The ironic thing was that Cinderton people thought Michael was the wild one. To them, he looked dangerous, the sort of kid who’d had a hard life, just because he wore toned-down versions of city styles and lived in a house with a quasi-biker upstairs. Around here, it didn’t take much to stand out from the norm. It was worse when they got out of town and into the sticks. Cinderton tolerated a minimal amount of weird behavior because of the campus; freakish college kids bankrolled the town. Past the town limits, all bets were off.
She took a step into the room, as if it might help her remember what had happened last night.
She walked up to the altar and saw Michael’s knife gleaming down in her shadow. Peering more closely, she saw that the tip was broken off, snapped right across. How had that happened? Michael was usually so careful with his things.
She flipped open the beat-up edition of The Mandala Rites lying next to the knife, upsetting the wooden wand that lay across it. The stick clattered softly on the floor, but before she could bend to pick it up, she saw the black mandala trembling on the page.
She bolted down the hall with a hand over her mouth, making it to the bathroom sink just as she vomited.
She hung there for a minute after it was over, running water from the tap, cupping it to her mouth. She sipped and spat, then splashed her face and reached for a handtowel.
As she patted herself dry, she glanced in the mirror. In shock, she put the towel down and leaned closer to the glass.
The scab was hanging from a thread of skin. She twitched it off and dropped it down the drain. The skin beneath was bright as a candy heart, except for the traceries of exploded veins, like the remnants of a hickey. She patted the spot with a damp washcloth. The capillaries looked weird, still oozing. Her eyes hurt from being nearly crossed, but she thrust her face still closer and stared without quite believing what she saw.
Sharp lines like spokes in a wheel, small speckled dots like… like eyes. It was a mandala. The same she’d been drawing that morning—or damn similar. The thirty-seventh mandala, in amazing detail. It looked more like a high-contrast photograph than a tattoo. The harder she stared, the more she saw. She could make out the texture of the spokes, the glistening of teeth in the central mouth, all the moist eyes that seemed to be watching her.
Teeth, mouth, eyes?
Why was she so sure of what she saw?
She stared so hard that the image seemed to change. In the old, stained, badly silvered mirror, it began to warp and waver. The thing’s thin arms rippled and the teeth parted slightly, revealing a midpoint of darkness that held her gaze and deepened, twisting, sucking her in like the water that swirled forgotten down the drain.
9
In addition to Mystery, Science Fiction, Westerns, and Puzzles, Michael was in charge of the Religion and Metaphysics sections at Beagle Books in downtown Cinderton. Several times a week, Michael took his inventory list down the aisles, assessing the history and current state of human spirituality based on titles in print and copies in stock, from Charles Fort to Paul Tillich, from St. Augustine and the Dalai Lama to L. Ron Hubbard and Erich von Daniken. The more outlandish writings had their own long shelf facing Fiction. This stretch was crammed with books on lucid dreaming and dream interpretation, on flying saucers and the Bermuda triangle, on astral projection, clairvoyance, crystal power, healing and visualization. There were tomes on witchcraft by Cotton Mather, Sybil Leek, and Starhawk; a complete set of Max Freedom Long’s kahuna treatises and Franz Bardon’s hallucinatory hermetic confections. No matter how many times he riffled through the section—and taking inventory gave him a good excuse for browsing through more books than he could ever hope to own—he always found something to send him into frenzies of speculation. The Big Five orthodox, received-wisdom cults (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism) had an entire wall to themselves toward the back of the store, around the corner from Metaphysics, and separated from their harebrained cousins by the smallish Science Fiction section. He went more methodically and sedately through Religion, a mere cataloger of defenders and heretics. Dogma did not interest him. Sometimes he cracked open a copy of Ignatius of Loyola, to see how the visualizations worked, if there were any techniques he could borrow; or skimmed Thomas Merton trying to figure out why Chogyam Trungpa had pushed him into a swimming pool; and he had long since moved Blake and Swedenborg into Metaphysics, feeling they would be more comfortable among others like themselves.
He was proud of his Metaphysics section, though it had glaring holes that never failed to frustrate him, representing volumes he considered crucial to any comprehensive occult library, but that were either out of print or unavailable through the distributors he was authorized to use. The Black Pullet, for instance. You could find it only in a cheap pamphlet that looked more like a compendium of love spells and hexes, which was admittedly as far as most people’s interest in occultism went. And just try finding a copy of A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. ELIZ. and King JAMES their Reignes) and Some Spirits: Tending (had it Succeeded) To a General Alteration of most STATES and KING DOMES in the World!
He had ordered another six copies of The Mandala Rites, figuring there would be a run on them after Crowe’s lecture, and this morning he’d moved them to the front counter. It would have been a coup to get Crowe in here to autograph them, but obviously the occultist hadn’t wished to linger in Cinderton for business or pleasure. Two copies had sold by noon, when Michael finished his inventory and took the register. Out of the corner of his eye, as he rang up a stack of magazines, he noticed a large woman standing at the mandala display. When he turned to look at her directly, he saw it was Cerridwen Dunsinane.
“Hey, Cerridwen,” he said. “They’re going good today, after last night. That was a great lecture, wasn’t it?”
The look she gave him was surprising, to say the least. Poisonous. Enraged. She snatched up a copy of The Mandala Rites. “I’d like to tear this thing in little pieces and feed them to my python,” she said. “I’m almost tempted to buy a copy just for the pleasure of mutilating it, except I wouldn’t want six percent sneaking back in that asshole’s pocket. I wouldn’t want to make my snake sick either.”
“Whose pocket?”
She slapped the book face down on the counter. “Derek Crowe’s.”
“What? You’re kidding.”
“The guy’s a fraud. A slimeball. I’ve never met a bigger one, and to think I helped him on his greasy way….”
Michael shook his head. “A fraud?” He flashed on Lenore, last night, the power she had summoned with Crowe’s book. That was real magic, more intense than anything he had ever experienced, undeniable and, in retrospect, rather frightening.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I have reason to think he’s got something there.”
“Oh, he’s got something going, all right. It’s just not what everyone thinks. He threatened to sue the Sisterhood.”
Another customer came up with a couple paperbacks; he rang them up absently. “Sue you? Over what?”
“Over a few bucks that were supposed to go to charity.”
“That doesn’t sound too enlightened.”
“Enlightened? The man is pitch black. If I were you, I’d purify these books with a little salt and water, a whiff of frankincense, and plenty of fire. I can’t believe anything worthwhile could come from that evil bastard.”
Michael decided not to mention that he’d given Crowe a ride.