“Given the opportunity to speak with Elizabeth, I was afraid I would learn that she hated me for not saving her.”
“I see. And despite all that, you’ve changed your mind.”
“I was able to rid myself of the fear. She was just not capable of hatred such as that. And as far as a possible conflict with scripture goes: And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
“How utterly appropriate.”
“Science is an invitation to know the truth. Physics, mathematics…as scientists we learn more and more of the truth of the universe every day. All data can be used for good or evil purposes. Professor Josephson related a fantastic story to me about a dead man returning to life, which I’m still trying to come to terms with. But in that case, the evil was obvious and prevalent. Our case also involves death, but after examining it forwards and backwards, I cannot see any aspect of evil in this. I cannot see the harm. We are seeking truth through the use of no tool of the Devil. Magic is just another science provided by God.”
When I had finished speaking, his head was nodding slowly up and down, as if to affirm my words. Then, without warning, he stood from the table and walked into the kitchen. He returned with a clear glass vase, a box of matches, and a stick of chalk. He put the vase and the matches down on the table in front of me, then got down on hands and knees, and began to draw something on the wooden floor, moving in a slow circle around the table and chairs, until he popped back up where he’d begun. He then took a seat at the table, and invited me to do the same.
“Please notice the circle I have just drawn on the floor,” he said. Not only did it encompass both the table and us, but its edges sported an intricate, curlicue design, reminiscent of spring shoots off a young tree. “Under no circumstances will you place any part of your body outside of that boundary during the ceremony. This is very important. I will inform you when it is safe to do so.”
The edge of the circle was fully two feet behind the back of my chair, so I did not feel the least bit nervous about coming anywhere near it. I nodded my understanding.
“What we are about to do is open a gate between this world and the spirit world,” he said. “We will be specifically requesting the presence of the spirit of Elizabeth, but it is possible that something else will notice the gateway and attempt to pass through. Please do not worry. You will be safe. The other entities cannot come through unless we invite them, or provide a bridge from our world to theirs by compromising the integrity of the circle. For the duration of the ceremony, everything within the circle, ourselves included, will no longer reside entirely in this realm. We will be transported to a nether-region, an in-between place where both material and spirit worlds can co-exist. You have something of hers?”
I removed the letter from my shirt pocket and handed it to him. He unfolded it, then rolled it up, and twisted it tightly. When he placed it in the vase on the table, I noticed that it actually held some small amount of fluid. He tapped the vase with a finger.
“This is a special oil. At the moment it is odorless and colorless—nearly invisible. Your letter will be lit and will act as a wick. While the wick is burning, the fluid will change properties. It will become multi-colored, many-scented.”
He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths.
“I am nearly ready,” he said solemnly. “First, I shall invoke the power of the circle to protect us, then I shall open the gate. The wick will be lit, and soon afterward you’ll feel a cold wind. This will be Elizabeth’s spirit, and will concentrate over the flame. You will know when she is here. You may speak your questions, but need not, as the spirits communicate with us through our thoughts. This amount of paper will probably last for ten minutes. At that point she will depart, and I shall conclude the ceremony. Do you have any questions?”
I hadn’t expected things to proceed so quickly. But there was no turning back now.
“Please begin,” I said.
He chanted for perhaps a minute in what I thought was Latin. When he stopped, I felt my skin begin to tingle. The room became unnaturally quiet. Not long before, sounds from the surrounding neighborhood had drifted through the relative silence of the room—children playing, a dog barking. Now there were none. All I could hear was the echo of my heart hammering away in my chest, the blood rushing through my veins.
After a short pause, Andrew once again started chanting. I listened more closely this time, and positively identified the language as Latin, but with the addition of a great many proper names that were unknown to me. The room outside of the circle took on a distant quality, as if a water glass had been upended over us, trapping us beneath it. Everything appeared somewhat transparent, ghostly. A painting that hung on the wall behind Andrew became blurred, and I could see the wall behind the painting.
There was another short pause, and then he picked up a match, and struck it. I held my breath as the flame touched the paper. A large flame erupted from the vase, and the oil became a vibrant, prismatic mixture of colors, constantly flowing and shifting. The aromas that assailed my nostrils were just as varied as the colors: orange, jasmine, rose, vanilla. Uncountable others. Even as I inhaled and tried to analyze the scent, it would shift, transforming smoothly from subtle mocha, to pungent garlic, to the salty smell of sea air.
I tried to ignore the overwhelming sensory input by closing my eyes and breathing through my mouth. With my heart threatening to burst from my chest in anticipation, I concentrated on clearing my mind. Calming myself. Several minutes went by as I awaited the cool wind that would announce Elizabeth’s presence. When nothing noticeable happened, I opened my eyes. Andrew was clearly confused. He motioned for me to be still, and we sat there looking at each other, watching the flame slowly consume the letter. From time to time I looked around, or listened, or tried to otherwise detect the presence of Elizabeth. She was not there. At last, with the paper gone, the flame extinguished itself.
Before I could make a sound, Andrew motioned for me to remain silent. He chanted in Latin again, and the odd sensation of being visually separated from the rest of the room disappeared. Another short, Latin phrase, and the sounds of the outside world once again intruded upon us.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed.
“What happened? I don’t understand.”
“I don’t either. I performed the rite correctly. Her spirit should have come to us the moment the letter was lit. But nothing happened.”
His voice faded out and he stared off into space.
Frowning, I rubbed my eyes and leaned back in my chair. After all of this, all the fear and anxiety and painful excitement—it looked as if I had been right all along. Thankfully, no money had changed hands. I had only wasted time, but I was still upset at my gullibility. I had allowed wishful thinking to influence my logic and my faith. Magic, as he believed in it, was not possible.
His self-confidence, though…He clearly had convinced himself he was capable of communicating with the dead. So there was no dishonesty here. It was just disillusionment. His parlor tricks had certainly been impressive, but they did not help me in the least. There was no reason to stay there any longer. I needed to step back and re-evaluate the events of the past week.
“I should be going,” I said, standing up. “If you—”
“No!” he shouted, leaping to his feet so rapidly that his chair nearly tipped over backwards. His movement was so jarring I nearly raised my fists in defense.
“Wait!” he said. “I’ve performed this ceremony before. In every case the outcome is always the same. There is no reason for it to have failed like that! None!”
I froze at his outburst, aware of the delicate balance of tension in the room. Might he become violent if I were to voice any disbelief? I looked at the door, measuring the relative distances. His head now hung in shame, turned away from me. Right then, I could have escaped. Or simply left; he may not even have chased me. But just as had occurred earlier outside the front door, I didn’t move. The sincerity of his
reaction gave me pause.
“What can be done?” I asked hesitantly.
We stood in stalemate, each waiting for the other to react, until suddenly, his head snapped to attention, as if a light bulb had gone on somewhere in his mind.
“I know! I’ll prove it to you. We must determine why Elizabeth did not answer her summons. We will call upon the spirit of my grandfather.”
“Bertram Hunt?” I was cowed by the thought.
“He was a voracious reader, and knew a great deal more than I. For whatever reason, spirits called in this manner are compelled to be truthful. If he knows, he’ll tell us.”
When he went into his bedroom, I looked at the door again, feeling that there was more than enough time to race out of the building and not look back. I paused, though. There was still within me the desire to see this through. Still tottering with indecision, I wondered what to believe. I needed answers: proof, disproof, something. And for some reason, I had not yet fully lost faith in this strange, excitable man. Another few minutes, then. I would give him one more chance.
He returned holding a clear glass beaker with a tight-fitting glass stopper. The container seemed to be empty until he removed the stopper, and poured more of the near-invisible fluid into the vase on the table. After placing the beaker on the desk, he located a notebook, and began paging through it.
Though I was still not fully convinced I would be faced that evening with the spirit of my fellow boarder Mr. Hunt, something had been weighing on me since my first meeting with Andrew. I needed to tell him.
“Andrew,” I said slowly, “before you begin, there is something you should know.”
The heaviness of my voice caught his full attention. He stopped what he was doing and looked at me.
“I am hesitant to admit this,” I said, “but your grandfather and I had a brief conversation within a week of his death. It was not pleasant.”
“What happened?”
“I have no idea what may have triggered it,” I said honestly. “But he stated, in no uncertain terms, that he wished to see me dead. Also, he did not wish to speak to me again before his own death, which he predicted to be forthcoming shortly. It was only days later that he died.”
“That is very strange, indeed,” he said softly, returning his attention to the notebook. “Although, based on his background, I can believe quite easily that he knew the time of his death beforehand.”
Andrew turned a page, another, then stopped and looked up at me.
“It’s odd you should mention that. He would make the strangest comments sometimes, or look pityingly at people. I remember being on the receiving end of that more than once.”
He looked down at the page he had turned to, and tore it out with a snap of his wrist.
“It was not an endearing habit, as you might imagine.”
He rolled it up and twisted it in the same manner as before, then placed it in the vase. He took his seat, prepared himself, and began the rites once again. Just as before, my skin tingled as silence enveloped us. He spoke again, and again we seemed to become disconnected from the room, which became phantasmal.
Once again, the match, the flame, the onslaught of colors and scents. I hardly had time to notice them however, because this time something very different occurred. A frigid wind appeared from nowhere, blowing from every direction. Yet the flame was undisturbed. After ten or fifteen seconds the wind died down, but the coolness remained.
Andrew cleared his throat.
“Grandfather, it is I, Andrew,” he said, his voice taking on a more booming quality than I had heard before. “I have with me Robert Adderly.”
The outpouring of hatred that I received then was so strong and shocking that my heart skipped a beat. I gasped and recoiled, nearly losing my balance as the chair tipped backward. Luckily, I caught the edge of the table, and pulled myself flat again. If Andrew had noticed my plight, he seemed unaffected.
“Not long ago, we tried to contact the spirit of his dead fiancée, Elizabeth Wentworth. But the attempt did not work. Can you tell us why?”
A pressure in my head, and a boiling sensation behind my eyes, formed into three short, animosity-filled words, directed at me:
SHE IS NOT!
I put my hands to my ears, but to no avail, for the words were not sounds. The flame, which had been burning steadily, abruptly increased in intensity tenfold. The paper was consumed in no time. The winds lasted only seconds; the ensuing silence was breathtaking.
I was left shaking. Andrew also had to compose himself before speaking the words to end the ceremony. In a minute, the sights and sounds of reality were restored.
“Robert, I’m sorry,” he said, a note of sadness in his voice, “that you had to be on the receiving end of my grandfather’s wrath.”
I laid my head upon the table, and tried to calm myself.
“What of his answer?” I asked into the table’s surface. “She is not what? What sort of an answer is that?”
“Unfortunately,” he said sadly, “it is the only one that makes sense. I should have known, even before I asked. She is not: She does not exist.”
“Of course she does not exist. She is dead.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s not what he meant. There’s a difference between the two. She does not exist, living or dead. Somehow her spirit has been…erased. The reason we received no response from her, is because there is no bit of her anywhere to respond.”
I lifted my head and looked at him, dumbfounded.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But she is truly gone.”
Ten
On the scale of devastation, or morale, once the limit is reached, how does one go past it? Is there a point lower than the lowest? An even-more-impossibly difficult? There must be. Somehow, I had breached that barrier, and sunk to a point far below where any sunlight could go. Enveloped in the darkness of the night, it felt so, anyway.
But in the morning, the rays did stream in through the window and touch my face. That warmth was a reassuring thing to feel, but only served to remind me how alone I was. The past hours spent in fitful sleep, there had been only numbness; now, my thoughts were coherent once again, but not the least bit pleasant.
It is admittedly a poor thing for one yet living—and as young as I had been at the time—to consider, but my own death was foremost in my mind. After Elizabeth’s death, I had taken some small consolation in the belief that she and I would be reunited in Heaven. We had pledged ourselves to each other; a ceremony is a necessity for human society, but spiritually, it had been done. Now, though…that was no longer possible. She was forever gone, and I was alone.
But how is it possible for a soul to be wiped from existence? Once again, I was confronted with a concept that contradicted my system of beliefs. It was maddening, even somewhat infuriating. Again, it seemed as if I was being forced to make a choice. For one, I could accept the fact of her surreal death, ignore all of the mysteries associated with it, take comfort in my faith, and move on with my life. Or, I could dig. I could dig down deeply and unearth the hidden truth behind some or all of it: definitely the hows, perhaps also the whys. At the end of it, having employed science to get answers, I might still have my faith as an anchor. I might. I also might not. That was a frightening unknown.
Round and round in a circle I went all that morning, thinking, thinking, and unable to muster desire for any sort of activity. And where exactly does a circle like that end? In that house, it ends when a concerned Mrs. Bettings knocks on the door. Because I did not go downstairs for breakfast, she visited at lunchtime, and inquired as to my health. I told her that I felt under the weather. When she offered to bring a sandwich up to my room, I declined, stating that I would be downstairs before much longer.
I needed to make a decision. But before facing the world, I also needed to wash up and shave. I began there, hoping that those simple, physical actions would help me concentrate. My thoughts gelled while I looked at myself in the mirror. The
fact of the matter was that I was still alive, and even if I had communicated with Elizabeth the previous evening, the inescapable reality of her death would yet remain. We would still be separated, and to one of the living, was there truly a difference between death and total obliteration? The events of the previous evening had changed nothing: She was still gone; I still lived. It was difficult to absorb, but that acknowledgement allowed me to conquer the despair. With the negativity gone, the choice of whether to bury my head in the sand or dig into the mysteries was easier.
I would dig. As well as I could, I would dig—but on my own. Andrew had access to information that I needed, but actively involving him further did not seem like a good thing to do. It would be selfish of me to use him in this venture. I decided to reimburse him for his efforts and remain on friendly terms.
Mrs. Bettings’ lunch had an oddly energizing effect on me. Different problems demanded my attention, but there were priorities, and so my thesis came first. I found and reworked a flawed section, then made a few notes about how to zero in on something uniquely my own. But they were only notes, and none of them inspiring. I ran out of ideas, and my notes became meaningless scratch marks and scribbles. I needed to be creative, and thought that perhaps the professor’s equations would provide a spark.
The matrix transformations he had applied were clearly correct. It was not a trivial task to work through them, but I arrived again and again at the same answer as he. As far as creativity goes, there was no inspiration to be found there: He had done the logical thing, and correctly, and I could think of no other methods to apply.
To the endpoints, then, the source of his frustration. The equations clearly described an asymptotic behavior, such as when a tangent approaches closer and closer to infinity without ever reaching it. But instead of a simple two-dimensional line drawn on sheet of paper, a path through five dimensions was described! Because of the complexity, the curve seemed to be non-linear, varying unpredictably—but no. It was simply the fact that the human mind was incapable of picturing the path it traced through those multiple dimensions.
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