wanted a woman to be. Perhaps I should have guessed, then, as we made love, that it would be a joke. Nothing that perfect could ever happen to anyone.
I pointed this out to her after our fourth meeting.
'Ssshh,' she intoned, placing a finger to her mouth. 'Live for the moment. Let the rest take care of itself.'
'I'll try, Annie,' I said, 'but things are never that neat.'
She answered by making love once more, taking me to new heights, and my worries were temporarily out of my mind.
Until the next day when, walking down an alley, someone came up behind me, spun me round, thumped me straight on the nose, distorting my vision, before pummeling me to the ground.
Through a haze of pain, I was finally grabbed by the collar, and this hissing voice said: 'You and Annie are finished. Got that! '
I agreed. I had little choice. Even though I never got a good look at my attacker, it seemed obvious to me that it had to be a husband. She could have said.
A couple of days later, I rang her mobile. I got nothing.
I went round the haunts I knew she frequented. I saw nothing. I asked people. They knew nothing. Annie had disappeared from the face of the Earth, and a nagging worry began to eat away at me.
When the imp of anxiety takes hold, it consumes all logic, all sense, all reason. I knew this only too well. I was a novelist, and prided myself with understanding the human mind. But then again, maybe novelists only knew their own, and their insightful novels nothing more than self-analysis.
Regardless, as my anxiety over Annie's fate intensified, I found my muse contacting me, telling me I had to write a novel on this experience. Maybe it was a way to cleanse my mind, to allow me to move on. But for whatever reason I knew I had another novel to write.
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