The Darkening Dream (27 page)

She opened her mouth. He put a finger to her lips.

“Something’s in the house,” he said. She picked up her skirts and went.

Joseph raced into his study. He grabbed his father-in-law’s prayer bag off the shelf, yanked it open, and pulled out the prayer shawl and the fuzzy top hat — no time for the complicated
tefillin.

He returned to the foyer, raised his arms above his head, and shouted in Hebrew: “
The Lord is my light and my help; whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life, whom should I dread?”
The structure of his temple-like ward seared into his retinas. A kind of ecstasy flowed into him. Four luminous walls girded the house, perfectly aligned as they were on the points of the compass. In each direction pillars shaped like angels spread their celestial wings.

“
When evil men assail me — to devour my flesh — it is they, my foes and my enemies, who stumble and fall.”

A line of cold red flame raced from his feet past the kitchen and into the open cellar door. From the depths of the basement he heard a scream.

He followed the trail. Soundless tongues of fire licked his trousers but did not burn. At the top of the stairs he yelled, “
To my right Michael and to my left Gabriel, in front of me Uriel and behind me Raphael.”

He leapt. The weight of his mentor’s shawl lifted and the touch of feathers enveloped him. He landed lightly on the cellar floor. He raised his arms, and the foundations of his metaphysical temple poured light into the room.

Before him, surrounded by sulfurous smoke, writhed a blonde girl in a black suit with a clerical collar. Joseph grasped the
mezuzah
around his neck and shouted the
Shema
, the central prayer of his faith.

Brighter than bright, a searing white light from the silver charm bathed the girl before him, causing the figure to blur and waver. In her place was a gaunt middle-aged man carrying a bag, his spectacles askew and his frazzled hair smoking.

Joseph could still see echoes of the feminine form — his prayers had only muted the effect. What foul sorcery was this? All too reminiscent of Khepri and his waxen disguise. And he thought he’d seen this man before, too.

The priest reached into his bag and pulled out a brass knife. Was that the letter opener Rebecca had given him?

The man shouted in Latin, “Blade of my own, burn my joined flesh!” and pricked himself in the leg.

Pain seared Joseph’s right thigh. He glanced down to see the fabric of his trouser leg burned away, black rot stained his flesh. The priest streaked past him and bolted up the stairs.

Joseph pulled off his prayer shawl and pressed it against the wound. The burn in his thigh cooled. Such was Rebecca’s father’s righteousness that his very clothing was drenched in God’s love.

He limped up the stairs. When he reached the door to the street he saw the priest receding into the distance, running hard. Joseph was about to give chase when the man thrust a hand into his pocket and vanished.

Cursed warlocks.

He hadn’t actually met one before, but the city was rumored to have its share. And he had thought it a good idea to move to a town named Salem!

He slumped against the door frame and pressed his forehead against the
mezuzah
. The false priest — he couldn’t be a real man of God — seemed to have used somebody’s soul, a young girl’s by the look of it, to sneak through the defenses. When Joseph regained his strength he was going to have a nice long chat with
Hashem
and close that loophole.

As the adrenaline subsided he began to shake. He felt weak, his mouth dry. Clearly he needed a bit more exercise. He unwrapped his throbbing leg and saw the skin was red and peeling. A bad burn, but he’d heal. The real problem was this warlock.

When he’d checked the wards this morning he felt something. At the time he assumed some mischievous child had tried to open a window. Now he wasn’t so sure. And no question what this priest was after down in the cellar.

Thankfully the Horn was gone, and fat chance some petty warlock could open a passage to paradise. Only on a day sacred to Gabriel was that even possible, and the next one wasn’t until March. Still, anyone seeking the Horn could present a problem.

He remembered Khepri. Could this priest be the beetle god in disguise? Khepri had been able to steal the form of other men, cloaking himself in a suit of wax. But he was dead — turned to ash by the wrath of
Hashem
— and the priest didn’t have a dog. Three times he’d faced Khepri, and three times the little silver dog had been with him.

Joseph shuddered.
Anubis, jackal-headed god who receives the organs of the dead.

Twenty-Nine:

Training

Salem, Massachusetts, Sunday afternoon, November 9, 1913

P
APA WASN’T IN HIS STUDY
when Sarah came home. She found him chopping wood in the back yard, looking ridiculous in a suit with the axe held high. This was doubly odd, since he rarely did physical labor. He had a white bandage wrapped around his right thigh.

“Papa, can you teach me how to enter a trance to increase receptivity and concentration?”

Back in Emily’s room this crazy idea had come to her — a half-baked plan combining Freud’s modern approach with Papa’s ancient one.

He put the axe down on the carpet of colorful leaves.

“We have to talk.”

“I promise to send Alex or Sam over to cut a month’s worth of wood,” she said.

“You command these young men at a whim?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, Papa. They both owe me favors for helping them with schoolwork.” That was true enough.

“Someone broke into the house today.” He looked her in the eyes. “This was no ordinary intrusion. A warlock circumvented my defenses and entered our home.”

Sarah stared. Witchcraft… Emily’s bracelet…

“Oh my God. I think a warlock put some kind of curse on Emily — a Mr. Parris, the Williamses’ pastor.”

“I knew I’d met him before!” Papa’s expression was somber. “But I couldn’t place him until you mentioned it.”

“You know him?” she asked.

He nodded. “I never liked the man. He seemed off, even for a Congregationalist. Tell me what he did to Emily.”

“I’m not sure yet, that’s why I want you to teach me the trance.”

She told him about the anklet, and he told her about his encounter. Together they went into the house.

“Yesterday, after we talked,” her father said in the mudroom, “I prayed to
Hashem
to protect our home. As you know, in Hebrew, the Great Temple in Jerusalem was called
Beit HaMikdash
, The House of That Which Is Holy. It makes an effective and popular esoteric model. I merely asked God to treat our house as if it were His.”

“So our house is the Temple of Solomon?” she said.

He leaned the axe against the wall. “Not literally, and certainly not in any way normal people might perceive. But to a warlock like Mr. Parris, this house has become holy ground, and his profane soul is not welcome.”

She stomped the mud from her boots, then tugged them off.

“But he
was
inside.”

“I think he may have entered by borrowing Emily’s soul.”

“What did he want here?”

“What do you think?”

“The Horn?” she whispered.

He nodded. “We need to find out more. Meet me in my study. Change into all white. No metal, no jewelry, no leather, no shoes or socks.”

When Sarah came downstairs she found her father placing a circle of white candles on the office floor. She watched in her knee-length white shirt with the tasseled fringes. It was one of her father’s old ones, they didn’t make them for women.

“Put on your grandfather’s garments. His holiness imbues them even now.” He handed her a pile.

She said the blessing, settled a prayer shawl over her shoulders, then studied the
tefillin
. Other than being white, the little boxes seemed typical. She took the proper box and wrapped the leather straps around her arm seven times. The straps of the other box she bound around her forehead, securing the little cube between her eyes. Finally, the arm straps were tightened about her left hand, forming the shape of the Hebrew letter
shin
.

Papa tapped the center of the circle. “Sit here.”

She stepped over the candles, the carpet crisp under her bare feet. Papa lit the tapers. From his desk, he brought a wooden tray littered with small bone tiles carved with Hebrew letters and placed it on her lap.

“Realize you’re about to serve your God in joy,” he said. “Begin to combine letters, permuting and revolving them until your mind warms. Delight in how they move and in what ideas you generate. Through the combinations you will understand new things not attained by human tradition nor discovered through mental reflection.”

“What am I looking for?” Sarah asked.

“You’ll know when God shows you… or not,” he said. “I’m going to call the police about Pastor John Parris, warlock extraordinaire. Then I’ll be praying in the sitting room. I need to close the gap in the house defenses. Find me when you’ve finished.”

Given the exercise, “finished” seemed a pretty elusive concept.

She tried to clear her thoughts and focus on the tiled letters. It was hard — soon her head began to nod. It had been a long day.

Sarah looked at the clock. An hour had passed. Examining the tiles she found they spelled in Hebrew,
The dark gift will make strength of your sacrifice
. Every tile had been used.

Her heart raced. It was terrifying and exhilarating. Her visual memory captured the phrase, then she rearranged the letters into a small section of a well-known psalm.

When she went to show Papa he was in the middle of praying. She didn’t dare interrupt, but out the window she noticed it was dark. She still had to get back to Emily.

Sarah changed back into her street clothes and shoved the white garb into her bag. She peeked in on her father, but he hadn’t moved. When she returned to the study, she paused before taking the prayer shawl, then fumbled with the desk drawer latch and added Papa’s pocket watch to her satchel.

The ends would have to justify the means.