The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (33 page)

Michael opened his eyes and was ready to let out the biggest
Whoa!
of his life. Then he noticed there was no one around to
Whoa!
to. Paul was already halfway up the next block, running so fast his head looked like a floating white blur above his all-black ensemble. He thought about running after him, then laughed at the absurdity. He looked all around. The street was quiet again.
What am I supposed to do now?

Then Owen and Pete burst through the door.

Michael clenched his teeth with dread as they galloped down the stoop. They were coming right toward him.
This is it.
They’re going to arrest me for cutting that guy’s head off! I’m going to jail for murder!

They never gave him a second glance. Owen hopped down the steps after Martin and Rose as fast he could. Pete followed at a less urgent pace, grumbling all the way. When his feet hit the sidewalk, his eyes widened. The guy and girl were gone, but someone else was chasing them. His long white hair was streaming behind him, and something shiny was gleaming in his hand, flashing like a strobe light as his arms pumped up and down under the passing street lamps at a speed even greater than his legs.

Owen was already halfway up the block, his legs and chest heaving to catch up. He could see the shining object much more clearly than Pete. It looked like a…sickle?

What the fuck?
Then a blinding flash ricocheted in his head, smacking Pete in the noggin at almost the same time. The morning briefing. The body on 10th and C. The body without the head. The long curved blade.
Holy fuck! It was Captain Fucking Hook!

Pete picked up the pace. Owen ran harder and faster. Michael watched them huffing and puffing with a nervous grin.
Good luck,
he thought, as Paul tore around the corner at Avenue B like he had rocket fuel in his boots.

So what now?
The gold. He looked at the cracked glass by the doorframe. It would be simple enough to get back inside. Then what? He couldn’t get through Martin’s door without a bazooka. And he sure didn’t want to be inside if he came back.

He felt inside his pockets and found them empty. As usual. The super-cool gun was gone. So was the last of the cash he had traded for with his emergency food stamps. Fuck. He’d have to panhandle just to buy a beer. He should have stolen some of that gold while he had the chance!

He watched the running cops. They were finally approaching the street corner Paul had zoomed around fifteen seconds earlier. Then he turned his head to the other end of the block and thought about Paul’s closet full of guns. What else might be hidden inside?

He swiveled his head back and forth one more time, then said two fateful words that should never have entered his brain after all he’d been through tonight: “Go home.”

He started walking. Then running. And all the way back, he never once stopped to ask why the voice didn’t sound like his own.

When Martin flagged down the cab, he looked back again to see if anyone was coming. Just an old couple shuffling along on the other side of street. When he jumped in the back with Rose, he looked again. Nothing.

“Where ya headed?” the driver asked.

“The Plaza!” Martin yelled. “Step on it!”

“No need to be rude,” answered the lazy voice of the driver, pulling away so slowly Martin wanted to jump out and push.

Martin looked back one more time and sighed with relief that no one had followed. Even so, he kept glancing back over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure. He looked over at Rose and clasped her hand as the taxi finally picked up speed and turned the corner on 9th Street. She looked at him and smiled nervously. “We made it, didn’t we?”

“Yeah, I think we did.” Martin nodded.

It’s too bad he didn’t take one more backward glance instead. He would have answered her question quite differently.

Owen was the first to sprint around the corner. Pete, unfortunately, wasn’t very far behind.
PFFFFT Thump
. Ten seconds later,
PFFFFT Thump
.

Paul stared at the heads lying on the dirty sidewalk. The heads stared back at him.

He glanced at the taxi rumbling three blocks away, then back at their sad, blinking eyes. Paul chuckled, marveling at how closely they had landed to each other—and at just the right angle—they could look at him and each other so easily!

“Sorry, lads,” he said, giving them a happy wink. “I’d love to stick around for a little chat, but I’m runnin’ behind.” They were still staring at him as he streaked away.

Paul couldn’t stop smiling. He could see Martin peering through the back window of the cab every ten seconds, but he knew he was safe. He almost wanted Martin to see him for the sheer comic value. Martin was watching every car and taxi. Paul was riding a bike he had stolen from a pizza delivery boy. He stayed far behind, having already memorized the taxi’s medallion number in case they were separated, but traffic was slow on Madison Avenue and Paul was able to maintain a fairly leisurely pace while keeping Martin within easy eye shot.

Suddenly, a frown crossed his face. The girl.

“She’s the cause of all this trouble…and the antidote,” he growled among the honking horns and ambulance sirens. By the time he watched the taxi pull over, his bike-riding glee had almost evaporated. But when Martin climbed out and led Rose by the hand into the lobby of The Plaza Hotel, Paul laughed so hard he had to cover his mouth.

“Looks like my luck’s holding up after all!”

He came here today. To my fucking apartment.

“Aren’t you going to ask me in?” Paul said, practically filling the doorway. When I stepped aside, he brushed past me and threw his coat over my favorite chair. “I’ll have some tea, if you please,” he commanded, gazing at the string of lights surrounding my bookcase. “You left your Christmas twinkles up. If you’re waiting for Lent to take them down, I’d like to remind you next week is Ash Wednesday.”

“They cheer me up,” I answered honestly.

“I can see how you’d need cheering up, with all your…hobbies.” He smiled, then went off on a mini-lecture about the druids and how the Christian missionaries appropriated their Yule solstice ritual to promote the Savior’s birth. He said that you could take any pagan festival and do the same thing. After three or four centuries all that remained were the newly created Christian feast days—All Soul’s Day, the Annunciation—and on and on. You name it, they stole it. He continued talking about the druids’ oral teaching tradition, how it could take up to twenty years for an apprentice to perfectly remember every verse in the story.

“Nobody knows if it was a story, or poetry, or genealogy. Nobody knows what the druids practiced, because they never wrote anything down,” I said, challenging him.

“What if they did?” he replied with a self-satisfied grin.

“They didn’t,” I said decisively.

“But what if they did? It’d be worth a pretty penny, don’t you think? The only extant manuscript of the entire druid teachings?” he said, strutting over to my bookshelf without looking at me, heading straight for my collection of rare books. The white binding of my most treasured volume, the
Corpus Hermeticum
must have called out to him like a homing beacon.

“Excuse me, that’s really valuable. Please don’t touch it,” I said, rushing over.

He ignored my request like he ignored my body trying to block him from the shelf.

“Not as valuable as it would have been if I hadn’t labeled the spine,” he said dryly. “Let me guess, you picked it up at Weisman’s in London, for eleven thousand, one hundred dollars. I wouldn’t hang on to it for too long if I were you. This book is cursed, you know.”

Who was this guy? My Corpus Hermeticum, my pride and fucking joy, used to be his? He wrote on the spine? It was cursed?

“By whom?” I snickered, trying to sound incredulous and haughty, not coming close to pulling it off. I was so damn curious I would have lit a fire and propped his feet on an ottoman just to keep him talking.

“Long story, longer than the book,” he replied disinterestedly, fanning through the pages with a flap of his fat thumb. He put it back daintily after waving it in the air like he had to fumigate it. Meanwhile, the odor wafting from his raised arm was burning my nostrils.

He leaned closer to the shelf, squinting like he couldn’t make out the faded words on the spines, then snorted, “Hhmmph! Now what have we here?” Grinning happily, he pulled out another very old, very rare volume, number two on my prized possessions roster.

“How on earth did you come by this?” he asked, with a genuinely warm smile.

“Flea market…in Cape Cod,” I said, feeling pretty cool.

“
Fama Fraternitatis Roseae Crucis.
Do you know what it means?”

“The Fame of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross,” I answered proudly. It was a first edition, printed in 1652.

“Yes, but what does it mean?” he asked, his eyes boring into mine.

I told him what I knew about Christian Rosenkreuz, Rosicrucianism and Masonry. From there, we segued into alchemy. He corrected me every few sentences, giving me the exact dates and titles of manifestos, describing alchemical formulas like he was reciting a recipe book. He knew everything.
Everything
. Every detail, every quote, every historical reference. When he commented on my mistakes, he never lost his patience or made fun of me. The cruel condescension he previously served up nearly every time he opened his mouth was replaced with the tone of a wise, caring teacher. I lost my know-it-all demeanor after the first two minutes. After an hour, I was completely enthralled; after the second hour, I felt like I was under a spell. It was so incredibly exciting to finally talk with someone who was a true scholar of occultism. He seemed even more delighted to share his knowledge.

“What is the most fundamental treatise of alchemy?” he asked, throwing me a softball.

“
The Emerald Tablet
of Hermes Trismegistus,” I replied, like it was the Daily Double on
Jeopardy
. When he pressed for a deeper analysis, my fumbling response elicited a groan and a sad shake of his head. Yet for the first time he declined to offer his own interpretation of the mysterious verses. Instead he asked:

“What do Trismegistus, Pythagorus and Plato have in common?”

I ticked off some of the tenets of Hermeticism shared by the Greek masters: the belief in an immortal soul, a connection between the divine realm and the material world, a force Pythagorus called the
Apeiron
that creates and destroys all life, which was guided by a godlike intelligence called the
Nous
. I would have continued, but he cut me off impatiently.

“Yes, yes, but what did all these beings have in common
collectively
?”

“They were all great teachers, with disciples who passed on their teachings. They were part of a learning tradition that stretched over centuries.”

He nodded. “They were all
one in spirit
. They all
knew
, passing down the Great Truth only to worthy initiates. And the most important aspect of their collective responsibility was the
line of succession
. Do you know why?”