Summer's End (4 page)

I walked out then. I’d
convinced myself that Conor had some confederate who’d followed me before and
who’d popped up outside the window. I hadn’t really seen the face for more than
an instant, and it could have been a mask, or even a complete fake head. I
knew whoever was working with him was probably still outside, but I’d be less
polite if they tried to follow me again.

Curious, though, I did walk to
the point where Conor’s office window faced out, and tried to examine the area
beneath it. There were bushes masking the ground and the brick wall, and the
growth was certainly thick enough to conceal someone crouching down. “Oh, and
by the way—fuck you, too,” I said, before turning to walk away.

I made it back to my car
without incident and drove home still percolating with anger. By the time I
crawled into bed, I’d decided that in the morning I would call Wilson Armitage
and talk to him about Conor ó Cuinn.

October 23

-

October 24

When I called Dr. Armitage’s office in
the morning, a male voice I didn’t recognize answered. “Yes?”

“Hi, this is Lisa Morton
calling for Dr. Armitage.”

“What did you need to speak to
him about?”

Something about the voice was
wrong—it was too gruff, too harsh to belong to anyone who worked at a
university. “I was consulting with him on a project.”

“Well, Ms. Morton, I’m afraid I
have some bad news: Dr. Armitage is dead. My name’s Lieutenant John Bertocelli,
and I’m investigating his death.”

Oh god. “How did he die?”

“He was found here on campus
last night. It looks like he was attacked by some sort of wild animal, but
we’re not ruling out murder yet.”

Wild animal…maybe something
with a too-wide mouthful of jagged fangs, something that moved unseen through
the night…

And I’d been there. If they
found that out, would I be a suspect? Would it look better for me if I told
them now? “I was at the campus last night.”

“What time would that have
been?”

“I came to talk to Dr.
Armitage’s associate Conor ó Cuinn. I was there from about eight-thirty to not
quite nine.”

“We think that’s about the time
Dr. Armitage was killed.”

“Something followed me last
night.”

There was a pause, and I
imagined the detective waving his partner over, or grabbing a notepad. “You
mean something followed you last night while you were on the school grounds?”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t see it?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. If you’d gotten a
look at it, you’d probably be dead today instead of Dr. Armitage.” He asked a
few more brief questions, then took my contact information and hung up.

After several seconds of just
sitting, staring, and wondering if Conor had killed him, I googled UCLA news
and found a brief mention on a local news website of Armitage’s death. It
didn’t add much to what I’d already heard from Lt. Bertocelli—that he’d been
found dead outside Haines Hall late last night, his body mauled and covered
with what looked like bite marks.

That could have been me.

Maybe I’d been wrong about the
face I’d seen outside the window. Maybe it’d been an animal; a mountain lion? A
maddened, injured dog? Yet Conor had known it was there.

Had Conor meant to kill Wilson
Armitage?  Why?

I was interviewed by Lt.
Bertocelli a day later, in an ugly little office with scratched furniture and
sickly-green walls in a Westside police station. They told me they were still
leaning toward wild animal attack, but they had some questions…mainly about Dr.
Conor ó Cuinn. Apparently he and Armitage had argued earlier in the day, about
something to do with what was now being called “the Celtic manuscript.”
Students who’d overheard the confrontation mentioned a loud “Yes, I do intend
to try it,” in Conor’s accent, to which Armitage responded, “You can’t be
serious.”

The fact that I’d been with ó
Cuinn at the time of Wilson’s death—it’d been put fairly precisely at
8:40—ruled him out as a suspect. And they told me repeatedly I was not a
suspect.

They also said they might have
more questions.

That night, a mountain lion was
spotted in wealthy Bel Air, just to the north of the UCLA campus. It happens
sometimes—predators are driven down out of the few remaining patches of
Southern California wilderness by hunger, thirst, wildfires…maybe loneliness.
In another few hours, the story would probably end the way these stories always
did: Some cop would claim his dart gun had jammed, and he’d just kill the poor
cat instead. Meanwhile, we’d all know: That the cop, when faced with a
140-pound, yellow-eyed carnivore, had reacted on the most primeval level
possible, that his every instinct had said “Kill or die,” and he’d opted for
the gun that he knew would put the beast down permanently. An armed caveman.

The news was already speculating
that the big cat had savaged Wilson Armitage. Bel Air was within (human)
walking distance of UCLA, separated only by Sunset Boulevard. It might provide
a convenient close to the case.

But I knew a mountain lion was
not what I’d heard following me. And it certainly wasn’t the grinning, red-eyed
specter I’d seen outside ó Cuinn’s window.

October 27

Soon, I was too busy to think much
more about Wilson Armitage and Conor ó Cuinn. I had signings to attend,
interviews to give, and blog posts to write for friends. There were Halloween
haunts to visit, decorations to photograph, and stores to shop in. I have a
soft spot for cheap, completely useless Halloween kitsch that makes me laugh. I
imagine the laborers at the manufacturing plant in China slaving over miniature
Halloween skateboards and goblin finger puppets, and thinking that all
Americans must surely be mad.

Then an e-mail arrived, with a
generic name from a Gmail account. I almost dismissed it instantly as spam, but
the subject heading read “Samhain query.”

Don’t open it, was my first
thought.

But of course I did open it.

It was from Conor ó Cuinn. The
gmail account suggested he was probably still under suspicion, and had sent
this from some public computer. It was a simple message:

“Scroll to page 147 in Armitage’s
translation. Read the next ten pages. And remember what I said about us being
the last Druids.”

I wanted to delete it and
forget about it. I considered telling o’Cuinn not to contact me again. Maybe I
should send it to my new detective friend Bertolucci.

Instead, I opened the Mongfind
translation file.

Page 147 started by recounting
the moment when the Celts realized their new Catholic friends were actually an
invasion force, bent on conquest. The initial attacks took out many in the
warrior caste; the survivors were trying to rally their forces. And so they
called on Mongfind:

I saw our dead, our dying, our wounded. These men had now
revealed that they came with no purpose other than to slay us and subjugate us.
My people turned to their Arch-Druids—Mog Roith and I—in this hour of need.

I sought out Mog Roith, and yet he was nowhere to be
found. Our path was clear: we had to invoke the Dagda and the Morrigan and take
them within ourselves. Only they would be powerful enough to lead the
opposition.

We searched quickly, but came to believe that Mog Roith
must already be dead, although he had not been found among the corpses yet.
Finally, we could tarry no longer—we had to hope the Morrigan alone would be
enough.

And so, protected by a ring of our strongest remaining
warriors, I performed the ritual to call forth the Morrigan. Fortunately, the
year was close to Samhain, and the Morrigan was near at this time.

She answered my summons, and filled me. Her power! Her
strength, her resolution gave me fresh hope. Sharing your body with a god is
one of the most ecstatic experiences for any Druid; it is neither possession
nor loss, but is instead a bonding that exceeds anything experienced by
ordinary men and women. It is one of the ultimate rewards to the years of
training and learning the Druid must undergo. It is among the holiest of our
rites, and may be practiced only by the male and female Arch-Druids.

The invocation was accomplished quickly and successfully.
The Morrigan, instantly awake and aware within me, began issuing orders to our
soldiers. Then she took a spear and shield, and led them to the battlefield.

I felt everything with her, as we cut a bloody swath
through the opposing troops. Our speed and skill were unmatched. The first row
of enemies went down beneath spear thrusts and a shield wielded as a second
weapon. Gore soaked us; we shook it from our eyes and kept going, bloodlust
increasing our power. We raged through their ranks, and behind us the Celtic
warriors were renewed, screaming their battle cries. The invaders began to
panic; many tried to run, only to collide with their comrades behind them. Our
shield sprouted arrows like deadly quills, but nothing could harm us. We were
invincible. We would win.

Eire would remain ours forever.

But then the enemy forces began to scatter for another
reason—something was coming up from behind them, something they
wanted
to let through. The Morrigan and I sensed an intelligence approaching, familiar
and usually welcomed…

The last of their rows parted, and Mog Roith stepped
through; Mog is blind, but because he moved among the soldiers easily, I knew
that the Dagda had joined him and given him sight.

“Mongfind,” he said—except “Morrigan” impossibly came
from his mouth at the same time—“we must cease this fighting.”

I felt the Morrigan’s disbelief surge through me, and I
shared it. The Dagda and the Morrigan were the great defenders of Eire; they’d
fought against Fomorians and
sidh
, they were the most valorous warriors
of the
Tuatha de Danaan
. The Dagda would never call for an end to
defending our land.

“No,” the Morrigan and I answered, “we must drive them
out.”

Mog Roith smiled, sadly…and then raised the great club he
held and brought it down on our head.

When I awakened, a day later, the Morrigan was gone, I
was bound and gagged in a dank cell, and I knew the invaders had won.

Eire was theirs.

Mog Roith had betrayed us. He had summoned the Dagda and
then used the god’s power against us. I never found out why, I never knew what
the Catholics and their God could possibly have offered. I did find out that
shortly after he bludgeoned me, he staggered from the battlefield to an oak
grove, took a sacred knife and slit his own throat. Or, likely, the furious
Dagda took over and repaid Mog Roith’s betrayal. One may partner with the gods,
but one cannot betray them and expect the forged bond not to shatter.

I’d read this account earlier,
but hadn’t really looked at what followed it: Instructions for performing the
ritual to invoke the spirit of the Morrigan. It was a comparatively simple
procedure, requiring none of the paraphernalia (a rod made of ash, a wand
fashioned from an oak twig) of most of the other spells I’d glanced at. Fasting
was suggested, but I knew Mongfind had performed it successfully without that;
the rest consisted of assuming a posture known as the Heron Stance, and
meditating while inciting an invocation. It reiterated that only a female
Arch-Druid could successfully invoke the Morrigan.

I had no idea why ó Cuinn
wanted me to read this passage. Yes, the account of Mongfind laying into her
Catholic enemies while possessed by a goddess was stirring fiction, but what
did any of this have to do with me? Did ó Cuinn actually believe that he and I
were Arch-Druids?

I tried to focus on writing an
article I had promised an online news site, but my thoughts kept circling back
to ó Cuinn’s suggestion. It was ludicrous; the thought of me standing in the
middle of my living room floor, one foot braced against the opposite knee,
trying to keep my balance while reciting words that sounded like a Lewis
Carroll poem…I couldn’t foresee that ending with anything but me collapsing
onto the carpet, cursing my own innate clumsiness.

Still…what could it hurt? It
wasn’t as if this ritual required the sacrifice of a child, or even a blood
oath. Fifteen minutes of my time, and it might be an interesting experiment;
perhaps it would help me to understand, at least in some small part, how
ecstatic states could be reached in shamanistic practices. Maybe I’d feel a
little of what Mongfind had felt, nearly two millennia ago. Maybe I’d
understand how she could have possibly believed that she’d been in communion
with a goddess.

The chant was simple
^[14]
; it only
took me a few seconds to memorize it. I stood, walked to a clear space in my
living room, raised one leg, and tried to concentrate.

The first few seconds were
disastrous. I wobbled; I lost the pose; I laughed; I almost returned to my
desk, thankful that no one had been around to witness my attempt.

But instead I opted to remain
as serious as possible; I was, as I mentioned, curious about the state it would
theoretically produce in the practitioner.

I held the pose, one leg bent,
the foot resting against the other knee, thinking about engravings I’d seen of
Celtic warriors in this pose, and Australian aborigines…and after a time of
struggling to stay upright, my difficulties seemed to fall away and were
replaced with calm steadiness. My eyes closed, the chant continued to flow past
my lips, becoming more effortless with each recitation. With every passing
second, it became easier to concentrate solely on the words…the invitation…

Awareness seemed to
simultaneously fall away and expand. I was calm, focused…open.

Something was in the room with
me. I felt it like a blanket, or like a luxurious wrap made of the most
exquisite fabric. It was warmth, and strength, and comfort. I didn’t open my
eyes, because there was no need; there was nothing in this sensation to alarm
me, to cause anxiety or dread.

The chant continued, and so did
the presence. It enveloped me; it spoke without words, telling me it—or,
rather, she, because there was something quintessentially feminine about this
presence—had come at my bidding. The no-words conveyed admiration and love, and
surprise, because it had been millennia since she had been thus called.

The Morrigan.

At this point, my skepticism
was laid to rest by desire—I wanted nothing more than to join with this power,
to feel it within me, infusing me. I wanted nothing so badly as to feel what
Mongfind had felt, as she’d strode onto a battlefield without fear, striking
down her foes with grace and divine skill.

The warmth was inside me, then,
and…