The Matrix (6 page)

‘I’ll be gone in an hour,’ he said.

‘It won’t take long. And I really would like to get this off my hands.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’

The street was as silent as ever, the old house as grey. Nothing had changed. I climbed the steps to the front door and rang the bell. The ringing echoed in the empty hallway, recalling unpleasant memories. My heart was beating too quickly. I felt an urge to turn and run away. With difficulty, I fought it down and remained where I was.

Jurczyk took his time in coming. He was slow on his legs, half-crippled by arthritis. But at last I heard the sound of his feet in the passage, shuffling towards the door. When he saw me, his wrinkled face broke into a smile.

‘Mr Macleod! It’s very good to see you again. You say you have been ill. We are all so worried.’

‘I’m much better now. I’d just been . . . overworking. Nothing serious.’

‘Well, I am most glad to hear it. Come in, you must not to stand in the cold.’

I passed through the door, closing it gently behind me. As I did so, I glanced apprehensively at the stairs and the dimly lit landing above; nothing moved in the untouched stillness. But I had to struggle to control the unease I felt at returning to this place.

Jurczyk led the way up the stairs and down the short passage to the library. He crept along slowly, and I walked beside him, shortening my stride and slowing my pace to accommodate his hesitant, shambling steps. I had time to observe the dark prints that hung on the walls, dust-covered and redolent of a much earlier time. The house seemed to have stood still, to have remained unaltered over decades, as though reluctant to part with long-kept secrets. We walked without sound across a heavy carpet, dull red in colour and seemingly as old as the house; my ears strained for sounds from the floor above or from the wainscoting all round me, but nothing stirred. Jurczyk opened the library door and we went in.

He sat down at his little desk and I drew up a chair beside him. There was no one else there. The lights were low. What little illumination came from outside was already fading. I began to apologize for having left so abruptly on my last visit here, leaving lights lit and books scattered about the desk I had been using. He looked at me strangely from behind thick glasses, a look of puzzlement on his narrow face. A lock of white hair tumbled onto his forehead, and he raised a hand to push it back in place.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but I do not understand. You are surely mistaken. I was here on the Monday afternoon after you are here. No lights were lit. All the books were in their places in the shelves. Nothing is disturbed. Nothing. I did not even know you have been here.’

‘But that’s . . . That’s impossible,’ I stammered, thinking he must be mistaken. ‘I was here on the twenty-second of November. I remember it very clearly. I left this room in a hurry. It was only later that I remembered I had not switched off the lights or replaced the books I had been using. Perhaps . . . Perhaps someone came here over the weekend and tidied everything up. One of the other members.’

He shook his head.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I think that was not so. No one was here that weekend. Do you not remember that we had a meeting in Glasgow? We had expected you there. No one would have come in. Believe me. No one.’

My mind spun. Perhaps the whole incident had been no more than a figment of my imagination, the product of a fagged brain. But I remembered the Glasgow meeting and my own decision to visit Craigie instead. And I remembered the book in my briefcase, the reason for my visit. How could it be there if I had not brought it away with me that night? I reached down and opened the case. The book was there, where I had put it. I drew it out and placed it on the desk in front of Jurczyk.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but when I left I must have put this book into my bag by mistake. I only found it there this morning when I was unpacking my papers. I realize you may have been worried about its loss. It seems extremely valuable.’

He took it from me.

‘There is no library mark,’ he said. ‘If it came from here it would have a label. On the spine.’

‘I found it over there,’ I said. ‘In the second stack. Behind some other books, stuck at the back of a shelf.’

He frowned and opened the book. As his eyes fell on the title page, his expression changed. His cheeks, already pale, became ashen white. His eyes brightened with a mixture of fear and anger. I heard a sharp intake of breath, saw him clench his jaw. Then he slammed the book shut and pushed it away from him. He did not look at me, but sat staring at the table, as though struggling to regain control of himself. When at last he did look up, there was a fierce light in his eyes. His voice was quite changed, cold and accusatory in tone.

‘You must tell me the truth,’ he said. ‘Where did you find this book? It was not found here. Where did it come from?’

Frightened and distressed by the abrupt change in the old man’s manner, I stammered that I had indeed told him the truth, that the book had been lying under a layer of dust exactly where I had said.

‘That is impossible,’ he said. ‘There has never been a copy of this book here. And even if it had been, it would never to be left in public. Such a thing could not be allowed. I think you are a liar, Mr Macleod. Perhaps worse than that. I would like you to leave. And take . . . that with you.’

He pointed at the book, pointed at it, but refused to touch it. I picked it up, obeying him out of shock and embarrassment, and dropped it into my briefcase.

‘Take it and get out of here,’ Jurczyk went on. ‘Do not come back. You will not be welcome here again.’

I could not speak, could not bring a single word to my lips, whether of protest or denial. I understood my own innocence, but without knowing what crime I was being accused of, how could I find the words to refute it? I got to my feet awkwardly, knocking over the chair on which I had been sitting. Grabbing my still-open briefcase, I made for the door and hurried into the passage. Jurczyk came after me, limping to the opening in order to watch me go, as though afraid I might hide somewhere or leave the book behind on the landing.

At the head of the stairs, I turned and looked back. Jurczyk stood framed in the open doorway, half in shadow, half in light, a look of mingled fear and anger fixed on his face, like an ugly mask. I do not know what made me tear my eyes away and look along the passage to the pool of shadows at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor. But as I looked I was certain that something moved there, furtively, without a sound. It was merely the flapping of a shadow within a shadow, but it seemed to fill the darkness with palpable terror. I turned and fled down the stairs.

Back in my rooms, I filled a large glass with whisky and drank until my nerves felt calm again. What had Jurczyk meant by his outburst? The little book had clearly been familiar to him, it or its title, and it had frightened him badly. Thinking of my own experience, I did not have to guess what it was he had found disturbing. And I suspected that there might be more to the volume of spells than I, with my limited understanding of such matters, could possibly know. Given time, perhaps I could convince Jurczyk of my sincerity. But in the meantime, I would have to act alone.

The thought of knowingly spending another night alone with the
Matrix Aeternitatis
in my rooms was far from attractive. I could not leave it with anyone, possessed no bank deposit box in which to keep it, knew no one with whom I could talk about it. And I was, in any case, certain by now that the book was, in some sense that I could ill define, capable of evil. It went against everything I believed even to admit that such a thing could be possible, that an inanimate object could be capable of anything other than mere existence. But my own experience and Jurczyk’s reaction had convinced me that to keep the book would be to risk consequences I could not as yet even guess at.

It took me a long time to make my mind up. The book sat on my desk, drawing me to itself again and again. I felt a growing urge to open it, to see once more the drawing that had so alarmed me, that had formed the basis for such terrible dreams. But the longer I sat there, the more certain I became that the book must be destroyed. I guessed its rarity and knew it might be almost priceless. But with every minute that passed, my impulse to destroy it grew stronger.

At last I made my mind up. I got together wood and coals, laid them in my bedroom grate and lit them. In a little while, the coals caught, and I soon had a good fire going. I collected the book and hastened to throw it on the flames. It seemed almost to resist me. My hand shook as I held it over the grate, as though a force other than my own will was trying to take charge. But I had come this far and was determined to be done with it. I threw the book onto the coals. It would not catch at first. But then, quite suddenly, it burst into flame, all at once, as though soaked in petrol. Within a matter of minutes, it had been quite consumed. I poked the ashes, breaking and scattering them. Some drifted up the chimney, flimsy white tissues lighter than smoke, others fell among the coals and were lost. I felt a great weight fall from me.

That night, I was kept awake by a constant scratching sound behind the wainscoting, as though rats or mice were scuttling in the walls.

It took me some days to recover from the incident. The sight of old Jurczyk, whom I had previously known only as a kind-hearted and affable man, shouting at me, telling me never to return, had been deeply upsetting.

I resumed work, but with a heavier heart than I had hoped. As the days passed and I put the incident at the Fraternity library behind me, my thoughts grew less perturbed. The scuttling sounds did not return the second night, nor any night after. The landlord must have put down rat poison, I thought. The shadows I had felt creeping up on me again had all but dispersed. From time to time, in the grey weather, I would feel uneasy walking past a dark opening or as I caught a sight of something moving against a window late at night. But, for the most part, I kept to crowded streets and strayed as little as possible beyond the reach of streetlights.

My research was hampered by my contretemps with Jurczyk. Such was the close-knittedness of the occult network in Edinburgh, I felt sure that word had by now gone round that little world to the effect that I was a thief or worse. I stuck with the more mainstream groups, people less likely to be in touch with the Fraternity of the Old Path, or its members. But I soon grew frustrated, knowing that the richest information would come, not from people like these, but from the true adepts, those most deeply devoted to the magical arts. I thought now and then of contacting Jurczyk again, possibly by letter, in order to explain myself; but each time I put it off until it began to seem too late to retrieve the situation.

I had almost resigned myself to carrying out a less wide-ranging research programme than I had originally envisaged, when matters took another unexpected turn. It was the middle of January, and I was in a pub in Bank Street. Ramsey McLean had asked me to join him for a drink. The invitation had been phrased quite casually – ‘a wee drink and a chance to catch up on news of Stornoway’; but I knew it was really to give him an opportunity to check up on my state of health. I knew that Iain was due to finish his classes later, and I was expecting him to join us when he was ready.

McLean brought two fine malt whiskies to the table, and we sat and talked like old times. He knew almost everyone in Stornoway, and had endless questions to ask about this or that household, about the children and grandchildren of neighbours.

When an hour or so had passed, the doctor finished his third whisky and set the empty glass on the table.

‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Evening surgery starts in half an hour. Andrew, you’re greatly improved. Keep taking the herbal drink. When the bottle’s empty, pop into the surgery for a new one. I’ll give you a once-over. By the looks of you, you’ll be on top form by the spring.’

I said I would stay on to wait for Iain. McLean shook hands and left, and I went to the bar for a soft drink. I had barely returned to my table when a man sat down next to me.

‘Andrew Macleod,’ he said. ‘Where on earth have you been hiding?’

I turned awkwardly, almost spilling my drink. For a moment I did not recognize him, for his face was not one I associated with the place or the time of day. His name was Duncan Mylne, an advocate, like half the other customers in the pub. We were near the Law Courts here.

He and I had met a few times at meetings of the Fraternity of the Old Path, of which he was a long-standing member. I had been particularly intrigued by him, for he did not fit the stereotype of the cult adherent in terms of social class, intellect, education, or anything else, as far as I could see. We had spoken at length once or twice, and I had marked him down as someone I should get to know better. At the same time, I had been a little wary of him, fearing that, with his unusually incisive mind – a mind long practised in sniffing out inconsistencies and nailing lies – he would see through my flimsy cover.

I shook hands and told him I had been ill.

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said. He was a man of about fifty, in excellent physical shape, conservatively but expensively dressed, and well groomed. He spoke with the upper-class accent of a Scot who had attended Fettes College and taken a first degree at Oxford before studying law at Edinburgh.

‘You were becoming a familiar face at our meetings,’ he went on. ‘The Fraternity can always do with fresh blood, and for my own part, a little intelligent conversation never goes amiss. I had high hopes of receiving you for initiation before long. Are you better now?’

‘Yes . . . yes, quite better,’ I stammered. He made me nervous in some way, I did not know how. As though his gaze penetrated me, as though his thoughts reached beneath my skin.

‘Well, then, I trust it won’t be long before we see you back at Ainslie Place.’

I reddened, not knowing if Jurczyk had spoken to him about me or not.

‘I’m afraid . . .’ I started, coming to an abrupt halt almost at once. I decided there was nothing for it but to confront the matter head-on. ‘Look, I may as well tell you, if you haven’t heard already, that I had a . . . a spot of unpleasantness with your Mr Jurczyk. I think he suspected me of trying to steal a book from the library.’