they weren't figments, these presences. He'd met them face to face
(those that had faces) in alleyways and tenements and elevator shafts. Found them squatting in hospital garbage, sucking on soiled bandages; seen them in the mud at the river, eviscerating dogs. they were everywhere, and more arrogant by the day. It was only a matter of time, Harry knew, before they took the streets at noon. And when they did, they would be unopposed.
At the beginning of his career-when his investigations as a private detective had first led him into the company of the inhuman-he had entertained the delusion that he might with time help turn the tide against these forces by alerting the populous to their presence. He soon learned his effor., People didn't want to know. they had drawn the parameters of belief so as to exclude such horrors, and would not, could not, tolerate or comprehend anybody who sought to move the fences.
Hany's stumbling attempts to articulate all that he knew or suspected were met with derision, with rage, and, on one or two occasions, with violence. He quickly gave up trying to make converts, and resigned himself to a lonely war.
He wasn't entirely without allies. In the course of the next few years he'd met a handful of people who had all in some fashion or other come to know what he knew. Of these few, none was more important to him than Norma Paine, the black blind medium who, though she never left her tiny two-room apartment on Seventy-fifth, had tales to tell from every corner of Manhattan, passed on to her by the spirits that came looking for guidance on their journey to the Hereafter. Then there'd been Father Hess, who had for a little time labored with Harry to discover the precise nature of the presences that haunted the city. Their work together had come to an abrupt halt that Easter Sunday in Wyckoff Street, when one of those presences had sprung a trap on them both, and Hess had perished on the stairs while the triumphant demon sat on the bed where it had been found, speaking the same riddle to Harry over and over:
"I am you, and you are love, and that's what makes the world go round. I am you, and... "
In the years since that appalling day, Harry had never found an individual whose judgment he'd trusted as he'd trusted Hess's judgment. Though Hess had been a fervent Catholic, he'd not let his faith narrow his vision. He'd been a keen student of all manner of religions, with a passion for life and its mysteries that had burned more brightly than in any soul Harry had encountered, A conversation with Hess had been like a trip on whitewater rapids: by turns dizzying and dangerous. One moment he was theorizing about black holes, the next extolling the virtues of peppered vodka, the next speaking in reverential tones about the mystery of the Virgin Birth. And somehow always making the connections seem inevitable, however unlikely they were at first glance.
There wasn't a day went by Harry didn't miss him.
"Congratulate me," Ted said, appeafing at the office door with a broad grin on his face, "I sold another piece."
"Good for you."
Ted slipped inside and closed the door behind him. He had a bottle of white wine in his hand. Squatting down against the wall, he sipped from it.
"Jeez, what a night," he said, his voice quivering with emotion. "I almost canceled last week. I wasn't sure I wanted people looking at what's in my head." He leaned back against the wall, and closed his eyes, expelling a long, low breath. There was silence for perhaps half a minute. Then he said, "I got what you wanted, Harry."
"Yeah?"
"I still think you're out of your mind-"
"When's the ceremony?"
"Next Tuesday."
"Do you know where?" look. "Of course," Ted said, giving Harry a mock-offended "Where?"
"Down around Ninth and-2' "Ninth and what?" "Maybe I should just take you." "No, Ted. You're going to stay out of this."
"Why?" Ted said, passing the wine bottle to Harry. "Because you swore off all that shit, remember? Heroin and magic, out of your life. That's what you said." "they are. I swear. Are you going to drink or not?" Harry took a mouthful of wine. It was sour and warm. "So keep it that way. You've got a career to protect." Ted gave a little self-satisfied smile. "I like the sound of that," he said. "You were about to tell me the address." "Ninth, between Thirteenth and Fourteenth. It's a trian gular building. Looks deserted." He claimed the wine bottle back from Harry's hand, dropping his voice to a near whisper. "I've dug some secrets out of people in my time, but shit, getting this address, Harry, was like getting blood from a stone. What's going on down there?"
"You don't want to know."
"The less you tell me," Ted warned, "the more damn curious I'm going to get."
Harry shook his head despairingly. "You don't let go, do you?"
"I can't help it," Ted replied with a shrug, "I've got an addictive personality." Harry said nothing. "Well?" Ted pressed. "What's the big deal?"
"Ever heard of the Order of the Zyem Carasophia?"
Ted stared hard at Harry. "You're kidding?" Harry shook his head.
"This is a Concupigaea ceremony?"
"That's what I heard."
"Harry... do you know what you're messing with? They're supposed to be exiles."
"Are they?" Harry said.
"Don't bullshit me, Harry. You know fucking well."
"I hear rumors, sure."
"And what do you think?"
"About what?"
"About where the fuck they came from?" Ted said, his agitation increasing.
"Like I say, it's all rumors, but@'
"But?"
"I think they're probably from Quiddity."
Ted let out a low whistle. He needed no introduction to the notion of the dream-sea. He'd dabbled in occult practices for half a decade, until in the midst of a conjuration, high on heroin, he'd unwittingly unleashed something with psychopathic tendencies, which it had taken all of Hariy's wits to beat. Ted had sworn off magic and signed on for a detox program the same day. But the vocabulary of the occult still carried its old, familiar power, and there were few words in that vocabulary as potent as Quiddity.
"What are they doing here?" Ted said.
Harry shrugged. "Who knows? I'm not even sure they're the real thing."
300 Clivc Barkcr
"But if they are-?" "If they are, I got some questions I need answering." "About what?" "About that snake you put under my heel."
"The Anti-Christ." "they call it the lad." Again, Ted needed no education in seminologies. "The Uroboros and the Anti-Christ are the same thing?" he said. "It's all the Devil by another name," Harry replied. "How can you be so sure?"
"I'm a believer."
The next day Harry went downtown to take a look at the building Ted had pinpointed. It was utterly commonplace, a four-story tenement, now apparently deserted, its windows boarded blind, its doors either padlocked or bricked up altogether. Harry ambled around it twice, studying it as discreetly as possible, in case he was being watched from inside. Then he headed back up to Nonna's apartment, to get some advice.
Conversation wasn't always easy at Norma's place. She had been since adolescence a beacon for lost and wandering souls (particularly the recently dead) and when she tired of their importunings she turned on the thirty-odd televisions she owned, the din of which drove the wanderers away for a spell, but rendered ordinary exchanges near impossible.