He heard the car horn bleat as he rushed down the hall, dropping the cat in the bathroom and slamming the door to keep her there. He rushed into the temple, praying Lenore was lucid. “Hurry! My mother’s…”
The temple was empty. The leather string lay on the carpet; somehow she’d freed herself. Trembling, mouth dry, he started slowly back out of the room; turned to find her standing in the hall, eyes wide.
He tensed, ready for anything now. He hadn’t remembered seeing his athame on the altar. She could have taken it. His eyes dropped to her hands. At that instant she laughed.
She was carrying a duffel bag.
“I’m packing,” she said.
“Jesus….”
“I told you I’d be fine. I’m better now that I know we’re going.”
He swallowed. “We’re going, all right. But my mother’s here.” Even now he heard footsteps on the porch, advancing none too steadily. He wondered if he could reach the door before her, and lock her out. It would give them time—but for what? The only way to get her out of their hair was to convince her everything was fine.
“Hide the bag,” he said. “Act normal. Are you sure you’re all right?”
She nodded, slipping back into the bedroom. A moment later, his mother started pounding on the door. When he opened it, she nearly collapsed in his arms. She managed to stagger past him, catching herself on the sofa back. She stood there, damp and panting, staring suspiciously, red-eyed, around the room.
“What are you doing here?” he said; his impatience came out sounding like disgust, but she didn’t notice. It was a miracle she’d made it this far. Another wave of panic caught him when he realized that she was about to collapse where she stood, forcing him to put her to bed right here. And when she woke in the morning, to find them gone, would she explore the house in search of them?
She started past him, stiff-legged, wheeling about as if scouring the room, trying lamely to make her loss of control look deliberate. “I came t’see Lenore. She’s sick, right? I brought you two some… some soup.” She pointed back at the door, and he opened it slightly to peer at the porch. There was an aluminum pot at the top of the steps, the lid half off, rain and hail pelting into it. Perhaps an inch of liquid was left at the bottom of the pot; if it had ever been full, it must have slopped all over her car on the way over. He slammed the door.
“She’s not that sick,” he said as gently as possible. “You should have called. The roads are terrible. Now I’ll have to give you a ride back. Does Earl know where you went?”
“Course he does.” She looked around at the litter of laundry. “Not much of a housekeeper, is she?”
“Mom….”
She stumped heavily around the room. “It’s freezing in here.”
“I didn’t notice.” He took her by the shoulders, but she lurched out of his grasp, staggering toward the hall just as Lenore walked out of the bedroom in her nightgown. The cuffs of her jeans were visible below the hem.
“Hi, Ma,” she said.
“What are you doing out of bed?” His mother’s voice was abnormally loud. “You’re on drugs again, aren’t you?”
“Mom,” he said, getting her by the shoulders, shaking his head at Lenore to stay out of sight. His mother lurched sideways, knocking open the door of the temple, plunging into it.
“Would you look at this shit?” she cried. “My God.”
“That’s private, Mom. Please come out of there.” He tried to pull her back as carefully as he could, but she wrenched her arm away from him and spun around, lifting her eyes to the ceiling with the weirdest expression he’d ever seen. Giee and malice and something else. As if she knew what was up there.
“Mom, please….”
She stumped heavily toward his altar. He flipped on the overhead light to make the temple look more like a simple library. He stood next to her, fearing she might break something in her strange mood.
She stopped where she was, gazing down at the open copy of The Mandala Rites. She reached out, flipped through the pages. Mandalas flickered past.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing. A book.”
“It looks like Satanism.”
“Satanism is inverted Christianity. I’m not into anything like that. This is totally different stuff.”
“It’s the same nonsense, isn’t it? This crap nobody can read?” She stooped over and picked up the book, and he felt a shudder go through him. “I mean, what is this shit? Can’t even hardly pronounce it: ‘P-sm-mim-nou-o-u-e-u-s-v-ee.’ ‘
“Don’t,” he said.
“You telling me this isn’t garbage?”
He heard a steady pounding somewhere, a rhythmic drumming like a flywheel turning, but loud as a house’s heart beating in the walls. It must be Lenore, hammering the walls.
She was turning very red now, with the strain of pronouncing the mandala keys: “L—Loq vey-vulp-sea—”
“Don’t do that, Mom.” He tried to pull the book away, wondering why Lenore was pounding on the wall, pounding and pounding.
“Do what? I’m not doing azca rod du naalauv…”
“Stop it!” he screamed.
But she wasn’t looking at the book, wasn’t even holding it now. The pounding continued, hard and steady in the walls, and the words came from her throat in thick waves, in gouts of vileness splattering the room. It wasn’t merely the words that sickened him; something rode in on the tide of sound, a seething presence that made the air itself cringe and crawl. The tide picked up his mother and carried her across the room, flung her toward him. No one he knew could be seen in her eyes just then.
But in the air above her he saw something familiar and not entirely unexpected.
It was dim, far dimmer than the mandala Lenore had summoned, but its power was very great. This one was flat and shimmering with membranous light, like a fat decayed snowflake, a rotting sea anemone; it was eyeless, colorless, and lacked the flailing arms of the other. It was gilled like the underside of a mushroom, and the thin folds of its astral tissue quivered and rippled, each one raw and open as a toothless mouth. It clung to her skull like an outrageous hat, attached by suction to her soul—fixed by the pressure of its hideous kiss. It fattened on her rage and anger, guiding her this way and that as she rushed about. Suddenly her eyes did not seem drunken; the mist that clouded them could claim a different source.
He backed into the hall, toward the bedroom where Lenore was pounding. The storm raked the sides of the house, tearing at the walls, shaking windows, screaming almost as loud as he wanted to.
His mother came on with both hands reaching for his throat. He ducked from her grasp and came up hard against Lenore. Her eyes were wide and bright with fear, alert with her own consciousness, thank God.
But the walls continued to pound. Lenore had nothing to do with that. There was something else in the house, invoked by his mother’s words, which kept on coming, shaking the house, splitting the wood planks of the floor, clawing at the foundation, hammering nails out backward with the fingers of the storm.
Lenore covered her ears, her face twisting up in pain and horror.
“Make her stop!” she cried. “Make her stop!”
Suddenly Mrs. Renzler paused, choking off the chant; she staggered sideways, grabbing for purchase on the blank wall. Her eyes rolled up as she shivered and let out a groan. She was waging a battle inside herself, but he could hardly help her fight it. He had to protect Lenore and himself; that was his priority.