The 37th mandala : a novel (40 page)

"These are new," Derek said as they strolled along.

"Yes, our commissions. Not part of the canon, but still ... amazing aren't they? Here's an original Mavrides." Pointing to a wicked mandala painted on black velvet, radiating poisonously under ultraviolet lights, each of its tendrils gripping some awful or banal object: electric appliances, a screaming nun, a smoking pipe. "A Harry S. Robins." This a sinister wheel of intricate evil perfection, rising from the waters of an underground sea where primordial shadows swam through the ruins of a drowned city 
of weirdly angled towers. "A Dan Clowes." Here an incongruous cartoon mandala, in lurid colors and Zip-A-Tone shading, the great one manifesting in a rundown room that could have been a motel or a sparely furnished apartment, with a circle of worshippers bowed down before it, buck-toothed and slobbering in berets and jazz beards, ragged flannels, sagging knit caps. Lenore saw much the same faces hovering around her in the club. "A Krystine Kryttre." This one so fierce that it seemed to stab her eyes with bolts of black lightning, a woman crucified upon a geared wheel, its spokes tearing through her flesh, lighting her up like an X ray, ripping her open as she laughed insanely.

Lenore tore away from Etienne, away from Derek, and found herself on a balcony, looking down on the crowded dance floor, trying to discern the shape of the great mandala painted there.

A hand on her shoulder. Etienne leaned close: "You're feeling the Thirty-seven. I wouldn't recommend eating now. Would you like some wine?"

She nodded, then remembered why she shouldn't. She must remain clear-headed. She had lost too much to unconsciousness. She felt as if she were still voyaging inward, twisting on an ever tighter downward path into her soul, while external events wound higher and higher on their own corkscrew trail.

"Water," she said, and Etienne moved off. Derek and Nina remained in the gallery, laughing and talking. Nina was introducing Derek to an artist.

She froze, clutching the rail, her eyes caught by one small fleck of color down in the sea of faces. For an instant she saw Michael, and then he was gone. She started after him instantly, rushing along the balcony, pushing through the crowded rooms to find the stairs, in a panic.

If she closed her eyes and calmed herself, she should be able to pick him out of the crowd.

She tried it, holding to a stair rail, letting people swarm past her. She sent herself floating upward, willing her mandala to enlighten her, knowing that it could lead her right to Michael.

All she had to do was reach out for his mandala.

But no ... he no longer had a mandala.

Michael had vanished. Utterly. As if he had ceased to exist, ceased to have any significance, at the moment his own mandala was destroyed. She could find no trace of him, not a memory, in her black guardian. It had not seen him enter. He and he alone moved invisibly among the mandalas. His was the only body in the room lacking a guardian, unattended.

What part of her, then, perceived him still?

Lenore had thought that she was entirely under her mandala's power, but apparently something else remained. Something clumsy and feeble and pathetically limited ... something that was forced to open its eyes and push its body down the stairs, searching for him the hard way—the human way.

Michael was quickly lost in the club, but he thought it was the best thing for now. One-Ear wouldn't shoot him in this chaos. If he tried, it would be easy to elude him in the crowd.

He moved as far from the door as possible, hoping Lilith had made it in. She would have been wiser to run for help, but there must be a phone in here somewhere. Outside—who knew? It had looked dark and industrial on the street: no bars, no shops—nothing for miles, maybe. So the chaos inside might work to his advantage. Maybe One-Ear would forget him completely, since what he really wanted was something Crowe had. Something, Michael suspected, that Crowe had stolen from Elias. Something besides the notebooks.

He found himself in a corridor too empty for comfort. He rushed to a doorway that opened onto the dance floor. Looking up, he saw a balcony running along the second level. That's where I'd go if I were One-Ear, he thought. Behind him was a flight of stairs running down into a basement. At the top of the stairs stood a big man, a bouncer, checking invitations. Michael waited until he was wrapped up in a dispute with someone, then leapt the first few steps, skipped around the landing, and slowed as he reached the bottom. He didn't hear anyone coming after him.

It was quieter down here, the music a vibration he felt with his body and not with his ears. Knots of people moved quietly between rooms. The hall turned and bent, mazelike. After several minutes he was not sure exactly where he stood in relation to the stairs. He heard laughter and turned into a small room, coming upon a dozen or so people watching some sort of video performance on a TV screen.

An image painted on the wall above the monitor caught and held his eyes, restoring in an instant all the faded terror he had first felt days ago, when this nightmare was only beginning.

The mandala on the wall was done in bloodred paint; it appeared glossy and still fresh, dripping. And it was not merely any mandala from
The Rites
. It was the pattern he had seen on Tucker's wall—the same one etched on Lenore's forehead. The mandala had followed him across the country like his personal nemesis.

He didn't move forward to get a better look, but the crowd shifted anyway, giving him a perfect view. The monitor sat on a pedestal against the painted wall, giving off its cold colors, everything tinted toward blue. There he saw a soundless image, glaring and jerky—a handheld video version of a scene he had relived countless times in his memory since witnessing it in life.

Tucker's room. The same mandala sprayed in gore across the posters and pictures. The camera roved over it lovingly, tracing the wheel's perimeter, its inner weave, then pulling back and dropping down to drink in the sight of the bed, substantially drier and blacker than when Michael had seen it last, and with flies a significant presence now. This must be some kind of police video. How had the club gotten hold of it?

The pictures tore at Michael, weakened and dazed him; but after all, he had seen all this before, and the image was no more shocking a second time.

What unnerved him now was the audience.

They were laughing. Watching the screen with enrapt, blue-lit eyes where tiny TV monitors swam. Little mirrored mandalas twirled in their pupils like advertisements.

Blackness gnawed his vision. He backed out of the room and clawed his way along a wall, stumbling up against a cold metal folding chair. He lowered himself into it slowly, hanging his head between his knees until vision returned.

As his eyes cleared, he saw a pair of hard black shoes standing before him.

One-Ear said, "I thought I'd find you down here."

"What do you want with me?" Michael groaned. "I don't have anything you want. If Derek Crowe's in here somewhere, fucking go to him."

"Assuming Mr. Crowe cares anything about you, or human life in general, I would like to have something more to offer him. Now get up and come with me. I think I know where to find him."

Michael lowered his head.

"I said get up."

"I'm sick, you asshole."

One of the hard black shoes gave him a sharp kick in the shin. Michael gasped and grabbed his leg, but forced himself to stand. No one looked his way. It was as if the scene meant less to them than the art on the walls or the video displays. As if Michael didn't exist in their eyes. Remembering what had amused them, he realized it would be unrealistic to expect help from such people.

One-Ear trailed him through the maze, nudging him with the gun. Michael turned into a room where several people stood around a woman. She wore a black plastic helmet that covered her face completely. She was engaged in pantomime, touching something only she could see.

"Now, reach in," a man was saying. "Grab the fucker's heart. That's it—twist it! Pull!"

She was murdering someone invisible. Doing it with her bare hands.

Michael stepped back, right into the gun.

"Which way?" One-Ear said, growing shrill and irritable now.

"How the hell should I know? It's a maze down here."

"You're not saying you're lost?"

"Of course I'm lost."

At that moment, Michael heard a voice he had not expected hear.

"Michael?"

He turned. Lenore was coming down the hall.

"Michael, how did you—what's happening? Who is he?"

She had seen the gun. One-Ear, indecisively, turned it on her as he fastened his fingers on Michael's arm.

"Don't move," he said.

"Who are you?" She looked up at the air above One-Ear's head. "What are you doing?"

"Lead us out," One-Ear barked. "Take us to Derek Crowe."

"What do you want with him?" she asked.

"Lenore," Michael said. "Crowe was lying."

"No," she said. "He's playing his part."

"Shut up!" One-Ear said. "Take me to Mr. Crowe! Now!"

Voices in the hall came up quickly behind them. Michael twisted his head around. One-Ear jumped uncertainly, wondering how to keep his gun on Michael and Lenore and still face this new threat. Around the corner came a young couple, a man and a woman.

"Etienne!" One-Ear said. "Don't move."

"What nonsense," said the young man, Etienne. Without hesitation, he clutched One-Ear by the throat, shoving him against the wall. "Nina, would you please?"

The woman took his gun. "You must be Chhith," she said. "A pleasure to meet you at last."

Michael moved closer to Lenore, taking her hand. Her fingers were ice.

"Now, Chhith, you're not playing the game at all correctly," Etienne said. "We must straighten you out."

Chhith spat some words in a language Michael didn't recognize, but Etienne merely smiled at Lenore. "Will you excuse us for a bit? We've put Mr. Crowe to work signing autographs upstairs."

Nina gestured with the gun, and the man called Chhith stepped away from the wall. They urged him down the corridor, around the corner, out of sight.

"Jesus," Michael said, sagging with relief. He turned to Lenore. "What happened to you?"

She was looking at the air above his head again; it drove him crazy when she did that. She was as bad as ever. And this place, full of the mandalas and their sick energy, was making her worse.

"What," he said. "What is it?"

"You shouldn't be here," she said. "You shouldn't even ... exist."

"What do you mean? I was worried about you. Now I'm terrified."

"Don't worry, Michael. Just go."

"Go where?"

"Out. Away from here. Take your chance. They can't see you, so they can't stop you. Don't get caught in the middle."

"Of what? What's happening, Lenore? What is all this?"

She looked around the hall as if she owned the place. "It's the end for some," she said. "But for you it's already over."

"Come on. Let's both get out of here."

"I have to stay."

"Lenore, come on. Derek Crowe is a fake—a charlatan—a thief. You have to get away from him."

"I came all this way to find him, Michael. It's not just the mandalas, I think. I'm doing this for me. Now please, leave me to it. You can't do anything here."

"I won't leave you," he said.

"You have to. You can't make me do anything anymore, Michael. I don't want to hurt you, but it's all over for us. I don't want you here, understand? I don't need you, I don't love you anymore, I don't want you. You have no part in this."

Her words tore into him with surgical, cold precision. He stood there as Lenore moved away. He put out a hand, then let it drop.

"Don't try to follow me," she said. "Don't interfere."

"With what?" he said, but she didn't answer. She went off down the hall.

After a while, he stumbled in the other direction, looking for a dark, quiet place to sit down, somewhere to rest and gather himself. He knew only one thing: He was not leaving.

He circled around in the underground maze, avoiding people wherever he came upon them, finally passing a door behind which he heard nothing. He opened it and saw a silvery glimmer of mirrors. It was a vast round room, empty except for an oxblood couch and a red velvet chair in the very center of the floor.

He crept in, closing the door behind him. He avoided the couch and chair. They looked too much like props in the center of a stage. Instead he sank down against one of the mirrored walls and put his head on his arms.

I have to find Lilith
, he thought. But she could take care of herself, he realized with relief. She had proven that already.

For now, he wanted nothing but to be alone.

Finally
, Derek Crowe thought,
a group of fans I'm not embarrassed to he seen with
.

Club Mandala had stacks of
The Mandala Rites
at an upstairs table in one of the gallery rooms, and they were selling faster than he could sign them. It seemed for a time as if everyone in the club were lining up to buy a copy. The woman handling sales stopped periodically to slice open another cardboard box full of copies and stack them on the table before going back to making change and taking cash. Derek, meanwhile, had wearied of writing inscriptions. For a time he had signed his name and made a small circle beneath it, filling it in with dots and wavery lines, crude hieroglyphic mandalas; but that looked so awful, compared to the elaborate designs in the book, that he finally resorted to an unadorned signature. The customers seemed satisfied with this, though few made conversation.