The 37th mandala : a novel (12 page)

Why was she so sure of what she saw?

She stared so hard that the image seemed to change. In the old, stained, badly silvered mirror, it began to warp and waver. The thing's thin arms rippled and the teeth parted slightly, revealing a midpoint of darkness that held her gaze and deepened, twisting, sucking her in like the water that swirled forgotten down the drain.

In addition to Mystery, Science Fiction, Westerns, and Puzzles, Michael was in charge of the Religion and Metaphysics sections at Beagle Books in downtown Cinderton. Several times a week, Michael took his inventory list down the aisles, assessing the history and current state of human spirituality based on titles in print and copies in stock, from Charles Fort to Paul Tillich, from St. Augustine and the Dalai Lama to L. Ron Hubbard and Erich von Daniken. The more outlandish writings had their own long shelf facing Fiction. This stretch was crammed with books on lucid dreaming and dream interpretation, on flying saucers and the Bermuda triangle, on astral projection, clairvoyance, crystal power, healing and visualization. There were tomes on witchcraft by Cotton Mather, Sybil Leek, and Starhawk; a complete set of Max Freedom Long's kahuna treatises and Franz Bardon's hallucinatory hermetic confections. No matter how many times he riffled through the section—and taking inventory gave him a good excuse for browsing through more books than he could ever hope to own—he always found something to send him into frenzies of speculation. The Big Five orthodox, received-wisdom cults (Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism) had an entire wall to themselves toward the back of the store, around the corner from Metaphysics, and separated from their harebrained cousins by the smallish Science Fiction section. He went more methodically and sedately through Religion, a mere cataloger of defenders and heretics. Dogma did not interest him. Sometimes he cracked open a copy of Ignatius of Loyola, to see how the visualizations worked, if there were any techniques he could borrow; or skimmed Thomas Merton trying to figure out why Chogyam Trungpa had pushed him into a swimming pool; and he had long since moved Blake and Swedenborg into Metaphysics, feeling they would be more comfortable among others like themselves.

He was proud of his Metaphysics section, though it had glaring holes that never failed to frustrate him, representing volumes he considered crucial to any comprehensive occult library, but that were either out of print or unavailable through the distributors he was authorized to use.
The
Black Pullet
, for instance. You could find it only in a cheap pamphlet that looked more like a compendium of love spells and hexes, which was admittedly as far as most people's interest in occultism went. And just try finding a copy of
A True & Faithful Relation of What Passed for Many Yeers Between Dr. John Dee (A Mathematician of Great Fame in Q. ELIZ. and King JAMES their Reignes) and Some Spirits: Tending (had it Succeeded) To a General Alteration of most STATES and KING DOMES in the World!

He had ordered another six copies of
The Mandala Rites
, figuring there would be a run on them after Crowe's lecture, and this morning he'd moved them to the front counter. It would have been a coup to get Crowe in here to autograph them, but obviously the occultist hadn't wished to linger in Cinderton for business or pleasure. Two copies had sold by noon, when Michael finished his inventory and took the register. Out of the corner of his eye, as he rang up a stack of magazines, he noticed a large woman standing at the mandala display. When he turned to look at her directly, he saw it was Cerridwen Dunsinane.

"Hey, Cerridwen," he said. "They're going good today, after last night. That was a great lecture, wasn't it?"

The look she gave him was surprising, to say the least. Poisonous. Enraged. She snatched up a copy of
The Mandala Rites
. "I'd like to tear this thing in little pieces and feed them to my python," she said. "I'm almost tempted to buy a copy just for the pleasure of mutilating it, except I wouldn't want six percent sneaking back in that asshole's pocket. I wouldn't want to make my snake sick either."

"Whose pocket?"

She slapped the book face down on the counter. "Derek Crowe's."

"What? You're kidding."

"The guy's a fraud. A slimeball. I've never met a bigger one, and to think I helped him on his greasy way. ..."

Michael shook his head. "A fraud?" He flashed on Lenore, last night, the power she had summoned with Crowe's book. That was real magic, more intense than anything he had ever experienced, undeniable and, in retrospect, rather frightening.

"I don't know," he said. "I have reason to think he's got something there."

"Oh, he's got something going, all right. It's just not what everyone thinks. He threatened to
sue
the Sisterhood."

Another customer came up with a couple paperbacks; he rang them up absently. "Sue you? Over what?"

"Over a few bucks that were supposed to go to charity."

"That doesn't sound too enlightened."

"Enlightened? The man is pitch black. If I were you, I'd purify these books with a little salt and water, a whiff of frankincense, and plenty of fire. I can't believe anything worthwhile could come from that evil bastard."

Michael decided not to mention that he'd given Crowe a ride.

Her fun- vented, Cerridwen produced three copies of another book and laid them on the counter. "I couldn't help noticing these got moved into the remainder bin," she said, more subdued now.

"Uh, yeah, sorry about that. It wasn't my decision."

They were copies of her own book,
Weaving With Moonlight
, all rather dusty and bearing that sad little gold "Autographed!" sticker, that always reminded him of the stars given to reward second-grade overachievers. Michael had convinced his boss to buy the books direct from Cerridwen, since it was a small press edition with a tiny print run. A few copies had sold to Cerrid-wen's friends in the first weeks after the book came out, and then no more. He hadn't read it himself. Cerridwen was a figurehead of local neo-paganism and a frequent patron of certain downtown shops—Wymmyn's Mysteries and Smoky Mountain Magick. In wanner weather she did Tarot readings for friends (or five dollars) at the sidewalk tables outside the Cutting Board, using the big round cards of the Motherpeace deck, or sometimes the Voyager Tarot. (Michael himself used nothing but the Thoth deck, despite its obvious deficiencies.)

He felt sorry for her, and so after checking to make sure he was unobserved, he ran the books through the demagnetizer and slipped them into a bag without ringing them up. don't you just take them?" he whispered. "No charge."

She looked surprised. "Really?"

"They're yours anyway. Sorry they didn't do better."

"Well ... now I know what sells. Crap."

At that moment, a tall teenage boy wearing a silver pentacle and a ragged parka came sidling up next to them and slapped a copy of
The Mandala Rites
on the counter.

"Hey, did you hear this guy last night? Intense! Oh, yeah, I remember you! You gave him a ride in your cool Beetle!"

Michael flinched a bit and grinned sheepishly at Cerridwen. Her friendly look gone, she hugged her sack to her breast and headed for the door. Michael rang up the sale.

After work, Michael was supposed to shop for his mother. Her car was dead. She had called in the morning to give him a grocery list, wasting his coffee break while she tried to decide what she needed. Eleven a.m. and she was already drunk; he dreaded seeing how bad she would be by the time he arrived with groceries. He decided to swing by and see Lenore at work.

The steep hill streets of downtown Cinderton were lined with crumbling brick buildings, most of them abandoned or sparsely occupied, except for a few square blocks rejuvenated by clothing boutiques, art galleries, and New Age shops selling crystals and herbs. Lenore couldn't stand these places, but Michael found them a welcome oasis among the backwoods people. He kept his car parked where it was, tucked the latest "Frauds & Fakirs" issue of
Gnosis
under his arm, then went down one hill and up another to the Cutting Board.

There was no sign of Lenore at the bakery counter. He poked his head into the dining room, which was quietly crowded with students, aging hippies, recent Yankee refugees drinking coffee, reading, or writing in notebooks. She wasn't at the register. Before he got to the kitchen, a man with a graying beard and ponytail came out through the swinging doors.

"Hey, Mike." It was Cal, Lenore's boss. "Where's your old lady?"

Michael stopped. "She's not here?"

"No. She didn't call in sick. I tried your number but the phone kept ringing."

"That's weird," Michael said.

"Tell her not to do this to me, all right? I already have a girl out. If she warns me, I can make arrangements. Otherwise—"

Michael started to say she wasn't sick, but realized he didn't know if this was strictly true. He hadn't talked to her yet. After last night, maybe she was feeling out of sorts.

"I'll check the roads and see if her car broke down somewhere," he said. "We've been having trouble with it."

Cal gave him an exasperated look. "I don't suppose you want a job?"

Cal let him use the phone to make another attempt at reaching Lenore; but if she was home, she wasn't answering. He supposed she could have stayed late at school, to work in the library. Lenore had her own reasons for doing things; she wouldn't appreciate him getting mixed up with her boss. For all he knew, she was mad at Cal and making him pay for it. She couldn't afford to lose the job, but she wouldn't stand for Michael lecturing her about responsibility. He reorganized his priorities in order of increasing unpleasantness, and decided to get his mother's groceries before dealing with Lenore.

The TV was blaring in the kitchen when he walked in the back door of his mother's house, a bag of groceries in either arm. She was standing at the sink, pouring vodka into a glass of grapefruit juice. Another TV was going in the living room; he could see Earl's feet up on the La-Z-Boy.

"Where were you last night?" she asked.

He dropped the bags on the table. She immediately started rummaging through to see if he'd forgotten anything.

"We went out," he said.

"What am I supposed to do in an emergency? You go out and you don't even tell me where you're going? How was I supposed to get in touch with you? Call that neighbor of yours, ask him to give me a hand?"

He started putting cans in the cupboard. "We went out, that's all. I'm supposed to tell you every time we leave the house? What's wrong with Earl, anyway? Why can't he help you?"

"You leave Earl alone. His car got repossessed. He's feeling low."

High-pitched laughter from the living room didn't necessarily contradict her. Michael heard the theme music from some game show. Earl was a moody sort of guy, and never said exactly what he'd been doing in the state prison outside of Cinderton, where his mother had met him. She had been "laid off," as she called it, shortly after his release, and Earl had been a fixture ever since. At least they weren't married yet. She'd taken that much control of her life.

"I'm sure one of your neighbors would help you out."

"My neighbors? Are you crazy? They won't give me the time of day. I'm lucky I don't have crosses burning on my front lawn."

"I thought you liked it here."

"It's not a matter of liking it. It's what I can afford. I can't live just anywhere I want, can I? You tell me how, on what I collect."

"What's wrong with your car?"

"Earl says it's the battery. He
was
a mechanic, you know."

"And it took him a week to figure out you need a battery?"

"He doesn't have his tools, Mike. You leave him alone, I said."

Michael threw the few vegetables into the refrigerator. "Well, if it's the battery, I'll just get you a new one."

"Would you? That'd be so sweet." She grabbed the carton of Neapolitan ice milk out of his hands before he could open the freezer. He started to put the six-packs in the fridge, but she said, "Leave one of those out."

Michael glanced at the clock over the stove. "I've got to get home. My night to fix dinner."

"What about my battery?"

"Sears is open late. I'll bring it by in the morning, before I go to work."

"Can't you do it tonight, Mikey? I just feel marooned out here."

"You shouldn't be driving anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Chubby-cakes?" Earl leaned forward in the big chair, peering down the hall into the kitchen. He always dressed like a seedy banker just home from work: white collar open, tie pulled loose. If any social workers or parole officers dropped by, he was prepared to claim he was just on his way to or from a job interview. "Oh, Mikey, how you doing? Did I just hear a pop-top?"

"It's coming," said his mother.

"You staying for dinner, son? We don't see enough of you. Where's your cute little missus?"

"I've got to go," Michael said under his voice, heading for the door.

"Michael, don't you be—"

He walked out the back door while she was talking.

Passing the college on the way home, he relaxed a bit. Sometimes, down here, among the old brick buildings covered with frost-bitten ivy, you saw a kid in black leather sporting dyed hair or a mohawk. Not many, but just enough to reassure him that he and Lenore weren't the only ones in Cinderton who'd survived the previous decade. He cruised down streets lined with ancient thick-trunked trees, bare and lifeless as columns of scaly cement. He was on the lookout for Lenore's car as he passed the student parking lots. Raindrops spattered the windshield, fattened on groping branches. The sky was patchy, marbled blue and gray. Storms coming; seems they'd been on the way for days, but never quite arrived. He slowed to watch a girl coming down the steps from the student union, long black hair falling over her face, bright lipstick. She glanced up as if sensing his eyes, he stepped on the gas, thinking guiltily of Lenore.

She'd been so weird last night. Nobody could turn weird on you like Lenore. Just when he started thinking he finally understood her, she always came up with something unexpected. They had met four years ago—that was a long time. He'd never done anything for four years in a row—not even lived in the same town. He supposed she was close as he would ever get to finding his ideal type. The sorority girls in fuzzy sweaters, lipstick models with books under their arms—imagine what they'd think of his altar. One glance and they'd probably run screaming, even though it was perfectly innocuous. It wasn't like he did black magic. He didn't give evil any credence anyway. That was Christian bullshit, something the priests used to keep people in line, setting down laws to keep folks from thinking for themselves. Michael believed the universe was fundamentally neutral, that you got out of it exactly what you put in. His magical practice stemmed from a heartfelt yearning that couldn't be satisfied by Christianity or Buddhism or Judaism, with their cores of written dogma and hierarchies of monks and popes and rabbis. He wouldn't be satisfied until he had reached his own understanding of the cosmos and felt it in every nerve.