DAEMONOMANIA: Book Three of the Aegypt Cycle (47 page)

“Where are you going, Beau? How far?”

“I don’t know. Not far, maybe. I don’t know.”

“Are you going out to the Coast? Will you meet the guys?”

“I can’t say, Julie. I don’t know.”

That he had been set in motion was news enough for Julie Rosen-garten.

Once, she had been sure she would see the inception of a world entirely different from the one she had been born into, had
sat one summer on the bluffs above the sea at Montauk waiting for the Old City to arise from the blue water, feeling delight
not only in the huge possibility but in her own aptitude in imagining it, which seemed to be power. It was Beau who had told
her no, it’s not a possibility, it’s a certainty: but it won’t be a city from the sea, it will be some small and unnoticed
thing, apparently one of a million identical things but not identical, you will very likely miss it even if it’s in your own
backyard; which doesn’t mean you don’t keep looking and waiting.

“What should I do, Beau? If I can help I’ll do what I can.”

“Tell stories, Julie.”

“Oh boy,” she said helplessly. “Well gee.”

Beau always talked as though she had chosen the work that she did because of the help she could be to the world, which was
shaming, sort of; he told her she had a big responsibility, because after all the world is made out of stories.

“There are different kinds of stories,” Beau said, as though Julie knew this very well. “There are stories that are like—like
wallpaper, or chocolate. And there are stories that are like food and shelter. And in certain times people hunger for that
kind, and in those times there have to be tellers of them. Not to have them is dangerous.”

“Who could tell that kind now,” Julie said or asked. “Who could.”

“They aren’t only told. I think that when they are needed, they’re found too, in lives and in the world. The newspapers and
TV tell them as though they were really happening, and they are.”

“Which ones are they?”

“Not many. I’m thinking that right now there’s only one.”

“Just one?”

“It’s told in so many ways though,” Beau said. He closed his eyes and began to speak as though counting or recounting. “Someone
or something is lost and needs to be rescued or awakened or saved,” he said. “It’s a woman or a man, or it’s a child. Or it’s
not a person, it’s an animal or a stone or something of your own or your family’s, something valuable or just magnetic, something
you need to have. Sometimes you find it. Sometimes you find out that whatever it is that has to be found isn’t the thing or
person you thought, but another one, one you knew about all along but didn’t recognize.”

“Right in your own backyard.”

“Or
you
are the one that’s lost, waiting to be found, or searching for a way back or a clue or.”

“Do you always find it?”

“No. Sometimes you fail, and what you have to tell is the story of how you failed. Maybe you took dangerous journeys, journeys
that other people don’t perceive to be dangerous, or even to be journeys; maybe you gave up, and turned back. Or maybe you
didn’t even dare to go. Maybe you refused, and the refusal might cause you some kind of awful shame and guilt, so you’re seeking
always ever after for relief, and in your seeking you find what was lost anyway.”

“So okay,” said Julie.

“Worse sometimes is when you do find it. Like the people you see on the street in this city, every city, who push their carts
and busted baby carriages full of junk. These terrible burdens. Every day they find the thing that was lost, the all-important
thing, they save it, and they go on, and then they find it again a little while later. And again.”

“Oh God.”

“It might be that it’s to those people the story comes first; that the burden is theirs first. It might be that there has
to always be one or some of them.”

“It would be hard to do that,” Julie said, and lifted her eyes to the solid walls around her.

“Hard,” Beau said. “How about if your task was to find some
one
, not something, but someone who is also a seeker, so someone who’s always faced the other way, who you can’t get to turn
and face you.”

“How do you think these up.”

Beau laughed. “If it was me thinking them up,” he said, “I might know how I did it. But it’s not.”

As usual it was impossible to know if Beau meant exactly what he said, or if what he said applied to the world she lived in
most of the time or to another one that was a lot like it but different. She thought of all the books she had sold or tried
to sell, many of those that were around her now whose covers and titles Beau’s eyes passed over, and she thought well what
the heck, most of them are just the kind Beau described; she didn’t think they had been food or shelter for anyone, or there
would not need to be so many of them; and so what was she in business for?

“Maybe the thing that has to be found, now, is just the right story of what was lost.”

That was Julie who spoke. All of those who had lived around Beau for long had this experience now and then of saying things
that they hadn’t known they were going to say, and didn’t know what they meant, or
if
they meant. Julie knew this. She knew the sadness too that came with his company and didn’t pass away when he left, along
with the joy of having had him nearby; the sadness that was maybe Beau’s sadness though felt as her own, the sadness for which
lost
was the word. And for which
found
was the word as well.

P
ierce that night dreamed that Rose told him how she had escaped, and been rescued.

“I ran away,” she told him. “I could see them all, the others, going the wrong way away over the hills, so many of them. I
don’t know if they were looking for me. I walked a long time alone. Then a band of other people saw me, and pointed, and started
calling to me; and I was afraid. But when they came close I could see that they were kind. They talked to me a long time,
days maybe, and everything made sense. The weather was so clear and dry. They asked if I wanted to come with them. They told
me I would be safe with them, and I knew I would be.”

Pierce in his dream both listened to her talk and saw her among her rescuers, not as though he were one of them but still
as though he looked on her too. When they had all rested they moved on, with her among them, climbing steadily upward into
the clear air. With them she gathered food and firewood, and sometimes helped to carry the children, great-eyed placid kids
who would grip her waist with their knees and lay their cheeks on hers. We’ll go up along that ridge under the shade of those
trees, they said; and all of them, the old people and the kids and the friends she had found, went up under great red-barked
trees so calmly tall, and after a time came out into sight of the sea far below.

He awoke in his bed in Littleville, and it was way before dawn, black and cold; he lay in the warmth of the sun he had dreamed
of, unmoving for fear of losing what he had found. For he knew how to make this right. He had awakened knowing how to make
it and everything wrong come out right from the present backwards. It was a question: a simple question he had to ask her,
the question he had not asked.

The morning after the outreach in Conurbana Rose Ryder had driven him back from the city to the Faraways, though
back
did not seem to
be where he came to. He parted from her in his yard; she wanted to come in no more than he wanted her to, she had clearly
had it with him by then. He watched her back out and turn to go, working her wheel with knitted brows. He went into his house
as though swallowed by it, and sat down in his overcoat on the daybed in his office, feeling the place around him as though
it expected something from him. Into the Invisible Bedroom he would not go. Though he had not slept, still he stayed all that
day and well into the night awake, the dark waters lapping at his feet.

Once he leapt up, telling himself aloud that after all he wasn’t friendless, he had counsellors. Beau Brachman would know
what to do, what to think; he should go out, drive there now; but the darkness and the image in his mind of the rising road
defeated him. Well then he’d call. Beau’s phone number was not listed, of course, but Pierce thought he had it somewhere,
written down on a matchbook or an envelope from last May, when Beau and he were making plans to go up to Skytop Farm for the
balloon festival.

Green May morning, the great balloons arising from the pasture. Rose Ryder departing in a black one with Mike Mucho, and Sam
in Mike’s arms. In the womb of that time had lain already the dark fœtus that had grown into this time, and yet he and all
of them had smiled in the sun and kidded and felt delight and hope.

Here was the number.

He dialed, and waited a long time while it rang. The woman who answered told him Oh no Beau wasn’t there, he was away (she
seemed to think Pierce would know this, as though everybody must) and she didn’t know when he would be back.
I hope soon
she said.

He sat again. He would get up now and then to put a log into his little black stove or go to the bathroom or check the flow
of water as the temperature dropped after dark; then return to sit. Which didn’t mean he was not in motion much of the time,
across the wastes to which he had come: he trod on league upon league, in time to the beating of his heart, not knowing the
right way back but quite sure this wasn’t it; he watched the beauty and interest drain from things, leaving mocking or sullen
husks which still had to be dealt with, his shoes, his clothes, his beard, his food; clustering stuff to be pushed aside so
he could Think.

By nightfall he felt as heavy as though cast in bronze, and at the same time evanescent, nothing but one burning eyeball and
a clockwork heart. He came to believe that he might die; he thought that if he did not get help, if he were not somehow shaken
awake, then by dawn he would certainly have gone too far, and not be able ever to return.
But who could help him now? Who would be on his side, who had the strength? Who would not simply dismiss his fears, or, worse,
share them? He knew of no such person or being.

Well maybe there was one. Her face and name appeared in his consciousness like the ambiguous answers swimming up out of the
dark well within the Magic Eight Ball when it was questioned. After a long hour of saying her name to himself like a charm
he got to his feet and went to find the telephone book.

As soon as he had finished dialing and heard her phone begin to ring, Pierce realized in horror that it was after midnight;
he knew he should hang up, but he knew also that he had already awakened her or her house, the damage done, and before he
could muster the cowardice to put down the phone a low voice answered. Male, he thought.

“I’m sorry,” Pierce said. “I’m really sorry, I know how late it is; but could I speak to—” The pastor? The minister? “Could
I speak to Rhea? Rhea Rasmussen?”

“Well she’s asleep,” said the voice. “Is this an emergency?”

He hesitated only a moment; once asked, he knew it was. “Yes. Yes it is.”

He could hear obscure fumblings, and something fall, the receiver maybe.

“Hello?”

“Yes. Hello. My name is Pierce Moffett. It’s likely you don’t remember me, but …”

“Um,” she said. “Yes. I think. Rosie Mucho. You helped at her greatuncle’s funeral. Yes. We’ve spoken. Yes.”

“Yes. I am truly, truly sorry to have bothered you so late. But I need to talk to somebody, I need to talk to. To you, in
your, well your professional capacity.”

“My professional capacity.”

“I am in really bad trouble,” Pierce said. “Something terrible has happened to me that I don’t understand.”

There was a silence at her end that Pierce thought might be shocked, or puzzled; or thoughtful. Then she said: “Is this about
your friend and the Powerhouse?”

“Um yes,” Pierce said.

“Is she in trouble, do you think? Is she suffering?”

“I,” Pierce said. “I don’t. I don’t think so. She seems okay. It’s me.” “You?”

“I wonder,” Pierce said, and closed his eyes in shame, “if I could come see you.”

There was a small pause before she answered. “Now?” she asked.

“I hoped,” he said.

“Well no,” she said, “that would be a disruption, really. But if you need to talk right now … Where are you?”

He told her.

“Oh the Winterhalters’. Yes. I know the place. I’m actually close by. I can be over there in a few minutes. If it’s not something
you feel you can say on the phone.”

Awed by her willingness, she knowing nothing of him except what he had said, he almost told her no, forget it. But a hope
had opened in his heart. “I’m not sure it’s something I can say at all,” Pierce said.

“A few minutes,” she said. “Leave a light on.”

“All right,” he said. “Thank you.”

And what would he tell her, he thought, after the line went silent and the air of his house again surrounded him. How he had
messed with magic for his own delight, to get for himself what he wanted but should not have had, and in consequence had harmed
irretrievably the world, “the world,” like a kid with a chemistry set who by chance learns to crystallize or liquefy the bonds
of space and time, a process beginning at his own Bunsen burner in his own basement and proceeding outward exponentially.
Stop oh stop. Horror and wonder.

He hadn’t moved when her headlights swept the room.

“That’s a remarkable garment,” she said when she had taken an assessing look at his house and at him.

It was Sam Oliphant’s dressing gown, purple satin side out, belted in leather. He tried to explain it, and himself a little,
his work, his ways: he seemed to have forgotten a lot of this, or to have trouble retrieving it. He offered coffee, she refused.

“Well would you,” he said, showing her the daybed where she might sit if she liked, noticing that his lair was not fit for
any habitation but his own.

She sat, a little gingerly, and by her look invited him to sit there with her.

She tried to get his story from him: carefully probing to make sure, he thought, that he wasn’t mad, or suicidal; ready to
try and help, though, it seemed, if he turned out to be. And why, despite his robe, he trembled. And trying to gauge Rose’s
predicament too. Did he think she would be harmed by them?

“No no,” said Pierce. “No, I know its not that. I mean I think maybe most of them are sincere. I want to respect, well her—you
know, her spiritual strivings. And this is such a small dumb harmless little group really. Bible people, how many thousands
are there. But I have had, well a sort of allergic reaction somehow to it, don’t ask me why.”

He had not ceased trembling, though now he made a conscious effort to do so, let his tensed shoulders fall and his hands cease
to wring one another. Watching, she put her hand over his. “It’s so hard,” she said. “We think we come to know people because
of the intensity of our feelings about them. The more intensely we feel, the closer we think we’re getting. It’s not always
so.”

“No,” he agreed, or protested. The plain frank touch of her hand was nearly unbearable. “No.”

“The opposite sometimes. But you know that. Everybody knows that.”

He wondered if that were the real horror of madness, to understand that you don’t know what everybody knows, and that this
is what separates you from them, the more-or-less well. You are gone to a land where what everybody knows is not known.

She talked more. She told him that when you feel you’ve invested a lot in a relationship, it can be very painful to think
you might have to lose that investment, of time and caring. She said that we cherish others in part because of their freedom,
but what happens when that freedom threatens commitment? It can be devastating, she said, to think that there’s no good way
to save the relationship, that the only right thing is to give it up.

“Well,” Pierce said, trying to find comfort in these phrases, boxes in which wisdom was surely kept but that he couldn’t open.
It
might not give
him
up, was what he feared.

She stood, and clasped her hands behind her, casting her eyes over his shelves of books. He saw the familiar titles as though
through her eyes: the
Malleus maleficarum
with lurid cover, the twelve volumes of Thorndike’s
History of Magic and Experimental Science
, the Rosicrucian anthologies of A. E. Waite. After a silent minute or two she turned to him, and he could tell she thought
she had learned something new.

“It couldn’t be, could it,” she said, “that you’ve been raising some demons yourself.”

“I’m a historian,” said Pierce, “I don’t, I mean those are research. I’m not a believer, or a practitioner.”

“Ah.” She continued to study him. “It always seems to me that when scholars take up one subject rather than another it’s not
for no reason. The opposite, actually.”

Too much reading. It was the medieval answer. Too much knowledge, not enough wisdom.

“I’ll burn my books,” he said.

“Aw, now.”

She came and sat again beside him on the daybed, close enough that he smelled the wool shirt she wore, and a light perfume
or shampoo.
“So tell me,” she said. “What’s the most painful thing in this to you? What is it that threatens you so much?”

“That it’s not true,” Pierce said.

She inclined her head to him, surprised maybe and interested. “Oh?”

“I can’t bear it,” he said. “That she could will herself to believe the stuff they tell her. That she could do that.” He saw
that she was smiling a little, and wondered if he might have offended. “I mean I can believe that these things can be true
for people
inside
,” he said, and touched his heart. “I see that it makes sense of the world for people. But not outside. I can’t
believe
it. I actually never did. I mean not even when I thought I did.” He understood this for the first time.

“And you think that separates you. That she believes what you don’t.”

“That she believes what is not true. What is demonstrably not the case. That they all can do that.”

She lowered her eyes. “Well.
Is it true
. You know oddly enough that’s not most people’s first concern.”

He knew. He clutched his brow.

“I think most people think first about help for pain, and certitude, and happiness. About having some power on their side.
You know when these stories were first circulating, that’s what people saw in them. Not some verifiable news story. You’re
a historian. You know this.”

“Yes.”

“The first question wasn’t
Is this true
, what I’m hearing? The first question was
What does it mean?
To me, to the world? What does it ask of me, what does it bring me?”

“I guess,” he said. He had bent nearly double on the daybed, clutching himself around the middle as though to contain himself.
“Yes, I suppose.”

“Like prayer,” she said. “About one-half of me—maybe two-thirds—doesn’t really believe in the power of prayer to alter the
world.”

“They do,” Pierce said bitterly. “They think they can get anything just by asking. Health. Wealth. New cars.”

“Yes well,” she said, and smiled. “Yes. We often pray for things that I just don’t think God supplies. Even people I love
and admire do that: maybe they know that they’re really asking these things of themselves. But, you know, another part of
me knows very well that prayer is powerful. You know it too.”

“Okay, yes,” he said. “Certainly, maybe. Inside.”