The List Of Seven (8 page)

He found every door along the hallway locked. Turning repeatedly as the corridor meandered, by the time Doyle realized he could no longer see his hand before him, he was not at all sure where he was. The air felt as frigid and heavy as the blackness was dense. He wiped the sweat from his hands. Fear of the dark was not something he commonly fell prey to, but after the last two days all such presumptions were forfeit. Attempting to retrace his steps—there had been lights burning in Sacker's office, a place that now seemed a haven of warmth and security—he kept one hand on the cool marble wall and took each step cautiously.

An intersection. Did I turn right or left here? His answer was not confident. Right then.

Fear of the dark is a primitive, instinctual leftover, he reminded himself: Our remote forebears spent the better part of their lives groping blindly in the dark- —and since there could be huge, carnivorous predators lying in ambush around every turn, it seemed altogether a very sensible response—tout that by no measure meant the same dangers still existed in the modern civilized—What was that?

Doyle stopped. A sound, some distance away. What was it?

Stay calm. It could be help, a neutral or friendly presence. Even Sacker himself. Perhaps we'll hear it again. Perhaps it would be a fine idea if we didn 't move from this spot until we do. Err on the side of caution, and not only because we're plunged into absolute darkness in an unfathomable maze and there are pitiless, unspeakable horrors tracking us from who knows which side of the etheric membrane—

Wait ... there it was again.

Try to identify. Not a footstep, was it? No. No smack of heel, no shuffling skid or impact on marble whatsoever.

Go on, Doyle, you know perfectly well what you heard.

Wings. A flap of wings. Leathery, cartilaginous.

Well, perhaps a sparrow or pigeon's flown through a window and gotten lost in the halls—let's be honest, shall we? Late December, even if birds were still about, that was not the exercising of a small or even midsized wingspan, if there exists anywhere in the world a bird that could produce that sound, that could displace that much air—

It's coming this way. Those first two flaps issued from a stationary position, loosening, limbering up, almost as if the—Doyle, put your mind in order, man: Allow into your heart the idea that those stone gargoyles on the stairs can fly, and in two ticks you 'II find yourself chained to a pallet in Bedlam.

On the other hand, something immense is moving through the air and coming closer, so from a purely precautionary standpoint, let's move on. Don't run, Doyle, use your walking stick ahead of you, like that—quietly, please—find a door, there's a good fellow, any door will do—got one: locked. Damn. On to the next.

Rummaging for bird facts—do they see well in the dark? Depends on the bird, doesn't it? How's their sense of smell? Do they have one? They must: Their entire lives constitute an uninterrupted search for food. Terrifically reassuring. What have we squirreled away in there about the eating habits of gargoyles?

It's not possible, but the wings seem to be advancing and receding simultaneously. Unless there are two of them; one on either side of the stairs for a grand total of—enough!

A door, Doyle, and please hurry, because one of them just

rounded the corner we recently turned, which puts it fifty feet behind us and closing rapidly—

There: Grip the handle and turn and push and enter and close the door behind you. Can you lock the door? No bolt. Can you recall any avian facts that would support the possibility of a bird turning a doorknob? Be serious. Is there a window in this door? Solid oak. Blessed old, thick old door, God save the English craftsman—

You heard that, didn't you? A settling of weight, a soft scratching on the marble floor. What goes with wings? Talons. And if talons were raked across the good old solid oak door, they would undoubtedly produce something remarkably similar to the sound we're hearing now.

Time to see what kind of room we 're in, and more essentially, what other exits it offers. Reach in the pocket, find the matches, move away from the door, and strike a— Good Christ!

Doyle dropped the match and recoiled to ward off a blow that never arrived. This surprised him, because what he'd seen in the split second as the match ignited, bearing down on him at an imposing angle, was the face of a ghoul, hideously denuded of skin, yellowed teeth bared in a militant grimace. He waited. Surely, he'd be feeling its foul breath on his face. Hands shaking, he lit another match.

A mummy. Upright, in its sarcophagus. Beside it, on display, a coiled staff of Ra. Maneuvering the match to reveal more of his surroundings, Doyle realized he'd stumbled into a room of Egyptologiana. Amphora, jewelry, preserved cats, gold-inlaid daggers, hieroglyphed slate: Egypt and its detritus were all the rage these days, no world tour complete without an excursion to the Pyramids at—

Boom! Banging on the door. Boom! The hinges groaned painfully. Thanks to his panicked exclamation, whatever was out there knew he was inside—

The match burned his finger. He dropped it and lit another, looking for a—please God—yes, there, a window. He moved to it as quickly as keeping the match alive would allow, fixed the position of the latch lock, discarded the match, grabbed the latch, turned—the pounding on the door insistent, massive bulk heaving itself against splintering wood—and the window flew open. Doyle looked down at an uncertain drop, no time

to hesitate, tossed out his bag and stick and followed them, absorbing the shock of the fall with his knees, tucking and rolling, scooping up bag and stick and sprinting away from the Tomb of Antiquities.

He stopped to catch his breath under the vaulted exterior arch of St. Mary's Church. He waited ten minutes in the shadows for the dreadful flapping to emerge from the darkness, for some vile avenging shadow to blot out the stars and streak down at him out of the sky. As his breathing steadied, the sweat that had soaked his shirt cooled, leaving him cold and shivery. Lights burned invitingly in the nave. He moved inside.

What had he escaped from? In the warm, same light of the church, the question turned on him; had his imagination transformed perfectly ordinary circumstances—say, an over-zealous night watchman whose corduroy pants produced an insistent hissing—into a wallow of self-generated terror? He had studied how the strain of combat could induce in soldiers all manner of hallucinatory mental phenomena. Was he not now laboring under an even more insidious strain, in that his antagonists were unknown to him and could be, as Sacker had suggested, any passing stranger in the street? Perhaps this was their preferred method of assault, driving their victims mad with a constant noncorporeal menace more sensed than seen. Show a man a target he can strike back against, and you lend him a footing. Attack him with inexplicable night sounds, will-o'-the wisps, macabre scarecrows by the sides of train tracks, incite the stuff of his own nightmares, and the suggestive vagueness of it alone could send him reeling into lunacy.

Standing at one of the transept chapels, Doyle entertained an impulse to light a candle in appeal to some conventional higher power of good, for guidance or aid. god is light and in him is no darkness at all, read the inscription.

There was a lit taper in his hand; he'd caught himself nearly in the act. Curious: I'm standing square in the fulcrum of man's eternal dialectic between faith and fear; are we beings of light, gods waiting to be born, or pawns in a struggle of higher forces vying for control of a world beneath their separate, unseen realms? Unable to commit himself to either

side of that argument, Doyle extinguished the taper without lighting a candle.

With returning to see if Sacker had returned to his office an option of exceptionally limited appeal, the prospect of food and drink presented the preferred alternative; feed the body, quiet the mind. Then a visit to an individual uniquely qualified to lead him out of this metaphysical mire was in order: HPB.

chapter seven HPB

One full stomach and two hours later, Doyle was srr-ting amid a modest gathering of Transcendentalists at the local Grange Hall listening to H. P. Blavatsky hold forth from center stage. No lectern, no notes, she spoke extemporaneously, and even if the essential content and continuity of the lecture proved elusive in retrospect, the effect was undeniably mesmerizing.

"—there has never been a religious leader of any stature or importance who invented a new religion. New forms, new interpretations, yes, these they have given us, but the truths upon which these revelations were based are older than mankind. These prophets, by their own admission, were never originators. The word they preferred was transmitters. They never, any of them, from Confucius to Zoroaster, Jesus to Mohammed, they never said, These things I have created. What they said was, invariably, These things I receive and pass on. And so it is today."

As her passion mounted, her eyes flashed liked sapphires. Blavatsky's round, diminutive figure assumed protean dimensions, while her heavily accented English, broken and tentative to start with, flowed in a grammatically impeccable silver stream.

"There exists in the world today sacred wisdom which dwarfs our puny notions of history; I am speaking of books of ancient origin, vast depositories of them, hidden for centuries from the Western eye; the Northern Buddhists of Tibet alone possess three hundred and twenty-five volumes, fifty to sixty times the amount of information contained in the so-called Bible, recounting two hundred thousand years of human history. Let me repeat that: two hundred thousand years

of recorded human history. 'But that's pre-Christian! What an assertion! She must be insane! She must be silenced!' I can hear the venerable Archbishop crying out all the way from Canterbury."

She cocked a hand to her ear, the comic effect of which did not elude her audience. Doyle glanced around the room and noticed that the Indian woman who had ridden up with him on the train was sitting one row over, smiling at HPB and nodding approvingly.

"What was the most devastating act the Christians took against their precedents? How did they begin their fanatical and systematic eradication of the Ancient Knowledge? Answer? The Gregorian calendar. So simple: Year One. Time begins with the birth of the Nazarene prophet—oh there were some mildly significant events before this, but the years run backward, you see, away from this Supreme Moment, into the void of insignificance. We men of the True Church, we'll decide when time begins. And so with one stroke prove definitively that the writing implement is mightier than the saber.

"Do you see how damaging, how trivializing this decision is to all the history that preceded it? How this one act, born not of the traditional Christian pieties, but from the fear of unwelcome truths—that is, truths contradictory to the best interests of those currently in power—cuts human progress off from the most powerful spiritual resources it has or will ever have available to it."

Bold talk in a Christian country. Doyle had to admire the woman's verve and evident common sense. This was no fuzzy-headed mystic with her head in cloud-cuckoo-land.

"You have to grant them this. These early Christians. They were tenacious. Did their work well. They scoured the world for these Ancient Doctrines, and they obliterated them, almost entirely, in the Western world. The library at Alexandria, the last great archive whose contents straddled the pre- and post-Christian worlds, burned to the ground. Do you suppose this act of willful spiritual vandalism was an accident?

"This is why our travels, our work as Theosophists, must always take us to the East. That is where the knowledge is. From where it has always emanated forth. Fortunately, the

Adepts of the East had the sound historical sense to conceal their sources from these Western marauders, Holy Crusaders intent on their own parochial destiny, oblivious to the true concern of man: human spiritual evolution. And so you ask yourself, why has this knowledge of the Secret Science remained hidden from the Western masses? Would it not be in the best interests of these alleged Enlightened Ones to share their secrets with the emerging civilizations? Let me ask you this: Would you give a candle to a child in a roomful of gunpowder? These truths have been passed down by spiritual leaders, from generation to generation, since time began. They remain secret because contained within are the keys to understanding the essential mysteries of life. Because they are Power! And woe betide us all if they should ever fall into the wrong hands."

Her eyes rested on Doyle for the first time, then moved on.

"So this is our lot; even as we labor endlessly to bring these truths, in their reduced, acceptable form, before the court of public opinion we should not delude ourselves that our efforts will be welcomed in our lifetimes. Quite the contrary. We must expect to be rejected, attacked, ridiculed. No scholar or scientist will be permitted to regard our efforts with any degree of seriousness. It is simply our job to open the door, if only this much." She held up two slightly parted fingers. "It will fall to each generation of fellow explorers who succeed us to open that door a little wider."

Now she seemed to turn her attention directly to Doyle. He felt the force of her eyes as she held him benignly in her gaze.

"How is this to be done? you ask. Imagine you are a tourist, and you are traveling in a country that is very well known to you, a country in which you have spent your entire existence. You are familiar intimately with its roads, rivers, cities, people, and customs. It represents the sum of all you know, and so you therefore, quite naturally assume it represents the sum of all that is. Imagine then that while upon your travels, you have quite unexpectedly arrived at the border of another land. A land not identified anywhere on your most impressive collections of maps. This country is ringed, on every side, by insurmountable mountain ranges, so you are unable to see down into this strange land from your position. But you are

determined to go there. You are enthusiastic. You have courage. You have, for lack of a better word, a certain faith. What must you do?"