Please forgive me if I wander. I have little occasion these days to Unburden myself to a Sympathetic ear, and I am straying beyond my Original intention in writing this letter.
I have lived an uncommonly full Life in the pursuit of the Mysteries, a life which I think would be an excellent example to others of like inclination. I know the World is full of such Souls, few of them as fortunate as myself in Uncovering their Latent powers, many Abused since childhood, victims of Rape and Incest, in dire need of Healing. They are Alone and frightened, seeking solace in Drugs and books of the so-called Occult, which you and I both Know are largely compendia of Stupidity and even outright Lies, more Harmful than Drugs to the Minds of those poor, vulnerable Souls who encounter them.
I therefore propose a Remedy to some of this world’s Ills. I have long had it in my Mind to compose an Autobiography, detailing all but the inmost Secrets of my Wisdom, and pointing the way to acquiring even these for the Brave souls who wish to follow the Path I have blazed. While it is true that I have not traveled extensively in the physical plane, my Mind has encompassed the Universe, and I have concrete experience of things most people consider purely Illusory. There is more than enough in my life to fill a thick volume—certainly more than I can write. It is very hard for me to hold a Pen. This short Letter has taken me One full Week to write, and has nearly drained my writing abilities. You will notice that the script—once my pride—deteriorates greatly from one page to the next. Yesterday my hand was so Swollen that I could not write at all. I could not be sure if you possessed a Cassette tape player, nor that you would ever Listen to such an Unusual correspondence from one whose name no doubt means Nothing to you.
My intentions were Great when I set out to write this letter. I meant to tell you how I met my first Wife (she Saw my Astral Body quite clearly on a Summer evening and followed it home to where I lay abed!) but I must cut it short now, in the hope that you will contact me at the address above and we may discuss these Matters further, without so much Formality and discomfort.
Yours in the Brotherhood of Truth,
—Elias Mooney
“Eli,” Derek muttered. “You started it all. It’s too late. I can’t take it back. I can’t stop it now.”
Fatigue was finally creeping up from within, insidious enough to alter the world he thought he saw. The room looked softened and blurred at the edges, part of a drifting dreamscape; he couldn’t believe it was dawn already.
Goddamn you, old man, he thought as he threw himself down on the mattress. I wish I’d had a crackpot file back then; your letter would have gone straight into it. It was your fault, writing to me. You should never have let me near you. You should have known what would happen, if you were so psychic.
As he fell into sleep, he dreamed he opened his eyes and saw a mandala following him down. It hung above like a leprous chandelier, a gray wheel covered with a hundred crawling mouths. It was falling faster than he—gaining on him. A hundred mouths opening, tongues lashing out to catch a taste of him.
I know you, Derek thought. You’re in my book.
Small comfort.
8
It was a slow day for Lenore. She had one class at eleven, a course in number theory, and then she worked from one to seven as a waitress at the Cutting Board. Math kept her mind sharp; the job kept her grounded in reality. The rest of her life, the domestic part of it, was vague and confused, its limits ill-defined. She never knew quite what to do to fill the hours. She did not do well with a lot of free time on her hands—time to think, to remember, to dredge up things she would rather forget. Especially now that she had few means of blotting out those memories. She couldn’t drink—couldn’t and wouldn’t. Shouldn’t, anyway. Even when she had pot, she didn’t let herself smoke it before going to school. Maybe some of the discipline she learned there was seeping over into the rest of her life. She’d never had a schedule before, not one she’d chosen for herself. There had been plenty of curfews and house rules in the foster homes and halfway houses. She needed structure in her life, she admitted that now—but those had been poor excuses for it.
Facing herself in the bathroom mirror, she had a moment of queasiness. There was a huge scabby bruise on her forehead, right in the center. It didn’t hurt. She couldn’t remember for the life of her how she might have gotten it; she only knew it must have happened sometime during the night. Had she fallen out of bed, gotten a slight concussion? She must have hit something on the way down to make such a mess. No wonder Michael had kept staring at her all morning before he left for work. Why hadn’t he said anything?
She leaned close for a good look, but it was just a moist scab. Capillaries had burst in her skin, forming delicate red filigrees under the oozing crust, like the tendrily bodies of bloodworms, wriggling.
Get a grip, she told herself. It’s just a scab. It’s not moving.
She was dizzy, though, and a little nauseated as she stepped into the shower.
She found a black wool cap and pulled it low on her brow; anyway, she needed it in the unheated classroom high in the old math building. It wasn’t a crowded class, not at all like the crammed survey course she had taken her first term, before she found she could pass a few aptitude tests and skip entire courses. The other students were mostly younger than she, or seemed that way—if they were older, they’d hardly lived her kind of life, and might as well have been children. Geeks and nerds and quiet, plain girls. She felt like a barbarian among them, except when she was working, and then her mind seemed to whisper along in cool efficiency, and she knew she was as good as any. She knew she intrigued them, but she kept aloof.
The textbook they were using was off-the-wall, she thought; the young, acne-scarred professor had written it himself. He was taking them now through a discussion of the prime numbers represented as visual images, as groups of points. He chalked one dot on the chalkboard, then two, then three, then five, seven, eleven. The dots fell into irregular patterns. Each cluster elicited a running commentary; each had its own quirks and characteristics, its distinct personality. The professor’s voice was monotonous, but it didn’t lull her. The pictures fascinated Lenore. Thirteen: the professor couldn’t resist a short talk on the historical significance of the set, touching on the obvious associations of bad luck, thirteen loops in a hangman’s noose, Judas as the thirteenth disciple, and so on. Seventeen. Nineteen. Twenty-three. Twenty-nine. Thirty-one. Thirty-seven. Forty-one. Forty-three.