The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller (38 page)

“Yeah…it’s safe,” he said, trying to convince himself, torn between the longing to forget everything that had ever happened before and the job still waiting to be finished.

Paul. The key. The Book. Martin had spent most of the night awake, trying to recreate the vision that slipped between the fingers of his mind. The more he tried to corral those re-erased memories, the faster the switches in his brain locked down, until finally, exhausted and angry, he settled between those soft sheets and wrapped his arms around Rose’s even softer body.
Nice
. That was the last word that registered in his mind before sleep carted him away. Waking up with Rose was even nicer. It was the nicest thing that had ever happened to him. He gripped her hand, staring at the same view that seemed so sinister last night. Everything looked so different. So new. He pictured them lying in the sun with some sandwiches. Could he deal with Paul later? Could he do something good, just once?

“It’s so nice out, isn’t it?” Rose asked in a childlike voice, trying hard to pretend she hadn’t noticed the hesitance in Martin’s last reply, needing him to affirm her denial.

“Yeah, it’s nice,” he said. “Everything looks like gold.”

Michael clutched the coin as he looked at the Book in his lap. It was so thick and heavy it practically pinned his legs to the couch. From the instant he held it, he ceased thinking about anything else. Not the weird hallucination with the burnt closet, or the equally surreal incidents preceding it: the beheading, their leap from a five-story building…not even Martin’s gold. As soon as he saw it, he knew this was the book Paul had taken from Firth.
Taken
back
from Firth,
he thought, wondering how anyone could take anything from Paul in the first place without losing his head in the process.

“Some things are worth more than treasure,” Paul had said.

What did
that
mean? He couldn’t begin to guess. Because he couldn’t open it up. A wide leather strap with a big brass lock bound it tightly shut.
Fuck!
It was driving him crazy. He’d been up all night trying to pick the brass lock with a rusty old paperclip he found on the floor, but the metal bent like rubber every time he stuck it inside and twisted. He even thought about grabbing one of those gleaming knifes in Paul’s “war chest” and slicing through the strap, but he knew what Paul would do to him for mutilating his most precious possession. Michael shuddered at the thought…then he started in with the paperclip again.

After another round of futile poking and twisting, he paced around the room. But like every other time he set the Book down, something felt so wrong about it that he scooted right back to the couch and picked it up again.
Ooof.
When he lifted it this time, the morning sun flashed across the leather surface and he felt the strangest sensation he’d ever experienced. The Book felt like it was pulling him forward, dragging him across the room and into the dark hallway.
What the fuck? Was he tripping?
He followed the tug on his hands for a few steps, then commanded his feet to stop.

There was something up ahead in the hallway. A light? He walked down the corridor, the tug from the Book growing more insistent with every step until suddenly he wasn’t afraid of the darkness. What darkness? The hallway was swirling with light. Where was it coming from? It seemed incredibly bright, but it didn’t hurt his eyes. He wanted to go closer. He needed to. The Book helped him, pulling him onward with a force that felt like gravity. This time he stopped resisting, his blinded eyes open, unseeing and seeing at the same time. But after he walked only a dozen yards, the darkness returned all at once and swallowed him up.

Holy shit!
He couldn’t tell which direction he’d come from or where he was headed. The Book knew. It kept pulling him. Bean tried to slow down, afraid he’d slam into a wall and break his neck. He ran into a wall anyway. As the feeble light coming from his left flickered against the surface, he saw that it wasn’t a wall after all. Well, it was and it wasn’t. It was the same height as the wall and it was covered with the same filthy wallpaper. But it wasn’t a wall. Not really. It was more like a door.

The Striker finished my implants today. I’m so wiped out. Between the agony of the procedure and the misery that followed, I can barely sit still to write this. It doesn’t help that I hardly slept last night. The gift Paul left in my suitcase was one reason. Strangely enough, the threat of arrest is much less disturbing than the panic I’ve felt since he dropped the Clan Kelly bomb. When he told me that his family—
our
family—co-opted the Hermetic line of succession, I could only conclude he was certifiably insane. What else could I think? Unfortunately, no matter what I thought, how obvious it seemed, how much I wanted,
needed
to believe that he was totally off his fucking rocker—in my guts, in my heart of hearts, I knew he was telling the truth. How crazy is that? Insanity must truly be genetic.

Regardless of his craziness or mine, he had also given me the first solid fact I could use to track him down. I went on the web to see what I could dig up. Kelly is the second most populous Irish surname after Murphy. There are a lot of Paul Kellys out there. I ran down as many as I could who seemed in the right age range, but I couldn’t find anyone who fit the bill—a big, burly Irish sociopath with a fondness for collecting ancient occult manuscripts and blackmailing young men into committing unspeakable acts of horror. I wasn’t particularly surprised when I came up empty. This obviously wasn’t a guy who craved publicity.

So I trudged over to their grisly parlor today, hoping Paul would be as chatty as he’d been yesterday. He was not. In fact, he barely spoke the entire time. When at last The Striker struck his final blow and cleaned off the blood, we all went to the mirror together to check it out. The golden rays snaking from my solar plexus were surrounded by inflamed bloody tissue. It looked horrible. Staring at my raw, red, ravaged skin, I can’t believe I ever thought about doing something so insane. As horrified as I felt, Paul seemed exceptionally pleased with the results. “Billy boy, you did such a fine job here that you’re due for a reward.”

“A reward?” I asked, completely flummoxed.

“Come with me,” he said with a sly wink. “There’s something I want to show you.”

The way he said it made me feel the same excitement I feel when I’m collecting: like an adventure is about to begin. I put on my coat. The Striker nodded and opened the door for us, but remained inside. We headed east, almost to the river. The wave of gentrification hasn’t pushed that far and most of the buildings are abandoned. It’s really scary at night, so I was grateful there were still a few rays of sunshine left. I’m not sure why I felt so jumpy. Even if it were midnight, I was in no danger of being mugged with Paul stomping beside me.

We walked up the stairs of a dark brick building until we came to an old teak door with an engraved cross. It was definitely a collector’s item. There was a strong odor inside I’d smelled many times before. I knew what it was, but considering who I was with, I wasn’t shocked. We walked into what I assumed was the living room. The furnishings consisted of a ratty old couch, a rattier chair and a liquor cabinet. He poured us each a glass of whiskey. My stomach churned. I hate brown liquor. The smell of it alone is enough to make me puke.

I asked if he had any vodka. He looked at me like I was the ultimate pussy and put the drink in my hand. “Cheers,” he said, laughing when I took a baby sip. My head shook involuntarily. He laughed again. I wanted to run away. He must have sensed it because he put a huge arm around me and led me down a pitch-black hallway. It went on for much longer than it should have, twisting and turning until we finally came to a stop and he pushed against a wall. The whole wall moved, or I should say, a section that was four feet wide. It was a door. A door without a handle.

Inside, I saw the dim flicker of candles. The room was about twenty feet long. At the far end was a large altar with a massive crucifix behind it that went from the floor to the ceiling. It looked extremely old, maybe even medieval. On it hung a life-sized figure carved from wood. It wasn’t like any other crucifix I’d seen before. There were nails everywhere, covering his arms, legs, torso…and wings. The wings were long and white and carved from the same worn wood. As I drew closer, it was easier to see the face. It was beautiful and smiling. The hair was long and blond. There was no crown of thorns. No beard. That’s when I fully realized the figure wasn’t Jesus with wings. It was an angel. A crucified angel.

It was fastened to the cross with at least two hundred nails. They weren’t exactly nails either: They were more like those handmade spikes African shamans hammer into their magical totem figures in a similar profusion. The more I looked at the angel on the cross, the more I was reminded of those totems. There were leather pouches hanging from the chest. They looked hand-stitched. There were bones lodged between the spikes. There were small photographs here and there, and small, brightly colored objects that might have been children’s toys. Covering all the visible skin was a thick grainy crust that looked like tar. I had a good idea what it was made of.

My eyes were drawn to the middle of its chest. I gasped, staring at the golden rays of metal emanating from his exposed heart in all directions, like the beams of the sun. I opened my shirt and stared at my implants. I looked back at the angel. And back at my chest. The shape and placement of my implants was exactly the same as the rays on the angel’s chest. How was this possible? When I went to The Striker for my implants, I’d never even met Paul, let alone visited his sinister sanctuary. I stared at the angel and I felt like I was having a déjà vu or remembering something from the distant past, but it was just out of reach, like the hem of a black tattered robe skittering around a corner.

“Look. Look and learn,” Paul said, pointing at the altar.

The altar was also wooden, with tall candles on either side. I stroked my hand across the surface. It was black and sticky with the same residue as the cross. There were holes everywhere, reminding me of The Striker’s stool. This was far more gruesome. I followed Paul’s finger to the front of the altar. There was a cabinet inside. I knew from the way he was looking at me that I was supposed to open it.

I hesitated, but not for long. After what I’d seen while assembling my collection, I was prepared for anything. I let out a sigh of relief when I opened the cabinet. There were only some thick leather volumes inside. In a glance I could see they were bound with hand-tooled leather. I could also see that the bindings weren’t very old—certainly not in the league of any books I expected to see in Paul’s collection given our most recent encounter. My somewhat disinterested response seemed to antagonize Paul and he shook his head ruefully like I was an idiot.

“You of all people,” he said, but didn’t finish the thought.

When I shrugged, he pointed at a small lectern in front of the altar with another book on it. I stepped in front of the lectern, which faced the cross and the angel. I read the inscription:
The Book of William
. It was so creepy I can’t find the words to describe it. It was even worse when I opened it. I saw a baby photo of myself looking right back, and a photo of Mother when she was younger, the same photo they posted on the website. A thousand questions swam in my brain. When I turned to Paul, his expression told me I’d get the same one-word answer: “Look.” So I turned the pages forward. It was the story of my life, a cross between a scrapbook and a biography. I quickly skimmed through the pages, until I reached the most recent entries—photos of the tattoos and a new one of the implants. I read the note next to a large shot of my face: “He’s almost ready.”

I went back to the beginning, looking for a clue that showed how I was related to Paul—some genealogical information, a family tree—or better still, a picture of my father (“the cunt,” as he put it). There was nothing, which seemed extremely odd considering how thorough the other details were: all the different towns we moved to, all the new schools where I instantly became a target for humiliation. Bully bait. Yet there was nothing connected to Paul, until I read the description of my mother’s death. My own journals were much more detailed, but these were astonishingly complete. They talked about the cancer. How it had moved to her brain. It didn’t say anything about the double mastectomy, which I thought was odd by omission.