The 37th mandala : a novel (6 page)

Derek handed back the signed book and started gathering up receipts and cash, all his things.

"You try all the rituals in here?" the boy said. "I mean, I know you transcribed them all, but have you worked them all yourself?"

"Every one of them," Derek said distractedly, looking for a pay phone.

"Even the—you know?"

The girl was looking at Derek with big eyes, lips slightly parted, as if stunned. Younger than she looked, but at the same time older, burned out deep inside. Nerve-damaged.

"The sexual ones?" the guy said.

An elderly woman gasped and moved quickly away, looking at the red volume in her hands as if she had just paid to poison herself. The others drifted off, sensing that they weren't going to get autographs tonight, not wanting to stress the brittle edges of their celebrity's mood. Derek stared at the two punks, weary of the crowd, the questions, the whole fucking charade that was his life and livelihood.

"Look," he said, "is there a phone around here?"

"You need to call someone?"

He didn't bother answering that one.

The girl slugged her boyfriend in the arm. "Michael, are you an idiot?"

"No, I mean, since he's not from around here, if he needs a lift somewhere ..."

Not with you, Derek thought. But he didn't know how long it would take to find a cab. The nearest taxi was probably in Charlotte. There was one flight tonight. If he missed it, he would be stuck here till morning. One of the Sisters was supposed to take him to the airport, but he was reluctant to ask them for anything now. Having already refused hotel accommodations, he found himself saying, "The airport."

"Hey, we can take you. We're going that way—we live on the outskirts."

"He doesn't want to ride with us," the girl said. "He's probably got a limo waiting out front."

At that moment the Valkyrie shoved past Derek, not deigning to grace him with her icy gaze as she headed toward the back of the hall. Reminded of what waited for him here, he nodded to the kids.

"Actually," Derek said, "if you're serious, I might just take you up on that ride."

"Wow, really?" The poor boy seemed in shock. "Okay, great! Wow, I don't believe this! Lenore, Derek Crowe is coming with us! Oh, man!"

"We're right outside," she said. "You need help with anything?"

"Yeah," Michael said. "Can I get your bags? Really, I can't believe this—there's like so many questions I want to ask you."

This is a mistake, Derek told himself, but he went right on making it anyway.

The night was colder than he 'd expected; it cut through the loose shirt to slash his ribs. As he paused on the steps, fumbling for a sweater in one of his bags, the guy said, "Name's Michael. You know, like the archangel?"

"More like plain old Michael," said the girl, extending her hand although Derek, caught up in the sweater, couldn't very well accept it. "I'm Lenore," she said.

"Like in Poe," Michael said. "The telltale heart, chopped-up bodies, big swinging razor blades, and rats trying to eat you. Some kids get named for nursery rhymes. Not Lenore."

Derek finally clasped her hand. It was small, cold, and bony, and studded with garish silver rings, lost-wax skulls and dragon heads, glittering crystal eyes.

"Nope, not my wife," Michael went on, striding stiff-legged down the steps toward the street. "Lenore's not like most people."

Lenore trailed close behind Derek, shadowing him. He glanced down and back, saw her upturned eyes gleaming with moonlight. It was a clear winter night, the waxing moon so bright that only a few washed-out stars managed to burn their way through—and those were near the horizon, competing with streetlights.

"I really liked your lecture," she said, a bit hesitant.

"Did you?"

"It was—inspiring. I felt something happen to me in there. As if everything you said made sense—as if I'd known it all the time but never realized it, and suddenly it just clicked." She smiled up at him. "I see everything differently now."

"Do you really?" he said, trying to hide his disappointment. He was hoping she had more sense than that, but apparently she was just another one of the loonies.

"Whoa, really, Lenore?" said the boy. "Are you serious? Man, Mr. Crowe, she doesn't usually go for this stuff. I mean, not at all, not Lenore. I sort of had to drag her along tonight."

"That's not true," she said. "I decided to come. I'm glad I did too."

"Well, that's very encouraging," he said. "You two're married?"

"Sure," she said.

"It's just... you both look so young."

Michael laughed, a hoarse and uncomfortable sound. "We're old souls."

"I envy that woman," she said. "Ms. A. You just had to hypnotize her and the mandalas came, huh?"

"That's right. I was doing what I thought would be some simple trance work, and she went deeper under than anyone I'd ever seen. Suddenly I found myself... well, out of my element. Everything changed for me then too."

"I haven't done any of the rituals in your book," she said. "Michael's done most of them I suppose, but I haven't really been interested. But I think I might like to now. After hearing you talk. You're really an amazing speaker. You have some kind of animal magnetism. Is that the word?"

It was a phrase that made Derek shudder, but he nodded. "An old word, but outdated. Like mesmerism. Thanks anyway." Her attention was flattering. He found himself regarding her more generously and finding in her haggard features quite a bit to attract him.

"Wow, I can't believe this," Michael said. "You want to do a ritual? Something really must have happened to you tonight."

"Yeah," she said, "something clicked."

Michael laughed and did a little capering step and hurried on ahead of them up the sidewalk.

"So," Derek said quietly, "do you have any children?"

"I had twins," she said, even more softly. "Not with Michael. I only saw them for a minute and then they got taken away. I wasn't on junk, not then, I'd kicked; but the hospital did these tests on my hair and it still showed up, and since I was on public assistance, they—I—they didn't even tell me they were taking them."

Derek felt the sickening pang that always came when he pulled too close to reality—when he penetrated the dark, tattered glamour of the streetwise and arrived in the place where illusion was torn away in ragged strips, like a bright circus poster peeling from a gray cinder-block wall. He always ended up facing the reality of hunger and dirt and stupidity—of the addict's meaningless, driven behavior. So much for the mystique of youth. He didn't want to ask where her children were, or if Michael was the father. Fortunately, she didn't say anything more about it. She seemed to feel she had said enough, which was fine with him. He reflected that what struck him as horror was probably all she had. She was one of the new generation, those for whom the future held less than ever before—a polluted, overcrowded world of dwindling resources, few options, not much room even for luck. Derek didn't like to think about the things these kids would live to see at the tag ends of their lives, when he had passed away. Not that he was much older than they; his perspective was simply greater.

Michael was approaching what had to be their car, a black Volkswagen Beetle with arcane designs painted all over the shell. There were symbols lifted from the Qabala and the Golden Dawn, and Taoist-looking swirls. He wasn't sure what all the signs meant, although he was glancingly familiar with most of them. He wished he weren't quite so well versed in useless arcana, but it was a hazard of his occupation. He did a double-take when he realized that the freshest-looking images were mandalas taken straight from his book. Michael had painted out older symbols in order to clear space for the newest images.

Michael saw him staring and must have thought he was admiring the painstakingly copied mandalas.

"What do you think?" the kid asked, as the car keys came out jangling in his hand.

"You drive around
here
in that?" he said.

"Oh, the local cops don't bother us too much anymore. They know we don't, you know,
use
. Lenore was always more into it than me anyway."

"Shut up, Michael," she said.

"I think a magician has to be pure, don't you?"

"Mm," Derek said, dropping his bags on hard ground iced with frost; he heard the grass blades snap.

"Maybe that's why you're getting interested now, babe. You've been clean long enough that your system's starting to cry out for the real thing. Spiritual sustenance."

"Are you going to make us stand here freezing all night?" she said.

The backseat looked full of trash; there was hardly room for Derek and his stuff. He wondered if he still had time to call a cab. But Michael started shoving things around inside, and the next thing Derek knew, his bags were in the car.

"Climb in back, Lenore?" Michael asked.

"You don't have to," Derek insisted. "I'll ride back there."

"You'd never fit," she said with a shrug. "Besides, it wouldn't be right shoving you in with our laundry, even if it is clean."

"I feel terrible," he said.

"Don't worry." She slid in like a wisp of smoke.

Michael pushed the seat back again, closing her in. "I mean, you've got to cut those drugs out if you want to do serious magic. Otherwise, how can you tell if you're hallucinating or if something real is happening? Like Crowley, man, he was always dosed. So how do we know he didn't just—you know—imagine everything?"

"Would you get in?" Lenore said. "I'm freezing."

Derek folded over and got in, reaching for the hand-strap over the window as Michael slammed the door on him. Dust and insulation fibers sifted through the ceiling fabric, rasping his nose. Michael got in on the other side and turned on the ignition. The car shook and roared, making conversation all but impossible.

Michael pointed at the steering column, shouting something as he revved the engine. Derek shook his head to indicate that he couldn't hear. The roar smoothed out. Heat oozed up from pipes beneath the seats, warming his legs. He shivered once, violently, and then began to relax.

"I said, you ever notice the symbols on the steering wheel of these old VW bugs? Look at this thing—it's like an old mystic Nazi design. You know about Hitler and the occult, right? This is like the Moon card in the Tarot. A castle on the water, and then these wolves ... real stylized, real simple, to make it really sink in. Doesn't register in the conscious mind, but all your life that symbol cooks away, like some kind of sinister survival from the Third Reich. Like Hitler's still got a grip. I'm kind of glad they don't make these anymore."

"I never noticed," Derek said, wishing there'd been room for him in back. Michael seemed too unstable, a little bit frightening. Even without drugs, someone so manic had to have a bitter, depressive side. Lenore was probably the steady one in their relationship, Michael's touchstone with reality.

He found himself remembering the cold, frail touch of her hand. Wanting to feel it again.

Glancing in the rearview mirror, he saw her eyes glimmering. He looked away quickly, though she hadn't been looking at him. How old was she, exactly? Twenty-five? Was that long enough for the world to drain someone as she appeared to have been drained? No doubt it was. Derek kept glancing at her as the streetlights, flicking past, picked out her eyes.

He saw little distinction between the center of town and the outskirts, where the airport lay. Cinderton was the kind of landlocked place that made him glad he lived in San Francisco, where freezing and hundred-plus temperatures were all but unknown. Cinderton probably spent part of the year locked up in ice, the ground so hard it could chip a shovel, sidewalks filthy with muddy salt and snow that never quite melted till spring, when the potholes came out like flowers in the thaw, to be followed shortly thereafter by unbearable heat pressing down on the land like a steam iron. So he imagined the cycle of seasons; but his actual experience was limited to the temperature climes of California and a few bus trips to Reno where he'd watched the snow from inside a casino. He always wondered what kept people in places like this. Didn't they know the world offered options besides the ones they'd been brought up to expect?

Probably not. Some found release in music, in weirder drugs than alcohol or barbiturates. A few—his current hosts apparently among them—sought escape in a synergistic combination, mixing all of the above with occultism, whose effects were more unpredictable than any drug. The typical young occultist migrated to a big city as soon as he was old enough to hitchhike, drive a car, or buy a one-way bus ticket. The older occultists, late bloomers, were usually simple souls, so near the grave that they had begun to scrutinize the plot with the intensity of a prospective tenant, hoping to find in their future something more rewarding than four windowless walls and a lid that screwed down from the outside.

Michael said, "I can't get over this. I've written you letters; maybe you remember me. Last name's Renzler?"

Derek shook his head. "Sorry, no. Can't count on the publishers to forward mail, unfortunately."

"Huh, yeah, thought maybe it was something like that. Or you get so many letters you can't answer them all."

Close, Derek thought. Countless lunatics wrote to ask his advice—as if he were a psychic Miss Manners. He kept a fat file of absurd letters, scheming someday to publish them all and let the sane mainstream public have a laugh at the expense of his cult following. That would be years from now, when his career had run its course and he could afford to admit his hoax, when that alone would be enough to catapult him into talk show fame.
Confessions of a Hack Mystic
. He would do it as a way of unburdening himself, showing his admirers how ludicrous they looked. In his files were deranged descriptions of psychosomatic maladies; formulas for curing every known disease, from warts to AIDS, with crystals or incense or the powder of bottlebrush trees collected on Thursdays at three in the afternoon when the moon was void-of-course.

He supposed he might easily have a letter or two from a Renzler tucked in his copious crackpot file. He didn't pay much attention to the names.