Dark Arts (5 page)

“It’s all right, Sam, I’ll tell him,” Allen
said. “Max, what would you give to be as famous as Jimi Hendrix, or
Jim Morrison? To be recognized for your style of music and your
talent?”

“I’ve given plenty already,” Max said. “You
should know, your son and your nephew have been along for the
ride.” He was already irritated that his music was being brought
into the conversation. “If this is about me playing in the devil’s
interval, then I promise to write something more cheerful for the
next record. If there is a next record.”

“No, it’s not about that, everyone here has
heard what you and my son do, and I think we all like it,” Allen
paused for a moment, looking to Sam, who was nodding.

“Vivaldi could not have written the Four
Seasons without the Tritone,” Sam said, taking a moment to wheeze
before going on. “There are no objections here.”

“I haven’t heard the record,” Gladys said.
“But my niece has loved it, Bernie sent her a copy when she could
not find it in New York.”

“And I know,” Allen said, “You guys have
been paying the price for the dream you share on the road for three
years. I’ve watched you start with a school bus rotting from the
inside that you fixed up, do a turn across the northern states,
then get a record deal. Everyone was excited, I think I was as
excited as both of you, then you were back on the road, pushing
that vinyl, and you started on a low when you found out most stores
didn’t get the record. It’s been harder ever since, I’ve seen it,
not the whole story, not how low things have really gotten, but I
get it from the tone of my son’s letters, from his calls. You’ve
been doing your father’s work to keep the wheels on the road,
everyone here knows it, and it was all right, he taught you
everything whether you liked it or not. Members of the Circle have
actually benefited from your skills, placing orders through Angelo,
or through Grant. It’s been good, watching you work connections,
bring things to the region, but now things are different, now
you’ve found something and you’re headed for a dangerous path.”

“This book,” Max said, reaching into his
jacket.

Samuel lurched into a coughing fit, Gladys
took a step back, clutching a small bag hanging from a string
around her neck, and Allen put his hand on Max’s. “You can leave
that where it is.”

Maxwell withdrew his hand without taking the
book out and poured a glass of iced tea for Samuel. He accepted it
gratefully. “I’ve come by that, and a piece of stone, looks like
wood, but I’ve never seen the like.”

“That explains more than you know,” Allen
said. “That book is powerful, have you read it?”

“From cover to cover, it’s fully
translated,” Max replied. “Completely mad too, a lot of laws,
rituals, and a list of names, a few I remember from lessons. Not
all bad, not all good, like it’s written by someone who just didn’t
care how the book was used,” he replied, consciously making an
effort to accommodate their apparent belief in the book. “Not
recommended for summer reading.”

“That’s what we were afraid of,” Allen said.
“Is there a section on the Covenant?”

“At the end,” Maxwell said. “It’s what my
father was looking for on and off most of his life, lives up to the
lessons he gave me. The section refers back to a lot of the
previous parts of the book, how those passages break the rules.
Doesn’t’ always go into details about consequences though. I guess
to a believer it’s either a horror show, or a kind of ‘how to break
the world’ manual. That Covenant deal is simple, but strict, not
easy to play with.”

“It exists?” Gladys asked quietly. “The pact
between the High Lords and the Gods? The laws are there?” She
pointed at his jacket, where the book was neatly tucked into his
inside pocket.

“Laid out in fine print. A man proves his
power by resurrecting himself, then surrenders to the will of the
Heavens – that’s the translation, none of this ‘Gods’ business –
and the heavens take him, restoring him to a natural death. For
their part of the deal, the Masters of All keep the primordial
darkness, the power of all things and the cycle of life in balance,
so mankind can’t monkey around with the order of things on their
own.” Max cleared his throat then and recited one of the final
lines. “’Upon the hill, Witnesses chosen during a new dawn beheld
their Master ascend as a being of light. All gathered felt the
whole love in his being, the truth of his heart, bathe them and
hold them. Then the Witnesses did travel, sharing the light that
followed them.” Max took a moment as his head spun and his fingers
tingled. He shook it off and nodded slowly. “The end is brighter
than the beginning,” Max said quietly. “Horror show of darkness and
things that hunt human like a lion hunts elk.”

“No more quotes for now,” Samuel said
quietly. “Especially from the beginning. The first translator died
before he reached the end, transferring the text from Ancient Greek
to Latin. I know you may not believe it, but that book contains
knowledge that can unlock a fount of power in someone with the
right upbringing.”

“I’ve heard that before,” Maxwell said, his
back straightening. “My father wouldn’t let me forget how
incredible I could be if I minded my lessons with him, if I took a
moment to be open to it. I know his books and lectures better than
I knew him, thanks to all this.”

“He was his lectures,” Allen said. “Whether
we like it or not, that was his life, and he was hard to deal with
sometimes because of it, but he was a good man on the whole.”

“Helped a lot of people,” Samuel said.
“Helped me too.”

“I knew him differently,” Maxwell said. “Too
tired to get in a row about it, so we’ll leave it at that. Now, I
need a buyer for this, and Angelo isn’t touching it, he isn’t
telling me who made the order either. So if any of you could help
me, I’d appreciate it. This cash is a new life for Bernie and
Scott,” Max said forcefully. “I can sell this, give them each four
thousand for whatever schooling they want, because this band is
going nowhere, and I’ll take the other two thousand to figure out
what I want to do. It’s the least I can do after dragging them on
the road with me for a couple years.”

“Max, I had no idea,” Allen said.

“This last tour was hard,” Max said. “Zack
is on his way out, and I’m pushing him on, good riddance, and we’re
not finding a new howler, so that’s it. I’ll quit so they don’t
feel like they’re leaving me, some dreams just gotta end before
they start taking what you love away.”

“So, you were going to give most of the
money away,” Gladys said, a strange expression on her face that
seemed joyful and sad at the same time. Max hadn’t seen it before.
“So they could have a future.”

“The plan,” Max said, nodding. He started
pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket, then remembered he was
sitting beside Samuel and put them back.

“We’ll pay you to keep it then, get a
collection,” Samuel said, his breath rattling.

“No, you’ll just make the connection between
me and the customer, then he’ll pay me. Doesn’t make sense to pay
me to keep this thing,” Max said.

“That book and the stone both have power of
their own, aside from the knowledge the book contains,” Allen said.
“It’s important that they stay with you because you were trained to
handle exactly what those things can do. As much as you hated every
minute of it, now that training is important in the presence of
something so spiritually influential. The book and especially the
stone have most likely already imprinted themselves on you. Things
that powerful do that, and it’s not good to have them passed
around, the fewer people they’re attached to, the better. You have
to be the bearer, I’m sorry.”

“This stone couldn’t be more dead. If it’s
petrified wood, then it’s been a tree, got cut off, died, then got
old, and turned to stone. It couldn’t be more dead, it can’t know
anything, it can’t do anything,” Max said, so irritated by how
ridiculous it was that these people, one of whom he’d respected for
over a decade and saw as an adopted father, were so concerned with
superstition.

“All right,” Allen said. “I’ve always
respected your point of view, Max. Now I’d like you to give us just
a minute to listen, then you can ride off, or go drop yourself in
the lake, whatever you like.”

“All right,” Max said, leaning back in the
old wooden chair until it creaked.

“Spirits follow the Dawn Shard around, it is
used to attract them for rituals. No one knows for sure where it
came from, we don’t know exactly how it got to North America, or
why it was brought here or by who, but we do know that it has been
in the wild for too long. We have seen it in pictures with
politicians, musicians and artists over the last few years, and
then we heard it had been brought together with the dangerous book
you’re holding, which is actually perfectly safe as long as it is
in your hands.”

“Why is it safe with me, but it nearly gave
Samuel here a coronary?” Max asked.

“You read what it said,” Gladys said. “You
don’t believe, and even if you start believing, you’ll never use
it. Your father trained you too well, and you are too strong to be
tempted.”

“I’ve come to call that a stubborn streak,”
Allen said. “But it’s true nonetheless. That book will tempt anyone
in this room many times more than it would you. We’ve all lost
people we’d be tempted to break the natural order for, and some of
us would want to extend our lives. We’d like to think that we could
resist, but you never know until the opportunity presents
itself.”

“If you followed most of the non-sacrifice
passages in this book, nothing would happen, because it’s a
fiction. All it did was cost me gas money, force me to talk to some
unsavory characters that each had a unique and terrible smell, and
get me shot at while I was looking for it. If that’s power, then it
is massive, but other than that, it’s a book, just a bloody old
book.”

“Max, just try to believe for a minute,”
Gladys pleaded.

Max put up his hands. “Fine, because I know
you’re good people with some strange business, but the good sort
nonetheless.”

“All right, to the point. That shard has a
demon attached to it,” Allen said. “We don’t know it’s name, but it
is an inhuman who has never been alive on this earth. It collects
the souls of the talented and desperate. We’ve managed to find
evidence of it and the shard together going back to 1938, but
that’s just for musicians. Gladys found evidence that one of the
earliest people to have dealings with that demon was Pope John the
Twelfth. All of them rose to high power or fame, and they were all
twenty seven when they died.”

“I’m not twenty seven,” Max said. “Safe for
a few years.”

“This is when we think you’ll be approached,
right now.”

“I knew it was going to happen before the
Dawn Shard was a part of this, thank you,” Sam said.

“Yes, we know,” Gladys said. “Not everyone
has good sight in both worlds.”

“I’ll trade my third eye for a good lung,”
Samuel said. He turned towards Max, gravely serious. “It’s on you,
son. That demon is going to approach you with temptations you
cannot imagine, and it will be just as you’re starting to believe.
You’ve tried for a while to be famous on your own, to get
recognized for all your hard work, and you see that road coming to
an end. I know what that’s like, more than you know.”

“All right,” Max said quietly. “That’s as
much as I can take. I’m sorry you’ve got fewer days ahead than
behind,” he told Sam. “But I’m going to take a few of these.” He
pointed at the platter on the table. “Then I’m going to get some
gas from the shed, top up my bike, and disappear for a few hours.”
No one said anything more as he pushed one-quarter sandwich in his
mouth and took two more in each hand then left.

Maxwell didn’t intend to ride to his
father’s gravesite, but he was rolling down the pebbly drive into
the old graveyard before he realized it. The once whitewashed
church standing by the graveyard was being reclaimed by the forest,
abandoned before Max arrived in Canada. One wall had fallen in, and
the eastern side had fallen outwards. Rotting pews were barely
visible beneath the wreckage of the simple old wood shingle roof.
The entrance, really an archway thee feet deep set into the low
front wall, still stood, its door absent now, though Max could
remember the finely carved cedar of the heavy door, with its iron
handles. He drove onto the flat stones that marked the end of the
graveyard path in front of the church, grabbed a blanket from his
saddlebags and walked to the quiet plot where his father was laid
to rest.

A few dead branches had fallen across his
father’s grave and those surrounding it. The grass was a little
long, but lush and green. Max took some time to clear the branches
away from several plots, throwing them into the bush surrounding
the quiet site.

When he was finished he looked at the simple
grey stone. There was a pentagram with oak leaves around it above
his father’s epitaph, which read:

Charles Foster
Father
Community Leader
He will be missed.
1910 - 1969

There was a ritual his father insisted on
when Max was given the first ring that didn’t have much meaning
beyond the aesthetic. Anything that didn’t have religious meaning
had to be left by the door. Max maintained a version of that
ritual, pulling a silver ram’s head, a pentagram, the circular Seal
of Julius, and a treble clef ring off his fingers. The Seal of
Julius and pentagram were religious symbols, but they meant little
to him other than looking flashy and feeling good on his fingers.
He put them all on top of his father’s rounded gravestone, hung his
leather jacket on one side, and lay down beneath it, using his
folded blanket as a pillow.