by Rex Baron
He lifted a photo of his mother from the narrow table next to the bed and regarded her familiar face with wonder. There was a woman, he thought. How had she done it? She had been able to make nations rise up and pivot at her feet, and yet, she had not been able to communicate the secret of her power to her only son. She had beguiled a sweet and harmless American soldier into rescuing her from the horrible aftermath of a shattered Germany, who brought her back to the unsuspecting world of Texas. She had been appreciative to her husband in her way, but it became apparent to Marc, from his earliest recollections, that she never referred to her husband as his father, although that conclusion was assumed by anyone not in the know. Finally, at age seven, she informed him, while playing a game of croquet, that his real father was someone else, another soldier, who she would allow him to know about but never speak of.
He closed his eyes and tried to visualize his mother as he remembered her. He had always come to her for whatever he wanted. She had always been able to manipulate the world to her own advantage and that of her child. He prayed to her now, as if she were a saint, and clutched the picture in his hands as he tried to conjure her living face in the darkness of his mind.
But he needed more than a simple prayer, an inner voice told him, as he fumbled over half-forgotten words she had once taught him to summon her. He must ask for guidance, he decided. He must call upon his mother from the other world to tell him what he must do, and how his desires might best be served.
He glanced anxiously at the clock and saw that he had scarcely five minutes to make ready for his attempt at incantation. He jumped up from the bed and hurriedly set about arranging the seemingly commonplace things on the table into the configuration of their true appointed purpose. The collection of candlesticks was set in rows of seven, spaced out along the length of the narrow table, flanking a series of photographs of his mother. Carefully, he filled the bowl lined in gold with water and positioned a small mirror on the table next to it, so that the surface of the gold-colored water could be clearly seen from a kneeling position while staring into the mirror.
Cool, evening shades of light filtered in through the studio windows in grays and blues. The cavernous space took on cathedral-like proportions as the light failed, transforming the easel with its painting of a bright-colored nude into a murky icon, displaying the open-mouthed martyrdom of some yet unheralded saint. The Japanese screen that protected the kitchen from view shape-shifted into a confessional wall and the high, arched ceiling overhead seemed to fill with the aromatic scent of ecclesiastical smoke and the sound of muttered prayers ascending heavenward.
Marc had no idea why the particular hour had been chosen, or what the string of words he had been taught to recite signified. He had learned it all by rote, as a child at his mother's side, and had been told that he might always be able to reach her and ask her guidance, if he could just remember the simple ritual and the litany of words, which she had him repeat again and again until it had been indelibly etched in his young mind.
He remembered the words faithfully, as they had been taught to him, and yet, he had never been successful in the divination of the spirit of his mother. On numerous occasions, he had set up his altar to her memory and chanted the words in the dark, but the promise of her guidance had never been fulfilled.
He knew that he needed his mother’s help more than ever. His success was now only a heartbeat away. Only a thin membrane of time stood between him and the fame and power he deserved, but he was unable to break through without help.
He lit the rows of candles and kneeled in front of his makeshift altar. He shifted his weight on his knees and concentrated on the reflection of the water in the golden bowl, viewing it in the small mirror at its side.
It was an ancient principle of divination, a dark reflection by which one was able to summon a vision, faces of those long departed or yet to come, who serve as oracles of wisdom, foretelling the future or seeing into the darkest corner of even the blackest heart.
The power of the magic mirror lay in the secret that the surface of the water must never be looked upon directly, but must be viewed only in the glass. He remembered his mother saying that it was in the space between the clear, still surface of the water and its reflection wherein lay the true vision. The water must be kept calm and untroubled, away from unwelcome currents of air or movement that would cause it to ripple and cloud, obscuring the clarity of its purpose.
Marc stared into the small square of mirror, watching the motionless reflection of unbroken stillness in the golden bowl. He cleared the dryness from his throat and slowly spoke the list of strange and foreign words.
“Aqua boraxit evenias carajos. Fixatur et patricam tornare.”
Marc delivered the pronouncement into the vast undefined blackness of the loft space around him. “Hax verticaline, pax Fantas marobum, max destinatus, veida porol.”
His eyes fixed on the golden disc below the surface of the water until they clouded over with fatigue. He repeated the words again and again, but the image in the mirror remained unchanged and still.
“It has to work,” he shouted, clenching his hands in frustration. His angry fist struck the top of the narrow table, causing the candles to waver and the dark likeness of his silhouette to jerk in agitated excitement on the wall behind him. The impact of his fist on the tabletop sent the small, square mirror sliding out of position. As he reached over an elaborate picture frame to right it, he caught the side of his hand on a jagged edge of the filigreed frame, opening a small but deep incision and drawing blood.
Instinctively, he drew his hand back toward his lips, but as it passed over the placid contents of the bowl, a drop of crimson mingled and dispersed itself into the golden liquid. He watched as the subtle ripples from the drop’s intrusion expanded toward the outer edge of the bowl and quickly turned his glance to the mirror reflection next to it.
There, in the glass, woven into the movement of the water, he saw a faint dark shape that had not been there before. His heart pounded and he heard his own breath coming fast and uneven as he repeated the magic words. He could not take his eyes from the shape, as it seemed to swim just under the surface of the clear liquid, swirling into the features of a frightening, but strangely familiar face.
Elizabeth's theory that the blood was the link to time was true, he thought, as his mind raced to keep the rising fear inside him from taking over.
The face grew clearer and more pronounced with every second, until he recognized it as the youthful face of his mother, frozen in time, like the faces in the photographs set between the glowing candles.
“Helen Liluth, I summon you,” he said, as he pressed his trembling hand to his lips and sucked the blood from the small tear at its side. “I call upon you. Mother, I need your help.”
The image on the water's surface, reflected in the mirror, was now a full and complete likeness of the woman he remembered. He dared not look directly at the bowl of water. He had been warned against it in the same way that a child is told not to look directly into the brightness of the sun.
The mouth of the reflection opened and closed, the familiar voice coming to him from every direction. Her words seemed to fill the open darkness around him in the cathedral-like space, and a chill of excitement went up his spine.
“You were once my son,” the voice echoed around him. “You are of my blood and that bond is made, which cannot be broken.”
Marc nodded his head in respectful silence.
“What is it that you desire? How may I assist you where angels and demons cannot?” the voice asked.
“I am unable to call upon them,” Marc said in a meek voice. “I have no dominion over them.”
“Why have you wasted your life in powerlessness? Why have you not summoned me sooner?”
“I did not know about the blood,” he replied. “I was never told that my blood was a part of the invocation, that I could not summon you without adding blood to the water.”
The face in th
e mirror softened into a knowing smile.
“It was for you to discover the final ingredient before the door was opened to you.”
“I need your help,” Marc pressed forward, fearing that his audience might end before he had made his request. “I must control both Elizabeth Winslow and Holly Driscoll. Elizabeth is the key to unlocking the powers of my mind, but she is distracted by her research, and I'm afraid I'll never get her to teach me the secret of the power she possesses. Holly holds the fame and success I've worked all my life for,” he said. “She is shrewd and not easily manipulated, and I have done too much already in getting the old man… the other gallery owner... out of the way to give up now.”
“You are a fool,” the voice of the reflection mocked him. “To concern yourself with this Holly and her position in your art world is laughable. She is yours to control, or be removed as an obstacle in your path, any time you choose. She is of very little consequence to us here in this place where the brothers of the Dark Lodge dwell. It is the woman Elizabeth who is of interest, but not for the simple reason you assign. She is the sole remaining descendant of a line of Wise Ones who represent the White Lodge and the Divine will. They have been our opponents since the time when our dark brothers, the seven angels, fell, and the world and its consciousness was divided into the dark and the light.”
“But how do I obtain control over her?” Marc asked.
“You already have it. She is in love with you,” the face in the mirror answered. “You have great power over her emotions and her astral life. We can promise you wealth and dominion over any you choose while in this incarnation, as long as you are successful in delivering Elizabeth to us.”
“But how?” Marc asked. The face in the mirror began to fade in and out of form. He heard the words of his mother's voice, but now they came interrupted, at intervals, like a bad connection on a long distance telephone call.
“How?” He repeated his question, moving closer to the glass to try and hold the focus with the now blurred and expressionless face.
The words of the voice were slow and slurred as it answered.
“You must lure her into the Kraft. By opening her mind and her astral body to the vibrations of this world, long forgotten by her and her family, you will lead her onto the battlefield where we will strike the final blow and attain victory for all eternity. Use her love for you to lead her onto the path of darkness, from which she will never return.”
Marc's mind panicked as the image of his mother flickered and seemed to sink below the surface of the water.
“Mother,” he called out.
“Lead her onto the path,” a hoarse whisper filled the heavy air around him. “We will assist you in setting up a course of events to take her there, but only you, as a brother of darkness, can do battle with the forces of light and vanquish her.”
Marc had no time to utter another word. Before his eyes, the image in the mirror dissolved once again into the uninterrupted gleam of the golden disc below the clear surface of the water. His eyes darted between the mirror and the bowl, but he saw nothing.
The atmosphere of the loft weighed heavily upon him, as he remained kneeling for long moments before his makeshift altar, wondering what course of events would be laid before him to help him in his task.
Chapter Twelve
UCLA Campus
Elizabeth fished in the back of the lab table’s drawer, hoping to find the stale pack of cigarettes that she had hidden from herself, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found a single broken occupant in the half-crumpled pack. She snapped the cigarette at the place where it was torn and lit the end without the filter, then drew in a bitter but welcome stream of gray smoke.
She rewound the videotape and watched herself on the screen, lying on a table in the lab with the sensing devices attached to her body. She watched with fascination as the eyes of the woman on the screen fluttered in deep sleep, and heard her call out the names of strangers with terror in her voice.
She had accessed the memory of her Aunt Lucy for nearly three weeks, amassing more data every day, getting closer and closer to the truth about how she died.
Music from the opera as well as popular tunes of the late Teens and early Twenties filled the lab during that time, almost without interruption, and Elizabeth's head pounded with the syncopated beat and tinny sound of the vintage phonograph records. She had even obtained a wax recording of her aunt singing a scratchy version of a Puccini Aria. It was an odd sensation to hear her sing. It was as if she almost remembered the placement of the notes, and felt a rushing sense of accomplishment when the sections in the high and difficult register were successfully completed.
She dragged in on the precious last of the cigarette and forwarded the tape to the most recent session. On the screen, she saw the image of herself, drawn up into a carriage and posture that was foreign to her. It was a regal bearing that she had come to know by now as the stage presence of her great aunt. As she watched the tape, she witnessed the memory of an argument on stage.
“If you could only keep her from distracting me, upstaging me,” her hysterical voice pleaded with some unseen authority in the sleep-like realm. “I know, I appear to be difficult, but I can't work as long as she is there, all the time watching me and laughing behind my back. Don't you all see how dangerous Helen is? Don't be a fool, David. She is using you and will stop at nothing. She wants my career. She has already taken everything else of value from me and will not rest until I am dead.”
A shiver went up Elizabeth's back as she replayed the entreating pronouncement for the third time. It was clear to her that her aunt's anxious words were a chilling prophecy of what was to come.
It had not occurred to Elizabeth, when she first began the pursuit of inherited memory, that she might reach a point where she would be ultimately confronted by the death process itself. In the back of her mind, she felt the cloudy images she had witnessed in her own dreams, lurking just below the awareness of her conscious brain. She thought of the dream she had of holding onto the ship's rail as her feet slipped out from under her, tossing her into the blackness of a sea that spanned the space between the living and the dead. To be submerged in the dark water was death itself, her frightened mind offered in explanation. Perhaps it was an actual drowning she saw, or merely a metaphor for the passage to the other world, like the ancient Greeks’s interpretation of crossing the river of forgetfulness, back to the place of origin for all disincarnate beings.
Elizabeth could not think of all of this just yet, she told herself aloud as she stumped out the remains of the burning cigarette between her fingers and switched off the monitor. Without realizing it, she was pacing the room, holding herself in her own arms, crossed in front of her like some unconscious gesture of love, a consolation for the inherited sorrow she felt in her heart.
She experienced sadness as her aunt's memories and passions swept through her body and mind, realizing she had never, in all of her life, felt an intensity of emotion that even approached these borrowed sensations, which she was now remembering. The old platitudes about how some people live their lives while others only watch from the sidelines seemed true. It had only been in recent weeks, since Marc had come into her life, that she had experienced true passion, or the doubtful emotions of jealousy and suspicion. And yet, she welcomed these strange and heretofore forbidden expressions of herself with a new gratitude, no longer trying to suppress them or hide the fire of her desire behind the pat excuse that there was no time for a scientist to have a life at all.
One more session… she felt she was nearing the answer to the mystery of Lucy's death. It would be the scientific breakthrough she had hoped for, the culmination of a series of provable memories, climaxing in a conscious awareness of what it is to pass over to the other side. In spite of this promise of reward, she feared going to that place on the edge of life and death. She saw it ahead of her, in her last two sleep sessions, and her body resonated with the fear that she might slip over that edge
and lose her own life along with the memory of her aunt. Just when she had found a love of her own and a chance at personal triumph in her career, she ran the risk of losing it all.
“Have some guts, for once in your life,” she said aloud. “Now is your chance to have a life equal to Lucy's, a life that would be worthy of being recalled, and perhaps explored by your own distant descendants.”
As she scolded herself, a knock sounded at the door. She had expected no one at this late hour. She smoothed her hair with her hand and opened the door to see John Ruskin staring down at his dusty brown shoes. Funny, she thought, how appropriate Marc's description of these dreary sorts of people were. She smiled to herself and wondered why she had never noticed such an incriminating detail before this moment.
“John, I must say, I'm surprised to see you here so late.”
Her visitor shuffled on the threshold like a nervous suitor hoping for a kiss.
“Come in,” she said.
“I only have a minute,” he replied, scrupulously avoiding her eyes. “I came with a piece of news. You'll be receiving a letter, more of a notice, in your mailbox in the morning, but I thought since I was your immediate superior I should tell you first.”
Elizabeth did not like the sound of the word superior, or the general tone of what it was he hesitated to tell her.
“The funding for your department has been cut,” he blurted out the news. “The Board of Regents and the Board of Directors of the university agreed that far too little of any scientific importance has come out of this department since Doctor Mathews’s death.”
The little man delivered the news like a proclamation at a public hanging. He was without compassion in his words and without understanding of their consequences.