The 37th mandala : a novel (34 page)

"It's the least I can do," Derek said, with a little nod to Lenore. She rewarded him with a slight smile.

"I've got to get our stuff out of the car—there's not much, but I don't want it to get stolen."

"Do you need help?" Derek asked.

"No, it's not much. I'll be okay."

When Michael was gone, Lenore came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The coffee was brewed; he poured her a cup and she sat warming her hands on it, inhaling the steam.

"I guess Michael told you what's been happening to me," she said. "It must sound pretty insane."

"Well ... no ..." he said weakly. His eyes caught on the mandala tattooed in the middle of her forehead. She went crosseyed trying to see it herself, and smirked.

"I can explain that," she said, rising and walking slowly toward him.

'I'm sure you can."
Relief
...

"The mandates gave it to me. And they brought me to you."

She brushed past him, into the living room, as he stood dumbfounded. "Where's the bathroom? Wait, I see it." She walked out of sight.

Derek groped for his own cup, sloshed coffee into it, and drank it down. He had scalded his mouth so much recently that he hardly felt a thing. The caffeine hit his nerves in a concentrated burst. He paced around the kitchen, listening to the water running, thinking of her in there. Jesus. This was trouble, all right. And he had just asked it to spend the night.

Obviously she was the one behind their jaunt. What had drawn her to him?

What if she saw my photo on one of my books and started fantasizing? It's common enough. Unhappy people are constantly forming attachments to people of reputation, stalking them. I'm an occult celebrity. She could have heard I was coming to town. Long before the lecture night she could have memorized some of the
Rites
, planning her possession, scheming to convince Michael that only I could help her.

But, my God. If she would really go to all that trouble, she must be even more unstable than her husband. Yet ... how focused, how elaborate her plans, and how successful she had been.

She had come to see him.

This is crazy, Derek thought, suppressing a thrill. I can't be so hard up that I would dream of getting involved with a neurotic, manipulative fan. Not to mention a married one.

And you hypnotized her, he thought. You've already planted yourself deep inside her mind, you idiot.

He realized he could hear the shower running, then a steady toneless murmur that sounded like Lenore gargling. The sound grew louder, droning on and on, rhythmic and monotonous, familiar.

She's reciting the
Rites
, he realized.

And for a terrifying moment, he believed everything Michael had told him, every word of Elias's story, every syllable scrawled in the ledgers. He believed in the power of a dead skin and the existence of every demon haunting the old books he'd studied to concoct his own volumes.

He clenched his eyes and held his breath and waited for the moment to pass.

The belief went away, but the fear—not quite.

"You know what drives me crazy?" Michael said, striking his fist into the palm of his other hand. He sat in Derek's kitchen, slurping coffee, while Lenore slept in the darkened living room. Michael looked as if he should have gone to bed days ago; but apparently he had been awake so long that it was habitual. Soon Derek would beg exhaustion and crawl away.

"What's that?" he asked, as politely as he could manage.

"I get jealous that... that they used
Lenore
instead of
me
. I spent years preparing myself, learning rituals, purifying myself in body and spirit—and nothing real, nothing definite has ever happened to me, nothing I couldn't explain away, until Lenore invoked that mandala. I'd never seen any phenomenon I couldn't interpret as coincidence or a stray draft, you know? But Lenore ... Lenore, who couldn't give a shit about the occult, who does drugs, all those things that are supposed to make you unclean—they come right through her. The preparation, the discipline, those things don't even matter. They're a crutch for people who don't have the aptitude and never will. You can take piano lessons from day one and you'll never be a Mozart, you know, unless you're
born
Mozart. The mandalas ignored me. They went straight to Lenore. All I am now is, like, her fucking chauffeur."

"Maybe you have some kind of inner strength or stability she lacks," Derek said, humoring him.

"So? I mean, I know that—but is that so great? Isn't the direct experience worth more? I mean, she's seeing things, living things I can only imagine. Why her?"

"If it's any consolation," Derek said, "you're not the first to ask. It's been this way through history."

"What do you mean?"

Derek felt himself warming to the subject, which drew on research he'd never been able to find a use for in writing
The Mandala Rites
. He'd never had a moment's conversation with anyone who might have appreciated all the invisible work he'd done; he hadn't felt able to discuss it with Lilith, because it would have made him appear too sincere in his work, and then she would have ridiculed him further for his hypocrisy.

"Well, apart from my own case—and remember, I got the complete mandala texts secondhand, rather than by direct revelation—you must be familiar with John Dee."

"Sure. One of the great wizards of all time. Queen Elizabeth's astrologer."

"He was also an accomplished mathematician and cryptographer. An intellect, I mean."

"Well, magic was an intellectual field back then—natural law. Plenty of great thinkers were involved in the occult."

"Plenty were burned for it too," Derek said. "But what I'm saying is that Dee could never put aside his intellect and simply
experience
the mysteries. He was obsessed with divination, but he lacked the talent for it. He had to hire someone else to use his 'shew-stone.'"

"Edward Kelly!" Michael's eyes brightened. Derek saw that Michael was equally proud of his arcane research. "Aleister Crowley thought he was Kelly's reincarnation!"

"Yes, and Kelly did all John Dee's scrying for him. He was the channeler, like Lenore and my friend Ms. A. All Dee did, like me, was write down what Kelly saw. Kelly had the visions, but he didn't have any understanding of them. To Dee, it was a miracle; to Kelly, it was a job."

"That's what I'm saying. It's unfair!"

"Then there's William Butler Yeats."

"The poet? Yeah, wasn't he an initiate in the Golden Dawn?"

"And a great enemy of Crowley's. He once changed the locks on the temple headquarters to keep Crowley out."

Michael broke out laughing. "Really? I didn't know they knew each other."

"Yeats got himself into a situation similar to our own. Have you read
A Vision
? He and his wife were experimenting with automatic writing, when suddenly the spirits began writing to Yeats through her. They gave him an entire cosmology for his poetry, a whole set of symbols linking the personality of man to the phases of the moon."

"Really? So you're saying he was like too intellectual, so they had to go through her to get to him? Like, he was too hard to reach directly. ..."

Sure
, Derek thought.
You're so intellectual 
....

He said, "Perhaps it's the same with you and me. We're too—too much in control, too controlling. Maybe it's in the male ego, the way we're wired."

"That reminds me of another theory of mine," Michael said suddenly, rising from his sulk. "Sometimes I think we're like the left and right hemispheres of brains. We're incomplete on our own. Say I'm the logical left-hand sort, and Lenore is the intuitive right-hand type. She experiences everything directly, then I analyze it. They possess her and fill her with energy, but I have to work out their instructions. Maybe we're supposed to form bonds with other people, a single consciousness made up from two. We're like separate cells, but we can't exist without each other. Maybe that's the lesson of the mandalas—that's what they're trying to tell us. We have to all come together. Maybe I shouldn't be afraid of what's been happening. But when Lenore goes away and they come around, I can't help being frightened. This is the sort of thing I always dreamed would happen, but somehow I never imagined it would be so ... well, dark."

"Are you afraid of them, Michael?"

Michael stared at him, red-eyed, embarrassed. "I hate to use the word evil; I never believed in it, really. But I've started to think I know what it means. Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Crowe, that the mandalas might have
lied
?"

"What do you mean?"

"They say they're all sweetness and light, working for the good of humanity, but what if that was just meant to sucker us in? Build a big cult and then—and then turn on us. I mean, how would we know? There's no way to check on them. But I'll tell you, what I've seen of them so far—it's sort of at odds with everything they told you to write."

Derek was beginning to grow uncomfortable. "I don't know if we need to suspect them of outright lying. Maybe we just don't understand them."

Michael considered this, and Derek began to scream internally.
Tell him
, went the scream.
Tell him the truth
.

But once he confessed, there would be no way to contain or control the truth. He was not prepared to sacrifice his reputation. Not yet.

He nodded toward the living room.

"She seems quiet enough now," he said. "I don't know her, but there's nothing unusual in the behavior I've seen."

Michael nodded. "They're taking it easy. I haven't really sensed much activity since we got to California. Maybe they're afraid of you, and they're lying low; maybe they know you're going to help Lenore." Michael surely saw that this statement made Derek uncomfortable, for he quickly added, "Or maybe they know she needs rest. They don't want to burn her out." He sighed, looked around. "Speaking of which, I think I'd better get to bed."

Derek rose to take his cup and rinse it in the sink. "Sleep in as late as you like. If you need anything, just knock on my door."

He left Michael undressing in the dark living room. He stumbled into his bedroom and sank down on his bed, feeling absurdly like a prisoner in his own home. He desired Lenore, he realized, but also feared desiring her. It wasn't her husband that frightened him. If something happened between them, and Michael were to discover, it would be merely pathetic. What he feared was any dramatic change, anything that might catalyze a crisis. Fear had entered his home in the form of two obsessed fans who had tracked him all the way across the country, coming to haunt him with his own incantations.

What did they
really
want from him?

Michael woke unhappily, uncertain of the hour, wishing he could sleep at least as long as he had driven. It was novel not to wake up cramped and stiff in the front seat with the sound of other cars rushing past. For days his first act upon waking had been to twist the key in the ignition. Now that he found himself with no immediate purpose, he felt aimless and hollow. And last night's conversation with Derek Crowe had not heartened him or given him much hope either.

The blinds were pulled to keep the living room dim, but judging from the sounds on the street outside it was already late in the day. The bedsheets were rumpled where Lenore had lain, but she was gone. He rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen, and found her heating last night's coffee. She gave him a sleepy smile.

"Good morning. Can you believe we're here?"

"Believe it? I remember every inch of that fucking road." He put his arms around her, absorbing some of her warmth, putting his face against her neck though she turned away as if his breath were wretched. "How are you this morning?"

"I'm good," she said. "I really slept last night. I feel almost human."

"You don't... you're not having trouble, then?"

She looked around, at the air above them, and shrugged. "I don't feel anything this morning. It's almost as if it never happened."

"Why?" Michael said. "Why would they force us out here and then just leave?"

"I don't know, Michael, but I'm not going looking for trouble, if that's what you mean. I feel normal this morning—do you know what that's like? Do you
want
me to start getting crazy again?"

"No," he said hurriedly, but it was with a pang of embarrassment. He realized he had been selfishly wanting her to have another powerful fit, so that Derek Crowe would believe their story. Crowe obviously thought they were nuts; last night he'd had the sense that Derek could scarcely tolerate him, and had asked them to stay only out of pity. He had begun to suspect there was
less
to Crowe than he'd believed; he seemed genuinely at a loss when faced with Lenore's condition. Michael couldn't bear to face the fact that he might not be their salvation after all but merely another dead-end. If one of the trances came on right now, Crowe might prove as helpless as any of them.

Maybe San Francisco itself had calmed Lenore. It was supposed to be that kind of place. They had been bogged down in Cinderton—not in the same kind of deadly ruts they'd carved for themselves in New York, but in a tedium just as suicidal in the long run. San Francisco was supposed to be a haven for people with divergent and eclectic beliefs—people like them. Maybe they'd end up staying here, if luck was with them and they fell in with the right people. Maybe a change was what they had really needed, and the mandalas had spurred their cross-country flight to spare them some worse fate back in Cinderton.

At that thought, he suddenly remembered Tucker and Scarlet, and the TV image of their house....

Crowe hadn't heard about the deaths, obviously; but it was only a matter of time. If he didn't pick up a paper and see one of his mandalas implicated in a ritual killing, then the police themselves were bound to come to him, asking his opinion. He was the mandala expert, after all. Someone might remember him leaving with the Renzlers after his lecture. The cops would work all that together, weaving a trap that Michael and Lenore and maybe even Crowe himself might never escape. Their alibis—the truth itself—sounded like sheer madness.