THE MESSENGER [010-5.0]
By: Donald Tyson


Category: fiction occult

Synopsis:

  Sealed inside a secret room of an old
mansion in Nova Scotia is a cruel and
uncontrollable entity, created years earlier by an
evil magician. When the new owner of the mansion
unknowingly releases the entity, it renews its
malicious and murderous rampage. Called on
to investigate the strange phenomena are three women
and four men -- each with their own occult talents. As
their investigation proceeds, the group members enters
into a world of mystery and horror as they encounter astral
battles, spirit possession -- even death. In their
efforts to battle the evil spirit, they use s@eance,
hypnotic trance and magical rituals, the
details of which are presented in fascinating and
accurate detail.


She went to the doorway and took Eliza by her
shoulders. "But you mind what I tell you. Something in
this house is watching us, and its thoughts are not kindly.
It's all twisted up and bitter inside. It means
to make us suffer. Then it means to kill us, one by one
.
.
."
  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Donald Tyson is a Canadian from
Halifax, Nova Scotia. After graduating with
honors as an English major, he has pursued
a writing career. His books include
Ritual Magic, Rune Magic,
and
The New Magus,
but his very first published work was a horror story in
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine.
Tyson's goal is to formulate an accessible
system of personal training composed of East and
West, past and present, that will help people discover the
purpose for their existence as well as ways
to fulfill it.
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Please write to:
  Donald Tyson
  csto Llewellyn Worldwide
  P.o. Box 64383-836, St. Paul,
MN 55164-0383, U.s.a.
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coupon.
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LITTLE-EWE
llyn Publications ,55164

The Messenger.
Copyright [*copy] 1993 by Donald
Tyson. All rights reserved. Printed in the
United States of America. No part of this
book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from Llewellyn
Publications except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and
reviews.
  Cover Painting by Martin Cannon
  Design by Christopher Wells
  Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
  Tyson, Donald, 1954-
  The messenger still Donald Tyson.
  people. cm. -- (llewellyn's psi-fi series)
  ISBN 0-87542-836-3: $4.99
  1. Occultism-Nova Scotia-Fiction.
I. Title.
  II. Series
  PR9199.3.T94M47 1993
  823".914-dc20 93-26249
  CIP
  Llewellyn Publications
  A Division of Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd.
  P.o. Box 64383, St. Paul, MN

  Announcing Llewellyn's FICTION Line
  Llewellyn Publications launches its
new line of occult fiction with two titles
by best-selling authors of the supernatural:
Raymond Buckland and Donald Tyson.
Intriguing and entertaining, the books in this series are
also highly educational because they are based on
authentic and accurate metaphysical
practices, written by world-recognized experts in
the occult. Look for exciting new additions to the
line in the upcoming months.
  THE MESSENGER
  Sealed inside a secret room of an old
mansion in Nova Scotia is a cruel and
uncontrollable entity, created years earlier by an
evil magician. When the new owner of the mansion
unknowingly releases the entity, it renews its
malicious and murderous rampage. Called on
to investigate the strange phenomena are three women
and four men -- each with their own occult talents. As
their investigation proceeds, the group members enters
into a world of mystery and horror as they encounter astral
battles, spirit possession -- even death. In their
efforts to battle the evil spirit, they use s@eance,
hypnotic trance and magical rituals, the
details of which are presented in fascinating and
accurate detail.
  Other Books by Donald Tyson
The New Magus,

Rune Magic,

The Truth About Ritual Magic,

The Truth About Runes,

How to Make and Use a Magic Mirror,

Ritual Magic,

  Editor and Annotator
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Written by Henry Cornelius Agrippa von
Nettesheim,

  Cards and Kits
Rune Magic Deck,

Power of the Runes,

And lest I should be exalted above measure
through the abundance of the revelations,
there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan to buffet me,
lest I should be exalted above measure.
-Ii Corinthians 12:7
[blank page]

The dry squeal of brakes and the gritting of gravel
under the tires of the bus drew Eliza Grey out of
her romance paperback.
"Regret Cove," the driver said in a bored
voice without turning his head.
She wiped the mist from the inside of her window with a red
wool mitten. A transparent oval face with a
tapered chin and a small frowning mouth stared back from the
wet glass. For a moment it was the face of a frightened
child, its eyes sad and its pale brow knitted with
strain. Then it became her own face, familiar and
plain. In the forgiving glass she looked half her
twenty-three years. And felt it, she thought.
Self-consciously she tucked a vagrant curl of
honey-brown hair back under her red beret.
Beyond her reflection the brooding evergreens guarded the
highway like frozen sentinels and shrouded the hunched
shoulder of the mountain beyond. It had started to snow. Tiny
crystals
slanting from the slate sky merged the forest into one
indistinct dark mass.
Thrusting her book into the baggy folds of her leather
purse, she advanced to the front of the bus.
"Driver, there must be some mistake. Regret
Cove is a fishing village."
He looked her up and down, then nodded toward his
side window.
"Down that road."
Peering past his head, she saw that a narrow rutted
dirt track diverged from the highway and disappeared in
a downward slope among the spruce trees. It was
not visible from her seat on the other side of the bus.
Surprise made her hesitate. She had
expected to find Professor Hale waiting for
her, or at least to be dropped off in a town. This
was the middle of nowhere.
"Are you gettin' off, girlie?"
Nervously she glanced at the beige travel case
beside her seat. A mother and her little girl three
places behind the driver watched her with solemn
eyes. The rest of the seats were vacant.
"I don't know, it's not what I expected
.

."
By reflex she reached out with her mind. The frustration
boiling inside the driver made her flinch. She
saw his knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.
"You want out or not?" he said, arching his eyebrows and
smiling tightly at her.
"Couldn't you wait while I
.
.
."
He sighed as though the weight of the overhanging
mountains rested on his narrow shoulders and jerked off the
parking brake without answering.
"Stop! Stop the bus! I'm getting off."
She hurried back to her seat for her suitcase and
pushed her way out the side door. The bus rattled
around the bend in a blue cloud of gas fumes. For
almost a minute she stood listening to its diminishing
engine sound.
Silence settled over the forest like a soft kiss.
Eliza brushed a crystal of snow from the long,
straight bridge of her nose and turned the fur
collar of her camel-hair coat up around her
ears. She had never felt so alone, so completely
vulnerable. With reluctant steps she
crossed the highway and started down the side road.
After the rush and roar of Toronto the transition
to northern Cape Breton was like a journey back
in time. The nearer she got to her destination, the more
primitive the mode of travel. From Toronto
to Halifax she had flown in a sleek commercial
jet, then from Halifax to Sydney in a smaller
passenger prop. A modern touring bus had taken
her from Sydney to the northern tip of the Highlands.
There she had managed to find the rickety local
bus to carry her to Regret Cove, where Hale had
promised to meet her.
A good thing I wore practical boots with flat
heels, she thought as she picked her way over the
frozen ridges of the mud ruts. Already the fine
blowing snow had covered the bottoms of the hollows and
made walking treacherous.
It was a crazy way to spend her Christmas
holiday. Three months ago while safely
cradled in the warm, fuzzy cocoon of academic
life she had run across Hale's ad in the
University
O
f Toronto newspaper:
Wanted! Serious graduate or
undergraduate students with occult or paranormal
abilities to accompany noted parapsychologist
on field trip. Purpose, to investigate
phenomena surrounding historic haunted site in
northern Nova Scotia, Canada. Duration,
Dec. 23-Jan. 2. Students to pay own
travel expenses. Room and board provided on
site. By special arrangement students who
complete this seminar will be awarded half a university
credit. Contact Dr. Ebenezer Hale, Dept.
of Psychology, University of Colorado.
Qualified applicants only!
At the time she was thoroughly sick of the hothouse
environment of campus life and longed for a break in
the grinding monotony of library research. Her
graduate thesis on the juvenilia of the Bronte
sisters had reached a dead end. Depression held
her mind in an iron grip. She even considered
abandoning university for a regular job in the hope that
it would shake her from the dull waking dream into which she
had fallen. With the money from her portion of her father's
estate nearly eaten up by tuition fees and rent,
she would soon have to
look for work in any case. The sheer craziness of the
ad appealed to her romantic temperament.
The reputation of Ebenezer Hale kept her from
dismissing the seminar as just another crackpot
project. His latest best-selling book on
poltergeists had been made into a six-part
mini-series for public television. He was
rapidly becoming the paranormal guru of the network
news and talk-show circuit. Whenever there was a
reported miracle, or a UFO close encounter,
or a sighting of Bigfoot, the media sought
Hale's opinion. Somehow he was able to maintain the
difficult balance between popularity and academic
respectability.
Much to her surprise, her application was accepted.
Hale sent a curt letter of directions in his own
handwriting instructing Eliza to meet him in
Regret Cove on the twenty-third of
December. The letter provided no additional information
about the seminar. She had tried several times to reach
him by telephone without success. Now here she was on
a lonely forest track with no idea of where she was
going or what awaited her at the end.
The trees fell away down a steep bank on the
left to reveal a small coastal inlet with a
haphazard cluster of houses and shacks. Brightly
painted fishing boats rocked on the grey
water beside a wooden wharf. Other boats rested high
and dry on timbers next to the houses. The breeze
carried the salt of the open ocean to her nostrils. It
was a smell unfamiliar to her midwestern
childhood.
As it entered the village the road dropped so
steeply Eliza had to slide down part of it to keep
from falling. It was impossible to imagine how an
automobile could ascend this hill in the spring, yet
there were many cars and pickup trucks in front of the
houses. Not all of the vehicles were in working order.
She passed a dilapidated house with an ancient
rusting wringer washing machine in the rocky plot that
served for its front yard.
So this is where Buicks come to die, she thought to herself.
It was not what she had expected. The village was
little more than a straggle of houses perched
precariously on top of the rocks. It had no
center. Eliza had assumed there would be a public
building of some kind, a post office or a general
store, where she could ask after Professor Hale.
There was not even a place where she could sit and rest
her legs. Wearily she continued down toward the wharf
where several men worked around the boats. They eyed her
suitcase curiously.
Eliza stopped beside a fisherman who was loading
lobster traps into the back of his pickup.
"I wonder if you can help me?"
He banged the tailgate closed with a shower of rust
and turned. His eyes were the clearest sky blue she
had ever seen. They seemed incongruously youthful in
his deeply-lined face.
"What do you want?"
"I'm looking for a man named Ebenezer Hale. I
was supposed to meet him here today."
"You missed him."
"What?" Eliza stared at him. "What do you
mean?"
The fisherman took out a pipe and began to fill its
bowl from a foil pouch of cut tobacco.
"Just what I said. He was here not more than two hours
ago. Paid me to take him up the coast in my
boat, him and a bunch of others."
"He told me he would meet me," Eliza said,
fighting down an irrational panic.
"Guess he figured you weren't coming."
He ignited a wooden match in one hand with the edge of
his thumbnail and sucked on the pipe several times.
Aromatic smoke puffed from his mouth.
Eliza looked at her watch. It was
barely past three in the afternoon. When had Hale
expected her to arrive?
"What am I supposed to do now?" she said in
desperation.
"I was just going to say," the fisherman continued
laconically. "This Hale fella left word I was
to bring anyone who showed late on up to Haven after
him."
A wave of relief washed over Eliza. She had
not been forgotten after all.
"Name's Tim Mcationeil."
"Eliza Grey."
He wiped the rust from his palm on the thigh of his
worn work jeans and shook her hand.
"What is Haven?" she asked curiously.
"Another fishing village?"
A young man who stood a few paces away listening
to the conversation with his hands in his
overalls pockets grinned and spat on the
snow-salted planks.
"She'll find out soon enough, but she won't like it
much," he muttered to no one in particular.
Several other men laughed and averted their eyes from
her.
"Shut your mouth, Elmore," Mcationeil
said.
He picked up Eliza's suitcase and put his
hand on her shoulder to guide her along the wharf.
"Don't pay any attention to Elmore. He's the
village idiot. If we're goin', we got
to leave right now before the water gets too choppy."
He helped her down into a long open boat with a
calloused hand. In moments they were skimming across the
ocean. Eliza clung to the gunwales in the bow.
Away from the shelter of the shore the sea was rough. A
stiff breeze raised whitecaps on the crests of the
waves as they rolled toward the rocky coast. The
noisy outboard sent the boat skipping forward like a
stone.
"Wind's comin' up. Won't be long before the weather
turns foul," shouted Mcationeil from the stern.
He took the pipe from his wind-reddened face and
spat over the side, grinning at her pleasantly with
tobacco-stained teeth.
She braced her knees and let go with one hand
to raise the fur collar of her coat over her right
ear. The wind wanted to hold it down. Crystals of
ice drove against her cheek like stinging thorns and
transformed the forested mountains into menacing giants.
For long stretches of the coast there was no
place at all to land a boat. The rocky cliffs
dropped sheer into the thundering white foam of the breakers.
"You said there were others with Professor Hale. How
many others?"
He silently counted to himself with his eyes rolled
skyward.
"Four."
She turned back to the sea, and back into herself.
Only six of us. She had expected more. Still, it
would be easier for her this way. Fewer emotions to deal
with.
The boat skipped on steadily for the better part of
an hour. The mountains along the shore retreated
inland, giving place to low rolling hills and an
occasional beach of wave-scoured granite boulders.
Not a single habitation broke the dreary, interminable
margin of forest.
"Look ahead," the fisherman shouted. "You'll see
the place when we round this point."
Eagerly she scanned the ridge of black stone that
thrust like a great axe blade into the waves. As the
boat curved past it the shore line opened on a
small inlet with a crescent pebble beach. The land behind
the beach rose in a gentle slope for several
hundred yards to the foundation of a large house.
It reared up unexpectedly from the frosted lawn as
though transported there whole by some druidic
magic.
"There she is, Haven By the Sea."
Something in Mcationeil's voice caused Eliza
to reach back toward him with her mind. Her shoulders
stiffened. He was terrified. But why?
There was nothing to cause fear in the dull gray
prospect. Just the opposite. The darkly forested
hills behind the stony points on either side sheltered
the inlet from the wind, lending it a strange stillness.
Even the waves became gentle against the boat as they
entered it.
Eliza studied with curiosity the place she was
to spend the next ten days. The house was a great
timber-frame, utterly devoid of the quaint charm
that distinguishes most Victorian architecture.
Three rows of tall mullioned windows broke the
severity of its sheer white face. A wrought-iron
parapet ran around the peaked and dormered green
copper roof with its many stone chimneys. The central
portion formed a pillared portico the windows of which
peered at the sea as through a set of white bars.
Wings on either side clutched the land with idiot
defiance.
As they approached the beach the house appeared to rise
up and tower over the boat. The illusion was
disturbingly real. Eliza looked back at
Mcationeil. The fisherman nodded.
"Everyone says the same thing first time they see it."
Eliza felt a growing inner tension coupled with a
sense of personal significance. This moment was
important in her life. She intuited this with a
strength that made denial impossible. Somehow Haven
would change her irrevocably. But whether the change
would be good or evil was not clear. She only knew
that she stood at a crossroad. She could remain
on the boat and let it carry her back to
Toronto and her dull university grind, or go
forward into the unknown.
I won't go back, she told herself firmly.
Whatever happens, I won't go back.

Mcationeil tied up the boat and helped Eliza
onto the icy dock. In the hour it had taken to reach
Haven the fine snow, now almost invisible in the fading
light, had managed to cover the land with a sandy carpet
more than an inch thick.
"Mind your step," he said. "Half the planks are
rotted out."
She bent to retrieve her suitcase from the boat but
he waved her away.
"You might as well go on up to the hotel. I'll
bring your bag and put it in the front hall."
She nodded, feeling a spring of pleasure mingled with
relief. Haven must be a vacation resort. A
hotel meant staff and other guests. There would be an
impersonal human environment to retreat into if the
emotions of the group became too intense.
A brick walkway with a series of shallow steps
led from the dock to the front entrance, which was terraced with
more brick in a herringbone pattern. Eliza kicked
through a snow-crusted drift of rustling
brown leaves as she approached the door and tried the
wrought-iron handle. It would not turn. There was no
bell. Clenching her fist inside her mitten, she
hit the oak panel. It was like hitting the frozen
ground. The door gave back a faint muffled
thud.
Mcationeil was still in the boat with his back to her. She
could see him pouring gasoline from a large can into the
top of the outboard. Eliza leaned her shoulder against
one of the pillars and waited for him to turn around. When
he showed no sign of losing interest in the outboard
she started to call him, then changed her mind
and stepped off the portico to explore around the
house.
Its uncurtained windows stared bleakly down like blind
eyes as she passed under their sills. Patches of
white paint peeling from the clapboards reminded her
of sores. The long brown grass on the lawn,
beaten over by autumn winds, stuck up through the snow
in low looped tufts. Her boots crunched on it.
She was forced to walk carefully with her eyes down
to keep from tripping.
Shrill laughter floated on the crystalline air
from behind the hotel. She rounded the rear corner and
looked up. A man and a woman stood some distance
apart on the back lawn playing with a bright yellow
Frisbee. They were both around her own age. The
man jumped with athletic ease to catch the
Frisbee and the woman applauded.
"Hello," Eliza called. "Are you with
Professor Hale's group?"
He raked melting snow from his curly blond hair
with his fingers and walked toward her
while the woman stood watching with her hands on her
hips.
"Yes we are," he said when he was close enough
to extend his hand. "Lee Sheppard."
She pulled off her mitten and took his hand. It was
strong and responsive.
"Eliza Grey."
She stared up into his intense blue eyes and forced a
slight smile. He had a serious face with clean,
rugged features and a cleft chin. His bulky
sheepskin jacket did little to conceal the breadth of his
shoulders or his lean, muscular body.
For a moment he continued to study her quietly. Then
he turned to the woman.
"Amber, come over here and meet a fellow inmate."
The woman let her hands slide from her hips and
started toward them. Eliza tried not to gawk at her
coat, a luxurious black mink with a broad
hood. The shoulder-length auburn hair framing her
high Nordic cheekbones and full lips contrasted
strikingly with her green eyes, an effect heightened
by skillful mascara and deep red lipstick. She
moved with animal grace, stepping across the
snow-crusted grass with cat-like assurance in spite
of the high heels on her black leather fashion
boots.
Eliza became acutely conscious of the rag
ged lining inside her old camel-
hair coat. She extended her perception and
recoiled inwardly. This woman was hostile.
"Eliza Grey -- Amber Fox," Lee said.
The two touched fingers.
"We had nearly given up hope for you," Amber
said in a compelling, husky voice.
"I know, I'm late. My bus was delayed."
She's jealous, Eliza realized. Wonderingly she
cast a sidelong glance at Lee Sheppard.
Bitter amusement welled within her. The jealousy would
pass soon enough once Amber came to know her.
"We're glad you made it," Lee said. "We
need the company. This place is a mausoleum."
"At least you can laugh at it," Eliza said.
He gave her a quizzical look.
"Well anyway, you were laughing a minute ago."
"We weren't laughing."
She stared at each of them. They met her gaze
blankly. Gently she brushed their minds. Lee was
puzzled and concerned. Amber's puzzlement was mixed
with contempt.
"But I heard laughter. It was loud -- you must have
heard it."
Both shook their heads.
"You better go inside and describe what you heard
to Professor Hale," Lee said.
"He'll want to meet you anyway."
"Could you show me -"
"Come on, Lee, let's play," Amber cried,
grabbing the Frisbee out of his hand.
She ran lithely over the lawn and Lee stepped
forward to follow her. Turning, she flung the yellow
plastic disk in a rising arc that passed over his
head and descended toward Eliza. The Frisbee
skipped off Eliza's fingertips when she reached up
to catch it.
A massive shape hurtled through the air past her
shoulder. Eliza flinched away instinctively, then
relaxed and took a deep breath, exhaling slowly
between her lips. An enormous mastiff with short
brick-colored fur and floppy ears bounded across the
lawn toward Amber with its tail beating from side
to side, the Frisbee clamped in its jaws.
Amber took back the Frisbee and ruffled the
dog's neck, watching Eliza with amusement.
"Luther! Here, boy!"
The command came from the rear door of the hotel. A
short powerfully-built man with white hair and a
full white beard stood framed in the open
doorway. Eliza recognized him at once from his
many television appearances. He beckoned
to the dog. The mastiff galloped back across the
lawn like a pony and disappeared into the hotel. The
man turned to Eliza.
"Ms. Grey? Glad you could join us. I'm
Ebenezer Hale. The others are inside. You're just
in time for our get acquainted session."
He called Lee and Amber over and they followed
him into a paneled corridor. Narrow service
stairs rose on the left. Beside them was the entrance
to the cellar, its plain plank door ajar. A much
wider panel door to the right opened on an enormous
kitchen with a cast-iron cooking stove. The stove
radiated gentle warmth. In the middle of the tiled
floor stood a long wooden table. Three people sat
around its far end. There were four empty chairs.
They beat the snow and ice from their coats and hung them
on a rack behind the kitchen door. Lee's denim
shirt and faded jeans matched his comfortable,
down-to-earth manner. Beneath the mink Amber wore a
pink cashmere sweater and silver metallic ski
pants. Strangely enough, this outlandish outfit
suited her.
She makes me look as drab as a sparrow standing
next to a peacock, Eliza thought.
"The weather here is unpredictable," Hale
said in a hearty voice as he brushed off the
sleeves of his Icelandic sweater. "Two days
ago when I brought in the supplies it was forty-five
degrees and the sun was shining. The ground was bare all
along the coast. Tonight we're in for a blizzard.
It's lucky you all got here before it started. According
to Mcationeil, when the heavy snow comes nothing moves
for days."
Hale took his place at the head of the table and
gestured for Eliza to sit beside him opposite Lee
and Amber.
She cast a curious glance at the other three.
Two were men, one a woman. The woman was
plain-faced and overweight, with oily brown hair that
hung limply over her ears and startled, bird-like
brown eyes. She wore a plaid dress of
conservative cut, and around her neck a small
gold crucifix on a gold chain. One man was
an East Indian whose dark hair lay combed flat
on his skull, away from his high forehead and hawk-like
nose. He had on a burgundy sweater-vest over
a white shirt. He nodded politely when her
gaze
rested on him. The other man was slightly built and
pale-skinned with unkempt black hair,
prominent ears and a thin nose. The knobs of his
shoulders and the sharp ridges of his collar bones were
visible under his black pullover. His dark eyes
stayed on her while she examined him. They held a
subtle humor.
"Eliza Grey," said Hale, "Meet your
fellow students Mary Tews, Mohan Singh, and
Allan Wibbley."
He pointed to each in turn. She acknowledged their
greetings.
"We have no formalities," he went on. "Everyone
is on a first name basis. Except for me. You
may call me Doctor or Professor or
Hale, but never under any circumstance Ebenezer.
It makes me sound like something out of Dickens."
"We greet you in this humble chamber," said Allan
Wibbley, spreading his thin bony hands to indicate the
kitchen, "Not to cast aspersions on your social character,
but because it is one of the few warm rooms in this wretched
house."
"Is something wrong with the heating?" Eliza asked
Hale.
"Not at all. We do what we can with our limited
resources."
"Don't the other guests complain?"
Amber laughed.
"There are no others," Lee said. "We're
alone."
She remembered the ragged tufts of browning grass
and the stark, staring quality of the windows.
"I take it this is the off season."
"Yes," Mohan said with a smile in an accent like
softly flowing honey. "It has been off season for a
very long time."
"Stop teasing, Mohan. The hotel's closed
down," Mary Tews explained to Eliza. Her
voice was southern and surprisingly mellow.
"I've been giving the others a few background
details while we waited to see if you would come,"
Hale said. "But you'll be able to catch up after
dinner. Right now I have something important to discuss.
I'd like your attention for a moment if you don't mind,
Allan."
Allan stopped whispering to Amber.
"You have my undivided ear."
The mastiff wandered in and crossed under the table,
brushing everyone's legs, then turned in a circle
and settled itself beside the stove.
"You all know, more or less, why you are here,"
Hale said, glancing at each of them. "This
seminar involves practical field research of
an occult manifestation. It is a credit course,
by special arrangement with your various
universities. At the end of the ten-day term you will be
required to write a paper analyzing our findings.
On this you will either receive a pass or a fail -- there
will be no marks given."
"How long is this paper to be?" said Mary.
"That's up to you."
"May we assume this is the locality of the
phenomenon?"
"You may."
Allan rapped a large silver ring on his right
index finger nervously against the table.
"Just what sort of thing are we dealing with?
Poltergeist? Ghost?"
"I don't know."
They all stared at him.
"When I began arranging the details of this seminar
I knew almost nothing about the scope or nature of the
manifestations at Haven. Since then I have learned
a great deal -- I'll be giving you the details
later tonight -- but I still have no idea as to the root
cause. That's why you're all here."
He shoved his chair out from the table. The dog
looked up, then settled its head on its forepaws.
Hale walked around the chair and flexed his short,
powerful fingers on its wooden back.
"You were chosen from a field of over three hundred
applicants because of your unique individual
talents. Each of you is highly proficient in some
branch of the occult."
They exchanged glances across the table. They're each
wondering what makes the others special, Eliza
thought.
"I'll go clockwise around the table," Hale said.
"Eliza is an English Major from the
University of Toronto. She is an empath.
Is there anyone unfamiliar with the term?"
Mohan raised his hand.
"An empath is one who senses the internal
emotional states of others. Empath. Short for
empathic. Eliza cannot read thoughts but she reads
feelings with remarkable accuracy. I chose her for
this seminar because it is vital that I know the stresses
building up in each of you, and how close you are to your
breaking point."
Eliza sensed a burning and looked across the table at
Amber. Amber was staring at her. Eliza felt her
cheeks redden.
"Mary," Hale went on, "Is a psychometrist
and channeler. She is sensitive to atmospheres and
objects. She can communicate with entities beyond the
range of our normal human senses. Mary is a
nutritionist on loan to us from Indiana State.
"Mohan was completing his doctoral thesis on
comparative religion at Harvard when I
persuaded him to join us. He is skilled in the
discipline of kundalini yoga. I am hoping that his
Eastern perspective will give us unexpected
insights into the nature of the occurrences at Haven.
"Allan -" Hale paused and frowned. "Well,
what can I say about Allan. He is attending an
Arts program at the University of Nebraska,
but his true vocation is goetic thaumaturgy."
"What on earth is that?" Eliza said.
"I conjure demons," Allan told her with a
crooked smile. "Isn't that so, Professor."
"Allan is skilled in the manipulation of
self-aware spiritual entities that sometimes involve
themselves maliciously in human affairs."
"Demons," Allan breathed, winking at Eliza.
"As for Amber," Hale continued around the table,
"She is in her senior year at Radcliffe, and
an hereditary witch. I selected her because
it is possible that the forces we are dealing with at
Haven By the Sea are below the level of
intellectual and symbolic control. Witchcraft
is largely an intuitive skill relying on the
simplest of tools and methods."
"We witches feel deeply," Amber said
to Eliza, her green eyes widening.
"Finally, Lee comes to us from a small college in
upper state New York called the Phoenix
Institute. It is devoted exclusively
to occult studies and is well respected by those who
understand its aims. Lee is a Hermetist."
Several faces went blank.
"A follower
of the teachings of Hermes Tris
megistus," Lee explained.
"Lee is skilled in a broad range of
subjects that include astrology, numerology,
runes, the Tarot, the practical Kabbalah,
alchemy and ritual magic. I wanted him along
because he has a balanced overview of the occult. His
background may help us solve any problems that
arise."
Eliza gazed out the fly-specked kitchen windows
at the falling snow. She shivered in spite
of the warmth from the stove. The gloom thickened by the
minute. Yesterday had been the winter solstice, the
shortest day of the year when the sun withholds its
sustaining radiance and life reaches its lowest ebb.
Hale leaned forward and rested his elbows on the back
of the chair. His expression became serious.
"It is no coincidence that this seminar falls on the
Christmas hiatus. It is during this time that the
phenomena at Haven reach their peak. If I had
known all I know now when I was planning this field
trip I might never have pursued it to realization. I
won't lie to you. There's danger here, mortal
physical danger. Men and women have died within these
walls at the hands of the forces we seek
to investigate."
He paused to let his words sink home. The dog
whined in its sleep. Its paws began to twitch.
"If any of you wish to leave I will understand.
Mcationeil has instructions to hold the boat. It
won't depart until I give the order. But once
it does leave there is no calling it back. It
won't return until the second of January.
There's no road and the nearest house is more than
thirty miles through trackless mountain woods."
"What if there's a medical emergency?"
Mary said. "How will we get help?"
"I have a battery powered short-wave radio
upstairs," said Hale. "I will use it in the case
of a life-threatening emergency, but only in that case.
I warn you, I will not be moved by second thoughts,
vain regrets or idle misgivings."
He pushed himself erect and picked at the elbows of
his sweater.
"I'm sorry. I know you should be given all the
facts before you're forced to make a decision, but there just
isn't time. A storm is blowing up. I have
to release the boat within the next few minutes."
He waited, watching them.
He's holding something back, Eliza thought.
Gently she probed Hale's emotions. He was
stalking them like a mischievous boy hunting a bird.
He
knew something important, but he didn't want
to tell them for fear it would frighten them away.
"I don't know about the rest of you," Allan said,
"But I've seen things that would probably make
whatever's haunting this hotel run for its mother.
I'll stay."
"Count me in," Amber said, a note of challenge
in her deep voice.
"I will remain," said Mohan.
"Me too, I guess," Mary piped. "Hope
I don't live to regret it."
"I'm staying," Lee said quietly. "What about you
, Eliza?"
Eliza met his eyes. He was so cool inside, so
poised.
"I'm with you."
Hale relaxed. Eliza felt his relief flow
across her mind like a spring breeze.
"I'll send the boat away. We'll get our
gear stowed and eat. There's more work to be done in one
or two of the bedrooms. After that I'll tell you
all about Haven."

"A fair meal, even if it did come out of a can,"
Hale said, pushing back his empty plate.
"We'll leave the washing up until tomorrow, I think.
We can take turns each morning in the
alphabetical order of last names."
"That means I'm first," Amber objected
indignantly.
"Look on the bright side," said Allan. "After
tomorrow you'll have the rest of the week free."
There was general nervous laughter. They were still
uncertain of each other, but growing more relaxed all the
time.
The remainder of the afternoon had been spent filling
glass oil lamps, fueling the kerosene heaters
upstairs in the bedrooms, making up the beds, and
stacking wood for the kitchen stove and the fireplace of the
gathering room established by Hale in the front of the
house. These tasks were of primary importance.
Haven had no electricity. Hale explained that
the diesel generator installed in
an out
building by the last owners to power the lights had seized
up from lack of use. Afterwards they busied themselves
sorting the boxes of supplies dumped by Hale in
the pantry. These consisted mainly of tinned foods,
condensed milk, powdered eggs, dried fruits,
instant coffee, tea, large cans of kerosene and
spare batteries for the flashlights. There had been
little time to discuss the reason for coming to Haven.
Darkness shrouded the brooding hills outside. Two
kerosene lamps shed wavering puddles of yellow
light over the kitchen table and lit the faces of those
seated around it from underneath, lending them a macabre
appearance. From time to time a puff of wind hurled a
fistful of ice pellets at the black
panes of glass above the double porcelain sink.
Hale took one of the lamps from the table.
"Let's go into the gathering room. I have several things
to show you."
He waited while the others lit lamps they had
previously made ready, then led them out of the kitchen
along the paneled passage past the formal dining
room on the left and into the cavernous front hall.
We look like a chain of lost souls, Eliza thought,
following at the end of the line. Shadows from the
flickering lamps in front of her slithered eerily
over the walls. When they emerged into the great hall it
was like entering a dark cathedral. Their footsteps on
the flagstone floor sent echoes rattling through the
silence.
A carved stone fireplace tall enough to walk into without
stooping dominated the space under the second floor
balcony. Mounted over it was the head of a stag. In
the corner by the front door stood the reception
desk, its pale maple front out of place against
the darker oak wall panels. Opposite the desk
a staircase curved up to the balcony. Doors
opened into the wings of the house on either side. A great
brass and crystal chandelier hung low over the center
of the hall. The ceiling was lost in shadow.
Hale led them to his right past the dark mouth of the
fireplace toward the entrance to the east wing. As he
paused to pull the heavy oak door open, Mary
gasped and almost dropped her lamp. Eliza felt
sympathetic needles of shock from the other woman.
"What is it, Mary?" Hale said sharply.
Mary stared wide-eyed, unable to speak.
"There's a face hovering over you," Lee said in a
deliberately even tone.
"I see it also," said Mohan in a hushed voice.
Hale looked above his shoulder, then chuckled.
Stepping back, he raised his lamp over his head.
Above the door was an oil portrait of an
elderly man. The background of the painting was dark
and the face pale, making it stand forth strangely in the
feeble light.
"Daniel P. Brannon, the man who built
Haven," Hale explained. "I'm surprised you
didn't notice it before."
The features of the face in the portrait were square
and strong,
the chin jutting, the lips
corn
pressed and bloodless, the dark eyes intense behind
half-lowered lids. Eliza shivered as she
looked at it. The face was that of a man accustomed
to getting his own way.
She felt whispers of pain emanating from someone and
noticed Mary holding her hand to her lips.
"What is it?" she said, touching the other woman.
"Are you hurt?"
"It's nothing," Mary said. "I burned myself when
I caught the lamp shade. Silly of me. It's
nothing."
"I have some ointment in the gathering room," Hale
said.
They passed under the picture into a long corridor
and entered the first door on the left. It opened on a
spacious chamber with light oak paneling and a
rose-colored marble fireplace. Some attempt
had been made to put it into living order. A long
table occupied the space under the pair of tall
windows in the exterior wall. Around the fireplace
were grouped a red leather couch and several padded
armchairs. Opposite the fireplace a rolltop
desk stood against the wall. It was strewn with
papers. Boxes and bags littered two smaller
tables and spilled over onto the oak floor, the
bareness of which had been covered by a faded oriental
rug.
"I had Mcationeil help me cart this stuff down from
the third level. It was hard work, I can tell you."
Hale went to the fireplace and stirred the ashes with a
poker while the others made themselves at home.
Sparks flickered up the chimney. In
a few minutes split sections of hardwood were
blazing on top of the exposed embers. While
Hale puttered with the fire the others helped themselves
to a rust-colored liquor in an antique crystal
decanter on an end table. Eliza poured some
into one of the waiting glasses and tasted cautiously.
Scotch.
Allan and Amber settled side by side on the
leather couch with an arm around each other. Amber
kicked off her boots and stretched her legs
luxuriously, admiring the play of firelight on
her silver ski pants. Allan raised his glass
to the flames and peered through it.
"Things are looking up," he said.
"I brought that bottle along to break the ice,"
Hale muttered as he sorted through the papers on the
rolltop desk. "Enjoy it
-
it's the only one. I don't want any of my
students drunk."
Eliza poured some of the liquor into a clean glass
and carried it to the table, where Lee was treating Mary's
burn with the first-aid kit.
"Here," she said gently. "Drink this. It will ease
the pain."
Mary fingered the crucifix around her neck.
"That's kind of you
-
but I don't drink."
"This is for medicinal purposes," said Lee. "As
your doctor I insist."
"Well
-" She sipped the scotch and rolled it on her
tongue. A look of surprise came into her
face. "It's good."
"Indeed it is," Allan said. "Gloriously
good."
Hale handed each of them a set of papers stapled
together at the corner.
"I had this copied before coming out here. It contains the
background
information I'm about to give you. Use it for reference."
He went to the fireplace and rested his elbow on the
corner of the scalloped marble mantel.
"You've already met the author of this house.
Daniel P. Brannon was a successful
American industrialist who made his fortune in
coal and steel during the last century. By all
accounts he was the original robber baron. He moved
into stock speculation and tripled his wealth, then
apparently became a philanthropist. He was one
of those enigmatic men who spend half their lives
making money and the other half giving it away."
"Judging by his portrait, I doubt generosity was
one of his vices," Allan said.
"None the less, he built a number of public
structures and founded several charities. In 1882
he came to Nova Scotia and built Haven By the
Sea as a kind of retreat for himself and his family.
The design is his own. He used mostly local
materials and workers. Apart from occasional hunting
parties Haven served as a summer cottage."
"Some cottage," Eliza murmured.
"Then around the turn of the century Brannon moved
here full time. My details of this period are
unclear. Apparently Brannon's wife died, and
then his only son. The death of his son must have been a
heavy blow for the old man. He lived on for another
decade almost as a recluse. One morning in
1911 he was found dead in his bed by a
servant."
"Natural death?" Allan said.
"Yes."
"How old was the boy?" Lee asked.
"I'm not sure." Hale flipped through his papers.
"Let me see
-
the boy was thirteen."
"How did he die?" asked Mohan from one of the
armchairs.
"Pneumonia. I see what you two are getting
at. It's true that poltergeist phenomena are often
centered around an adolescent, but I'm afraid in
this case it won't work. There were no troubles before or
after Michael Brannon's death."
"That's a relief," Mary said. "Poltergeists can
be horribly spiteful."
"After Brannon's death his relatives sold
Haven to a Canadian named Biddingford, who converted
it into an expensive hunting lodge. There were moose
and bear in the Cape Breton Highlands in those days
-
still ar
e, for that matter. Bidding
ford ran the lodge as a paying proposition
until 1943, when a fire gutted much of the west
wing."
"What caused the fire?" said Amber, staring past
Hale into the flames on the hearth.
"It was a freak accident. Some of you may have
discovered that much of the ground floor of the west wing is
taken up by a large hall. It was used for
celebrations and formal dances. On New Year's
Eve, 1943, a party was in progress. The blue
spruce tree that had been erected for Christmas was
still set up in the center of the hall. Apparently it was
knocked over in the excitement by some of the guests and
fell into the fireplace. It must have been dry as
paper. In minutes the room was filled
with smoke. The colored cotton hangings and
banners mounted over the doors fell burning on the
guests as they tried to escape. Many were burned
to death. Others were crushed or trampled."
They were silent as Hale paused to consult his
notes. The deliberately subdued description
of the scene could not disguise its horror. Alive
to such things, Eliza felt the tension of the others.
"Biddingford died in a heroic effort to put out the
fire. The lodge was boarded up and remained that way
for over thirty years. The trustees were
unable to find a legitimate buyer. Then in 1975
Haven was sold to a consortium of professional people
in Toronto who were looking for a tax shelter. They
renovated it, repaired the fire damage, and opened
it as a vacation resort in the spring of the following
year. The idea was to run it all year round
-
in summer for fishing and boating, in winter for
cross-country skiing and hunting.
"The summer season passed more or less without
incident. In the fall strange occurrences began.
The owners found they couldn't keep the staff, even after
they offered generous increases in salary. The maids
complained of being spied on and tormented. The
grounds-keepers said that something was following them as they
made their rounds."
"In what way were the maids tormented?" asked
Mohan.
Hale shrugged and stepped in front of the
fireplace, standing with his back
to the flames to warm himself.
"The information I have is unclear. As you can imagine,
none of them bothered to write their stories down.
Everything is hearsay, with the exception of a single
firsthand account that I'll get to in a minute.
According to the stories the maids would put something down,
then turn around to discover it was no longer there. They
would make up a room, and minutes later return
to find it a shambles. They were convinced that some maniac
was creeping through hidden passages and deliberately
harassing them. At least, that was one of the explanations
given.
"In early winter a major incident took
place. Sev
eral horses were kept in an out
building that had been converted into a stable. One morning
they were found dead in their stalls. There were no
external marks or signs of injury. They seemed
to have died of some sort of fit. Their limbs were
contorted, and the boards of the stalls were kicked out."
"Where's Luther?" Eliza said suddenly.
"Probably exploring," said Hale. "I
His
ll call him."
He pursed his lips and let out a low sustained
whistle. They listened in silence for several
seconds. A clicking noise came from the
passage and grew louder. The big mastiff rounded
the corner of the open door and trotted over to the
hearth, where it sat on its haunches looking
expectantly around. Hale ruffled the short red
hairs along the dog's thick neck.
"He's a loveable mutt," Hale said. "But I
didn't bring him along out of sentiment. Animals
have senses that are more acute than ours. Maybe even
than yours, Mary."
"Are we to understand that these incidents intensified as the
year wore on?" asked Lee.
"As I told you, they seem to peak near the
Christmas season and climax with the turning of the
year."
"Were any people hurt?" Mary asked hesitantly.
Hale left the fireplace and sat on the rounded
arm of couch.
"Unfortunately, yes. Over New Year's
several guests were found dead. One woman took an
overdose of pills. A man was discovered at the
bottom of the main staircase, but the body bore no
signs of injury from a fall. There were others but the
records have been whitewashed to protect the feelings
of family members."
"If what you told us is true we should be nearing the
height of the phenomena," Allan said. He spread
his hands. "Nothing has happened."
"Yes, that is disturbing, I grant you,"
said Hale, lacing a finger through his snowy beard.
"It's watching us," Mary said.
They turned to look at her. She sat leaning forward
in her chair by the conference table, back rigid, eyes
wide and focused on infinity. Hale raised an
eyebrow significantly to the others and went over
to her chair. She continued to stare at nothing.
"What do you see, Mary?"
She remained silent and unaware of his presence.
He passed his hand several times before her face but she
did not respond.
"Eliza, what is she feeling?"
"Fear. Horror." Eliza sharpened the focus of
her perception on the other woman. "There's a
scream building up inside her."
The channeler closed her eyes and fell limply
back. She began to breathe in short, quick gasps,
faster and faster until she lost control.
"She's hyperventilating," Lee said.
He pushed Hale out of the way. Taking Mary's
bloodless hands and holding them pressed together in his
left hand, he made passes over her head and
palpitating breast. Slowly she opened her eyes.
He fixed his gaze on hers, compelling her to look
at him.
"What's he doing?" Amber whispered to Allan.
Hale gave them a warning glance.
After a few moments Mary's breathing slowed and
color began to return to her fleshy cheeks. Lee
folded her hands in her lap and touched his fingertips
to her temples. Her eyes fluttered shut.
"Ask her what she saw," Hale said.
"It could be dangerous."
"Ignorance is dangerous. Ask her."
"Mary," Lee said quietly. "Describe the
vision that appeared to you."
Mary began to twitch and start. She leaned back,
trying to pull away from his hands.
"It's all right," he said soothingly. "You're
safe. My aura surrounds and protects you.
Tell me the vision."
"Blood," she muttered. "Blood and madness.
Eyes blazing with madness. Strength. A knife
rising and falling. Blood everywhere .
.
."
She lapsed into inarticulate moaning. Lee
massaged her temples with his fingers and breathed
gently across her eyelids. Her features
unknotted and grew placid.
"That's all we'll get," he told Hale.
"She's suppressed the rest. I could pull it out of
her but it would hurt her, maybe seriously."
"No, leave her. Perhaps it will surface on its own
after a night's sleep."
Lee reversed the direction of his hand passes across
her body and spoke to her, telling her to wake.
Mary opened her eyes.
"I mesmerized you," he told her.
She smiled shyly at Lee.
"I know. I don't mind. I trust you."
"Well," Amber said. "True love."
"Don't be bitchy, my dear," said Allan. "It
spoils your mystique."
They broke up the knot they had formed around Mary and
returned to their former places.
"Professor," said Eliza hesitantly. "I
forgot to mention something earlier."
She told him about the laughter.
"Neither of you heard anything?" Hale asked Lee and
Amber.
They shook their heads.
Hale sighed. Putting a hand on the back of his
neck, he rolled his head.
"We'll put it in the record. It's
getting late. I
was going to give you all some additional information but
it'll keep until tomorrow. I want you to turn in and
get a good night's sleep. Does each of you have
an amulet of protection?"
Amber pointed to a silver crescent that hung over
her pink sweater in the hollow between her breasts.
Allan held up his right hand to show the arcane
design on the face of the ring on his index finger.
Mohan merely touched the center of his chest and nodded.
"I don't use physical symbols of
protection," Lee said.
"What about you, Mary?" Hale asked.
Mary lifted the gold cross on its chain.
"Will this do?"
"Admirably."
Hale looked at Eliza.
"I don't have anything. I don't care much for
jewelry."
"I'll give her something," Lee offered.
"Excellent. Go to bed, all of you. I'll join you
shortly
-
I have a little work to finish."
They wandered into the front hall and mounted the
stairs. The upper corridor of the east wing was dusty
and the faded flower paper on the walls was beginning
to peel at the edges. Hale had furnished seven
of the rooms in preparation for their arrival, stapling a
file card with a name to each door.
Eliza stopped in front of her name and pulled the
key out of the lock, then opened the door a
nd entered. Lee followed her.
In addition to the
kerosene heater that glowed at a low setting to take
off the chill, the room held a double four-poster bed
of rich dark mahogany and a small maple chest of
drawers mounted with an oval mirror. Hale had
taken the furniture from the attic as he found it, and
each room was furnished with a quixotic disregard for
style.
"Do you have a paper and pen?"
Eliza set her lamp on the chest and unclasped
her suitcase on the bed. She drew from its depths
a spiral notebook and a ballpoint and gave them
to him. He tore a small square from one of the
pages in the notebook and held it and the pen close
to his heart. Closing his eyes, he began
to mutter. He seemed almost to be praying. Eliza
could not distinguish his words. Placing the paper
on the chest of drawers, he drew on it a double
circle with several strange marks between, and in the
center a triangle.
"Have you something you can put this in? Something you can wear?"
She thought a moment, then slid her watch from her
wrist and held it up by its gold expansion
bracelet.
"Only this," she said. "Will it fit under the back?"
He took the watch and used her nail file to pry
it open. Folding the charm twice, he pressed it
into the cavity, then put the back on.
"I can't guarantee it'll keep perfect time, but
the pentacle should offer you some protection, if you can
believ
e in its power."
Eliza looked into his blue eyes. They were so
intense yet so far away. He seemed to be looking
at a part of her she didn't know about.
his
After what I saw you do to Mary, I'd believe
practically anything."
He smiled.
"I'm right across the hall if you need me."
"Thanks, Lee. Good night."
She watched him disappear behind the door on the
other side of the corridor before shutting her own
door. Shivering, she changed into blue flannel
pajamas patterned with large strawberries, and was
thankful for the foresight that had caused her to pack them.
They might make her look like a frump, but at
least they were warm. In the next room Amber was singing
in what sounded like Gaelic. Her husky voice
drifted faintly through the wall.
"I look a mess," Eliza muttered, staring in the
mirror at her pale travel-weary face. Her
hazel eyes were bloodshot and her disordered hair
looked several shades darker than its normal
golden brown. Dusky hollows had settled in her
cheeks.
She took a brush from her suitcase and began
angrily tugging at her loose curls, which were a
mass of knots and tangles. After a moment she
threw down the brush in disgust. Setting the lamp on
the floor beside the bed, she climbed between the icy
sheets. She began to take off her watch as
usual, but something made her hesitate. She slid
its expandable bracelet back onto her wrist and
leaned down to blow out the lamp.

She followed a green-gowned male
attendant down a windowless corridor with a door
at the end. Dusty cobwebs clung in the corners.
Damp ran down the mo
u
ldy walls. The only light came from a single
naked bulb hanging on the end of a frayed
electrical cord that crackled and sparked
fitfully.
On the wall in a shattered glass case hung a
fire axe, its blade dripping with blood.
Dimly she heard moans, screams and wild
laughter.
She passed a naked boy with a shaved head, his
skinny body covered with filth and sores. He
reached behind his back for a piece of his own feces and
put it into his mouth with a drooling idiot grin. She
shrank away to keep from touching him. The attendant
took her arm and propelled her unwillingly to the end
of the corridor.
"You
r mother is waiting," he said, opening the door on
darkness.
He winked at her. His face was strong and cruel,
the face of Daniel P. Brannon.
The door shut behind her. In the darkened room
a gray-haired woman sat in a wooden chair
facing the blank wall. She was doing something with her
hands in the air. Eliza walked slowly around the
chair until she could see the familiar features of
her mother.
"I came to visit, mama."
The other woman seemed not to hear. With intense
concentration she reached into the air in front of her and
picked some invisible particle between her thumb and
forefinger, then carefully placed it into a little wooden
box in her lap. She wore a dress of the same
drab institutional green.
Eliza felt a great sorrow mingled with tenderness.
She put her hand on her mother's shoulder.
"What are you doing, mama?"
"Why, I'm picking stars, dear. See all the
beautiful stars?"
Eliza bent forward. The dark air glittered with
countless tiny points of brightness, like motes of dust
caught in a beam of sunlight. They danced and
trembled as though alive. She caught her breath at
their delicate beauty.
"This box is for you, Eliza."
Her mother extended the wooden box toward her. For some
reason she drew back and shook her head.
"Take it," her mother insisted. "Take the pretty
box of stars."
Reluctantly Eliza accepted the box and opened
it. Bright specks overflowed into her hand. They
glittered like sparks. They were burning her,
but she did not wish to drop and lose them on the
floor. She blinked and looked again. Abruptly the
sparks had changed into thousands of tiny red spiders that
crawled over her palm and wrist. Their bites
felt like countless hot needles. With a cry of
revulsion she dropped the box and shook the spiders
off her hand.
The clanging bell of a fire alarm sounded outside
the door.
"Now you've done it," her mother said in a sad, tired
voice. "You'll have to go away. I can't help you
any more."
Thunderous pounding came from the other side of the door.
Frantically Eliza looked around for a way of
escape, and saw a jagged gap in the plaster of the
wall that was shaped like the mouth of a cave. She dashed
through just as the door burst open behind her and ran down the
dark tunnel.
Something followed her. She sensed its menace, heard
its faint crackling hiss. With arms
stretched out to ward off the hanging cobwebs she fled
through the endless darkness, the unseen horror close at
her heels.
At the end of the tunnel shone a light. Eliza
ran toward it. She emerged abruptly into blinding
brightness and stood shielding her face while her eyes
adjusted. She found herself on a vast sundial
shaped like a clock with Roman numerals all around.
The knife-like central marker cast its shadow edge
behind her, cutting completely across the radius of the
dial. The shadow was impenetrable, as deep and cold
as a frozen pool. From within
it she heard the same menacing crackle and hiss that
had pursued her down the tunnel.
She realized the shadow was moving toward her while she
looked at it and took a step back. The black
edge crawled after her with increasing speed. Again she
stepped away from it, and again. With mounting fear she
began to back away around the dial. Some sense
warned her with utter certainty that she would die if the
shadow touched her skin. Still it moved faster, and
faster, until she was running to keep from being
overtaken.
Her legs felt heavy. She moved in a maddening
slow motion while the shadow swept after her like
a black scythe. The Roman numerals on the
dial had become dates. She ran past them.
December twenty-third, twenty-fo
u
rth, twenty-fifth
.
.
.
She looked back over her shoulder in terror. A
great hulking silhouette edged in flickering fire
ran after her with loping strides and outspread arms
to engulf her. Its icy fingers brushed her back.
Something round turned under her foot and made her
stumble to her hands and knees. The floor was littered
with bleached human bones. She realized it was a
skull that had tripped her. Frantically she tried
to scramble to her feet. The bones rolled and slid
over each other, throwing her down.
She turned and raised her arm to ward off the fiery
shadow. It loomed over her and descended with the
voracity of a bird of prey. Terror drained the
strength from her limbs. She could not move. She
felt a scream rise in her throat.

The thud of footsteps overhead shocked
Eliza from her nightmare. She sat up in bed with a
gasp, heart pounding, then forced herself to relax. The
sounds were obviously made by human feet, and it was
difficult to feel supernatural dread with the clear
light of morning filling the room. She glanced at
her watch. It had continued to run, and showed nearly
nine o'clock.
Quickly she slid from bed and put out the kerosene
heater. The wooden floorboards were icy against her
bare feet. She gathered some clothes and the vinyl bag
that held her toothbrush. Inserting her feet
into furry pink slippers, she went into the corridor
and headed for the bathroom at the end.
Although the house lacked electricity there was a
limited supply of cold water to operate the
plumbing. In the process of opening Haven for the
seminar Hale and Mcationeil had filled a copper
cistern in the attic of the east wing with water from an
old dug well in this
e cellar. Everyone had been
cau
tioned to use it sparingly and boil it before drinking.
Unfortunately without power there was no way to operate
the water heater, Eliza reflected. When she
wanted a bath she would have to boil water on
the kitchen stove and carry it up to a tub.
A round stained-glass window at the end of the
corridor colored the slanting beams of the morning
sun. On the right a narrow enclosed staircase led
up to the third level. The two bathrooms were side
by side on the left. Someone had used chalk
to write "Boys" on one door and "Girls" on
the other.
Footsteps pounded down the stair. She waited in the
bathroom doorway. Mohan swung into view around
the frame of the stairwell. The knees of his
immaculately creased dress pants and the front
of his sweater vest were smudged with dust.
"Eliza, you are a late sleeper. Everybody
else is dressed and about long ago."
"Where are they all?"
"Everywhere." He waved his hand vaguely. "Can't
stop to talk now. I'm helping Dr. Hale
explore the house."
"Did you find anything interesting?"
"Yes. Something very, very important."
"What?"
"I cannot tell you." He put his finger to his smiling
lips. "Dr. Hale has sworn me
to secrecy."
Before she could question him further he hurried past her.
Shrugging, Eliza entered the bathroom and experimented
with the decorative Victorian plumbing which the
renovators apparently had
not had the heart to replace, then washed herself in
freezing water and dressed in the same drab brown
sweater jacket and wool pants she had worn the
previous day. She was not overly fond of these things,
but the rest of her wardrobe was limited to a pair of
corduroy slacks, a spare sweater and a few
shirts.
Idly she wished it had been possible to pack more
clothes. Hale's letter had specified only one
suitcase. Everyone had complied with this sensible
luggage limit except Amber, who had been
unable to content herself with less than two large cases
and a smaller carry-on bag.
She returned to her room and pulled on her high
boots. From far parts of the house she heard murmurs
of conversation. Her nose picked up the faint aroma
of bacon.
She noticed that the door to Lee's room stood
half open. No one was in the corridor.
Furtively she pushed the door wider.
"Lee
-?"
She had not expected an answer.
The room was similar to hers, but furnished by the
capricious Hale with a narrow cot and a tall
walnut wardrobe. The bed was made. A
conservative brown leather suitcase sat upright in
a corner. Nothing had been left lying about. There was
a scent in the air which she tentatively identified
as cologne.
Eliza crossed to the window and looked out. The room
was on the north side and gave a magnificent
view of the ocean and the beach. The
weather had cleared completely. Snow covered the land
in low drifts and frosted the grim black face of the
ax-shaped point of rock on the far side of the
inlet.
"I've discovered your secret vice
-
you're a snoop."
Eliza whirled around. Amber stood in the
doorway, arms crossed and shoulder resting against the
jamb. Coloring, Eliza went to her.
"I'm looking for Lee."
"Aren't we all."
The redhead turned and Eliza followed her
into the passage, studying with suppressed envy the way
her white turtleneck and skin-tight black leather
pants enhanced her waist and hips. She noticed that
Amber carried something in her hand.
"What's that?"
Amber held it up with a look of distaste.
"Charcoal from the fireplace. Messy stuff. I
had some bad dreams last night. I'm going to seal
my door."
She closed the door of her bedroom and began
to draw a geometric design on the outer panel.
"Mind if I watch?" Eliza said.
"Why not? This is a New England hex sign.
Guaranteed to frighten off goblins, spooks and other
bump-in-the-nighters."
"What was it about?"
"U
m
?"
"Your dream."
Amber was silent a moment.
"I'd rather not talk about it."
Eliza did not press. She extended her awareness
and felt a shiver of revulsion deep in the mind of the
other woman. Surprisingly she found no
animosity toward herself.
"Are you scanning me?" Amber asked without turning.
Eliza dropped her eyes.
"I have a certain sensitivity, you know," Amber
said. "My magic may not be as flashy as Lee's
but I get by."
Eliza watched the hex sign grow into a complex
six-pointed star with curving lines around its center.
It stood out strongly against the eggshell-colored
paint on the door.
"You're not the only one who had a nightmare," she
said with a shudder. "I dreamt about my mother. It was
awful."
In a few words she recounted the events of her dream
while Amber continued to sketch the hex sign.
"That's odd," Amber said, looking at her.
"What? That we both had nightmares?"
"More than that. My dream was about my step-father. He
wasn't much of a father, if you know what I mean."
Eliza felt deep hurt beneath the bitterness in her
voice. She put her hand on the shoulder of the other
woman. Amber shook it off and returned to her
drawing.
"Do you mind if I ask you something?" Eliza said.
"Shoot."
"Why did you come to Haven?"
"Why did you?" Amber shot back.
"I don't know. I thought I could help. It sounded
interesting." She hesitated. "And I don't really
have anywhere to go at Christmas."
"I came because I was bored to death," Amber said.
She set the charcoal on the floor and stepped
back, dusting off her fingers.
"There. I'll sleep better tonight."
"Where is Lee anyway?"
"He and Allan went into the woods looking for a
tree. This is Christmas Eve, remember, and
boys will be boys."
"I hope they're safe."
Amber laughed.
"There's no danger. This whole field trip is
one big fiasco."
"We don't know that yet. Mary
-"
"Is a frustrated, hysterical girl looking for
attention. She should be in therapy."
"Hale seems to think there's a threat," Eliza
said defensively.
"Where? Since we've been here nothing has happened
to any of us."
"What about our dreams?"
"Don't tell me you've never had a nightmare
before," Amber mocked.
Eliza turned away to hide her irritation.
"I'm going to the kitchen to get something to eat."
"Liza?"
Eliza stopped.
"I know you're interested in Lee. I thought I should
tell you that you're wasting your time
-
he doesn't like girls."
"What?" Eliza laughed.
"It's true," Amber continued seriously. "Last
night I was feeling expansive after the scotch. I
went to his room. I even climbed into bed with him.
He sent me away."
Eliza was shocked by the casual way Amber
admitted her actions, but did not allow her emotions
to show.
"That doesn't prove anything. Did he tell you
he was gay?"
"Not in so many words."
"I suppose it never occurred to you that he might be
celibate?"
Amber blinked, then slowly smiled.
"No, it didn't. The poor dear. Maybe I can
still help him."
I should have kept quiet, Eliza thought as she made
her way down the main staircase. Amber would have
left him alone. Now she'll be on him like a bitch
in heat. Well, it's not my concern.
Mary greeted her in the kitchen and lifted a plate
out of the warmer on the stove.
"I kept these hot for you. I knew you'd be
hungry when you got up."
Eliza stared at the plate of fried eggs and bacon
in delight.
"I thought I smelled bacon. But you shouldn't have
bothered,
Mary."
Mary brushed the admonition aside.
"The Professor and I had a talk, and he
agreed to make me cook. I'm a farm girl and
I know my way around a wood stove, which is a
whole lot more than the rest of you can say. Anyway,
I like to keep my hands busy."
"Well I'm sure you'll get no argument from the
group," said Eliza past a folded section of
bacon. "But I hope you didn't wash the dishes
from last night. That was Amber's job."
"No, she did them," said Mary. She opened the
stove door and shoved a section of maple log into the
fire. "But to tell the truth, she did such a poor
job that when she was finished I took them all out and
did them again. Promise you won't let on?"
Amused, Eliza solemnly agreed not to inform
Amber.
"I wouldn't expect this kind of breakfast from a
nutritionist," she said as Mary poured her a glass
of orange juice.
"Just because I've got to feed people tasteless,
predigested pap when they're sick doesn't mean
I've forgotten how to cook real food."
She poured herself a mug of steaming black coffee from
the pot on the stove and sat down next to Eliza.
"How's your hand?" Eliza asked.
"Nearly better." Mary showed her the ugly red
sear along her palm. "It wasn't a bad burn.
Just needed a little butter."
"You really frightened us last night when you went into your
trance. Is that the right word, trance?"
Mary blushed.
"I just call it makin" out pictures. I
didn't mean to scare nobody."
"We were scared for you," Eliza said.
"You don't need to be scared for me. I've been
makin' out pictures since I was five. It
doesn't cause any harm."
"Does it always happen like that?"
Mary sipped her coffee and shook her head.
"No, last night was real sudden. Usually I can
control it."
She frowned to herself.
"When I was little I used to scare people. They said I was
the Devil's child. My daddy whipped me to make me
stop, until I got so that I could control it most
times. But every now and then it just happens."
"Mary, did you dream last night?"
"Indeed I did. I dreamed I was a little girl
back on the farm in Arkansas waitin' for my
daddy to give me a whipping. He always used to whip
us kids on the back porch. It was so real it almost
scared the pee out of me. But it wasn't daddy who
came, it was a big shadow with burning eyes."
She shivered and cupped the mug of steaming coffee with
both hands as she drank.
It's too much of a coincidence, Eliza thought.
All three of us have nightmares, and all three
concern unhappy memories of our childhood. But
what connection can it possibly have with Haven?
Her reverie was broken by the entrance of Mohan, who
looked around the kitchen with disappointment.
"Do not tell me that Lee and Allan have yet
to return?"
"They're still outside," Mary said.
He shook his head and sighed.
"This is very bad. Dr. Hale wishes to see
everyone in the gathering room at once. He has an
important discovery he wishes to reveal."
"He'll just have to wait," Mary said pleasantly.
"Sit down and have some coffee, Mohan."
"No, I must go out and look for them. Dr. Hale
will be angry."
He took his scarf from the coat rack behind the door
and began to anxiously loop it around his neck. Mary
got up and forcibly guided him over to the table.
"For heaven sake, will you sit down and relax. Much
as I respect the Professor, he's not God
Almighty. The boys will come in when they're ready."
Mohan started to protest. Eliza got up and
took her own coat and beret down from the rack.
"I'll go. I need the fresh air anyway."
"Thank you, Eliza, that is very good of you," Mohan
said sincerely.
"You know what your trouble is, Mohan? You
fuss too much," Mary told him. "Sometimes you just
have to let a log find its own way down the river."
Eliza opened the door and stepped into the much cooler
air of the back hall. A sudden thought made her
stop and turn.
"Mohan, did you have any dreams last night?"
"I never dream," he said, watching Mary pour his
coffee. "Why do you ask?"
"It doesn't matter."
Eliza felt strong disappointment. That was the end of
her lovely dream pattern. Maybe it had been
only coincidence after all.
"You be careful in those woods," Mary said suddenly.
"You're as bad as Mohan," Eliza told her
irritably. "There's nothing out there. According to Amber
this whole seminar is a waste of time."
"She's dead wrong," Mary said with conviction. She
gazed out the windows at the distant trees. "There's
danger, I can feel it. Someone is walking under the
shadow of death."
"If you feel that way, why don't you ask Hale
to use the radio to call the boat?"
"That wouldn't be right," she said, shaking her head
sadly. "I gave my word that I would see this through
to the end and I mean to do it."
She went to the doorway and took Eliza by her
shoulders.
"But you mind what I tell you. Something in this house
is watching us, and its thoughts are not kindly. It's
all twisted up and bitter inside. It means
to make us suffer. Then it means to kill us, one
by one."

It was cold in the shadow of Haven. The white cloud
of Eliza's breath hung around her shoulders like
wisps of cotton wool before dispersing. She paused
on the back step for several seconds, drawing in
deep lungfuls of crisp air heavily laden with the
scent of evergreen and the salt tang of the sea. There was
a glorious freshness in everything that intoxicated her
senses. It was such a relief to escape the
oppressive gloom of the house.
If I were looking for a Christmas tree, which way
would I go? she wondered. Two lines of
footprints led across the drifts on the back lawn
into the woods. Eliza set out to follow them.
As she stepped into the sunlight a flicker of
movement drew her attention to a low building lying
close under the edge of the trees. It was almost as if
someone had ducked behind its corner.
Lee?" she called uncertainly. "Is that you?"
The out building stood facing the house. It was a
large solid
structure with heavy beam
fram
ing and a green copper roof. Eliza realized
suddenly that it must be the stable where the horses had
died.
The silence made her nervous. She extended her
mind and felt a mischievous presence waiting behind the
corner of the building. The emotion was quite faint, as
though veiled by some barrier. Amber's words about boys
being boys came back to her.
Collecting her courage, she forced herself on stiff
legs toward the stable.
"You might as well come out. I know you're there."
I won't give them the satisfaction of scaring me,
she thought. As she rounded the back corner she
tightened her hands into fists inside her mittens
to prepare herself.
Nobody jumped out. The back side of the building
was deserted. Puzzled, Eliza continued to walk
all around the structure, trying the locked double
doors as she passed. Plywood sheets prevented
her from seeing in the windows.
The distant murmur of conversation in the woods made
her shelve the mystery for later consideration. She set
off toward the voices at a quick pace before Lee and
Allan wandered out of hearing. Here the ground was
relatively flat and open. Walking was easy
except where her path intersected the crests of the low
drifts, which rose no higher than her shins.
Golden sunlight slanted through bare boughs of
mature birch and maple. Eliz
a guessed that at one time this
part of the
woods had been cleared, since the evergreens had not
yet regained full control.
So peaceful, she thought. So safe. The woods and
gently rising hills seemed to cherish and protect
her. It was years since she had walked alone under the
trees. Not since that final summer in the family
cottage on the lake, the year of her father's death.
It had been the last truly happy year of her
life. Her mother never recovered from the shock.
Care of her mother, the pressures of the funeral, the
settlement of the estate, and then later committing her
mother to the institution
-
all these burdens had fallen upon her
immature shoulders like a yoke of servitude.
Only the word used by her aunts and uncles was
duty. Servitude. Duty. It amounted to the same
thing, in the end.
She stumbled and caught herself on the ice-crusted bough
of a small spruce. The jolt brought her mind
back to the present. She saw that in front of her the
ground dropped away into a shallow irregular bowl
cut in the base of a low cliff. Broken blocks
of stone lay scattered about everywhere, their jagged edges
frosted with snow. It was a dangerous place to walk
without looking. Stepping into the depression, Eliza
picked her way with care across the loose rocks to its
center.
The pit was not a natural formation. Some of the rocks
had round holes drilled in them, and there were signs of
tool marks on others. She realized this must be the
quarry the original builders of Haven had used
to get stone for the foundation. That was why a broad track
had been cleared
through the forest. The masons had needed a wagon
to move the cut stone to the building site.
Eliza picked up a stone chip and tossed it across
the pit. It clattered over the rocks with a dry echo
and vanished noiselessly under the snow. There was
a feeling of abandonment about the place, almost of
desolation. Piles of stones still waited for the wagon
that would bear them away. They had rested there for over a
century and would remain unmoved, for all she kn
e
w, until the end of the world.
A shadow passed over her face. She looked up
at the sun, expecting to see the silhouette of a
soaring eagle. The sky was empty. With a shiver she
realized she had spent more time investigating the quarry
than she had intended. She listened intently. The
murmur of voices no longer reached her through the
trees.
Lee and Allan are probably back at Haven
by now, she thought. Suddenly the notion of searching for them
deeper into the woods was not appealing. She turned
around with a prickling on the back of her neck. Even
though she told herself she was being foolish the sensation
would not go away. The naked rock face of the cliff
frowned at her in disapproval. Drawing her fur
collar tight around her throat, she climbed out of the
quarry and retraced her footprints between the trees.
The prints of her boots undulated through the drifts
between the stark, frozen trunks of the trees until they
blended into the gloom of the forest. Viewed in the
di
stance they might almost be
mis
taken for the tracks of some large animal. It was
easier to walk in the hollows then beside them. The sun
made the snow slippery. Eliza picked her steps
with care to keep from falling.
Abruptly she froze motionless, heart pounding in
terror. She bent slowly forward and studied the marks
in front of her, then straightened with a jerk and turned
a complete circle, staring wide-eyed all about at
the breathless trees. Lifting her boot, she
pressed it into the snow beside one of the prints and gently
removed it. For several seconds she regarded the
two impressions in disbelief. Her reason fought a
brief battle with her senses and lost. It was
impossible. But there was no doubt. These were not her own
tracks that she followed.
The line of prints curved gently, almost
imperceptibly, leading her away from Haven and
deeper into the woods. Had she continued to follow them
she would certainly have become lost. She remembered
the mischievous presence behind the stable, and the shadow at
the quarry. The conviction grew that something was stalking
her, playing a malicious game with her, a
game with deadly consequences.
From where the track vanished among the trees she
heard the murmur of voices. Ignoring the sound,
Eliza took a bearing from the sun and set out across the
unbroken snow in the direction where she knew Haven
must lie. It required all of her inner resolve
to keep a walking pace and not break into panic
flight.
The inviting air of the woods had been only a ploy
designed to lure her away from safety. She sensed
a hostile presence following close behind, waiting for
her to slip and fall. But when she turned to look there
was nothing. Something dry rustled at her heels.
Eliza broke into a floundering, sliding run, then with
agonizing effort forced herself to slow her steps. If
she ran she was lost. Primal instinct warned her the
watcher would fasten upon her fear and use it to destroy
her.
A line of prints appeared in the virgin snow
ahead. For a moment she experienced the horrifying
suspicion that she had walked in a circle. Then
she realized she had regained her original track,
which meant she was headed in the right direction. Her
disordered mind seized on the familiar impressions
in the snow the way a drowning victim
grasps a lifeline. She followed them heel
to toe, at every anxious step expecting to be seized
from behind by some malicious potency.
With startling abruptness she emerged onto the frozen
back lawn of Haven. Lee and Allan were just coming
out of the trees a hundred yards or so to her right. In
the distance the slender body of the theurgist looked almost
feminine, an illusion heightened by the tapered waist
of his navy pea jacket. Lee dragged a bushy
evergreen behind him by its stump. He saw her and waved
with the axe he carried in his other hand.
She waved back and turned apprehensively.
Once more the woods appeared quiet, serene and
inviting. The terror that had gripped her heart in its
icy fist only moments before had melted away like a
forgotten dream. Forcing down a shudder, she ran to the
men.
"Ugg, we great hunters," Allan said. He
put a hand behind his head and stuck up two fingers.
"We bring heap much tree-meat for white squaw
to cook."
"Chauvinist," said Eliza, eyeing him. He
seemed overly animated, but perhaps it was only an
illusion caused by her strained senses.
"Where were you?" Lee asked.
She evaded his eyes.
"Exploring. I found the stone quarry where the foundation
of Haven was mined."
"Are you all right?"
"Sure."
She needed time to collect herself before telling him of the
footprints. After what Amber had said about Mary,
she did not want to seem hysterical.
Lee said nothing. Eliza knew he was dissatisfied
with her response. He senses things, she thought, or
reads them in my face.
They dragged the tree into the gathering room and cleared
a corner. It was a pine, perfect except for a
double crown and one missing bough near the bottom.
Mary dug up an old galvanized bucket, and
Allan with the help of Lee managed to wedge the
tree upright in it with several bricks. They filled
the bucket with water and dropped in two aspirin from
the first-aid kit.
"There are no decorations," Amber said, looking at
the evergreen critically with folded arms. "And it's
crooked."
"We'll have to decorate it the old-fashion
ed
way and make our own," said Mary.
Mohan and Hale entered the room crabwise, bent
double under the weight of a large wooden trunk.
Luther trotted in behind them and claimed the hearth.
They let the trunk drop with a bang. Hale took
out a handkerchief and wiped his glistening face. He
had stripped off his sweater and rolled up the
sleeves of his blue flannelette shirt.
"With all the racket you were making down here I'd
thought you'd scared up the Devil himself," he said,
staring at the tree.
"Not perfectly perpendicular," Allan said with a
glance at Amber. "But what's Christmas without a
tree?"
"What's Christmas anyway, but a pagan
festival stolen by the Church for its own purposes?"
she retorted.
"Amber is quite right," Hale said. "Originally
Christmas was a pagan celebration designed
to lure the sun back from the depths of midwinter. The
tree itself is a pagan symbol, not Christian."
"However it started, that's not to say it isn't
Christian nowadays," Mary said somewhat
indignantly.
"Of course," said Hale. "You're right, Mary.
Festivals change and grow just like everything
else."
"What have you and Mohan found in the attic?" Lee
aske
d, eyeing the trunk.
"Something rich and strange," said Hale with a smile.
"Something that may throw light on the unwritten
history of Haven."
"What are we waiting for?" Allan said. "Let's
open it."
Eliza gathered her resolve and stepped in front
of the trunk.
"Before you do that I need to tell you what happened
while I was in the woods."
They looked at her curiously.
"Did you see something?" Lee asked.
"Yes. In a way."
"Go ahead, Eliza," Hale encouraged. "We
need phenomena to work on or we won't have a
seminar."
"Some of you may think I'm being hysterical," she
said, glancing at Amber.
In a few unemotional words she told of finding the
strange footprints, and described her
uncontrollable panic. She left out the shadow by the
stable and the voices in the woods. Both could be
explained away by natural events such as snow
dropping from the roof of the stable or wind among the
trees. Even though she knew these explanations were
insufficient she had no proof, and did not wish her
whole story to be dismissed as an hallucination
induced by fear.
"You say the terror left you the moment you stepped out
of the woods?" Lee inquired gently.
Eliza nodded.
"That suggests your fear was artificially induced."
"Is that important?"
"It would mean that whatever we're facing has the power
to manipulate our emotions," Hale explained.
"That might account for some of the deaths at Haven,"
Amber put in. "Suicides resulting from induced
depression."
"Possibly," Hale said. "However I'm convinced
that some of the phenomena are physical."
He sat on the domed lid of the trunk and crossed
a leg over a knee. He tugged his beard
meditatively.
"The prints you saw must belong to one of us. Who was in
the woods today?"
"Only Lee and Allan," said Amber. "Apart from
Eliza, that is."
The tracks weren't made by any of us. They were too
small," Eliza said.
"Luther, then," suggested Hale. "I let him out
this morning."
"They were too large for a dog. Anyway, they were
human."
Eliza felt herself being put subtly on the
defensive. They think I imagined everything, she
realized. Resentment began to swell inside of her.
She looked around for support. Lee's eyes
held sympathy. Mary was looking at the floor.
Eliza felt her cheeks begin to burn.
"Maybe they were the tracks of a moose, or a
bear," Allan said.
"No, they were made by human feet." She had
to fight to keep shrillness out of her voice.
"How can you be so positive?" Amber asked
skeptically.
Eliza glared at them.
"Because I saw the outline of toes, damn it! They
were a child's footprints
-
a barefoot child!"

They stared at her in silence.
"I know it sounds crazy, but I'm certain of what
I saw. Look for yourselves if you don't believe
me."
"We believe you, Eliza," Hale said gently.
"But I do want to get verification. This is our first
physical manifestation. I wish you'd told me
immediately. It shouldn't be hard to find the tracks. Will
someone volunteer to go photograph and measure
them?"
"I'll go," Allan said. "Anything to get out of this
tomb."
"All right, but take Mohan with you. I don't
want anyone alone where it can be avoided. We need
verification of all incidents."
Allan picked up the adjustable Polaroid camera
that was part of Hale's field equipment and left with
Mohan.
Hale dragged the trunk beside the conference table and
busied himself opening its ornamental iron catches.
"I'll show you what we found in the attic. I
imagine Mohan will fill Allan in as they
walk."
Mary put her heavy hand on Eliza's shoulder and
drew her aside.
"Did you feel anything near you in the
woods?" she asked seriously.
"I got the sense of being watched, but it may have been
only imagination."
"This morning I thought I felt a presence in the
house," Mary said. "It's real slippery, though.
I can't quite make it out."
Hale raised his head from the trunk at her words but
said nothing. He glanced significantly at Lee
and Amber.
"The worst part," Eliza said with a shudder, "Was that
the footprints led all the way up to the quarry. It
must have been standing right behind me."
At Hale's direction they gathered around the conference
table. Amber, Mary and Eliza sat with their backs
to the windows. Lee sat on the opposite side
next to Hale, who pulled a bundle from the trunk
and unrolled it across the tabletop. It was a garment of
some kind, Eliza saw, a long and heavy robe.
"What do you make of this, Lee?" Hale said.
Lee gently spread the robe apart. It clung
to itself with gray-green mildew and exhaled a musty
odor.
"Ceremonial dress of some kind."
"Familiar to you?"
"No."
"Satanic?"
He brushed the dust off an embroidered emblem on
the left breast of the garment.
"I doubt it. This cloth is dark blue
-
almost a purple. Satanists normally use red or
black robes. And this emblem is a variation on the
rose-cross. See, a flaming heart over a
gold cross on a silver field."
"Not a white lodge, though."
"No
-
more like a gray, if there is such a thing."
"Would you two mind telling me what you're talking
about?" Amber broke in.
Hale gestured to the trunk on the floor beside him.
"This is the trunk of a ceremonial magician. His
ritual robe you see on the table." He reached
down and began taking things out of the chest. "This is his
cap. His circlet. His sash. His shoes. His
lamen. And his rod."
The last object he picked up gingerly with his
fingertips and held it away from his body. It was a
plain black wooden rod with caps of gold on
each end.
"This gave me a nasty electrical shock when I
touched it in the attic, but it isn't hurting me now.
I seem to have earthed it."
He passed the rod around the table. Eliza was
surprised at how heavy it felt. It must be made
out of solid ebony, she thought. There was a clinging
aura of corrupt potency about it. Mary refused
even to touch the rod, and drew back when it was passed
to Amber. The witch twirled it between her fingers like a
baton, then gave it to Lee.
"There's some writing on the lamen," Hale said.
"For those who don't know, a lamen is a personal
emblem of power used to project authority over
spirits."
Lee picked up the large silver medallion by its
chain from the table. It turned slowly in the chill
northern window light. Heavy gold wire inlaid
across its tarnished face formed an interlocking star with
eight points. Strange signs and marks like letters
adorned its back.
"This looks like Enochian script," he said.
"So it is, along with some Hebrew and Arabic names
of spirits. But it's the three Enochian letters in the
center that interest me."
Taking the lamen, Hale went to the small
green chalkboard he had erected on an artist's
easel and copied the marks from right to left:
"D, P, B," Lee translated.
"Daniel P. Brannon?"
Hale's gray eyes fairly danced with glee.
"So it would seem!"
"Brannon, a magician?" Eliza said. "You
told us he was an industrialist."
"And a speculator, and an architect, and a
philanthropist. But most of all, a mystery,"
Hale said.
"It looks like gibberish," said Amber, eyeing the
chalk marks.
"Enochian is an inspired language believed
by some to be the original tongue of the angelic
hierarchy," Hale said.
"It was supernaturally revealed to the Elizabethan
philosopher John Dee around the end of the
sixteenth century," Lee added meditatively as
he fingered the rod.
Leaning over the table, Hale extended the lamen
to Mary.
"I want you to read this, Mary. Will you do that?"
"Of course, Professor," Mary said, sinking
weakly in her chair. "That's why I'm here,
isn't it."
With unwilling fingers she accepted the blackened disk
and cupped it between her hands. Her eyes closed.
Eliza reached out to her and felt a dark gulf open
in the mind of the other woman.
"What do you see, Mary?" Hale prompted.
"A face." Dread dulled her voice.
"Describe it."
"Strong. Old. Cruel mouth and sharp eyes."
"Is it the face of the portrait in the front
hall?"
"Yes
-
it's hard to tell
-
I think so."
"That's because she's seeing his magical image along
with his physical features," Lee murmured.
Looking past Mary's strained profile, Eliza
was surprised by the genuine concern in Amber's green
eyes. For the first time she realized that Amber's
cynical veneer was only a mask to hide her
deeper feelings. Amber felt her gaze and sat
back in her chair.
"Can you make out any surroundings, Mary?"
said Hale. "Try to expand your vision."
"It's dark." Mary's voice became distant.
"I see candles. Men standing inside circles.
There's a
big triangle on the floor and three smaller
circles where men stand looking out at the darkness.
There's something in the triangle."
"What? What's in the triangle?"
"It's like smoke. No, more like a shadow. And it's
moving
-
s
wirling
-
it's dancing around and around. The air is rushing and
blowing the hair and the robes of the men. There's a roar
like the waves of the sea. It's so big
-
bright and dark at the same time. Like a big dancing
flame
-
oh!"
She opened her eyes and let the lamen clatter
onto the table.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't
want to drop it, but it suddenly felt hot."
Amber put out her hand to pick it up and drew
back.
"Mary didn't imagine that. Put your hand over it,
Lee."
Lee held his palm a few inches over the
surface of the lamen. He gradually lowered it and
touched the silver disk gingerly several times.
"It's warm," he said. "But it's cooling
rapidly."
He picked the lamen up and juggled it like a baked
potato. Where it had lain on the table a singed ring
showed in the varnished board.
"Are you burned, Mary?" Hale asked.
Mary held up her fingers. They were unmarked.
"I let go the moment I felt it."
"There's a power here," said Hale. "And it
obviously doesn't want us poking into its past."
He went to the rolltop desk and brought back his
compact video camera and a battery-powered portable
television with a flat folding color screen about the
size of a paperback.
This is the tape of an interview I conducted last
March with George Three-Rivers, a Micmac
Indian living on the Eskasoni
Reservation in East Bay, Cape Breton," he
murmured, connecting the camera to the television with a
video jack. "Three-Rivers was a handyman at
Haven while it was owned by Biddingford from 1911
to 1943. He even claims to remember
Brannon. I'm afraid the sound quality is
poor. Please listen carefully."
He positioned the television at the end of the table so
that everyone could see it and set the camera to play the
pre-recorded video tape onto the screen. The
picture flickered, then stabilized to show the
shriveled face of a very old man propped up in a
steel bed frame with two pillows behind his back. His
long snow-white hair lay like a cloud over his
shoulders. Faded roses covered the paper on the
wall behind the bed.
"Mr. Three-Rivers?" Hale's voice came
from somewhere off camera. "You were telling me about
Haven."
"I remember." The voice of the Indian was no more
than a husky whisper. He spoke with a flat but
indefinable accent. "What do you want to know?"
"The night of the fire
-
the fire that gutted the west wing
-
were you working?"
"It was my night off, but one of the waiters got
sick, so they asked me to fill in. I was a
good-looking man in those days."
He smiled at the memory, then abruptly started
to cough. Rolling out of the camera frame to the side of the
bed, he spat up phlegm and lay weakly back
on the pillows.
"Were you in the hall when the fire started?"
"No. I was in the kitchen."
"What did you do?"
"We heard all the yelling and screaming and I run
along with the rest of them to look. We pushed open the
big double doors on the ballroom."
His eyes widened and he fell silent.
"What did you see?" Hale prompted.
"The tree that stood in the middle of the room
-
it was on its side blazing like a pine torch, the
flames licking right up to the ceiling and showers of
sparks falling on the ladies' long dresses.
They were all running around knocking into things and
screaming. I guess they were crazy with fear."
"So it was the blue spruce getting
knocked into the fireplace that started it."
The Indian shook his head.
"I read that story in the newspaper but that was wrong."
"How do you mean?"
"That tree was nowhere near the fireplace."
"Are you sure? You said yourself the air was filled with
smoke."
"I
didn't need more than one look. The fireplace
is in the south wall. That tree fell north toward
the windows."
"Do you know how it got knocked over?"
The old man shook his head and closed his eyes.
After a few moments his breaths deepened. It was
evident that he had drifted into sleep.
Hale shut off the play-back on the camera.
"This bit coming up concerns the phenomena that occurred in
the months prior to the fire. Three-Rivers was the
only living witness to these events."
"Was?" inquired Amber.
"Shortly after this series of interviews he fell
asleep with a cigarette in his hand and burned to death in
his bed."
"The poor man," Mary said.
Hale turned the camera back on. The
television showed Three-Rivers sitting up in a
wooden armchair with a blanket wrapped around his
shoulders. The wall behind him was shingled. Sunlight
fell across his hollow cheek. A cigarette
dangled from the corner of his mouth.
"This was recorded on the back porch of the house owned
by Three-Rivers' daughter, who was taking care of
him," Hale explained as his own voice spoke from
the television.
"Mr. Three-Rivers, you told me yesterday
funny things were going on at Haven in the year of the
fire."
"That's right." The voice of the Indian was stronger
than in the previous segment.
"Did you see any of these things yourself?"
"All the time. You couldn't turn around that autumn
without something strange happening. I was ready
to quit."
"Tell me some things that happened to you."
"Voices in empty rooms. Children laughing when
nobody was there. Doors opening and slamming shut
by themselves."
"You actually heard and saw these things?"
"Hell, we all did."
"Why didn't you tell someone?"
"Everyone knew what was going on."
"I mean someone outside, like a newspaper."
"Mr. Biddingford warned us not to. He would have fired
me. I needed that job."
"Then Biddingford himself knew about the incidents."
The Indian laughed silently, took the cigarette
from his mouth and spat to the side of the chair.
"He knew. He had to send his wife away on
account of it."
"How was that?"
"One night she ran stark naked out into the snow. She
claimed something tried to drown her while she was taking
a bath."
"Did she say what it looked like, this thing?"
"Not to me, but I heard the story. She called it a
tall shadow with glittering eyes and flaming hair
-
those were her own words."
"How long before the fire was this?"
Three-Rivers looked meditatively into the distance.
"About a week or so."
"Can you think back to when the trouble first started?"
"I know exactly when it started."
"You do?"
"It was when Biddingford opened that sealed
room."
There was a pause, then a rustle of movement from
somewhere off camera. When Hale's voice came it
was tense with suppressed excitement.
"Would you tell me about the room, Mr.
Three-Rivers? Please think very carefully, it
may be important."
The Indian drew on his cigarette and let the
smoke out slowly.
"It happened about the beginning of April in
forty-three. Mr. Biddingford decided to make some
improvements in the plumbing. It was the off-season
-
not much business anyway because of the war in Europe.
While he was going over the plans of the hotel he
spotted a room that no one had ever seen. He got
real interested and made a bunch of us help him
search for it."
"Where was this room located?"
"On the third floor
-
we called it the attic
- just above the front hall."
"And this room was deliberately hidden?"
"Somebody built a wall right over it.
We chipped off the plaster and lath and there was this door
underneath with some fancy design painted on it."
"Do you remember the design?"
"No, it's been too many years. I don't
recall it."
"Who opened the door?"
"Biddingford. It was locked shut and didn't have no
knob, so he grabbed a wrecking bar out of my hand and
pried it open. He was like a crazy
man. I think he somehow got the idea there was money
hid in that room."
"Was there?"
"Hell no. It was empty."
"And that's when funny things started to happen?"
"Right then. When Biddingford opened the door a gust of
wind blew out that damn near knocked him over. The
air smelled real bad. Like death."
"Do you remember what the room looked like?"
"Damnedest place you ever saw. Painted flat
black from top to bottom. Even the floor. And there
weren't no windows or lights."
"What did Biddingford do when he found it empty?"
"He was disappointed pretty bad. He had the
door to the room boarded over. Said it wasn't good
for nothing the way it was, and it wasn't
worth the trouble to fix it."
Once more Hale stopped the camera and regarded his
listeners intently.
"This last bit was something I got early in my first
conversation with Three-Rivers. It didn't strike
me as important at the time."
He started the camera. Once again the scene showed the
old man propped up in his bed.
"You said your father worked for Daniel Brannon, the
builder of Haven By the Sea?"
"For twenty-three years."
"Did you ever see Brannon yourself?"
"A few times. I was just a kid. No more than
seven or eight years old."
"What was he like?"
"He was a big, stern man. Used to scare me
silly when he looked at me. He was always holding
conferences with men who came to Haven from foreign
countries. They spoke French and German and a
bunch of other languages I didn't
recognize."
"Do you remember who any of the men were?"
"No. I do recall one funny thing, now that I
think back on it."
"About the men who came to see Brannon?"
"It was the way they shook hands. I remember hiding
behind the door and watching them."
"I don't understand. How did they shake hands?"
"It was different from regular people. I can't describe
it. Give my your hand."
Hale leaned into view on the television screen from
the left and allowed Three-Rivers to take his hand.
"It was like this, with the two thumbs together. Feels
funny, doesn't it?"
Hale shut off the camera and rewound the video
cassette.
"Some kind of Masonic sign?" Lee suggested.
"I've seen handshakes similar to it, but not the
same," Hale said. "Here, give me your hand."
Lee extended his hand and Hale shook it, showing them
the way the thumbs came together.
"I don't see where this is leading us," Amber
said suddenly. "Suppose Brannon was a
magician. Suppose he belonged to some bizarre
Masonic order. Brannon died in 1911. The
phenomena didn't begin until 1943. How do you
explain the lapse of those thirty-two years?"
"The black room. It's that, isn't it?" said
Mary with hushed conviction.
"I think so, yes," Hale agreed.
"I'm not sure how or why, but Brannon must have
sealed something into that room before his death. W
hen Bid
dingford opened the door he released it. It's been
free ever since, haunting this house."
This was what Hale had been holding back the
previous day, Eliza realized. He had known about
the black chamber all along, but had not mentioned it for
fear of frightening them off. She wondered what other
horrible secrets he was hiding. Did he know
something about the watcher in the woods? Was he really
cold-blooded enough to place them all at risk just
to insure their cooperation? Suddenly she wished she had
taken the opportunity to leave with Mcationeil in the
boat.

While Eliza was considering whether on not to confront
Hale over the devious way he had withheld the
full truth about Haven, Allan and Mohan came
bustling in, their cheeks still red with cold. Allan
dropped the Polaroid on the desk and handed Hale
a set of pictures.
"Not too good, I'm afraid," he said. "We
found the tracks, but the sun must have deformed their
outline."
Hale tossed the photographs on the table.
"Not good at all. This is the kind of evidence
skeptics love to ridicule."
Eliza picked up several of the snaps. One was a
distant shot showing a line of footprints in the snow.
The others were close-ups of several individual
prints with a measuring tape beside them. They were merely
depressions in the snow without detail. They might have
been anything.
"They were clearer when I saw them," she said.
"I'm sure, but that doesn't help us any now,
does it," Hale said, struggling with his frustration.
Allan picked up the lamen and rod and examined
them.
"Interesting. Mohan's been telling me about your
chest. Is it Brannon's magical box?"
"So it appears. I want you to watch this video.
I've just played it for the rest, but it's worth seeing
twice."
They sat in silence while the tape played to the end
uninterrupted. Then they discussed the theory of the
black room.
"There are ways of binding a hostile entity,"
Allan said. "But usually it's easier just to send it
away."
"Maybe Brannon wasn't strong enough to banish
it," Eliza suggested. "He was old."
"Or perhaps he did not wish to," said Mohan.
"We'll never find out this way." Hale stood
decisively. "Mohan and I have located the
entrance to the black room. I propose that we open
and enter it. Any objections?"
No one spoke.
"Fair enough. Let's get to work."
As they moved through the front hall Eliza noticed
Allan lagging behind. She watched him from the corner of
her eye and saw him slip aside into the entrance to the
rear corridor. The others, who were listening to Hale
as they followed him up the staircase, had their
attention directed forward. Quietly Eliza
backed down the stairs and went after the theurgist.
He stood just out of sight around the edge of the passage
door. She watched him tip from a small vial
into his palm two brightly-colored pills.
Lifting his hand to his mouth, he leaned back his head
and closed his eyes as he swallowed them.
"Allan, are you sick?"
He jumped and stared at her, then grinned
crookedly.
"No, but these are good for what ails you.
Care to try one?"
She waved aside the proffered vial. Capping it,
he put it into the pocket of his jeans.
"We can't keep secrets from you, can we, Eliza?
I expect that's why Hale asked you along."
"I noticed you were acting differently from yesterday, but
I never suspected drugs."
He pushed himself away from the wall with his shoulder.
"The kind of magic I work requires large
amounts of animal energy. It's not uncommon for
goetic magicians to take stimulants."
"What were those pills
-
some kind of upper?"
"More or less."
They began to walk slowly toward the stairs after the
rest of the group.
"Have you taken others?"
"Mescaline, cocaine, heroine, LSD
-
should I go on?"
"But why?" she asked angrily. "You don't need
them."
"How could I know that until I tried them?"
"You're killing yourself."
He looked at her quizzically, as though wondering
how to answer.
He thinks I'm a prude, Eliza thought. But he
doesn't want to injure my feelings.
"The acknowledged span of a man's existence is
three score and ten," he said. "Drugs may cut
twenty years off my life. The way I see it,
that leaves me with about thirty more good years."
"Not if you injure your mind."
He shrugged his thin shoulders.
"I'm already half mad. When I go over the edge it
will be a relief."
She took him by the sleeve of his sweater and stopped
him at the foot of the stairs.
"That's why you came to Haven, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You want to see how close to the edge you can push
yourself."
A wild light danced in his dark eyes and he
smiled in self-mockery.
"I need to grasp the beast by its throat and bare its
face to the sun."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I."
"Maybe if you talked to Lee
-"
He shook his head.
"Lee is a good man. Straight as a die. When
he says something you never have to wonder what he's
thinking. But this is a matter I have to deal with alone."
"Does Professor Hale know?"
"He probably suspects, but we haven't
discussed it."
They ascended the sweeping marble staircase in
silence.
"I'd rather you didn't tell Hale," Allan said
as they reached the landing. "It might precipitate an
unnecessary confrontation."
Eliza felt the hard edge of arrogance and
determination behind his words and knew it would be futile
to inform Hale.
"All right." She touched his arm. "Allan, please
be careful."
He smiled and patted her hand.
"Come on, you two," Amber called impatiently
from the end of the east wing. "You're holding up the show."
Quickening their pace, they followed her down the length
of the corridor and climbed the steep staircase to the
third level. It was the first time Eliza had seen
it. On either side of a dark, narrow
central hallway were small rooms with sloped
ceilings and dormer windows. Eliza glanced into the
first room on the left. It contained Hale's
battery-powered short-wave radio, positioned on
a small table under the window. Apart from a single
wooden chair and the table, the floor was empty.
They made their way back toward the center of the house
where the others stood listening to Hale.
"This level was used in Biddingford's time to board the
staff, and even an occasional guest when the hotel was
pressed for space. Before that I'm not
sure what purpose these rooms served. The old
servant quarters are in the other wing. The central
portion of this level contains several windowless rooms
that were evidently used for storage."
He led the group into the shadowy end of the passage, which
branched into a number of storage rooms piled high
with damaged and worn furniture and other junk.
"Because of the high cost of transportation, everything not in
use was either stored or burned," Hale commented.
The refuse of half a century seemed to be
collected together in these dark rooms. Eliza peered
uncertainly through the open doorways at the gloomy
interiors while Hale busied himself lighting a
kerosene lamp. Mohan was occupied with the
video camera. Hale wanted the opening of the black
room preserved on tape.
"Look, a Victorian ball gown," Amber said
with delight.
She stepped into one of the rooms and began to beat the
dust off a yellowed satin gown hanging from a wooden
rack. The smell of age enveloped them.
"It's Edwardian," said Allan, following her.
"So who asked you?" Amber retorted. "I wonder
if it would fit me?"
She pulled out the sleeve to measure against her arm
and the rotten stitches parted, leaving a gaping hole.
Disappointed, she let the fabric fall.
"This side, people." The voice of Professor
Hale drifted in to them. "The black room is on
the north."
They wandered back into the passage. Eliza noticed
Mary in one of the doorways looking with an odd
intensity at the jumbled contents of the room beyond. She
scanned the emotions of the other woman and was relieved
to find no apprehension.
"What are you looking at?" she asked.
Mary gestured into the storeroom.
"Am I imagining things, Eliza, or is that
furniture smaller than it ought to be?
Look at that little chair."
Eliza looked over her shoulder at the furniture
stacked nearest the door. There were numerous chairs
visible, several bed frames, and a table lying on its
side. The furniture did seem too small
to be of practical use.
"Maybe it's doll furniture. Or maybe it
was intended for children."
"I'll bet that's the answer," Mary said. "There
must have been a nursery where the guests could leave their
kids when they went off hunting and sailing."
She stepped into the room and laid her hand on one of the
stacked chairs.
"It's so cute
-" Her face became gray and vacant. She
snatched her hand away.
"Mary, what's wrong?"
Eliza grabbed the other woman to keep her from
falling.
"I'll be all right," she said weakly. "I
wasn't ready for it, is all. Let me catch my
breath."
"What's going on?" Hale entered the room,
followed by Lee
and Mohan.
Eliza described the incident.
"There was a sickness in the chair," Mary told him.
"Sickness and death. I wasn't expecting it
- not in a chair made for children."
"Do you want to go downstairs?"
"Goodness, no, leave me be. I'm fine."
Mohan and Hale helped her out of the room over her
flustered protests. Lee remained beside Eliza.
They were momentarily alone. Eliza fingered a broad
strap that hung from an upturned bed frame, her
back to him.
"I noticed this miniature furniture myself,"
Lee said. "Strange."
"What is?"
"I can't understand where it came from. No Edwardian
resort hotel would cater to the whims of children
by providing them with special furniture. In those
days children were expected to mould themselves into the adult
world."
"The furniture must have come from the time when Haven was
still a private home," she suggested.
"That's even less likely. Brannon only had
one son. There's enough furniture here for a dozen
children."
They followed the reverberating voice of
Hale to a larger room with some empty floor
space. It was also windowless. The kerosene lamp on
a table cast a pale yellow glow.
"Don't worry about the camera," Hale said
to Mohan as they entered. "It adapts itself to low
light."
He turned to Lee and Eliza, his ruddy face
shining with enthusiasm.
"Mohan and I spent the entire morning clearing the
junk away from this wall. It's a good thing George
Three-Rivers was explicit in his directions or
I might never have found the entrance to the black room,
even knowing of its existence. It was completely
hidden."
He picked up a crowbar and began to pry at one
of a series of wide boards nailed from floor
to ceiling horizontally across the wall. The rusty
nails shrieked as they broke loose and began
to pull out. Mohan crouched and moved around to get the
best angle for the camera.
"I must be
standing exactly where Bidding
ford stood on that fateful day in April long ago
when in a frenzy of greed he pried at the door that
lies concealed behind these planks," he said
into the lens.
The board came loose and fell with a resonate
clatter to the floor. Lee cleared it away from
Hale's feet. It was at least sixteen inches
wide, cut from the tree of a bygone era.
"I see something," Allan said.
He picked up the lamp and brought it closer. Through
the gap in the boards a door was visible. Its jamb
showed gouge marks and ragged splinters. An
intricate geometric pattern of painted black
and silver lines about the size of a human face
adorned its surface. The design had a
vaguely sinister appearance. It reminded Eliza
of a black spider sitting in the center of a silver
web, although it was too
abstract to actually depict anything. Peering at it
over Allan's shoulder, she
found herself shivering.
"Stand back," Hale said, wiping sweat from his
forehead with the back of his wrist.
He attacked the remaining boards through the opening and in
a few minutes cleared the door. Apart from the
symbol, its panels were unpainted. It lacked a
latch or knob of any kind.
"We may never know what drove him on,"
he continued, his voice charged with theatrical
excitement. Clearly he was enjoying himself hugely.
"Was it only the chimera of some hidden treasure,
or did the entity encoffined behind this portal in some
subtle way direct his emotions? Whatever the
truth, he forced his bar into this crack, even as I am
doing, and with one wrench
- the thing was free!"
The splintering crack of the door as it sprang
outward under the prying steel made them all flinch
back reflexively. The door banged to a stop
against the wall and stood gaping, utter blackness beyond
it. From some far part of the house came an answering
echo. Then there was silence except for the labored
breathing of Hale. He tossed down the crowbar with a
ringing clang.
"Nothing," he said. "Did you expect differently?
You shouldn't have. Don't you see? It's still free.
When Biddingford ordered this room boarded up he
locked the creature, whatever it is, on the
outside."
A draft stirred the flame of the lamp and made it
flutter. Instead of diminishing, it strength
ened.
Eliza saw Amber's long reddish hair
ripple across her face as the other woman clawed
at it. Allan bent almost double over the lamp
to shield it with his body, cupping his hand around the top
of the shade. Dust whipped up from the floor and
gritted their eyes.
"It must have a sense of nostalgia," Hale said
loudly. "It came back to look at its old
room."
Even as he spoke the draft died away. Eliza
thought she heard a soft gibbering chatter as the air
stilled, but it was so faint she said nothing.
Hale blew out an exclamation of breath.
"Well! No doubt about that manifestation."
"We still have no physical proof," Mohan
reminded him. "The skeptics
-"
"Damn the skeptics," said Hale. He rubbed his
hands briskly. "Let's go in and take a look."
Allan followed quickly after him through the door with the
lamp. The rest went in more slowly, Lee bringing up
the rear with a protective hand on Eliza's
shoulder.
The black sides of the room seemed to swallow the
lamplight whole. It was like being inside the belly
of a whale. They spread out from one another,
the lamp liming the edges of their bodies.
Tentative hands reached out through the blackness for
walls which could be felt but not seen.
"No wonder they decided it couldn't be used for a
storeroom," Amber said. "Imagine trying to find
anything in here."
Hale took the lamp from Allan and carried it
back and forth across the flat-black enameled floor,
bending low in search of some trace. The floor was
absolutely empty. Straightening, he went to the
wall.
"Come here and look," he said in a moment,
excitement catching in his voice.
They clustered about him. He traced with his finger a thin
line of silver that wound around the room. Reaching the
gap of the doorway, he shut the door. The silver
continued across it, no wider than the span of a fine
artist's brush.
"This is metallic silver, not paint," he said.
"Lee, notice that it runs around the room at
roughly heart level."
"A circle of containment," said Lee.
"It must be. Biddingford broke it when he opened the
door. The pentacle on the door wasn't
designed to keep the entity in. It was a
warning to stay out. This was holding it. Only this."
Allan started to chuckle, and then to laugh. Once
started he could not stop. The tension in the air made the
laughter infectious. Mary giggled. Even Hale
smiled weakly.
"What's so funny?" he said.
With an effort of will Allan sobered himself.
"I was thinking," he said. "We were afraid to come in
here, but this is probably the only safe room in the
house."
"You're right," said Hale. "Now that it's shown itself
to us it may feel compelled to attack. But this is one
room I think we can safely assume it will never
enter."
"Do you think the barrier would still hold it, if we could
lure it back into this room?" said Mohan.
"Perhaps," Hale said. "But we don't want
to imprison it. That was Brannon's mistake. This
thing is evil. It must be destroyed."
That's been his purpose from the beginning, Eliza
realized. It's never been his intention merely to study
the entity, but to exterminate it. To him we're only
tools to achieve that end.
"This is the place I saw," Mary said suddenly.
"When I held the pendant."
"Lamen," Hale corrected. "Are you sure?"
"There were marks in the floor that aren't here now, but the
atmosphere is the same. I'm sure this is the
room."
"This must b
e the ritual chamber where Bran
non and his friends practiced their magic. It makes
sense. I wonder how they got in here without alerting
the servants?"
"They were likely accomplices," Allan said.
"Yes. Let's go down." Hale turned his watch
to the lamp. "It's nearly four o'clock. We can have either
a late lunch or an early dinner."
"Thank God
-
I'm starved," said Amber.
"After we eat we'll get down to the really serious
work. We have to find out what's behind all this, and quickly.
Our time is running out. With every day that passes this thing
gets stronger. Since there are apparently no
physical records, we'll have to pursue our
inquiries from a different angle."
"A s
`e
ance?" Mary asked, a drop of fear in
her voice.
"Yes Mary, and I'm afraid you'll have to carry the
main burden of the work, as well as the danger."
They left the door to the black room open and went
down to the kitchen, where Mary set about happily
preparing a meal. The cooking chores seemed
to drive the apprehension from her mind. Eliza and
Mohan offered to help but she fussily waved them
off.
"There can't be two cooks in one kitchen," she said.
"It's against nature."
Hale got up from the table and wandered restlessly into the
passage. Eliza sensed his growing unease but said
nothing. After a while she heard a low whistle from
somewhere in the front of the house. Amber was joking with
Allan. Both stopped to listen. Eliza caught
Lee's gaze across the table.
"Where's Luther?" she said.
Hale came back with a troubled look on his
bluff, solid face.
"The dog doesn't seem to be in the house. I
wonder if you'd mind helping me look for him before
we eat. He's probably got himself locked in
one of the rooms."
Eliza remembered the fate of the horses
and shivered. Hale cared more for the mastiff than he would
admit.
They searched the house from top to bottom with no sign
of the dog. Then abruptly Mohan gave a shout that
brought them all running. He was in a small room
in the west wing on the ground floor, just beyond the
ballroom. When they arrived he showed them what he
had discovered. Two panes of glass were shattered
outward from one of the
windows, as though a heavy body had hurtled through.
Eliza recalled the echo she had heard when the
door to the black room banged open. Or had it
been an echo?
Hale leaned out the opening and studied the snow beneath the
window. He drew in silently. Eliza looked.
In the fading twilight she saw drops of scarlet
on the white snow, and a line of prints leading around the
edge of the house toward the rear lawn.
They're Luther's tracks," Hale said to her
mute question. "He must have seen something through the window and
chased it."
"We will go after him," Mohan said gently.
"No." Hale turned his back on the window.
"It's nearly dark. Luther will have to take his chances.
Lee, do you think you could patch this window?"
"I'll close the storm shutters," Lee said.
"Fine. Let's eat, the rest of us. We'll need
our strength for tonight."

Eliza picked at her expandable watch strap and
pulled it out, letting it snap back against her
wrist. She realized that she was making a red spot
on her skin and folded her hands together on the conference
table, determined not to fidget. It was after eight
o'clock. The tension in the gathering room had increased
unbearably. She tried to cut herself off from the
emotional turmoil of the others but could not.
They sat silent and apart. Hale and Allan had
gone out to prepare the s
`e
ance. Mohan was at the desk reading, or
pretending to read, some of the background material on
Haven. Amber lounged with her boots off and her
feet up on the couch, shaping her long nails with an
emery board. Mary sat in a chair with her hands
pressed between her knees staring at the fire. From time
to time her lips moved in silent prayer.
Only Lee gave any sign of maintaining an
internal balance, and even in his tightly controlled
mind Eliza felt a growing anticipation,
as though he were preparing himself for an ordeal.
"Would you please stop that scratching?" Eliza said in
irritation. "It's driving me crazy."
Amber looked at her a moment, then shrugged and
slid the emery board back into her stylish
snakeskin purse. She took out a sealed pack of
cigarettes and toyed with it meditatively without
opening it.
Luther had not returned. Hale had followed the
track of the mastiff as far as the edge of the woods.
The track led behind the stable in the general direction
of the stone quarry. They had eaten with little conversation,
taking turns calling the dog from the back door.
Somehow the unexplained behavior of the mastiff
transformed what had before been partly a game
into something more serious.
Hale entered the gathering room and rummaged in one
of the cardboard boxes for a fresh video cassette,
which he inserted into the camera. He exchanged its
partially-depleted battery pack for one that was fully
charged.
"We're ready," he said, excitement in his
voice. "Follow me, everyone."
They emerged into the front hall. Beneath the crystal
chandelier five wooden chairs formed a ring
facing inward with a sixth at their center. A double
circle of white chalk on the flagstone floor
surrounded the chairs at a distance of several feet.
The chalk lines ran about six inches apart, and between
them words were written in a script Eliza did not
recognize. Around the circles a large chalk
square
had been drawn. Four kerosene lamps sat
burning at its corners. Undecipherable words were
written in the angles of the square.
A fire burned in the great stone fireplace in the
south wall beneath the second-level balcony. Its
dancing flames took the chill off the air. The
firelight reflecting from the tiles on the hearth
gave the mounted stag head an unnatural animation
and sent the shadows of its antlers sliding like long
black fingers across the walls and ceiling.
"Enter the circle through the gap in the west and take
your seats," Hale said. "Leave the seat at the
south vacant. Amber and Eliza, sit on either
side of the empty chair, please."
Without prompting Mary took the chair in the center,
which faced the fireplace. Eliza sat on her right
side and Amber on her left. Lee and Mohan
sat in the chairs behind Mary. Hale fixed
the video camera to a tripod next to the hearth where
it would record the s
`e
ance and turned it on. He entered the circle and
sat in the chair to the south facing Mary. Their knees
nearly touched.
"Join hands," he said. "And if you value your
sanity, don't let go until I tell you."
Eliza took Lee's responsive fingers in her
left hand and the rougher fingers of Hale in her right.
She sent a glance of encouragement to Mary, who
answered with a weak smile.
Allan emerged from the dark entrance of the back
passage and crossed in front of the fire. He
wore a black pullover sweater and black jeans.
In his left hand he carried a small crystal
bottle and in
his right a smoking brass censor on a triple
chain. Pungent incense filled the air.
"Allan will control the s
`e
ance and erect barriers of protection," Hale
murmured.
Allan moved with slow grace, his face strangely
distant. He seemed to be in some form of
trance. He entered the double circle through the gap, then
set the censor and the crystal bottle on the
flagstones in the south and used a piece of chalk
to join the lines after him. Returning to the south, he
extended his right index finger outward and walked once
around the chairs clockwise.
"Once seals," he said in a startlingly sonorous
voice.
Picking up the smoking censor he repeated the
circuit.
"Twice sears."
He exchanged the censor for the crystal bottle,
opened it and sprinkled its contents outward as he
made yet a third circumambulation.
"Thrice purges."
He approached close behind the chair of Hale and
spread his arms. The fire at his back cast his
shadow across their upturned faces. His own countenance
remained obscure.
"Bornless One, Lord of Earth and Heaven, First and
Last, Beginning and End, Alpha and Omega, Thou
who art God of gods and Ruler of men, before Whom
the stars tremble, within Whom the seas ebb and flow
-
hear us! Extend Thy infinite mercy upon
the task we are about to perform. Into Thy boundless
grace we entrust our souls."
He dropped his arms and bowed his head, then began
to speak in a lower tone guttural sounds Eliza
took to be words but could not recognize. Several of the
words he repeated more than once. She felt a
chill and shivered. Lee's hand tightened on hers.
She reassured him with a slight return of
pressure.
Allan raised his head and pointed his index finger
directly at Mary, who stared at it stricken with
wide eyes, like a bird before a snake.
"Dweller in Darkness, by these words of power I give
you leave to speak with the tongue of this woman and tell us
why you are bound to this place of earth."
He began to utter a series of harsh names while
walking slowly around the chairs inside the circle,
his left hand raised straight overhead, his right
directed unwaveringly at Mary. Eliza lost
count of the number of times he walked behind her. She
began to feel dizzy, and a sickness rose from the pit
of her stomach. She seemed suspended in darkness,
her only contact with reality the pressure on her
hands. She became conscious of a rushing overhead, like
the sound of great wings.
Mary trembled violently. Her eyes rolled
back in her head so that only the whites showed and her
stuttering mouth flecked with spittle. She emitted
animal noises. It seemed impossible such sounds
could issue from a human throat. Eliza felt the
pain and terror of the other woman fountain up from a
deep fissure in the darkness of her mind. With sudden
clarity she realized that when the flow of terror reached
the surface Mary would go mad.
"You'll kill her!" she cried. She fought to free
herself from the grasping hands on either side.
Allan fixed his dark eyes momentarily upon her.
Eliza felt her body go limp. An invisible
hand pressed over her lips. She could not speak or
resist. She was forced to watch and experience the events
unfolding before her.
Standing behind Hale, Allan raised his hands to heaven.
"Speak!"
Mary stopped trembling. Her fleshy body sank
in upon itself and she shrank visibly in her chair.
Abruptly the terror inside her was gone. A
murmur passed between her lips.
"Name yourself," Allan commanded.
"Jen
ny." It was the voice of a little girl.
"Jenny, are you the master of this house?"
Silence. Allan repeated the question.
"No," the voice said.
"Is the master here now?"
Hesitantly
com8allyes."
"What is the master's name?"
Mary sat motionless, eyes staring sightlessly into the
shadows. Allan repeated the question but got no
response.
"Jenny, do you know the name?"
"Yes."
"Why won't you tell us?"
There was a long pause.
"Afraid
-
of him."
"I can protect you," Allan said. "There's no
need to fear.
Tell us his name."
Mary shuddered. A new expression molded her
features. Her head hung forward and her tongue
lolled in the corner of her open mouth. It was the
face of an idiot.
"Jenny, can you hear me?"
Mary sat as though deaf.
"Who are you?" Allan said. "Speak
-
I order you!"
"Bo-Bo," said a slurred male voice.
"How old are you, Bo-Bo?"
""leven
-
and a half."
"How did you die?"
"Not dead
-"
"You are dead. Remember your death."
Mary's face twisted with mingled pain and confusion.
"Knife
-
he said it wouldn't hurt."
"Who? The master?"
The confusion intensified.
"Yes."
"Was it Brannon, Bo-Bo?" Allan
pressed. "Is Brannon the master?"
"Yes, Bran
non. He hurts us
-"
Mary jerked taunt in her chair, her back arching.
She screamed and thrashed her head from side to side.
"Mary!"
Allan spread the fingers of his right hand in the air
over her head. The ring on his index finger sent forth
flashing spears of ruby light that seemed
to Eliza's dazzled senses to strike and penetrate
into the forehead of the entranced channeler.
Mary straightened in her chair and put her hands on
her knees. A cunning expression narrowed her
eyes and quirked the corners of her mouth. She
looked slowly around, studying them.
"Spirit, what is your name?"
"Won't tell," it said in a high male voice.
"Speak! I command you!"
It looked at Allan with contempt.
"You can't make me."
"Do you mean us harm?"
A smile crept across Mary's lips.
"Maybe."
"Are you Daniel P. Brannon?"
It laughed.
A chill went through Eliza. It was the same
laughter she had heard on the lawn yesterday.
"How many of you are there?"
It toyed with its fingers for a few minutes as though
considering whether to answer.
"Two," it said at last.
"You're lying. Speak the truth."
Slowly it raised its head and looked at Allan
with glittering malignancy. Its face was utterly
altered.
"You don't know anything, murderer," it said in a
deep guttural voice. "We're going to play a
game, and when we finish you'll be dead."
Allan pointed at the spot between Mary's
eyebrows.
"Speak the truth or I'll burn you with fire."
"We are one, and we are two, and we're too much
for the likes of you," it sang, once more using its child's
voice.
"How old are you?"
"Thirteen."
"How did you die?"
"Better than you."
"Why are there so many children here?"
"They're locked in and can't get out."
"You got out."
"I'm cleverer than the rest."
"And stronger?"
Again the voice deepened.
"Much stronger."
"Was it you who started the fire in the ballroom?"
It leaned back and looked at the ceiling, sly
pleasure stealing across its face.
"You should have heard them scream and run about.
Squawk! Squawk!" It flapped its arms. "Like
chickens with their tails alight."
"Why don't you go away? You don't belong here."
It stared at Allan with brooding anger.
"Can't," it said in its child voice, and its deeper
voice repeated, "Can't. We're bound."
"You escaped the black room. Brannon can't
hold you any longer."
"Not by Brannon."
"What binds you to this place, if not Brannon?"
It looked steadily at him.
"Each other," it said.
Abruptly the door to the east wing slammed shut with a
thunderous
boom.
"No escape for you," it said in its two voices
together.
Allan ignored the sound of the door.
"Why did Brannon imprison you?"
"He needed us."
"For what?"
"Murder," it said, caressing the word with its lips.
"Who did you kill?"
"Many men."
"Why?"
It was silent.
"What power did Brannon hold over you?"
Again it refused to reply. It twisted in its chair
as though seeking escape, turning its leering face
to each of them around the circle.
"Who are you?" Allan demanded.
"The fires of hell!"
A great roaring issued from the mouth of the fireplace,
and a yellow ribbon of flame slid serpent-like through the
air and twined itself around them. As it continued to wind
over and over its own length, it thickened. The air
outside the boundary of the circle was filled with heat and
light.
"Hold your places!" Hale cried.
The whirling flame formed a solid wall and pressed
in upon them. Eliza squeezed her eyes shut against
the blinding brightness and gulped the searing air. The skin
on her back crackled. A smell of burning
flesh filled her nostrils. She blinked
back tears of pain and looked at Hale for
guidance.
Hale was staring at Mary as though mesmerized. Some
strange transformation had come upon her. Fire
wreathed her head and her eyes blazed like twin stars.
Through the shimmering waves of heat her face enlarged and
distorted, becoming bestial.
The house is burning, Eliza thought calmly.
We're all going to die. They'll find our
bodies in the ashes. Will mamma weep when the
doctors at the institution tell her? If she's
having one of her bad days, will she even understand?
Numbness settled over her emotions and soothed them.
She no longer felt pain. The roaring of the flames
receded and her awareness drifted apart from her body.
She looked down and saw herself and the others straining
forward in their chairs, their hands still joined, faces
wide with fear. She could see everyone at once from every
angle, as though she were a million places at the
same instant. Strangely, she could not see the
fire.
She watched Allan turn and face the edge of the
circle as though confronting some invisible menace.
Shouting barbarous words, he tore the heavy silver
ring from his finger and cast it out through the barrier.
A flash of pure white light stunned her senses.
Eliza opened her eyes. Hands were raising her
upright in her chair. She saw Mary lying as though
dead on the floor at her feet and reached down
to help her.
"Let me," Hale said. "You're too weak."
He crouched and cradled the head of the unconscious
woman in his hands while Mohan knelt over her
chaffing her hand anxiously.
"Poor little Mary," Mohan muttered in distress.
She groaned and struggled feebly, then relaxed and
opened her eyes.
"It was bad," she whispered. "I knew it would
be."
Eliza looked around in wonder. There was no trace
of the curtain of flame. Everything was as before. The
fire still burned on the hearth. The lamps still
flickered in the corners of the chalk square. Only
the members of the group had changed. They were drenched in
sweat and trembling with fatigue. She realized with a
start of surprise that she was in exactly the same
condition.
Allan supported himself on the back of Hale's
chair. His blanched face bore a haggard look.
"No one leave the circle," he said.
"Not until I exorcise the room."
He walked once around the circle
counterclockwise with his finger pointing outward,
muttering words in an unknown tongue. Returning to the
south, he flung wide his arms in a gesture of
banishment.
"All spirits drawn to this circle, depart! In the name
of the Bornless One I exorcise and compel thee!"
He clapped his hands four times sharply together, then
paused with his head cocked as though listening. He
relaxed slowly.
"It's safe to step out."
When Mary began to recover, Allan helped
Hale lift her into a chair and Mohan ran to get
a
damp cloth from the kitchen. He returned and
tenderly wiped her face and neck.
"You will be all right," he told her gently. "No,
do not try to stand up yet."
"I hope you learned something, Professor," Mary
said with a wan smile.
"A great deal." Hale looked around at the others.
"I want everyone to record their impressions.
Everything you saw, heard, felt, smelled, tasted
or imagined. We'll correlate tomorrow."
Allan walked over and picked up his ring from where it
had fallen. He turned it over and examined it.
"If I hadn't interrupted the circuit of the flow
with this, I don't know what would have happened," he
told Hale.
"How did you know what to do?" Lee asked.
Allan shrugged.
"Something touched me. I can't explain it. I felt
an inner direction."
"Write it down," Hale said wearily. "We
wanted phenomena. Tonight we got phenomena."
"I'm not so sure," said Lee.
"How do you mean?"
"Look around." He gestured across the hall. "No
damage. Nothing is even disturbed."
"I thought my hair was on fire," Amber said
to Eliza. She stroked it and lifted it from her
shoulder. "Look, it's not even singed."
"I see what you mean," Hale said to Lee. "It
was merely an illusion to test our nerve. As the
entity said, it was playing with us."
"But the game is deadly. If one of us had run
outside the circle
-"
Hale went over to shut off the video
camera.
"If the fire existed we'll see it when we play
this tape."
A distant wailing howl froze him motionless. They
listened until it ended, staring from one to another.
"What is it?" Amber whispered. "A wolf?"
Hale switched off the camera and methodically
unhooked it from the tripod.
"It's Luther," he said.

"I've gone over your accounts of last night
,
his
Hale said, dropping a pile of papers on the
table. "It seems a divergence exists between what we
experienced and what actually took place."
They sat around the conference table in the gathering room.
It was early afternoon of Christmas day. Shadowless
gray light flooded through the tall windows from an
overcast sky.
"I want you to look at the tape I made of the s
`e
ance."
He pressed the playback switch on the camera and
they watched the small television screen
while their own recorded voices, first tense and
later shrill, filled the room. When it was over he
turned the machine off.
"Any comments?"
Eliza took a deep breath and tried to still the
tremble in her hands by pressing them flat on the table.
The tape had revived the emotions of the other night.
They buffeted against her mind like storm winds.
"There was no trace of the fire," she said, speaking
for the rest.
"Exactly," Hale said. "Lee's intuition was
correct. The fire was a psychic event."
"But we heard the voices of the spirits," said Amber.
"Because they came from Mary's vocal apparatus. But
notice that the changes in her features several of you
reported seeing toward the end of the experiment were not
recorded by the camera."
He got up and went to the chalkboard, dragging it
farther away from the tree so that he could walk around it.
He drew a thick chalk line down its center.
"Let's run through the things we know about the
supernatural events at Haven." He waved the
chalk. "Anyone?"
"There's more than one entity," Amber said.
"Four that we know." Hale began to write
on the left side of the board. "Jenny. Bo-Bo.
And two others who appear to be linked in some way."
"Three of the voices were childlike," Lee said.
"How would you characterize the fourth?"
"Bestial. Inhuman."
"The double entity appears to be the source of the
events," said Allan.
"The primary source, at least," Hale agreed.
"Anything else?"
"It is capable of some physical phenomena," said
Mohan in his soft flowing accent. "There were the
footprints seen by Eliza. And the statement
by George Three-Rivers that something tried to drown
Mrs. Biddingford in her bath."
"And its physical strength may increase toward the
end of the year," added Hale, jotting the points
down.
"It has an affinity for fire," said Eliza.
"Its hair and eyes were burning. It threatened us with
flame, and it caused the fire in the west wing."
Hale wrote "Salamander" and put a question mark after
it.
"A Salamander is the name for a fire elemental,"
Lee murmured to Eliza, who was seated beside him.
"It's evil," Mary said in a low
voice. "It intends to kill us."
"It has power over animals," Allan said.
Hale noted this without speaking. He had spent part
of the morning walking through the woods calling Luther.
The erratic, winding track of the mastiff through the snow
suggested that it had run mad.
"We can surmise that this entity was called into being
by Daniel P. Brannon for purposes unknown,
imprisoned in the black room for nearly half a
century, then released inadvertently by Biddingford,"
Lee offered.
"And that Brannon was part of some cult or secret
society," said Amber.
"That Brannon was a skilled theurgist," said
Allan.
"Anything more?"
They were silent.
"All right," said Hale after a few moments.
"Let's list those things we don't know. What are
our
major questions?"
"What is it?" said Allan.
Hale wrote "nameggs)
-
nature" on
the
right side of the chalkboard.
"What does it want?" said Mary.
Hale wrote "purpose."
"Why was it called into manifestation?" Lee said.
"And why does it get more aggressive and violent
toward the end of the year?"
Hale continued jotting.
"For what reason does it remain at Haven?" said
Mohan.
"When will it be strong enough
to
kill us?" Allan said quietly.
Hale looked at him a moment, then wrote
"strength."
"Is that it?"
"When do we open our presents?" said Amber.
Laughter diffused the tension. Eliza looked at the
small pile of packages that lay under the boughs of the
crudely decorated tree. Some had been there when
she came down for breakfast, and the pile had quickly
grown in the early hours of the morning. She had
selected six of her personal possessions and
wrapped them in plain notepaper, adding them to the
rest. It was the first time anyone had mentioned
the presents.
"Let's wait until after dinner," said Hale with a
smile. "I understand Mary has something special
planned."
Mary blushed and dropped her eyes. Eliza felt
the inner glow of pleasure in the other woman.
She suspected that Mary had been the first to plant
gifts under the tree.
"I also have a little secret I've been saving for
tonight," Allan said mysteriously.
"What is it?" asked Amber.
"You'll find out with the rest, my lovely little witch."
A distant scraping and banging stopped further
conversation. They listened silently for several moments.
"It's coming from the back door," said Lee.
The banging was followed by a series of deep barks.
"It's Luther," Hale said.
He ran out of the room, knocking over the chalkboard
easel in his haste.
"Professor, be careful!" Lee called after him.
Eliza followed Lee across the flagstones of the
front hall with the others close on her heels.
She rounded the entrance to the rear passageway just in
time to see Hale unbolt and open the outer door.
"Wait
-" Lee shouted.
The door burst inward with tremendous force and
knocked Hale onto his back. The great body of the
mastiff landed on top of him. Eliza parted her
lips to scream.
"Good dog, good dog
,
his
Hale said, laughing.
The long tongue of the animal laved his face and hands
and its tail beat against his shins. He pushed it off his
chest and stood up to brush the snow from his sweater, then
led the panting dog by its broad leather collar into the
kitchen.
Eliza could not help laughing at Lee's reaction.
He glanced at her ruefully as the others pressed
past them.
"Oh!" Mary exclaimed. "Look at his poor
paws."
The dog limped as it danced around Hale. Spots
of blood dotted the white ceramic tiles.
Eliza saw that its brick-colored fur was caked
in places with dry blood.
"You've been in a scrap, haven't you, boy,"
Hale said, kneeling to examine the dog's
coat.
"I'll get the first-aid kit," Mary said.
Eliza picked up one of the dog dishes and filled
it with fresh water at the sink. She set it down and
Luther lapped at it greedily.
"I thought he was dead," Hale said, patting the dog
on the side.
"What do you think happened?" said Lee.
"Temporary possession?"
Hale nodded.
"It seems likely. If he'd been chasing something
he would have come back last night. His tracks lead
all over the woods. The poor mutt was almost run
to death."
"It looks as though he was digging," said Eliza.
"Only his front paws are cut."
"Little wonder with this frozen ground," Hale said.
He went to a window and peered out.
"There's a trail of blood in the snow. I'm going
to follow it. Anyone like to go with me?"
They all volunteered.
Hale pulled on rubber overshoes and took from the
rack behind the kitchen door a quilted nylon
jacket of drab olive-green.
"Mary, I want you to look after Luther.
You have to prepare dinner in any case. And Mohan,
I'd like you to stay with her so she won't be left
alone."
Mary nodded and continued to sponge the blood from between the
toes of the dog with a cotton swab.
"I will make sure she is safe," Mohan
promised.
In a short while Eliza found herself following
Hale through the woods, the house lost from sight behind the
trees. It was not as cold as yesterday. The snow
squeezed rather than crunched under her boots. The
shadowless light of the overcast sky made the distant
forested mountains look like an impressionistic
charcoal sketch.
Allan and Amber kept up a running snow fight,
and periodically the others were drawn in. Their shouts
and laughter rang out harshly on the stillness. It was
only when they had walked for some time that Eliza
recognized with a start the direction the bloody
prints were leading.
"They go to the stone quarry," she said.
"If the dog was digging there it's a wonder it can still
walk," said Allan. "It's nothing but broken
granite."
They continued on in silence to the stand of
stunted spruce at the edge of the quarry where Eliza
had nearly fallen.
"Be careful
," she warned. "It's treacherous."
She looked around uneasily. It was just about here that the
thing must have stood watching her. The small hairs on
the back of her neck prickled. She hunched her
shoulders inside her coat.
They pressed through the springy spruce branches and
stepped into the uneven bowl of the quarry.
"Here," said Hale, walking over and crouching.
The snow and rocks were covered with a spatter of red for
several feet around. It looked as though a small
animal had been butchered on the spot.
"This is where Luther was digging. Give me a hand."
Hale began throwing aside the jagged stones. Some were
as small as h
is
fist. Others required the full effort of the three
men to drag and roll aside.
Amber and Eliza dusted off the tops of two
boulders some distance away and sat watching with the rough
face of the cliff at their backs. After a while
Amber folded back the hood of her fur coat and
shook out her auburn hair across her
shoulders. She rummaged in her snakeskin purse
and glanced inquiringly at Eliza.
"Cigarette?"
"I don't smoke."
"Very wise. It's a filthy habit. I'm trying
to quit myself."
She shut the silver clasp of the purse with a
decisive snap.
"Want some chocolate?"
There was a note of uncertainty in her husky
voice. Eliza realized the candy was meant as a
peace offering.
"Sure."
She accepted half of a broken chocolate bar, still
in its wrapper. It was dark with almonds and
raisins. They ate quietly for a time.
"This place gives me the willies," Amber said
at last.
"I know what you mean," Eliza agreed between
nibbles.
"I've got half a mind to pack a suitcase and
start walking down the coast."
"You wouldn't make it. A person needs special
gear to survive in the woods in winter."
"What makes you an authority?"
"I used to live in Saskatoon."
"It is cold there?"
"Oh yes."
Amber balled up her piece of candy wrapper and
threw it over her shoulder against the rock. She gave
a short laugh.
"What's so funny?"
"I usually spend Christmas in Acapulco."
"You're a warm water rat."
"What's that?"
"My father used to say there were warm water rats and
cold water rats."
"And I suppose you're the cold water variety."
"I guess so."
"Which kind is Lee?"
Eliza watched Lee hurl a stone onto a growing
pile.
"I haven't decided."
"I think he's tepid," Amber said. "I neve
r met s
uch a bloodless male in my life."
"You get along all right with Allan."
Amber studied her mildly.
"We're comfortable with each other.
Allan
and I come from the same background."
"What's that?"
"Country clubs. Private riding schools.
Vacations in Europe."
Eliza looked at Allan curiously. He was
wrestling with a stone too heavy for him. His slender
back twisted with effort inside his loose navy pea
jacket, which seemed several sizes too big.
Lee helped him lift the rock from the hole.
"I didn't think he was the country club type."
"I know," Amber said. "But his father is
absolutely stinking rich. The old man disinherited
him when he found out about Allan's occult
activities."
"Just because he studies magic?"
"Not only that." Amber dropped her voice. "I
shouldn't be telling you this, but a couple of years ago
Allan was involved with the authorities in Spain.
Some underage girl died during an occult ritual
he was conducting. The police tried to implicate
him."
"What happened?"
"I'm not sure. Allan wouldn't say. But I
think it still troubles him."
Eliza remembered that during the s
`e
ance the entity had called Allan a murderer. It
had puzzled her at the time. Now she understood. It
attacks us at our weak points, she thought.
"At least he's got a father," Amber said with a
trace of bitterness. "My parents divorced when
I was five. I barely remember my father. My
mother remarried when I was nine. He married her for
money. Every time my mother got drunk he came after
me. For three years it was pure hell. Then I was
sent away to a boarding school in Europe. I
avoid home as much as I can. During the summers
I travel and do a little fashion modeling."
"How did you become a witch?" Eliza asked
to change the subject.
"Through my grandmother," Amber said, smiling at the
memory. "She was a Theosophist and a spirit medium.
She claimed to have known Madam Blavatsky
personally. Once she even met Aleister
Crowley, but she wasn't very impressed. She used
to tell me all about Sarah Wildes, an
ancestral black sheep of the family hanged for
witchcraft at Salem. After my mother remarried,
my step-father wouldn't let me visit her. She's
dead now."
Eliza closed her eyes and tilted her face
toward the sky. The gray light filtered gently through
her lids.
"My father died when I was eighteen. He owned a
small retail business in western Canada. My
mother never got over his death. Gradually she lost
control of her mind, became schizophrenic. She's
in an institution in Toronto. At times she's
almost normal. Other days she doesn't even know
who I am."
"I'm sorry," Amber said.
Eliza shrugged and opened
her
eyes.
"I wonder what Mary and Mohan are doing," she
said in a lighter voice.
"Probably upstairs in one of the beds."
"Amber!"
"Well I think he's sweet on her," Amber
said,
eyes
bright with mischief. "You saw the way he acted when
she fainted after the s
`e
ance."
"That doesn't prove anything."
"No? I've heard about these Hindus. They have
deeply passionate souls."
"I thought he was a Sikh."
"Don't use facts to confuse the issue."
"Sex is all you think about, isn't it?"
"What else is there?"
The digging stopped. Eliza noticed the silence and
turned to look. Lee waved her and Amber over.
They approached the men, who stood looking down into the
shallow hole they had excavated in the loose
rock. When Eliza followed their gaze she saw
peeking from between the jumbled stones the smooth dome of a
human skull. It was lying on its side. One
eye socket and some upper teeth were visible.
"It said it had killed," Allan murmured.
Hale pulled off his green stocking cap and used it
to wipe the sweat from his eyebrows before putting it back
on. He stepped heavily into the trench and worked the
skull loose, holding it up for examination on his
gloved palm.
"I
t's so small," said Amber.
"The skull of a small woman or a child," Hale
s
aid.
"I wonder if there are any others?" Lee looked
at the stones under Hale's boots, then met the
older man's eyes.
"Only one way to find out," said Hale.
They continued to dig, passing up the bones they
uncovered to Eliza and Amber, who paced the rim
of the deepening pit.
B
y the time the light began to fail the men had dug
down to breast level. Nine skulls, all of children,
formed a mound along with numerous other ivory-colored
bones.
"We'd better quit," Hale said at last. He
climbed out with difficulty. "We don't want
to be caught in the woods after dark."
"Shouldn't we take the bones back with us?" asked
Amber.
Hale looked at them and shook his head.
"No. Best to leave them for the Mounties. I'll
contact them when we get back to Regret Cove."
He went into the woods and kicked a small fallen
tree loose from the frost. With the help of Allan and
Lee he propped it upright next to the bones in a
pile of rocks.
"This will mark them," he said, dusting the bark from his
gloves. He squinted at the sky. "It feels like
more snow."
Even as he spoke Eliza saw a tiny crystal
land on the green wool of his cap. It remained there
without melting.
"This is a damnable business," Hale said sadly.
"Worse than I ever imagined."
They were subdued as they followed their trail through the
woods back to Haven. By the time the house reared
into sight above the trees it was snowing heavily through the
twilight gloom.
A pleasant smell of cooking odors greeted them
as they entered the kitchen. Mohan and Mary were both
present. Luther lay by the stove. While they hung
up their coats. Hale described briefly what
had been found in the quarry.
Mary was shocked and frightened. Mohan seemed
strangely unmoved.
"I am not surprised
,
his
he said in a solemn voice. "It fits all too
well t
he information I have uncovered.
his
"What have you found out?" Hale asked.
"Well, you know I have been studying the records of
Haven and its owners searching for clues
this
at might be of use to us."
"Yes, go on."
Mohan took a typed legal-size sheet of
paper from the
k
itchen table.
"Daniel P. Brannon founded a children's
hospital in the year 1896."
"He was a philanthropist," Allan said. "He
founded many charities."
"Yes, but this one is different. I have checked.
All the others had to do with social or cultural
institutions. Libraries. Monuments. Art
galleries. Gymnasiums."
He handed Hale the paper and pointed midway down
the list.
"This is the only one that has to do with sickness or
infirmity, and the only one to concern children."
"What was the name of the hospital?" asked Lee.
"The Brannon Asylum For the Juvenile
Insane."
Hale frowned and passed the paper around.
"I'm not sure I see your point," he said.
"Where is the connection with Haven?"
"That is the point exactly," said Mohan. His
eyes lit with excitement. "It was the miniature
furniture that first made me wonder. I checked
most carefully. All the other charities established
by Brannon have addresses, but there is no address
listed for the Asylum."
Eliza felt a knot form in the pit of her
stomach.
"I still don't understand," said Hale.
"What reason could Brannon have for not wishing the
address of the Asylum widely circulated?" said
Mohan.
Hale stared at him, comprehension at last beginning
to dawn.
"It is because the address of the Asylum and
Brannon's home address were one and the same."
"You mean," Lee said, "Haven was once
-"
"A madhouse for children."

Christmas dinner was made up of a thick
lightly-seasoned cream soup, baked canned ham with
an apricot glazing, baked potatoes, mixed
vegetables, freshly made tea biscuits smothered
in butter, strong tea, and for desert a rich fruit
pudding with a sauce of sweetened cream.
They looked at the pudding as though it were an apparition
from another world when Mary bore it steaming from the oven and
began dividing it into the Victorian china desert
bowls.
"How on earth did you manage to make a pudding out
of our supplies?" Hale asked. "Everything is
canned, dried or powdered."
"We had flour and sugar. Powdered eggs. Canned
milk. Salt. Dried fruit. There's not much
else a smart cook needs," Mary said with a trace
of pride as she ladled out the sauce.
"This is wonderful," said Eliza. "It wouldn't have
seemed like Christmas without a real cooked meal."
"I agree," Allan said expansively.
"Mary, you've taken some of the horror from this
depressing old pile."
There was a general concurrence with his opinion. Mary
blushed but seemed pleased over the attention in her
quiet way.
They left the dishes and pots for Hale
to wash the following morning and went with their lamps into the
gathering room, where a low fire glowed on the
grate. Luther got up from the hearth and came over
to lick the hand of his master. Hale examined the
mastiff as he patted its thick neck.
"He seems stronger," he said to Eliza. "I
think he'll be all right."
"Let's open the presents," Amber said.
"First my surprise," said Allan. He went to a
cardboard box by the desk and pulled from it three
dusty bottles, cradling them carefully in his hands.
"Wine!" said Amber, wide-eyed. "Where on earth
did you get it?"
Allan passed her a bottle and twisted the cork
from one of his own. The seals were already broken. He
began to pour the sparkling golden liquid
into long-stemmed crystal goblets set out on an end
table.
"I was exploring," he said, holding the bottle to the
firelight to gauge the progress of the sediment. "I
happened to go into the cellar. All kinds of junk
down there. I found a box of white wine. It had
been left standing upright and the corks were dry. All but
these three bottles had gone to vinegar." He
smiled. "Naturally I had to test them.
That's why the seals are broken."
"It's perfectly good," Amber said, draining a
glass she had half-filled from her bottle.
The spirits of the group were lifted another notch by the
wine. Eliza felt the flood of emotions from the
others buoy her up. They opened their gifts and
exchanged complements with more sincerity than seemed
possible only a few hours before. The wine
possessed a mysterious energizing power. The shadows
retreated before its clear sparkle. Even Mary
drank several glasses and began to talk and laugh
freely.
"What I don't understand," said Allan, "Is why
Brannon would turn his own house into an
institution."
"We may never know, unless there's some clue at
Haven we haven't uncovered yet," Lee said.
He stretched his sock feet across the low table in
front of the couch toward the fire.
"It's possible," Hale said. "Without roads it
costs a fortune to move anything in or out of Haven,
as I mentioned before. When something comes it usually
stays."
"We should search the house from top to bottom,"
suggested Mohan.
Hale shook his head lazily on the padded back of
his chair and closed his eyes.
"Impractical. It would take weeks to do a
thorough job. Maybe months."
"I don't think this thing, whatever it is
-" Amber began.
"Let's call it our adversary,"
Hale suggested.
"I don't think this adversary has any real power.
Not in a physical sense. If it had it would have
done something before now."
"I agree
,
his
Lee said. "All the phenomena we've experienced
or have read accounts of have been physically minor."
his
The fire in the ballroom," Mary objected.
"A single spark might have started it. The panicking
guests probably knocked over the tree trying
to get out of the way."
Eliza curled her toes at the fire. She had
taken off her boots and sat on the couch beside Lee.
"Even so," she said, "One spark during the night
while we sleep would be enough to finish us."
"That would destroy Haven," Hale said. "I doubt
it wants to do that. Haven is its home, its
refuge, perhaps its prison."
"If only I knew its name," Allan said. "I
might be able to work against it. Bind it. Exorcise
it."
"It's crafty," Lee agreed. "But there may be
a way to find out."
"You have a plan of attack?" said Allan.
"Maybe."
Hale let his hand fall to the leather armrest of his
chair with a loud bang. Luther started and looked at
him.
"Let it wait 'til morning. It's late.
We're all tired, and I suspect a trifle
drunk
-
at least I know I am. Let's go to bed."
They gathered their things and carried their lamps
upstairs, bidding each other good night in the
corridor.
Eliza entered her room and closed the door without
clicking it into place. She dropped her armful of
gifts on the bureau as she passed it, then sat
heavily on the bed and with exaggerated care
placed her lamp on the floor where she would not kick
it over. Her head spun in a pleasant way. She
heard the snow hissing against the window behind her. Even
though Allan had left the gathering room an hour
ago to do the rounds lighting the kerosene heaters, her
room still held a deep chill that made her shiver.
She changed into her strawberry pajamas and took a
trip to the bathroom. The corridor was empty,
all the doors closed. Returning to her room, she
was about to blow out the lamp when a creak from the
floorboards outside her door froze her
motionless in a sitting position on the bed. She
watched with mounting tension the door silently open
inward.
It was Lee. He wore dark pajama bottoms
and a white terry cloth robe with black trim that
hung open to reveal the curling hairs on his naked
chest. His feet were bare. He smiled
apologetically at her expression.
"Sorry I scared you," he whispered, closing the
door after him.
"What do you want?" she said in a low voice. She
was acutely conscious that Amber was only a wall
away.
"The same thing as you, I hope. If
I'm wrong tell me and I'll leave."
She said nothing. The buzz of the wine in her head
made it hard to think. She became aware of his war
mth as he sat on the bed beside
her.
"I wanted to come last night," he said softly,
taking her hand. "But I wasn't sure."
"Are you sure now?"
She did not draw her hand away.
"I'm sure I want you."
He put his arm over her shoulder and drew her
closer. She stood up and faced him.
"This is a bit of a surprise," she said,
flustered. "You were so reserved. Amber even thought
-" She stopped.
He smiled slowly.
"Did she tell you about that?"
Eliza nodded.
"I thought maybe you were celibate
-
you know, under a vow of some kind."
He put his hand over his mouth and fell slowly back
across the mattress, his stomach and sides shaking.
Eliza realized that he was laughing. Indignation bit
her.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, sitting up and wiping
the tears from his eyes. "That's so funny."
"Well what were we supposed to think when you sent her
away?" she said angrily.
"Amber's a beautiful woman, but she's not for
me," he said, looking at her with sudden sincerity.
He reached out and took her two hands.
"Am I?" She began to breath more quickly.
He stood and kissed her on the lips. His hands
slid up her back to embrace her. Trembling,
she broke away.
"What's wrong, Eliza?" he said, puzzled.
She breathed deeply without meeting his eyes, feeling
her color come and go. Her fingers covered her lips.
"I can't," she whispered.
"Why not?" Gently he pulled her hand down and
made her look at him. "Is it me?"
"No, no." How could she explain the apprehension
inside her? He would never understand.
"Tell me."
She felt tears start in her eyes and fought them
away.
"I'm an empath. You don't know what that means.
I feel things deeply, too deeply. Not only
my own emotions but those of other people."
"I assumed you could control it."
"I can most of the time, but not
-" She fought for the words. "Not when it becomes
personal. I feel every suspicion, every reproach,
every anger. And it hurts, Lee, God how it
hurts."
He stroked the soft honey curls of her hair.
"Haven't you ever had a lover?"
"Once. I tried to make it work. It was no good
-
no good for either of us."
"He let you down?"
She nodded.
"I don't blame him. He found someone else.
Someone normal. He didn't have the courage
to tell me straight out, so we dragged on together for a
while. It became terribly bitter at the end."
"It could be different."
"No." She closed her eyes and shook her head.
"I
can't bear that pain again."
She felt his hand slid
e
away from her body. Suddenly she was cold. Opening
her eyes, she saw that he had moved to the
door.
"We'll leave it this way for tonight," he said. "But
I haven't given up."
Eliza could not reply. She watched the door
close behind him. After several seconds she blew out
the lamp and climbed under the chill blankets on the
bed. She cried herself to sleep.
Darkness stretched into darkness around her. Voices
whispered encouraging words. Laughter cascaded in a
distant shower like the song of birds. She walked down
the endless incline of a great invisible spiral. Far
above her, hidden from her sight, the stars twinkled in the
hollow vault of space. She felt utter
freedom. No walls of flesh held her in.
No eyes blinded her. No ears made her deaf
to the music sighing up from below, drawing her deeper
into the loving darkness.
"Will we be in time?" said a fearful voice without
inflection.
"Hurry," said another. "While it wanders, while
it works, we are safe."
"Safe," echoed several voices.
"It will hurt us," said yet another.
"No matter," the first replied. "We must help."
"Help." Like a rustle on an autumn
day.
Eliza felt a pressure grow around her and bear
her down. It was as though she had passed into a
breathless cavern under the roots of a mountain. A
vastness of earth oppressed her heart. She
could no longer walk but crawled through the midnight
void without hands or feet. No question arose within her
mind. She was as passive and accepting as a child
rocked in its mother's arms. She felt only a
quiet sense of wonder.
"She has it. She takes it up," the third
voice exulted.
"Quickly, guide her back before it sees," said the
second.
"It returns, it watches," said the first in alarm.
"Too late, too late," they sighed in chorus like
the wind in the trees.
Eliza felt herself rise weightless through space,
returning upward toward the glittering stars. In her
arms she clutched something square and hard. As she
neared the surface rude fingers tried to tear it
away from her grasp, but she held on and fought
furiously. Eventually the fingers withdrew and she
knew she had won a victory, though what kind or
how great she could not imagine. Her mind
broke the mirror of darkness like the head of a swimmer
rising for breath.
"Eliza, wake up."
She opened her eyes.
Lee was leaning over the bed with a look of concern, his
hand on her shoulder.
"What is it?" she murmured. "What's wrong?"
Blinking owlishly, she realized it was morning. The
chill gray light from the window showed him already
dressed in a denim shirt and jeans.
"It's Mary," he said with a hollow voice.
She sensed his emotions
and grabbed his
arms.
"Is she hurt?"
"She's dead."
Eliza sat up slowly.
Her feelings drained
away and left her numb.
"I'll get dressed."
"Amber found her," Lee said. "She was in her
room on the bed."
Eliza took off her pajamas and mechanically
put on a yellow shirt and her rust-colored
corduroy slacks, unconscious that she
was making herself nearly naked before Lee. She moved
in a daze. Mary had been so cheerful the night before.
It was impossible to comprehend.
"What's this?" asked Lee.
He picked up a flat black book from the
quilted coverlet of the bed and held it toward her.
She looked at it.
his
I
don't know."
Flickers of her dream danced and swirled away from
her awareness when she tried to grasp them. Then they were
gone.
Lee opened the cover of the book and examined the first
page absently. He seemed not to see it.
Suddenly his attention quickened. He stared at
Eliza.
"Do you know what this is?"
"I don't even know how it got there," she said
indifferently, her mind filled with Mary.
"This is Brannon's magical diary," he said in
excitement. "At least, I think it is. Come on
-
we have to show Hale."
She followed him down the corridor
to Mary's room. It was tucked under the stairs that led
to the attic. The door stood open. Eliza entered
and stopped behind the others, who were gathered inside in a
semicircle looking down at the bed.
Hale bent beside the bed to pick up something that
glittered. As he straightened and stepped aside,
Eliza saw Mary. She lay under the covers as
though asleep. Blood stained her face and pooled
in her upward staring eyes. More blood reddened the
pillow and matted her brown hair.
"She was bludgeoned," Hale said. "It looks like
it happened sometime near morning."
He examined what he had taken from the floor in the
chill window light. Mary's crucifix. Eliza
saw that its gold chain was broken. She realized with a
sick feeling that it had been torn f
rom the neck of the dead woman.
Wordlessly Hale gathered the chain together and set the
cross on top of a worn pocket Bible on the

next to the bed.
"This damn house," Allan said between his teeth. "I
say we burn it to the ground."
"Wait a minute," Hale said. "This is a
police matter now. However it may have
happened a woman has been murdered."
"Are you going to radio the village?" Amber
asked. Her voice was toneless.
"Yes. I'll do it now. There should be a boat
here before noon."
"Good," said Amber. "I'm getting out of this
damned place."


"We all are," Hale said wearily. "The seminar
is terminated."
He reached down and gently closed the staring eyes of the
corpse. Lee detained him as he was going out of the
room and showed him the book.
"Brannon's magical diary," he said.
Hale frowned as he forced his attention to focus on
the book.
"Where did you find it?"
Lee did not answer.
"It was on my bed when I woke up," Eliza
said. "It must have been put there last night while I
was asleep."
Hale studied her a moment.
"Keep it safe," he said to Lee. "I can't think
now. I'll look at it later."
He continued on to the radio room. His heavy
footsteps sounded on the stairs over a corner of the
ceiling.
"Better just leave her," Lee said, pulling
Mohan gently away from the bed.
Mohan would not or could not look away from the face
of the corpse. At last he allowed Lee to guide
him to the wall, where he stood gazing into space like a
bronze statue.
Eliza went to him. They were some distance from the others,
who gathered around the bed.
"Mohan, I know how you felt
-" she murmured so that only he could hear. She
stopped. What could she say that would comfort him.
"She will be reborn," he whispered. "We all
live again."
"It's horrible!" Amber expelled the words with the
full force of her revulsion.
"We were fools to misjudge it," Allan said
quietly. "It was playing with us. It had the power
to kill us all along."
"I'm not sure," said Lee, searching the wound on the
head of the dead woman. He reached into her hair and
plucked something from the blood,
holding it up.
"What is that?" Mohan asked.
"A splinter."
They looked at him blankly.
"Mary wasn't killed by a ghost. Her head was
bashed in with a wooden club of some kind."
"What are you saying?" Eliza said.
Lee stuck the bloody splinter on the pillow beside
Mary's head.
"I think it was one of us."
They were silent as his words slowly sunk
home.
"Possession," said Allan. "Is that what you
mean?"
Lee nodded.
"It took one of us during the night, the same way
it took Luther, and used that person to kill."
"If that's true," said Amber, "We can't be
sure it isn't still inside that person."
"Agreed. We must all be very careful."
Eliza saw an image of herself walking through
darkness. When she tried to recapture it, the image
vanished into a million fragments. She felt
sickness in her throat. The room was heavy with the
smell of blood.
"I have to get out."
Blinking spots of faintness from her eyes, she
stumbled toward the door.
Hale caught her in his arms and held her. There was
a wild look on his face.
"We can't call the police," he said. "The
radio's been smashed to pieces."

"We have to come to a decision," Hale said. "Do we
hold out here until the boat comes? Do we send
someone to the village? Or do we all pack up and
take out
r
chances in the snow?"
They sat tensely around the kitchen table. Eliza
stirred the charred logs in the stove and tried to make
them burn, but she did not have Mary's touch. The
kindling smoldered and fumed.
"Let me," Allan said. He took the poker from
her hand.
Eliza went to a window and stared blankly out at the
snow. With the accumulation of last night it now carpeted
the ground more than a foot deep
-
twice that in the drifts. There was no sign of
life. In her mind an image arose of
Mary lying in bed behind the closed door of her room,
her lips white, the window open to the frigid winter
air. Would the birds fly in when they discovered it
open? There were crows in the woods, and smaller
birds that loo
ked like starlings.
"I say we leave," said Amber. "I'd take the
woods any day over this place."
"That's what it wants," Lee said. "It's trying
to make us panic."
"You think we should stay and fight?" asked Allan.
Lee nodded.
"Last night I was going to suggest another s
`e
ance to learn the name of the entity, but without Mary
.
.
."
"I don't think it makes sense for us all to go,"
Hale said, his brow knitting in indecision. "The
snow's deep, there are no trails. It's going
to be two or three tough days travel along the
coast."
"If a storm came up or the temperature
dropped we wouldn't stand a chance," said
Eliza.
They watched each other uneasily. A reserve
stood between them that had not existed the day before. Eliza
sensed their suspicions, their unasked questions,
simmering like a poison.
"There's enough emergency supplies to equip one
person adequately and still leave something in
reserve." Hale tapped his fingernails
meditatively on the table. "I'm willing to send a
volunteer."
Lee and Allan exchanged looks.
"I'll go if you like," Lee said. "But I still think
we're better off to stand and fight."
"My feelings are the same as Lee's," Allan
said.
"Let me go," said Mohan, breaking his long
silence. "I believe I can reach the village in
one day."
"That's impossible," said Amber. "It's over
thirty miles by land."
Mohan regarded her with solemn eyes.
"None the less I can do it. I am a Sikh of the
Punjab. My father was a diplomatic aid at the
royal court of Nepal. Since the age of three
I have studied yoga under Tibetan masters
who fled south to escape the Communist occupation of their
homeland. They taught me the secrets of tumo and
lung-gom."
"Tumo is the ability to generate internal body
heat at will," explained Hale. "Lung-gom is
the power of crossing great distances in short periods
by means of a sort of leaping run."
"Mohan, you'll kill yourself if you try to run
thirty miles through the snow," Eliza said. "It's
physically impossible."
Mohan smiled at her gently.
"It was precisely these winter conditions that tumo and
lung-gom were designed to overcome."
"At any rate, Mohan is a yogi," Hale
said. "His endurance is likely greater than the
rest of us."
They waited while he considered.
"All right," he said finally. "Mohan goes to the
village. The rest of us will take what steps we can
to protect ourselves."
"I will need an hour to prepare," Mohan said.
"Then I will leave."
He stood and went out of the kitchen. Amber also started
to rise. Hale waved her back into her chair.
"There are a few things I have to
say to the rest of you."
Eliza and Allan sat down, Allan taking the
seat Mohan had vacated and Eliza sitting beside
Lee.
"I don't want anyone left alone for an
extended period, especially not at night. We're
going to double up our sleeping accommodations. Amber
will go in with Eliza. Allan will bunk with Lee."
"What about you?" Lee said.
Hale looked down at the dog lying beside the stove.
"I have Luther."
The dog opened its eyes sleepily at hearing its
name, then pressed its chin into its paws and closed them
again.
"Another thing. No one is to wander away from the house
or go on solo exploring expeditions. Last night
I closed the door to the cellar. This morning it was
standing open. Can anyone explain that? Allan?"
"I haven't been down there since I brought up the
wine," Allan said.
Hale grunted noncommittally.
"All of you, please extend your hands on the table
where I can see them."
Looking questioningly at each other, they laid their hands
flat on the tabletop. Eliza noticed with
surprise that her fingernails were black underneath.
She turned her hands over and saw faint brown
stains on her palms. In the shock of seeing
Mary's corpse and the letdown that followed it she had
neglected to wash.
Hale reached over and took one of her hands gently.
He turned it back and forth, then released it.
"There were traces of earth on Brannon's diary,"
he said. "Are you certain you don't remember
anything of how it got into your room, Eliza?"
"I was asleep," Eliza said, confusion building
inside her. "I had a bad dream."
"What kind of dream?"
"I don't know. It was dark. I was walking. I
heard voices."
"Do you remember what the voices said?" Lee
asked.
Eliza shook her head.
They stare at me as if I'm some kind of
changeling, she thought. At last their fears and
suspicions have found a focus.
"I'm going to examine the diary," Hale said. He
pushed himself up from the table with both hands. "There may
be something in it we can use to defend ourselves. Lee,
I'm putting you in charge. I want you
to arrange the rooms upstairs and see to it that
Mohan gets away safely."
"All right, Professor." Lee stood and
gestured to the others. "Let's go upstairs and move
the beds."
Hale caught Eliza as she was leaving the kitchen.
"Would you wait a minute, Eliza? I'd like
to talk to you."
"Of course."
He waited until the other three were out of hearing.
"Have you examined the internal states of the members of the
group?" he said in a low voice.
"Yes."
"Any abnormalities?"
"They all seem normal," Eliza said slowly.
"A bit nervous and apprehensive."
"Good." He paused. "What about my state?"
"You're normal too, as near as I can judge."
She decided not to mention the increasing vacillation of his
emotions since Mary's death.
He nodded with a vague relief.
"I wanted to be sure. We don't know what
we're dealing with. We can't be too careful."
"Professor, you don't think I'm the one
-" She did not know how to finish.
"No, of course not." Hale looked at her
sadly. "The trouble is, a person can be possessed
and not even realize it."
Eliza parted from him in the front hall. Hale
went to the gathering room to read Brannon's diary.
She climbed the stairs and helped Lee and the others
dismantle the beds of Amber and Allan, then carry
them piecemeal to their new locations.
Amber insisted on moving all her makeup and
clothes as well. There was not enough room in Eliza's
small chest of drawers for both their things, so Lee
and Allan had to drag Amber's own larger bureau
into Eliza's room.
"At least we'll have two heaters," Amber said,
breathlessly setting her kerosene heater beside her bed.
"You could have three," Allan said mischievously.
"Mary won't be using hers."
Eliza shuddered and Amber glared at him.
"Sorry," Allan mumbled. "Just a little gallows
humor."
"Two should be enough," said Lee. "You can take
Mohan's if you want a third."
"Where is Mohan, anyway?" Amber asked.
"Meditating." Lee looked at his watch. "He
told me to call him in an hour. It's
about that time."
They followed him along the corridor to Mohan's
open door. Mohan sat in a full lotus
position on the bare floor beside his bed, his hands
folded at his groin and his thumbs touching. He was
naked except for a pair of underwear briefs.
Despite the fact that his heater was out, his muscular
brown body was covered with a fine sheen of sweat.
Steam rose in nearly invisible wisps from his
shoulders.
"That's tumo," Lee said in a low voice. "It
can't be started all at once. It takes time
to activate."
Mohan raised his hands over his head and took a
deep breath, then let it out slowly as he brought his
arms to his sides. Uncoupling his legs, he stood
to face them. There was a distant look in his dark
eyes.
"I've made up a first-aid kit for you," Lee
said, showing the yogi a small zippered case.
"Aspirin. Antiseptic. Bandages. Matches.
A foil emergency blanket."
"Many thanks," Mohan said with a polite smile.
"But I will not need it."
"You can take it anyway, just in case,"
Lee argued.
"All right."
They watched him dress. He moved as though
asleep, slowly drawing on knee-length socks and
woolen trousers, then donning a shirt and a gold
turtleneck sweater, he slid his feet into light
nylon boots and absently clipped the emergency
packet to his belt.
"I'm ready."
"Where's your backpack?" Eliza said.
"I need no supplies. They would only weigh me
down. Once I begin I may discard this sweater
-
it is very heavy."
They did not argue but followed him downstairs to the
back door.
"I shall return by tomorrow morning or early afternoon.
Look for the boat."
With a wave he jogged across the deep snow of the lawn
and into the trees. He seemed to bounce at each step
as though his feet were on springs. In moments he was
lost from sight.
"I hope he makes it," Amber murmured. "For
his sake and ours."
They ate a late lunch from the can. It was
dismal fare after Mary's cooked meals. Eliza
realized that Hale had not yet washed the dishes and
made a mental note to do them herself at the first
opportunity. Even with the threat of death over their
heads they still needed to see to the details of living.
Hale entered the kitchen as they were finishing and took a
piece of hardtack and a cup of black coffee.
He was strangely subdued.
"Come with me," he said, draining his cup.
Without questioning him they followed him to the gathering room.
Luther was before the fire as usual. The black diary
lay open on the rolltop desk. Hale carried the
book to the conference table and they seated themselves around him,
Allan at the end of the table on his left, Lee and
Eliza across from him with their backs to the windows,
Amber at the other end facing Allan.
Eliza looked at the book curiously. It was the
first time she had examined it. Handwriting in a bold
Italic script covered both open pages with
faded brown ink. The covers were black leather. A
number of slips of paper had been inserted between the
pages as bookmarks.
"This is the
magical diary of Daniel P. Bran
non." Hale framed the book
meditatively with his hands. "It covers a working
conducted by his occult fraternity, the Brotherhood
Of the Fiery Heart, in the year 1899. I've
marked some pertinent passages. I think it would be
less tedious if you take turns reading them
aloud."
"Pardon me
-
what's a working?" asked Eliza.
"A magical operation usually requiring a series
of rituals," Allan told her.
"This first excerpt is dated February the fourth."
Hale turned the book and slid it across the table
to Amber, who frowned a moment at the unfamiliar
Victorian handwriting, then began to read.
"'The Brotherhood has concurred with my opinion that
we need a more responsive mechanism
for influencing world affairs. Financial pressure,
though effective in certain circumstances, is not
enough. It is too liable to produce general and
undirected chaos. Famines and wars do little
to further our cause. Money is a social
bludgeon. We need a political scalpel that
will cut directly to the heart of those who seek
to obstruct our goals. I have suggested that
we communicate with the Lords of Light and ask that they
appoint to us a special Messenger of our will that we
may dispatch across the globe as the need arises. The
Brotherhood has agreed to make the attempt,
relying on my knowledge in such matters to guide the affair
to a successful conclusion.""
Amber slid the book back to Hale. He
flipped through the pages to the next marked place.
"The following is from March twenty-third."
He passed the diary across to Lee.
his
His
The Lords of Light seem strangely unwilling
to agree to our requests. I do not know what troubles
them. Surely they realize we desire only
to execute their true will upon the earth. The new
social order we create will be their monument. Yet
they withhold powers they formerly granted most
readily, and will not come when we call them.""
Hale took back the book and turned its pages.
"This is from April the eleventh."
Eliza accepted the book with reluctance and
hesitantly read the marked passage.
his
His
The Lords of Light have forsaken us! On this black
day the heavens were dark. The air was still. There is
grea
t consternation among the
Broth
erhood. Some openly question the direction of our new
policy. It will require strength and faith in this
hour of trial to keep the Order bound together. May
my heart burn with the unquenchable fire of true
faith, that unwavering I may serve as a model for
my brethren.""
Suppressing her revulsion, she slid the book
back to Hale. The cover had a slick, chill
feel that reminded her of the slithering touch of a serpent.
She wondered what kind of leather had been used
to bind it.
"There's a great deal more soul searching," Hale said.
"Then on July thirtieth the tone changes
abruptly."
He passed the book to Allan, who read his part with
theatrical gusto.
his
His
We are delivered from despair. Tonight one of the Lords
of Light who had not taken part in our
earlier communications addressed us directly and
agreed most graciously to fulfill our
requirements. This is a blessed day. We emerge from
the valley of shadow unbroken, our spirit strong, our
will undefiled. We have been tested in the fires of the
dark places of the earth and our steel is true. Now
I know we will succeed! We will mould the world into our
vision of divine glory and bring the order of heaven
to flower upon the stones of human nature.""
"The next entry is August the third," Hale
said, passing the book to Amber.
his
His
He has returned and laid his needs before us. I
tremble as I write, yet all the while I
recognize the necessity that c
ompels our Lord to make so fearful
a set of conditions. Fire cannot be trapped in a
bottle of Air
-
it must be given Earth to dwell in. Unchecked, our
blazing Messenger of Death would consume the world! We
must veil his glory with our tears, I most of all,
for it is my blood that will win him to us. Our Bright
Lord exacts a heavy payment for his
service, yet we have such dire need of him.""
"This is from October the eleventh," Hale said.
Lee accepted the diary and began to read solemnly.
his
His
I have written the final letter of condolence to the parents
of the boy who was supposed to have died of fever this past
week. Poor mad child. I fancy the letter will come as
a relief to the long-suffering couple who gave him
life. His blood and the blood of the others will
provide the vitality we need to complete our Great
Work. Feigning an outbreak of pneumonia has
proved an excellent device. The impoverished
parents are more than happy to let the Asylum bear
the full expenses of burial. This small
hypocrisy will be repaid a thousand times over when these
infants are reborn in the fires of heaven. We have
set them apart in a windowless chamber to await the
fateful day of their deliverance. Michael is among
them. My own poor lad.""
"I've skipped many of the details of the preparation
for the ritual," Hale said as he flipped the pages
to the next paper slip. His expression darkened.
"This is dated December the first."
Eliza accepted the book with cold hands.
his
His
When I see the blood flow forth from their innocent
throats I fancy I will feel myself to be a
veritable ghoul. I must steel my resolve. If
I falter who will take up the knife? My strength
is needed to sustain the others. There are precedents.
The Apis bull and the rites of Mithra. Blood
is life. My son, I will baptize you anew and
you will be reborn to me. How fitting that it should happen
on the dawning of the Aquarian Age. The old world
gives place to the new.""
"From December thirty-first, the date of the final
ritual," Hale said, passing the book to Allan.
The spirit of mockery had deserted the theurgist. He
read from the page in a quiet voice.
his
His
The blood flowed and drowned the struggling mad thing.
He understood nothing of what was happening, and suffered
little, I think. Michael, my beautiful angel, you
will return to me an instrument of fiery retribution,
and the earth shall roll beneath your iridescent wings.""
Allan gave the book silently to Hale, an
expression of disgust drawing down the
corners of his mouth.
Hale turned a page and passed the diary
to Amber.
"This is the day after
-
January the first in the year nineteen hundred."
"The Messenger has come. We knelt before him and
sang praises to our Bright Lord, and we were
overcome by his splendor. He is beautiful, and
terrible in his beauty. So darkly bright, a sword of
justice to strike into the far capitals of the nations of the
world! Yet he is also my son, my own dear boy.
I have dete
rmined to name him Michael,
see
ing that the fiery elemental sprite that forms his other
half bears no intelligible name of its own.""
Hale flipped through many pages, pausing toward the
end of the diary.
"I'm omitting the record of the crimes of the
Brotherhood," he said with distaste. "I haven't
counted the number of men they killed, or claim to have
killed, but it must amount to several dozen at least,
all political figures in Europe and
America."
He gave the book to Lee.
"This is dated September the seventh."
"'Michael has grown increasingly unruly over the
past several weeks. I confess I am at a
loss to explain his behavior. He often refuses
to manifest when we call him, and on one occasion
even came forth through the Veil unsummoned. This cannot
be allowed to continue. It is too dangerous. There
must be a reckoning between us.""
Lee returned the diary to Hale.
"This is from November twenty-first," Hale said,
turning the pages and giving the book to Eliza.
his
His
It pains me to write these words. On our last
action in northern Italy, Michael killed
several members of the family of our target. He
would give no reason, no explanation. When I
called his conduct vile he mocked me before the
Brotherhood. He is rapidly losing all sense
of decorum. As his conduct changes, so does his
outward appearance. He has become vulgar, even
ugly, to look upon. Worse, he will not wait for our
ritual summons but presents himself to me at the
most inopportune moments. Last night
while I was at dinner! It is intolerable. The
Brotherhood has determined that he must be brought before
our Bright Lord for censure.""
"This final passage is from December the third,"
Hale said, passing the book for Allan to read.
his
His
He has defied the Lord of Light! Surely he
is utterly mad. How he did so I know not
-
it must be his human portion with its element of free will
that gives him the power. But he is mad. What have
we done? In striving to raise the soul of a mad boy
into an angel of glory, we have instead imbued a spirit
of the flaming empyrean with all the frailties and
vices of perverted humanity. I tremble to think of
that which he may be capable. He must be restrained. I
cannot bear to destroy him. Whatever his faults he is
yet my son. I have decided to imprison him on
earth, within a chamber of this very house, until I can
correct the imbalance in his nature. Two C.
twelve seven.""
Hale accepted the book from Allan and shut it
"Brannon succeeded in luring the Messenger into the
black room and sealing the door shut on
it, as we already know. But he died before he could deal
with the problem he had created."
"Two C. twelve seven," Eliza repeated with a
thoughtful frown. "Is that some sort of occult
code?"
"Nothing so abstruse, I'm afraid. It's a
reference to Saint Paul. Second Corinthians,
chapter twelve, verse seven."
"Of course," Lee said.
Hale picked up a small book Eliza
recognized as Mary's Bible and read a marked
passage.
""And lest I should be exalted above measure through the
abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a
thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet
me, lest I should be exalted above measure.""
They sat silent for several moments.
"What became of the Brotherhood?" Allan asked.
"As far as I can determine from the last few
entries, it began to break up when the Messenger
escaped from their control. Apparently many members were
terrified of what they had ushered into the world."
"They were a bunch of cold-blooded murderers, and
they were never punished," said Amber bitterly. "No
wonder the spirits of the mad children still walk this
ground."
"At least we know what binds the Michael-thing to this
house," Eliza said.
"Madness," Lee suggested.
"No, love."

"This is just like being back at camp," Eliza said,
snuggling down under her blankets.
"Not to me," said Amber through the darkness. "I had a
private tent."
A gap of several feet separated the beds. Amber
lay nearer the window. Lee and Allan had pushed
Eliza's huge four-poster toward the door to make
a space for the smaller brass bed frame.
"I wonder where Mohan is right now?" murmured
Eliza.
"Wherever he is, I hope he keeps running.
It's frigid outside."
"I hope he's safe. According to the diary that thing can
travel anywhere."
"You mean Michael."
Eliza hissed softly.
"What's wrong?"
"Don't say it's name."
Amber giggled. There was suppress
ed hysteria in her voice.
"Why? Do you think it's listening? Michael,
Michael, Michael."
Eliza lay silent and reached out her mind. She was
startled by the level of tension that had grown in Amber
since putting the room into darkness.
"If you need a pill to help you sleep," she said
tentatively, "I think Allan may have something."
"Allan has enough pills to launch a moon
rocket," Amber said.
"Do you want me to get up and ask him? He and
Lee are probably still awake."
"Not on your life. You think I'm crazy enough
to sleep with that murdering spirit wandering the halls?"
"You have to sleep sometime," Eliza reasoned.
"I'll sleep in the daylight, like Luther."
Eliza lay listening to Amber's shallow breathing.
If they did not sleep, she thought, their minds would
become hypersensitive, making it impossible for them
to relax. This would invite disaster.
Closing her eyes, she cradled Amber's feverish
emotions in her awareness and drew them close. She
looked down inwardly on the feelings of the other
woman. They squirmed like a child in the embrace of
its mother.
I am sleepy, Eliza thought, her self
impartial and detached.
There was an apprehensive wriggle from the mind of the
other woman. Eliza soothed it.
I am so tired. My breath is slow and deep. So
tired. My eyes close. So tired .
.
.
Gradually the ragged hush of Amber's breathing
quieted. Eliza felt her slide into the velvet
darkness of sleep. Withdrawing gently, she returned
to her common self with a mixed feeling of triumph and
apprehension. She had only tried such a trick a
few times in her life, and each time it had left her
fearful of the consequences, although there had been no ill
result. She lay for a time trying to relax.
Now I can't sleep, she thought.
Somewhere in the forest Mohan was running through the snow, his
only guide the pale light of a quarter moon
diffused through a veil of cloud. It was the same
light that filtered through the window and defined the room with
masses of shadow. She could see the light fixture
on the ceiling, the bulk of the bureau and the smaller
chest of drawers beside it. Their edges were etched by the red
glow from one of the kerosene heaters that sat out
of her sight below the end of the mattress. With a sigh
she turned on her side and closed her eyes.
She stiffened, all her senses alert. Stillness
hung in the dark around her. Somehow the room was
subtly altered. Her watch arm lay beside her
face, her hand tucked under her cheek. She looked
at the luminous dial. It showed nearly half past
three. Without meaning to she had fallen asleep for
over four hours. But something had awakened her.
A soft brushing sound came from the corridor, as
though a hand were sliding along the flowered paper on the
wall. It came and went, came and went, always
closer, until it was just outside the
door. There it stopped. Eliza held her breath with
her head raised from the pillow and her lips parted.
She stared at the inner surface of the door and felt
the pulse of her heart high in her throat. A
scratching began on the other side of the oak panel.
Without thinking she shrank backwards across the
four-poster and stepped to the icy floor, then climbed
onto the mattress of Amber's bed. Leaning across,
she put her hand over the mouth of the sleeping woman.
Amber twisted her neck, eyes rolling.
"It's me," Eliza breathed into her ear.
"Listen."
She removed her hand. Breath hissed between the teeth
of the witch when she heard the scratching.
"Maybe it's Lee and Allan playing a joke,"
Eliza whispered, her mind negating the words even as
she spoke them.
Amber did not reply.
The scratching began again, more insistent this time. It was
as though fingers clawed at the upper half of the door,
scrabbling like the hard, dry legs of a crab across the
grain of the wood. They stopped, momentarily
frustrated. Then they began to slid
e
downward.
"Is it locked?" Amber breathed.
"No."
"Where's the key?"
Eliza peered through the gloom at the ornate brass
knob and realized she had taken the key out of the
keyhole. She tried to remember where she
had put it, but her mind refused to work. In
fascination she watched the knob slowly turn. It
gave a soft click. The door began to open.
Amber gripped her tightly by the muscles of her
shoulders and dug her fingernails into Eliza's skin,
but Eliza barely noticed. Something
built inside her, funnelling upward like lava in
a volcano, then abruptly exploded.
"Stay out! Stay out of here!"
She tore herself away from Amber's grasp and leapt
across her own bed in two bounds to hurl her body at
the gaping door. The impact of her shoulder sent it
slamming shut. Whatever lurked on the other side was
thrown back by the sudden force. She heard it stumble
against the opposite wall of the corridor.
"Get the key!" she cried to Amber, who still crouched
on her bed.
"Where is it?"
"I don't know
-
in my purse!"
Amber began hunting about in the room in the near
total darkness.
"Where did you put your purse?"
"I don't remember!"
Eliza gripped the brass doorknob in both hands
and squeezed. She pressed her cheek against the
wood. Her shoulder was completely numb from her
neck to her elbow. She began to scream, calling out
Lee's name over and over, but no answer came from
outside, only the stealthy noises of a
mass sliding itself against the door panel.
An awful strength turned the knob around in her
perspiring fingers and began to
force
the door
inward. Eliza braced her bare feet on the
floorboards and tried to grip the smooth surface
of the wood with her toes, but inexorably her feet
slid back.
"Amber, help me!"
Amber left her search for the purse and ran to the
door. The weight of her hands striking it once again
slammed it shut. Both woman tried to grip the
knob. Eliza felt Amber's fingers digging into the
backs of her hands.
There was a pause, as though the intelligence on the
other side was recalculating the forces opposing its
entry. With an awful power the knob once again began
to turn.
"We can't hold it," said Eliza.
"Where are the others?" Amber said hysterically. She
began to sob.
With a sudden jerk the door opened several inches.
Eliza released the now useless knob. Drawing off
her wristwatch, she pressed it against the
door under her two palms. She laid her forehead
on the backs of her hands.
"You cannot enter," she said in a clear, trembling
voice. "You are barred. You cannot enter."
She tried to extend her mind through the door, but
recoiled in shock. X. was like reaching into the darkness and
touching ice. There was nothing to grasp hold of, only
a coldness and a glittering malice.
Amber guessed what she was doing and took the silver
crescent from her neck to lay it against the door.
"The Goddess watches over us," she said, struggling
to keep her voice steady. "You cannot enter."
They began to chant in rhythm over and over, "You cannot
enter, you cannot enter, you cannot enter." It was a children's
game made deadly real and played in earnest.
The pressure against the door lessened. Bracing their
feet they muscled it shut, all the while continuing
to chant.
When no new force was felt for several minutes their
voices died away. They stood listening. Amber
looked at Eliza, who shook her head. Putting
her finger to her lips, Eliza left the door and
lit her lamp, then found her purse where Amber had
inadvertently kicked it under the bed. She rummaged
through its baggy folds and pulled out the key.
Returning, she slid it quietly into the keyhole
under the knob and turned it.
"Do you think it's gone?" Amber said.
"I don't know
-
it may be waiting."
"Can't you sense anything?"
Eliza extended her mind. She shook her head.
"Nothing. But that doesn't prove anything
- it's clever."
Amber took hold of Eliza's upper arms and
shook her.
"Where are the men?" she said in a low tone. "They must
have heard us. Where are they?"
"Maybe it went to their rooms first. Maybe
-" Eliza stopped. It was too horrible even
to think about.
Gently she disengaged herself from Amber, wincing as she
twisted her right arm. Her shoulder began to throb
painfully. Tomorrow she would
have a bruise the size of her palm. But that was the
least of her worries. She slid open a drawer
of the small chest and lifted out a sweater and pants.
"What are you doing?"
"Getting dressed. We may have to make a
run for outside."
Silently Amber followed her example. In
minutes they were fully dressed. They sat together on
the side of Eliza's bed with their arms around each
other and stared at the door. Time passed. Eliza
looked at her watch. The crystal was cracked, but
it still ran. Nearly four o'clock.
"We can't wait all night," she said at last.
"The others may be hurt. Anyway, we have to know
what's going on."
She stood and took up her lamp. Amber grabbed
her hand.
"Are you crazy? You can't go out there."
"I have to." Eliza pulled loose. "Are you
coming?"
Amber stared at her in wide-eyed terror.
"Stay here then," Eliza told her. "Lock the
door after me. You'll be safe."
She turned the key and opened the door a crack,
ready to slam it shut at the slightest hint of a
presence in the dark beyond. Opening it wider, she
extended the lamp and looked around the door jamb.
The flame cast a flickering glow dimly to both
ends of the corridor. It was empty. Her legs
trembling, she stepped out.
Amber pressed the door shut behind her. Eliza
heard the rattle and click of the lock. Slowly
she advanced across the corridor toward the room that
belonged to Lee and Allan. Its door stood ajar.
Its interior lay in blackness. Heart hammering,
she pushed the door inward with her fingertips and held
the lamp before her face to look into the room. Both
beds were empty, the covers disarrayed and the pillows
indented. With mingled relief and dread she searched the
room. It contained no horrible surprises.
Cautiously she continued on to Hale's room. It
also stood open and in blackness. Neither the
Professor nor the mastiff were inside. Emerging
into the corridor, she looked both ways in
consternation, her curiosity beginning to balance her fear.
She noticed with a shock of unease that the door at
the end of the corridor stood ajar. It was the door
to Mary's room. A chill draft blew out of it from
the open window. With small, reluctant steps she
advanced toward the door, ready to bolt at the least
sign of threat. She reached the door and stood
listening. The silent space beyond pulled her in.
A quick glance around assured her that nothing lurked in
the shadowy corners or behind the open panel. She
relaxed marginally. Mary lay as she had
last seen her, head in a halo of blood. The
blood had dried black. Her face was a mingled
gray and white, with a waxen cast to her lips. Where
before the sight had stirred revulsion in Eliza, it
now moved her to pity. She drew closer.
She stopped and felt her knees buckle. An
invisible hand seemed to squeeze her heart. She
stared at the face of the dead woman and could not
cease staring. She distinctly remembered Hale
reaching down to close the eyelids of the corpse.
Yet Mary's brown sightless eyes stood open.
Eliza took a breath to steady her nerves. She
had heard stories of dead people twitching and opening their
eyes, even sitting up in their coffins. It had to do
with gases accumulating in the abdominal cavity and
muscular reflexes. Steeling herself, she bent over
the bed and reached to reclose the eyes of the corpse.
The dead eyes rolled and looked at her. With
startling quickness a pale white hand groped for her
extended wrist.
Eliza screamed and ran. Somehow she held onto
the base of the lamp, although the shade tumbled away and
smashed on the floor behind her. The naked flame
fluttered wildly as she flew down the corridor,
threatening to blow out, but it was still alight when
she reached the locked door of her room. She
hammered the door with her clenched fist.
"Amber, open up!"
"Eliza? What's wrong?"
"Open up, damn you, it's after me!"
There was a pause. Eliza fought down a scream.
She did not dare to look behind, fearing she would lose
all control and run stark raving mad.
The door opened and she tumbled through. Amber slammed
and locked it. Setting the lamp down unsteadily,
Eliza fell onto the bed and buried her face in
her hands.
"Are they all dead?" Amber asked in a leaden
voice.
"It's Mary," Eliza said with a shuddering exhalation.
"What?"
"She moved. She
-
that thing must be inside her."
They both whirled around as the doorknob rattled.
Blows sounded on the panel.
"God, not again," said Amber.
"Eliza? Amber? Are you girls awake?" It was
Lee.
Laughing with relief, Amber ran to the
door and opened it. Lee entered, and behind him Allan
and Hale. Luther padded in and sniffed curiously
around.
Eliza could not speak. She ran to Lee and
embraced him, burying her face in his shoulder. He
caressed her awkwardly and stroked her hair.
"Where the hell were you?" demanded Amber.
"We heard a noise
-" Allan began.
"We almost got killed, goddamn it!"
"Calm down," Hale said sharply. He led
Amber to the side of the bed and made her sit.
"Tell us what happened."
Amber began to describe the incidents of a short
while ago. As she talked Eliza regained a
measure of control. Amber reached the part about Mary
and Eliza took up the story.
"Interesting," Hale said when she had finished.
"Divide and conquer."
"What are you saying?" Amber demanded. "Where the
hell did you go?"
"As I started to tell you before, we heard noises,"
Allan said. "It sounded like Mohan calling for
help."
"We all heard it," said Lee. "It
seemed to come from just outside the house."
"By the time we went to investigate, it had receded to the
woods," Hale went on. "We followed it for a
few thousand feet, but when we realized it was a
trick to lead us away from Haven we came straight
back."
"How could it wake you and not us?" Eliza said.
"Divide and conquer," Hale repeated. "When
faced with a force of superior numbers, divide it
into inferior units and overcome each separately."
"We're facing a very sophisticated being," said
Lee to Eliza. "It uses our weaknesses against us.
It manipulates us."
"Don't take this the wrong way," Hale said
gently. "But are you certain you weren't dreaming? The
whole incident may have been a psychic event."
Anger flared in Eliza. She took Hale by the
arm and drew him into the corridor.
"Look at the door," she said. "Does that look
like an illusion?"
Hale raised his lamp. The paint on the upper
half of the panel was covered with a fine spider web of
white scratches
of the kind that would be made by human fingernails.
Hale studied
it
silently. Then he and Allan went to Mary's
room while Lee stayed behind with Amber and Eliza.
In a few minutes the two men returned,
visibly subdued.
"The fingers of the corpse are worn raw. The nails
are broken," Hale said. "I've locked the door
from the outside."

Eliza awoke late in the morning. After only a
few hours of troubled sleep she felt exhausted rather
than refreshed. Amber still lay dreaming. Not wishing
to leave her alone in the room, Eliza gently
touched her on the hip. The witch flinched, then
relaxed as she took in her surroundings.
"I'm going to get something to eat. Are you hungry?"
Blinking sleep from her eyes, Amber stretched under
the covers like a cat and thought about it.
"I believe I am. After last night, don't
ask me how."
They washed and returned to their room to dress.
Amber laid out half a dozen outfits across her
bed, and after a few moments of internal struggle
chose a red silk blouse to go with her black leather
pants. She threw a knitted shawl over
her shoulders for warmth, then watched Eliza put on
the same drab brown sweater jacket she had worn
the previous day. Eliza felt her sympathy but
pretended not to notice.
Biting her full lower lip, Amber made a
broad gesture of disgust at the domes scattered
across her mattress.
"Look at all this stuff. I always pack more than
I need. If you see anything you like, Eliza, just
grab it."
"Thanks, I will." Eliza felt her cheeks
flush with mingled embarrassment and resentment. She
knew Amber's intentions were kind, but hated being
regarded as a charity case.
They went down to the kitchen together. Eliza cleaned the
dishes from the previous two days and stacked them
away. They stove was already lit. Amber opened a
tin of bacon and another of sausages and made a
greasy breakfast.
"I wonder where the boys are this morning," Amber
said, breaking one of the hard biscuits that took the
place of bread.
"Probably in the other room."
"It's so gray outside. Looks like it's going
to snow again."
"Yes."
Eliza got up and went to the stove to pour herself a
cup of tea.
"Eliza," Amber said slowly, "I want
to apologize for the way I behaved last night."
"That's all right."
"No it's not. I locked you out. You might have been
killed. I was so terrified I couldn't think
straight."
"It was a natural reaction
-
forget it."
"Not for me it wasn't," Amber said emphatically.
"I'm usually stronger than this. There's something about the
atmosphere in this house that turns my spine
to jelly. It's so alien
-"
The thud of footsteps in the passageway drew their
attention to the open kitchen door. Lee appeared and
stood looking at them impassively with his cool
blue eyes. He stepped forward and Eliza saw that
he carried something at his side. It was a long,
heavy wooden handle that swelled into a bulb at its
end. The thickened part was caked with a black smear like
dried current jam.
Amber dropped her fork with a clatter and slid back
out of her chair away from the door. Eliza stood
slowly up.
"Take it easy," Lee said, smiling weakly.
"I heard voices and thought it was the Professor."
He laid the handle across the corner of the table.
"I found this under the cellar steps. It's an old
pick handle. It looks like it might be the weapon that
killed Mary."
They approached and studied it with mingled fascination and
revulsion.
"The killer must have hidden it there."
"How did you find it?" Amber asked, looking at
him guardedly. "I went down the cellar with
Allan. It's as dark as a coal mine."
Lee frowned. He did not answer immediately, then
looked at Eliza.
"It was funny. I decided to explore around and
see if I could turn up anything useful. I
didn't
find anything
-
there's too much old junk down there. But as I was
looking I started to daydream. You know how your mind
goes blank when you're doing something with your
hands and not really thinking of anything?"
Eliza nodded.
"When I came to I was standing beside the steps, the glow
of my lamp falling on the pick handle. It was
weird."
"There's something in Haven that's trying to help us,"
Eliza said with conviction.
"What do you mean?" said Amber.
"An intelligence
-
or several intelligences, I'm not sure. I think
it led me to Brannon's diary the night Mary was
killed."
Eliza regarded them nervously. For the first time she
had dared to admit what they had been thinking
-
that she had been possessed the same night Mary was
killed.
"Do you remember anything?" Lee asked.
"No. I only remember walking down a long
slope, and voices urging me on even though they
weren't speaking to me. But there was earth under my
fingernails."
Amber said nothing.
"I've been thinking," Eliza continued.
"The first day at Haven we drank scotch. That
night Amber, Mary and I had horrible
nightmares."
"So did I," Lee said. "The atmosphere of this
place
-"
"No, it's more than that. On Christmas we shared the
wine. A few hours later I found the diary and
Mary was killed."
"You think alcohol makes us more susceptible to the
forces working around us?" Lee said.
Eliza nodded.
"We won't have to worry on that score," Amber
said dryly. "There's not a drop of hooch left in
the house."
Eliza did not answer. She was thinking of Allan
with his endless supply of little colored pills.
Lee levered the pick handle from the table.
"Let's take this to Hale."
They went through the freezing air of the entrance hall
into the warmth of the gathering room. Hale and Allan
stood over a litter of loose papers on the table,
each paper covered with jotted notes and arcane
symbols. Brannon's diary lay open between them.
Luther got up and rubbed his nose
into Eliza's hand. She patted the dog
affectionately on the shoulder.
"We were tracing the steps in the working by which Brannon
evoked the Messenger of Death," Hale said, pale
eyes dancing with excitement.
Allan stretched his arms behind his head and yawned.
"We've pretty well reconstructed the entire
series of rituals."
"Allan's been a great help," said Hale. "I
couldn't have done it without him."
Lee held up the bloody pick handle. Hale
looked at it and blinked, stepping closer. Some of the
academic enthusiasm faded from his features.
"What's that?"
"This is what killed Mary."
Hale took it gingerly.
"You didn't think to preserve any possible
fingerprints for the police?"
"It was caked with dried mud when I found it. I
beat most of it off."
Lee explained how he had found the handle.
"It's clear now what happened," Hale said,
examining the blood-smeared end with distaste. "The
Messenger possessed one of us while we were
asleep and used that person to kill poor
Mary, then hid the murder weapon in the cellar
to divert suspicion and add to the confusion."
"Which of us did it use?" Amber asked. She
looked at Eliza.
"We may never know," Hale said. "But whoever it
was, that person has proven susceptible and therefore
is still a danger."
Eliza felt the emotions of the others directed
toward her and tried to turn her mind away from them.
She was only partly successful.
"Why are you calling it the Messenger?" asked
Lee, bending over the pages of occult diagrams.
"I thought its name was Michael."
"Michael is the name Brannon used. It was a
pet name, in memory of his son whose mad spirit forms
part of its vitality. But the Messenger is much more
than the deranged psyche of an adolescent boy.
It is an unholy amalgam of a human being and a
fire elemental, welded together by blood and anguish,
driven by a single-minded lust to kill. It is almost
unimaginably powerful."
"Elementals control vast amounts of physical
energy," Allan explained. "But they lack the power
of free will. Free will, simply stated, is the
faculty in human beings that permits them
to violate divine law. No spirit entity is able
to kill. Malicious spirits use fear and confusion in
an attempt to turn the powers of man against himself.
Sometimes they are able to make people commit suicide, or
go crazy and kill others, but spirits can't murder
directly."
"I see," Eliza said. "Brannon needed the
free will in the spirit of his son so that his Messenger could
assassinate his enemies."
"The enemies of his grand vision of the future,"
Hale corrected. "Brannon was an unusual
man
-
apparently above personal animosities. But he
was that most dangerous kind of fanatic, a
Utopian. He was willing to commit any crime
to bring his world order into being."
"The turn of the century was a turbulent period,"
Lee murmured, flipping the pages of the diary.
"New philosophies were threatening the old social
patterns. Marxism. Nihilism. Feminism."
"Brannon was looking for a perfect world," said
Allan. "The Messenger of Death was to be his
instrument."
"I still don't see why he had to kill
all those children," Amber said. "When I think of their
little white bones I get shivers."
"Think of it this way." Hale held up his hands with the
fingers spread. "In order to join two different
kinds of steel you need intense heat." He laced his
fingers together. "The spilling of their
blood, and more importantly their terror and pain,
provided a psychic forge that Brannon used to link
two beings that were never intended to be linked."
Allan picked up a worn cloth-bound book from the
table and showed it to Amber.
"It's not unprecedented. I've been doing some
research in the Professor's library. In the
Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece there
was a ceremony in which worshippers stood in a pit
or trough while the throat of a bull, and sometimes a
human being, was slit over their head. This baptism
of blood was supposed to renew their life force."
"I remember a case in Hungary," Lee said.
"In the sixteenth century a countess named Ersza
Bathory was tried and convicted of sorcery. It
turned out she had murdered hundreds of young girls
and bathed in their blood to preserve her beauty."
"That's horrible," said Amber.
"And probably useless," Hale agreed.
"But it does have a basis in spiritual reality.
Brannon knew exactly what he was doing."
"If the Messenger is as powerful as you believe,
why hasn't it killed us?" Eliza said to Hale.
"I've been giving that a lot of thought. At first I
believed it was simply toying with us, but now I
suspect there's something else. Its dominant part
seems to be Michael, Brannon's son.
We're all adults. To the confused and unstable mind
of the boy we represent authority figures. Without
a clear command to kill us it's uncertain how
to proceed."
"Professor Hale thinks the motivating influence
of the Messenger alternates between the fire
elemental and the spirit of the boy," Allan said. "The
elemental is wholly evil
-
it wants us dead. But it can't sever itself from the mind
of the boy without losing its power of free will. In the
night it becomes dominant and moves against us
-
during the day Michael's madness obstructs it."
"It's only a theory," Hale said. "We don't
have much to go on."
"Does that mean we're safe during the
day?" Amber asked.
"No. Merely that you're less safe at night."
"If there was just some way we could act against it,"
Lee said.
Hale shook his head.
"I'm hoping we won't even have to consider such a
course. If we irritate it into realizing how weak
we are it's liable to turn us into six smoking
cinders."
"But there must be a way."
"I don't know. Frankly, this is out of my
league."
Eliza was inwardly shocked at the extent to which
Mary's murder had shaken Hale's nerve. Only
a couple of days before he had talked brashly about
destroying the entity.
"What about the Lords of Light that Brannon wrote
about?" she asked.
"Spirit beings on the order of lesser gods," said
Allan. "Usually they don't concern themselves in
human affairs, but Brannon must have sought their
aid. They are a mixed hierarchy, neither wholly good
nor wholly evil. When they saw the
direction the Brotherhood was going they abandoned it,
all except one who Brannon called the
Shining One."
"There are intriguing similarities between
Brannon's Shining One and Lucifer, the fallen
angel of light," Hale said to Lee. "But nothing
tangible to link the two."
"Maybe it could help us fight the Messenger,"
Eliza said.
"No way to contact it," said Allan. "After the
Messenger defied it in December of nineteen
hundred, the Shining One withdrew. Brannon was
unable to re-establish communication with it, although the
diary indicates that he tried a number of times."
"That's it, then," Amber said, fear making her
angry. "We sit and wait for it to kill us one
by one."
"I hope it won't come to that," said Hale
quietly. "Mohan should have reached Regret Cove
by now. With luck we can expect the boat in a
matter of hours."
Amber laughed.
"You don't really think he made it? Who was it you
were chasing last night?"
"That may have been an audile illusion," Lee
said. "The fact that you and Eliza didn't hear it
suggests that it was."
They sat talking in a desultory fashion for
several hours. Every few minutes one or the other would
go to the windows and look out across the ruffled gray
sea. At noon they broke for lunch, and in the afternoon
they returned to the gathering
room, more subdued than they had ever been. The warm,
stuffy air was thick with unacknowledged tension.
Eliza found herself getting one of her bad
headaches. It throbbed between her temples more
intensely when she rubbed them. She clenched her fists
and suppressed the urge to scream. Instead she
closed her eyes and laid her head against the high
back of the couch.
"What's wrong?" Lee asked. He had been
watching her.
"Nothing
-
just a headache."
"I'll get you an aspirin."
"They don't do any good."
He went to the emergency case and took out two
aspirin from their tin box, then poured ginger ale from a
can into a crystal goblet left over from the wine.
"Here, try them anyway."
She swallowed the pills and drank a bit
of the ginger ale, then stretched herself out on the couch on
her shoulder and stared at the fire.
This was what she had feared most, even before coming
to Haven. She had grown to know the others too well.
Her mind was attuned to their emotional wavelengths.
Like a sensitive radio receiver it focused and
magnified their feelings unendurably. They were too
close to block out. She was rapidly losing
control. Their fear and suspicion and horror and
sense of helpless frustration flooded in and
overwhelmed her own weaker feelings, threatening to drown
her inner identity.
Forcing down a shudder, she sat up. Nausea
rocked between her head and stomach.
"Professor Hale, I'm going for a walk. I
need to be alone."
She felt his sympathetic concern like the blast from a
loudspeaker.
"I understand. Do you want one of us to walk behind you?"
"No
-
no. I want to be by myself."
Lee watched her. Only his emotions were stable. They
reached out to her warmly. She averted her eyes and
stood up.
"You should be safe enough," Hale said, as much to himself
as to Eliza. "Nothing's happened outside except
at the quarry. Stay out of the woods and keep within
sight of the house."
"I will."
She put on her camel coat, red mittens and
beret in the kitchen and stepped out the back door. The
air was mild and the wind low. Large flakes of snow
like crystal parachutes spun and fell from the slate
sky. The heavy cover of ground snow compressed
silently under her boots. As she walked around the
side of the house little cones of snow caked on her
toes and flipped through the air in front of her when
she brought her feet forward.
Descending to the edge of the front lawn, she turned
and made her way toward the stony point with the pebble
beach below her on her left. The level house
grounds gave way to a rough margin of bush and twisted
wild grasses, their nodding brown tips exposed
between the drifts. The great
axe head of black granite thrust in an angled
ridge far out from the shore. No spruce grew on
its wind-blow
n
crest. At its edge a ragged line of
turf showed where the cover of snow had slid and fallen
into the sea. It was beside this that Eliza walked, placing
her feet in the snow with care to keep from stumbling.
The wind blew stronger above the level of the trees.
When she turned her gaze across the crawling waves
of the gray ocean, the snow slanted into her eyes and
blinded her. She hunched her shoulder, looking back
the way she had come. Haven lay spread out below.
She could see the window of the gathering room in the east
wing, and wondered if anyone was watching her at that
moment, high on this naked arm of rock with the sky behind
her.
She stood breathing in her freedom, almost happy,
so great was the release of her emotions. Nothing
assailed her but the brush of snowflakes against her
cheek, the scent of salt spray, and the rustle of the
waves on the rocks below. The snow lying against her
boots began to chill her toes. She took a step
and shook it off.
If only it could be this way always, she thought.
Silent and alone. Even in crowded cities other people
could withdraw and be with their private thoughts. How she
envied them. To look upon others and not know what they were
feeling. What bliss that would be. Not to have to guard
her mind from emotion. Not to have to erect a
wall around her heart.
It was time to return. She hesitated, unwilling
to leave the protective sanctuary she had found.
At
last she began placing her feet in the holes she
had made in the virgin snow. It should have been
easier. The way back was downhill with the wind behind.
But to Eliza it seemed more laborious than the
climb. Her foot slipped and she had a dizzy
look at the sea close below her right hand.
Deliberately she bent her steps farther away from
the edge.
Wrapped in her own thoughts, it was a while before she
noticed the solitary figure walking toward her from
the line of trees at the base of the point. She
wiped her welling tears on her mitten and narrowed
her eyes, then recognized Mohan by his gold
turtleneck sweater. It was so covered with
snowflakes that distance made its color indistinct.
Her heart began to thud. He made no sign of
recognition but walked with a measured pace toward her
in a line that would intersect her curving path back
to Haven. She could not avoid him. Behind her lay the
narrowing crest of the point and on either side the sea.
Before her was the open margin between the shore and the
forest. She continued to walk at a natural pace.
Reaching out her perceptions, she probed him
cautiously. He was calm inside, neither pleased
nor regretful at seeing her. But there was something
unnatural about his emotions. They felt stiffly
artificial. Perhaps, she thought, exposure to the
wilderness has induced some psychic trauma. He
stopped and waited for her. She approached within six
feet and also stopped.
"We thought you'd be in the village by now," she said
quietly. "What happened?"
"I do not quite know." His voice was husky. He
frowned. "Something took hold of my mind. I
remember running and shouting."
"How did you get back to Haven?"
"I do not know. It is puzzling."
Eliza relaxed slightly. He had obviously
suffered the same temporary madness that had seized
Luther.
"Come back to the house. You must be freezing."
"I'm not cold. But I am very hungry."
She walked past him and he took up a pace behind
her.
"The others will be disappointed," she said. "They were
counting on you rescuing them."
"Maybe I will try again."
"It'll have to wait until after this snow. If much more
falls it could make traveling in the woods
impossible."
They began descending a difficult section of the
rocks where walking was uneven and made treacherous
by hidden pockets of ice. Eliza crouched and put
her hand on a boulder to steady herself.
"Let me help you
,
his
Mohan said from behind.
He took her arm. A tightening in his fingers made
her turn. She cried out and struggled to free herself.
Red fury blazed from his eyes. His lips drew
back from his barred teeth in a snarl. Before she could
brace her feet or defend herself he struck her
brutally on the side of the head with his clenched fist.

For a moment she spun free in space. The earth and
sky turned a cartwheel. She saw Mohan leaning
out with his arms spread crabwise, and Haven tumbling
on its head. Then the rounded sea-worn boulders on
the beach rose up to catch her.
15
Water from melting snowflakes cooled the inner edges
of her eyelids. Eliza blinked and saw the snow
whirling toward her out of a steely sky. Every so often a
flake landed directly in one of her eyes, making
her wink it away.
Pain flooded through her body but she could not determine
its point of origin. Her mind was strangely
detached. She gradually realized that she was moving.
Soft voices murmured around her. She focused
her eyes and saw the backs of Hale and Amber.
Lee and Allan were also there leaning over her, concern
in their faces.
Her hand slid across her hip and banged into something
hard and round. She felt it and recognized a
doorknob.
I'm being carried on a door, she thought
wonderingly. Isn't it dead people they carry on
doors? She closed her eyes.
When she opened them it was warmer. Lifting her head,
she looked around. She was in the
gathering room stretched out on the conference table with a
blanket over her and a pillow under her head. The
others stood looking down at her. Amber wiped her
forehead with a cool cloth.
"She's coming around," Amber said.
"Is she in shock?" asked Lee.
"I don't think so," Hale said. "Her color's
good. But I'm not a medical doctor. We'd
better keep her warm."
"I was with Mohan," Eliza muttered, surprised
to find her mouth dry as cotton. "He pushed me."
"Hush," said Amber. "We know. We saw it from the
window."
"I'm thirsty
-"
Amber lifted Eliza's head and gave her a sip
of water from a cup she had ready on a chair beside
her.
"Wiggle your toes," Hale said.
Eliza did as directed.
"Now your fingers."
A stab of pain lanced up her left
arm when
she moved her fingers.
"My arm hurts."
"We think it's broken." Lee took her other hand
between his and rubbed its back. "We were trying to decide
how to fix it."
"It has to be set," Hale said. "We'll break
one of these wooden chairs and make splints
from the rungs. Amber can tear a bed sheet up for
bandages."
"Do you know how to set a broken arm?" Allan
asked.
Hale pulled on his white beard, a worried
expression on his face as he studied E
liz
a.
"I've had a little emergency training, but I've
never set a bone."
"Then we're liable to do more harm than good."
"We can't leave it like this for a week," Hale said in
irritation. "Unless someone wants to volunteer
to walk to the village."
"I'll try it," said Lee.
"No, sorry Lee," Hale said in a more subdued
tone. "With that madman out there and the way the snow's coming
down, it's out of the question."
"Then we set it," Allan said. "How do we
start?"
Hale gently lifted Eliza's left arm from the
table. She saw that her forearm was swollen and
irregular on one side. She realized that her
coat and sweater were off, but had no recollection of
them being removed. Someone had rolled the
loose sleeve of her shirt up above her elbow.
"The bones have to be pulled apart and realigned."
Hale probed the swelling gently. "It's likely
to be painful."
"I can give her something to make her sleep,"
Allan offered.
"No, no drugs." Eliza struggled to sit up and
Amber held her down.
She had a vision of herself lying helplessly
unconscious while a shadowy menace approached.
Whatever the pain she wanted her wits about her.
"I understand," Hale said soothingly. "We won't
knock you out, Eliza. Anyway, not with drugs."
He glanced at Amber and Allan.
"Get the splints and bandages."
They left Eliza's circle of vision. She
heard splintering noises, but her mind was too
confused to identify them or even to make her turn
her head. Lee bent over her.
"You trust me, Eliza," he said. It was both a
statement and a question.
Of course, she thought, and was not certain if she had
said it aloud.
"Look into my right eye."
He took her face in his two hands and
began to brush her forehead and the bones of her cheeks.
"Listen to my voice. Relax. Try to make your
mind receptive. Think of yourself as a still pool of
water, and my words as drops falling into the pool and
vanishing. You can feel my hands on your face, but
soon you won't feel them. Your face will become
numb and then your eyes will close, but you'll still hear
my voice .
.
."
She felt herself resisting automatically as the
ordinary defensive screens went up in her mind.
Gathering her resources, she forced herself to open up
to him while she listened to his quiet words. Soon
she saw only his face, then only his blue eye.
It seemed to grow and change, streaming his words in the
form of tiny crystal tears into her emptiness. A
void neither dark nor light surrounded her and she
floated free.
"She's back," said a childish voice.
"She hears," said a second.
"But will she remember?" a third asked.
"She must
-
we'll show her," the first said.
"She forgot before," the third reminded.
"That was different," said the first voice. "She was
shielding herself from us."
"It will find out and punish us," the third voice said
fearfully.
"No. It's busy outside, in the woods," said the
first.
"Hurry, then," said the second.
"Hurry, hurry, hurry."
Eliza walked along a shadowy corridor. On
either side doors stood open. People rushed in and out of the
rooms in a brisk manner, passing near her without
a glance as though she were invisible. They wore
strange costumes which she recognized as
Victorian clothes. Many were in servant uniforms,
the maids with hair drawn up in the back and
frilly white aprons on black dresses and
button shoes, the menservants in starched white
collars and black suits, their silver buckles
gleaming, their hair parted in the middle and their white
gloves immaculate.
Although they chatted to each other as they met in the
corridor Eliza could not hear their voices.
Haven itself was subtly transformed. The walls were
covered in ornately patterned paper and the
floors warmed by co
z
y oriental rugs. Fires flickered silently
in all the rooms. Candles burned in chandeliers
overhead, but their light did not dispel the grayness of the
scene.
She emerged into the entrance hall. A group of
gentlemen and ladies stood by the door talking
while servants bustled around them moving trunks and
other luggage. Where the hotel reception desk had
been rested two matching rollback ottomans and a
low marble table. Oil paintings hung on the walls.
A large fire blazed noiselessly in the
fireplace.
One of the gentlemen turned away from the group
to relight his cigar with a wooden match. He glanced
up. With a slight interior shock Eliza
recognized Daniel P. Brannon. He did
not seem to notice her but his charcoal eyes dwelt
meditatively on the hearth where she stood
transfixed. He turned back to the lady he had
been speaking with, who made some remark that caused him
to laugh.
Eliza continued across the hall and stole swiftly
along the paneled back passage to the
plain cellar door opposite the entrance to the
kitchen. It opened before her and she descended into the
denser gloom. Although there were no lights burning and
no windows, somehow she could still find her way. The
walls and ceiling, even the earthen floor, seemed
to radiate a soft light. It was the first time she had
been in the cellar, but it felt oddly familiar.
The vast mass of Haven pressed unseen upon the low
ceiling. Thick stone pillars rose at intervals
from the black earth. Stone walls divided the dark
space into rooms and corridors. She moved past
a massive iron machine she recognized in a
detached way as a steam furnace. A wooden
coal bin filled with small bits of coa
l
stood beside it. Through a grate in the cast iron door
of the furnace fi
r
e burned
with a dull red glow. She turned left and continued
along a brick walkway laid down in the middle
of the passage in the earthen floor.
Somewhere under the west wing she stopped. This part of the
cellar had been set aside for storing wine. The
floor was made of flat stones and swept
relatively clean. Wooden racks held dusty
bottles in their diamond-shaped compartments. Several
barrels were stacked against a wall. At the back of the
wine room was a heavy wooden door made of
rough-sawn planks fastened together with black iron
straps. She felt herself attracted to it. She
touched the door and it opened soundlessly.
Beyond lay a root cellar filled with bins of
vegetables, their ends projecting out of the sawdust
packing. She recognized potatoes and beets.
A rough rack on the wall held jars and
crockery. But Eliza's attention was drawn to an
undistinguished spot on the bare earth floor.
Kneeling, she began to rake at the dry black
loam with her fingers, scooping it toward her.
Strangely her left arm was unbroken and free of
pain. Even as the thought fluttered past her
consciousness it was blown away.
She felt a rough fabric under her fingers and began
to pull on it. Try as she might, it would not come out
of the hole. She braced her feet and yanked it from
side to side, gritting her teeth at the sudden lance
of pain in her arm. For some reason it was vital that
she get the canvas sack out of the earth. There was
something important in it, something she must show
the others.
"We are losing her," the first voice said.
"No matter," sighed the second. "She has
seen. She will remember."
Eliza opened her eyes. She immediately became
aware of the deep throbbing in her left arm. She
lifted it and saw that it was swathed in a thick white
bandage from the elbow to the wrist.
"Don't move it," Amber said beside her. "Let it
heal"
Eliza looked around and realized she was in her bed in
their upstairs room. Blankets covered her to the
chin. Both her arms lay on top of them. She
felt the cotton sheet against the skin of her bare
back. Someone had stripped her to her bra and
panties and put on her pajama bottoms, all
without her knowing it.
A small table had been brought in and placed between the
two beds. On its top stood a pitcher of water
and a glass beside a flat metal box.
"Aspirin," Amber said, following her eyes. "I
took them from the first-aid kit."
"Thanks."
Amber smiled and touched her arm protectively.
"You need them more than we do
-
I don't know how you can stand it."
"It's not so bad."
"There's a trick witches use to control pain,"
Amber said hesitantly. "I'll teach it to you, if
you like. You may need it when the aspirin run out."
"Show me."
Amber looked around the room, then pointed at an
oil lamp that rested on top of her bureau.
"See that lamp over there?"
Eliza nodded.
"I want you to reach out to it with your mind. Try
to feel its smoothness and shape. Try to see it from
all sides at once."
Eliza sent an imaginary hand out to caress the
glass base of the lamp. She felt the curves of
its shade and the damp, furry texture of it
s
wick.
"Continue to hold the lamp in your mind. Now at the
same time become conscious of the pain in your arm. Can
you do that?"
"I think so."
"Good. This next part is tricky. The pain is no
longer in your arm, it's inside the base of the
lamp. Feel it throbbing and aching inside the lamp.
Let there be no doubt in your mind. Just feel it in
the lamp. It's no good trying to push it there
-
you must feel it there already."
The glass of the lamp surrounds my pain, Eliza
thought. It is aching inside the glass, aching under the
cool oil. For a moment she actually felt the
coolness against the hot skin of her forearm under its
bandage.
"I feel it."
"This next part is easy. Disengage your mind from the
lamp, but leave your pain behind inside it. Hold to the
certain conviction that your pain is over there on the
bureau and no longer inside your body. Don't
force it, just understand that it's the truth. The pain can't be
in two places at once. You left it inside the
lamp, so its not inside you."
"That's amazing," Eliza said, blinking at Amber.
She could feel her pain throbbing inside the lamp.
But since the lamp was detached from her body the pain
no longer had any power to hurt her. It was like the
pain inside someone else.
Amber smiled.
"You're a quick study. It took me
weeks to learn that trick."
She busied herself with something on the table.
"What's that?" Eliza asked.
"I've made a sling so you can walk around when you
feel better. I'll put it on if you like."
Eliza nodded and lay back on the pillow with her
eyes closed. She felt Amber's fingers fussing
over her arm and shoulder like the fluttering wings of a
bird. Images stirred in her interior darkness.
She remembered a bizarre dream. She had been
digging in the cellar and had unearthed a sack, but it
would not come out of the hole. And there had been maids in
Victorian uniforms. And Daniel P.
Brannon had looked at her.
As she thought about the dream it returned with greater
intensity. She remembered strangely familiar
voices but could not think what they had said. Did it have
any significance, she wondered, or was it only the
result of her injury and Lee's soothing words.
"How are you?"
She opened her eyes. Lee stood in the doorway.
He came in and sat on the side of the bed
opposite Amber.
"What did you do to me?" she asked with mild
reproach.
"Hypnosis. I put you in a light trance so you
wouldn't feel the pain when we reset your arm."
"How did it go?"
"Like a charm. I felt the bones snap back
into place."
Amber winced.
"Sorry Amber," Lee said. He smiled at
Eliza. "You should be the squeamish one."
"I would be, if I let myself think about it."
Lee took her right hand in his and squeezed it
encouragingly.
"Do you remember anything about it
-
I mean before Mohan pushed you?"
"He seemed normal enough," she said, shuddering.
"I talked to him. He was confused and sort of
vague. I thought the same thing that happened to Luther
had happened to him."
"We may have been wrong about the dog," Lee said.
"How do you mean?"
"I don't think Luther was ever taken over. I
think he just saw something through the window and ran wild
for a time."
"Speaking of which," said Amber, "You'll be glad
to know that the boys moved Mary out of the house
while you were asleep."
"Hale thought it would be better," Lee said. "We
put her in the stable wrapped in a blanket, and
locked the door."
"I'm glad," said Eliza, settling back into the
pillow.
It was a relief to know that the corpse was no longer just
a few doors down the corridor. Irrationally she
felt safer, even though she knew they were all still in
grave danger.
"Allan and Hale are closing the storm shutters,"
Lee went on. "The entire ground floor will be
sealed, just in case Mohan comes back in the
night."
She turned her face to the window. Snow was still
falling, thicker now through the gathering twilight.
"He may die out there."
"I know. But there's nothing we can do. We tried
calling him. He doesn't answer."
Persistently, like a mental fly buzzing past her
ear, the memory of the dream returned. She decided
to mention it to Lee for what it might be worth.
"While I was hypnotized I had the strangest
dream
-"
Distant barks and shouting voices stopped her. They
listened for several seconds. A howl rose and
trailed away mournfully. It was an eerie sound,
unlike any Eliza had ever heard. The barking
began again and changed to savage growls. There were more
shouts, followed by a chilling series of animal
screams.
Lee released her hand and ran from the room without a
word.
Amber hurried around the foot of the bed after him.
"A
mber, don't leave me!"
"You'll be all right," Amber said quickly from the
door. "The others may need my help."
Eliza lay alone with all her senses alert,
listening to the beating of her own heart. There was utter
silence throughout the house. When she could no longer stand
the waiting she pulled herself out of bed, cradled her
arm close to her chest and wrapped a blanket about
her shoulders with her good hand. She went into the
corridor and made her way toward the front
stairs, the floorboards creaking under her bare
feet.
They were gathered inside the front door. Pale
light filtered through the unshuttered upper
windows of the hall. Eliza stopped halfway down
the marble staircase. Hale sat on the flagstones
with his back against the door, blood streaming down his
face from a wound on his scalp. Amber was vainly
trying to staunch the bleeding with his handkerchief, which had
turned a bright scarlet. Allan stood crookedly
supported by Lee. His navy pea jacket was rent
open at the shoulder as though by the claws of some
animal.
"We finished the shutters and were taking one last look
around," Allan said, his voice strained. "He
attacked without warning. I don't know where he came
from. He knocked me down and tore at the
Professor. I think he would have killed us both
if it hadn't been for Luther."
"Where is Luther?" Eliza said.
She descended to the floor of the hall.
"Dead," Lee said quietly. "Mohan killed
him
-
broke his back."
"We only barely managed to get the door locked
against him," Allan said. "He's incredibly
strong. He's not a man anymore, he's something
else."
A bestial scream of fury cut through the exterior
wall. Some great mass slammed against the front
door and made the oak panel flex on its iron
hinges. They listened silently. The assault was not
repeated.
"He was a good dog," Hale muttered to himself, head
cradled in his hands.

As darkness fell Hale had several mattresses
and all the blankets brought down to the gathering room.
His voice was unnaturally subdued as he gave the
order to move the Christmas tree to an empty
chamber where it would be out of the way. They settled into a
state of siege. Lamps were kept burning throughout
night. The men took shifts remaining awake while
the rest tried to sleep.
Mohan continued to test the doors and shutters as he
restlessly circled the house in the darkness. Eliza
heard him scratching and banging in the still, early
morning hours. At intervals a sudden noise would
wake her, and she would lie frightened and exhausted but
unable to close her eyes until fatigue
overcame her.
The worst of it was when he spoke. He called
to each of them by name and begged them to let him
inside, saying that he was cold and hungry. At
times his voice was piti
ful, at other times angry. Now and
then it trailed into guttural animal
sounds, and the groaning creak of the window shutters
attested to the force applied against them.
But the shutters had been made when Haven was still a
summer home, and had been designed to withstand not only
the Atlantic storms but the casual attacks of
vandals. They held.
Dawn brought no ray of light into the stuffy room and
no relief from the tension. The kerosene lamps and the
dull embers of the fire gave off a sooty glow that
strained their eyes and wore their tempers raw. The
intermittent banging and scratching outside kept their
nerves always on edge. While it went on it
occupied their full awareness. When it stopped the
waiting for it to begin aborted attempts at
conversation.
Eliza began to feel like a trapped beast. The
dark, shuttered room was an outward reflection of
her state of mind. Her thoughts raced like a small
animal on a treadmill endlessly round and round,
further inflamed by a low fever caused by the healing of
her broken arm. Throughout the sunless day and
all through the still, tense hours of the night the scraping
continued without let
ting up
.
On the second day of waiting Eliza's
tight-lipped self-control began to unravel.
"We can't just leave him out there to die," she said in a
loud voice.
The scraping at the shutters had ceased for several
minutes. They were silently waiting for it to resume.
"What do you suggest?" Amber said. "That we let
him in to take another crack at us?"
"At least we could put out food and blankets."
"He's got food."
"What do you mean?"
Amber rattled nervously in her purse and tapped
out a cigarette. Stress had driven her back
to her old habit. She worked her lighter several
times before it flamed.
"I mean the dog. I saw it from upstairs. Its
underside is all open and bloody."
Eliza stood and paced around the table to listen at the
window for a moment. Silence.
"Maybe we could tie him up. Lee?"
Lee shook his head, his expression
sympathetic.
"That's what the Messenger is waiting for. It's much
stronger now than it was two days ago."
She had expected at least moral support. His
denial hurt her.
"You talk about Mohan as though he were already dead,"
she said accusingly.
"Damn it, Eliza, wake up," Amber said.
"It's him or us."
"I say it's murder." She appealed to Hale,
who sat at the desk not looking at them, his bandaged
head propped in his hand. "What do you suppose the
police will say when they discover what we've done?
They'll say we scared ourselves silly, then locked
Mohan out and let him freeze to death."
"Justifying our actions is the least of our
worries," Hale said wearily.
"I see," Eliza said. "You're all willing
to let this bogey man, this shadow, turn us
into animals."
They looked at her unspeaking.
"That's what we are, isn't it? Apes hiding in a
cave."
Allan stood up from the couch and stretched, then went
to the table. He lifted a leg over its
corner and sat with his hands folded on his thigh.
"In some measure I agree with Eliza," he said
in a quiet voice. "I've been doing a lot of
thinking these past few days. We were wrong to let the
Messenger set its own terms. We're playing its
game. It's using our weaknesses against us."
"Agreed." Lee pulled out a chair and sat beside
him. "But what can we do? We have no weapons
to fight it."
"We have to wait," Hale said in irritation.
"Today's the twenty-ninth. The boat will be here on the
second."
Amber let out a brief shrill laugh.
"It's not going to let us get on the boat. It's
biding its time until it's strong enough to kill us."
"Shut up," Allan told her. "Professor,
I'm sorry but I can't sit and do nothing. I'm
going to try to fight it."
"No," Hale said sharply. "After the New Year
its power will dissipate. We only have to hold out two
more days."
"That's not good enough," Allan said.
"I'll decide what's good enough!" Hale stood
up, the knuckles of his hand white where he gripped
the back of
his chair. "This isn't a democracy
this is a field expedition and I'm running it.
You'll do what I say."
"Stop fighting, you fools," Eliza said. "Can't
you see that's what it wants?"
The tension felt like sandpaper scraping along her
nerves. She could no longer defend herself. It
attacked her from every direction at once. Her head
throbbed like a drum.
Amber got up.
"I'm going upstairs where there's some daylight," she
said, and stalked from the room.
Hale took a breath and seemed to collect himself.
"Follow her, will you Allan? I don't want
anyone left alone. We'll talk later."
Allan nodded and went after Amber.
The remaining three looked at each other, the silence
thickening between them. At the shutter behind Eliza the
soft scratching began again.
"I have to get out," Eliza said. She took up a
lamp. "I'll check the lock on the back door
-
it will give me something to do."
The door at the end of the rear passage was secure.
Eliza suppressed the impulse
to unlock and open it just for a moment to breathe the fresh
icy air. The dark interior of the house stifled her.
She went into the kitchen, where the belly of the iron
stove cast a dull red glow across the tiles.
"Mind if I join you?"
Lee came into the kitchen and set his lamp next
to hers on the table. His inner stillness soothed her
despite her lingering resentment. He put his
hand on the side of her neck. She pulled away and
toyed nervously with a button on her sweater.
"I suppose Hale sent you
-
he's like a mother hen."
"How's the arm?" he asked, ignoring her remark.
"Better. It doesn't hurt so much. It's starting
to itch."
"Eliza
-"
She faced him.
"Why didn't you back me up, Lee? I thought
I could count on you."
"You know you can. but I have to think for everyone."
"You're willing to let Mohan die in the snow."
He took her shoulders in his hands.
"Mohan is like a rabid wolf. We'd
have to kill him before we could take him."
"Maybe that would be kinder."
"Maybe. But then that thing would possess someone
else."
He leaned close. She embraced him with her good
arm, protecting the other in its sling with her upper
body. They kissed. She broke the contact of their
lips, breathing faster. The hardness of his body made
her knees weak. Her back curved like a bow over
his supporting hand.
"Let's find a room where we can be alone," Lee
murmured into her hair.
"No. They'll come looking for us."
"Let them look."
She pulled away and laughed.
"I thought you had to think for everyone."
"I wasn't talking about thinking."
She stepped to the side and put the kitchen table between
them.
"Are you going to help Allan?"
His face became more serious.
"I think so. Allan's right, we have to take the
risk and confront it. I just wish we had a
weapon."
"What weapon could possibly hurt it?
It doesn't even have a body."
"A
s
ymbol of some kind." His blue eyes flashed.
"On the subtle planes of being symbols are
tangible. They can maim and kill."
"It's hard to know where illusion ends and reality
begins."
"Sometimes it is," he agreed. "The lives of men
are the dreams of God."
"I had a funny dream when you hypnotized me,"
Eliza said thoughtfully. "I forgot about it in all the
excitement."
She told him about walking through the Victorian
edition of Haven, and about seeing Brannon, and
digging in the cellar.
"There were voices that sounded weirdly familiar,
though I can't think where I've heard them before."
"What sort of voices?" Lee asked with mounting
interest.
"Childlike, but sort of old at the same time.
Three of them. They led me somehow."
"Were they the voices you heard in your other dream?"
"Maybe

I'm not sure."
Lee paced in front of the stove and stood with his hands
on his hips.
"I didn't think it was important," Eliza
said. "It was only a dream."
"Dreams are uncommon in hypnotic sleep,"
he said, turning to her. "It may have been a psychic
message from spirit entities trying to help us."
"Or a trick."
"Yes. There's one way to find out. Come on."
He grabbed his lamp up from the table and drew her after
him by the hand.
"Where are we going?"
"The cellar."
"Wait
-
I need a light."
Impatiently he paused while she took up her
lamp. They crossed the chill back passage to the
cellar entrance. Lee pulled the plank door open
and stepped into the darkness. Eliza followed. An
earthy puff of moist, warmer air rose to engulf
them.
It was both the same and different from her dream. The
walls were in the places she remembered,
and the dark mass of the furnace. The thin ribbon of
bricks that formed the walkway in the dirt floor still
ran down the middle of the main passage. But
cobwebs that had not been in her dream hung thick in
every corner and trailed from the beams of the low ceiling
to brush her face and tangle in her hair. She
held her lamp up to ward them
off, and they burst into brief strings of sparks on
contact with the hot shade.
"Careful," Lee said. "You
His
ll
set the place on fire."
"I'm not getting cobwebs in my mouth," she said
indignantly. "You've got two hands
-
I haven't."
They passed into the wine cellar. It was as Eliza
remembered it from her dream, but the racks were empty.
One rack had fallen onto the flagstone floor and
splintered. The small door at the other end of the
chamber stood crooked in its frame. When Lee
pulled on its latch it fell out toward him in a
shower of dust and rusty flakes of iron. The hinges
had disintegrated in the damp air.
Eliza followed Lee into the root cellar. The
preserve shelves were bare. The wooden bins held
no produce. A few empty burlap sacks
littered the earth floor like the pelts of dead
animals.
"I remember walking over here," she said half
to herself. "And kneeling down."
Lee dropped to his knees and held his lamp near
the floor.
"It's been dug," he said with excitement.
"Look, the earth's piled up."
Eliza crouched and brushed at the granular black
soil with confusion.
"It can't be. Anyway, I'm sure I didn't
do it
- I've never been down here."
"Are you positive?"
"Yes. Only in the dream."
Lee picked up a piece of yellow-orange
paper. It showed a rectangular pattern of
creases. The edges were stuck together with red wax. It
had been torn open. He held it close to the
lamp and examined its texture, then smelled it.
"Oilskin," he said. "It was used to wrap something."
"Brannon's diary," she said with sudden
realization.
"Maybe. The diary had black earth clinging to it but
was undamaged, meaning it hadn't been exposed to any
damp."
She studied his face. The upward-slanting
lamplight gave it a sinister cast. I must look
the same to him, she thought.
"You think I was the one who found Brannon's
magic book."
"You're the most likely candidate. It couldn't have
been Mohan, not if he killed Mary, and the book
was in your room."
"But I don't remember," she said in exasperation.
"You were unconscious. Something in this house guided
you."
She stood up with her lamp.
"Then the dream doesn't mean anything. I was only
remembering what I did before."
"In your dream you were pulling a sack. This isn't
a sack," he said, holding up the oilskin.
"No, but you know how dreams are. They're always
confusing one thing with another."
He got up and began casting
around
the chamber with his head bent low. She
followed
him into the wine cellar.
"What are you looking for?"
"Something to dig with."
Stepping inside the fallen wine rack, he lifted
his heel and brought it down on one of the oak cross
members. The strap of wood splintered with a loud
crash. Lee twisted it loose from the nail holding
it to the frame and carried the stick into the root cellar
.
H
e began to dig in the depression of the floor.
Eliza put her lamp where it would cast the best
light and stood watching.
When he had gone down two feet he paused and
wiped his head with his sleeve, grinning up at her.
Dirt on the cuff of his denim shirt left a
black streak on his brow.
"If there's anything here, it's deep," he said.
"Give it up, Lee. You're getting filthy."
"I'll change clothes after we're finished."
Stubbornly he went back to work. The hole was
nearly a yard below the level of the floor before he
struck something hard. He brushed the dirt aside with
his hands and tapped the black surface below
experimentally with his stick. It thudded with a hollow
sound.
Eliza leaned over the hole to look.
"That's not what I saw in my dream."
"Maybe this is the treasure Biddingford was looking
for," he grunted as he tugged at the exposed
wooden corner.
"It's some sort of trunk," said Eliza.
In a few moments its outline was free of soil.
It took all of Lee's strength to lift it
straight out of the hole, but once clear of the clinging
sides of earth it proved to weigh little.
"No lock," Lee said. "Can't contain anything
too valuable."
He loosened the clasp. Eliza drew back
nervously. The square wooden lid squeaked open.
"Here's your sack," Lee said.
Inside the trunk was a gray bundle sewn around
the edges with thick twine. Lee pulled it out and set
it on the ground.
"Sailcloth," he murmured.
The rotten stitches resisted his strenuous efforts
to part them for several moments. Abruptly they
broke. A cascade of white bones tumbled to the
floor. A skull rolled toward
Eliza. She shrank away from its touch.
"More bones," Lee said. "Another child by the look of
them. This place must be a regular cemetery."
With a slight grimace of disgust he piled the bones
back into the canvas sack and held it closed with his
fingers.
"All that work for nothing," Eliza said, glancing
nervously behind her.
"Not necessarily. Ask yourself why all the other
skeletons are in the quarry, and this one is here
buried inside a sack and a trunk."
She shrugged. "It was buried at a different time,
I guess."
"But why not at the quarry with the rest?"
"By a different person, then."
"Possible, but unlikely."
"Somehow this body was different from the others?"
"That's it." He rattled the bones. "The corpses
of the other children were treated with contempt. This one was
accorded respect. The others were piled together under a
few stones. This was interred
-
and not the whole body. These bones were carefully
cleaned of flesh and sewn into this sack, then buried in
the trunk. This is a legitimate
grave."
She stared at him.
"Michael Brannon," she said softly.
He nodded.
"It would explain why this place was important enough for
you to dream about, and why the diary was put here long after
the original burial."
"I assumed Michael's bones were in the quarry with the
rest."
"We all did," Lee said. "But remember,
Brannon loved his son."
"Even if this is Michael's grave, what good
does it do us?"
Lee stood and gripped her elbows with excitement.
She winced as the sudden pressure jarred her injured
arm but he did not notice.
"This is the weapon we've been looking for," he said
intensely. "Through these remains we can work against the
human side of the Messenger."
Eliza looked around at the shadows
apprehensively. She did not like to hear the name of the
thing spoken aloud. It seemed too much like calling the
evil toward them.
"We'd better get upstairs," she said. "Hale
probably has Amber and Allan tearing
the house apart looking for us."
They took up the lamps and retraced their path
toward the cellar steps. Lee went in front with the
canvas bundle of bones. They passed the brooding
bulk of the old furnace. Eliza's spirits began
to lift.
Without warning both lamps went out.
"Lee
-?"
"Eliza, don't move. I'll get out my
lighter."
The dark was absolute. Never had Eliza
experienced such total blackness. The walls of
earth and stone pressed upon her and muffled up her
nervous words. She began to gasp. Her breaths
became louder and louder until they roared in her ears
with hurricane velocity. Even the air seemed
to shift and whirl about her. Sly fingers brushed her
neck and face. She reached blindly out and stumbled with
dizzy steps through the void, her free arm beating at
the swirling air.
She shouted as loudly as she could but the rising noise
of the wind drowned her words. Dimly, like the echo of
her own thoughts, she heard an answer. The thunderous
rushing increased until it was a great
cataract of sound, and even the echo was lost in seamless
space.
Is it outside or inside my mind? she wondered.
A confused cacophony of gibbering voices mocked
her. Inside and outside were one. The margin formed
by her skin dissolved and she swayed and clawed vainly
with her single arm for support,
uncertain whether she stood or fell endlessly through
some bottomless crevasse.
Am I going mad? Is this what Mohan has been
feeling? If I'm possessed, what is my body
doing?
Somewhere nearby Lee was alone with her in the darkness.
Concern for him focused her chaotic thoughts. With a
supreme act of will she forced herself to disengage her
attention from her overloaded senses. Instead she
fixed on the color of Lee's emotions. Faintly
through the blizzard of background noise she sensed
him. He was concerned and apprehensive for something apart
from himself. He was worried about her, she realized.
Warmth flowed through her and gave her strength.
Forcing her nerveless legs to work, she groped blindly
toward the source of his emotions, not knowing if she
walked or crawled. Only the growing force of
Lee's feelings confirmed that she was moving
in the right direction. It seemed an eternity before her
wildly flailing hand hit and clung to something
solid. A kind of electricity flowed through her
fingers at the contact. She pulled close and clung
desperately.
Like a swiftly turning tide the chaos enveloping
her senses began to recede. She heard Lee's
voice dimly calling as though from a distant mountain
peak. She shouted in answer. The earth stabilized
under her and she realized that she was indeed standing on her
two feet, though leaning at a precarious angle.
"Don't move," he shouted, his words strengthening
moment by moment. "Wait until I strike a
light."
With a click the pale flame of his lighter broke the
mirror surface of the dark and the last of the chattering
eddies swirled away into nothingness.
Eliza gasped and pulled Lee toward her, hurting
her arm in her haste. He stumbled and held her
tight. They stood in an alcove off the main
passage beside a rotting wooden platform. The
lighter flame revealed long rents in its decayed
boards, and beneath them a fathomless blackness. The
platform was barely sound enough to support its own
weight, let alone the weight of a human
being.
"It must be the old well under the east wing that Hale
used to fill the cistern," Lee said, his voice thin.
"I was following the sound of your voice through the
darkness. I almost walked over it."
"The bones," Eliza said. "Where are they?"
Lee glanced at the well. The gaps in the boards
were not wide enough to accommodate a skull. He left
the alcove and began to search anxiously back along
the brick walkway by the flame of the lighter.
Eliza followed with a sinking feeling in her heart.
"It's all right," he said.
The glow of an oil lamp brightened the stone walls,
and she saw the sack of bones lying in a heap where he
had placed it while rummaging in his pockets for his
lighter. Her own lamp lay shattered next to the
black hulk of the furnace.
"We have a weapon," he said grimly, scooping up
the sack. "It knows, and it doesn't like it. Let's
get out of here."

"Allan, I don't want to hear any more about it,"
Hale said. "What you've proposed is madness."
"It will work," Allan said, spacing his words evenly.
"Tell him, Lee."
"I think Allan's idea has a chance," Lee
said.
"A chance," Hale repeated with a scowl. "And if it
fails, we will have provoked the entity just as it is
reaching its greatest destructive potential."
"If we don't act we're finished," Allan
said.
"We don't know that," said Hale. "I won't be
responsible for any more deaths."
The argument over how to use the remains of Michael
Brannon, and whether they should be used at all, had
smoldered all the previous evening, only to flare
up after breakfast. Hale was set against any action
whatever. Allan seemed equally determined not
to passively await his fate. This placed Lee in
the unenviable position of mediator.
The bones lay stretched across the conference table where
Hale had arranged them the night
before in the shape of a human skeleton. They were
pathetically small, filling less than half the
tabletop. Michael Brannon had been a slight
child, Eliza thought as she gazed over them. Not at
all like his father. The boy must have followed his mother's
side of the family. The bones of the shins curved
slightly, leading Hale to speculate that
the boy had suffered from rickets in addition to his
madness.
If he was ever mad at all. Perhaps he had been
autistic, or learning-impaired, or epileptic.
In the Victorian age all abnormals were
lumped together. What was madness but a vague term for the
unknown? She would be called mad for feeling the
emotions of other people. If she had been unstable as a
child, or less secretive about her ability, today she
might be locked in an institution, like her mother.
Sometimes she wondered if her mother's insanity stemmed
from an effort to suppress an inherited empathic
ability. Maybe all empaths were destined to go
mad, sooner or later.
"My decision is final," Hale said in a louder
voice that drew Eliza out of her reverie.
"I'm sorry, Professor," said Allan
gravely. "I can no longer accept your authority.
You're allowing your sense of guilt to overpower your
rational judg
e
ment."
"I don't need any pop psychology from you, young
man." Hale wagged his blunt finger at Allan.
"With your history of drug abuse, you're
lucky I even let you into this seminar."
"We all feel so lucky," Amber said in a
cutting tone.
Allan motioned her to be silent.
"I intend to compose the ritual with or without your
help," he told Hale.
He was completely calm
-
almost detached from the conversation. It was as though he were
describing the inevitable rather than presenting an
argument. Hale, by contrast, threatened to explode from
internal pressure. His flushed face gleamed with
sweat.
"You're talking about necromancy
-
the same kind of bloody black magic that called
the Messenger into being in the first place."
Allan shrugged.
"Sometimes one has to fight fire with fire."
Hale turned to Lee in exasperation.
"Lee, you talk to him. Make him see sense. I
can't seem to get through his drug-induced stupor."
Lee shook his head.
"I agree that what Allan proposes is
dangerous, but we have to act. If there were
any other way
-"
"There is," Hale said. "We take our
supplies into the black room and seal the door, then
simply wait out the New Year."
"There's no guarantee we'd be safe in the black
room," Lee said. "The Messenger could easily
smoke us out if it couldn't reach us directly."
"Even if we could escape by running and hiding, we
can't simply let this entity continue to exist,"
Allan said with determination. "We have a
responsibility to end it. That's why you came here."
This appeal to his sense of duty stifled the retort
on Hale's lips. His broad shoulders sagged.
He turned his back on Allan and went to the table,
where he stood looking down at the skeleton of the child.
Eliza expected Amber to protest this altruism,
but she merely linked her arm through Allan's and stayed
by him.
"Many crimes have been committed," Lee said, coming
up behind Hale. "But the worst was against that boy. His
soul has been in torment for nearly a century due
to the monstrous evil of the one person in the world he should
have been able to trust."
"For Mary's sake," Amber said
quietly.
Hale turned to them, his face set in stubborn
lines.
"I have no power over you if you refuse to accept my
authority."
"That's not enough," said Allan. "We all have to work
together if we're to have any chance of winning."
"Well, if you're all against me
-" Hale looked at each of them. "And I see that
you are
-
naturally I won't obstruct you."
Allan went over to Hale. He stood looking at
the older man eye to eye.
"I'm asking for your help," he said simply.
Hale blinked and cleared his throat. He looked
away, embarrassed by Allan's directness.
"I'll do all I can."
"Thank you, sir." Allan opened a spiral
notebook on a bare corner of the table next to the
bones. "I've made some sketches of the layout of the
circle. I'd like your opi
nion."
Hale followed
him and
leaned over
to look at the notebook. Hesitantly he put
his
hand
on Allan's shoulder. It was perhaps as close as he
could
come to an apology.
Amber went to the opposite side of Allan and
put her arm around his waist while he explained his
ideas.
"We've postulated that the power of the Messenger is
increasing exponentially, and will reach its peak at
midnight on New Year's Eve, which is tomorrow. For
this plan to work it must be put into effect on the
anniversary of the Messenger's birth, but during the
day
when the spirit of Michael Bran
non is strongest. We don't dare delay until
tomorrow night
.
.
."
"I'd like to catch my breath," Eliza said softly
to Lee. Do you mind walking with me?"
He studied her with concern. She realized that
her face must betray more of her inner turmoil than
she wished.
Without waiting for his answer she left the gathering
room and went quickly into the front hall toward the
stairs. She needed light and chill fresh air.
Lee followed her. As she mounted the staircase she
slowed her pace to allow him to catch up.
"I can't stand arguments," she said. "Especially between
friends."
"You should have left sooner."
"I didn't want to draw attention to myself."
He trailed her silently into the east wing. Her
steps led automatically to her room. The door
stood open. She went i
not. Because of its size the
four-
poster had not been stripped of its mattress. A
discarded red blanket and a single pillow lay
rumpled across it.
Eliza walked past the naked frame of Amber's
bed to the window and looked down. It was a sunny day.
The snow lay deep from the last storm.
Automatically she searched for the lurking figure of
Mohan. They had not heard him outside the gathering
room for several hours. He was nowhere to be
seen, but his footprints were visible in the snow.
A faint musky odor hung in the frigid air
of the room. It was elusive yet familiar. She
turned, trying to trace it. Lee stood in the
doorway as though afraid his nearness would be
unwelcome. She walked around the room slowly.
The scent was gone, leaving her wondering if she had
imagined it.
Her eyes strayed to the bed. Two depressions
dimpled the pillow. In the middle of the twisted
blanket was a small white stain. She sat on the
bed and laid her hand in a hollow of the pillow, then
cradled her face. Quietly she began to cry.
"What's wrong?" Lee said, stepping into the room.
He gently pulled her hand away.
"Nothing. I'm an ass," she said, wiping her
eyes.
She was furious at her display of weakness.
"Tell me."
She gestured behind her at the bed.
"Amber and Allan. When they came up here
yesterday they made love."
He looked at the bed with a bemused expression.
"Even if they did, I don't see what there is
to cry about."
"That's why she was acting like a blushing bride,"
Eliza said. "She didn't contradict him all
morning."
He sat on the bed beside her.
"Why don't you tell me what's really bothering
you?"
Eliza sighed and wiped her hand on the knee of her
jeans.
"I don't know
-
maybe I'm jealous."
"Of Allan?" he said in surprise.
"No, Amber. She has something I can never have."
"Why can't you?" He covered her hand with his on her
knee. "All you have to do is ask."
"It's not the sex, it's afterwards that hurts."
"Everyone takes a chance."
"It's harder for me."
"You have to stop worrying about tomorrow. Everyone feels
hurt when their trust is betrayed. You just feel it
more."
"I can't live with it."
"You have to."
"I'm afraid it will turn me into a stone-faced
heartless old maid."
He laughed.
"What's so funny?" she asked defensively.
"I was trying to picture you in a rocking chair with
granny glasses."
She slapped him spitefully on the side of the
head. He caught her hand and embraced her with
care so as not to injure her other arm, kissing her
despite her resistance. Suddenly she knew she
wanted him.
He shut the door. They undressed without haste and
made love slowly side by side on the bed with their
legs entwined. She was amazed by his control.
Several times she reached shattering peaks of sensation
before his own release. When it came, the strength of his
reaction frightened her. He was like a whirling
fire-wheel throwing off sparks to her empathic
perception. She felt the intensity of his pleasure more
forcefully than she had felt her own.
Afterwards they lay together with the blanket pulled over them
against the freezing air. Eliza rubbed her bare
shoulder. It felt pebbly. She realized her
entire body was covered with goose bumps. Lee
put his arm under her head and hugged her close for
warmth.
"You should have told me," she said.
"Told you what?"
"That Hermetists make such terrific lovers. I
might have given in sooner."
"You're not so bad yourself."
"Hollow flattery."
"Not at all. You seem to know just what to do at
exactly the right moment. Maybe it's your gift."
"Anyway, we're a heck of a couple."
"You said it. It would be a shame to split up such a
pair as us."
His flippant remark subdued her.
"We will have to go separate ways," she said. "I know
it sounds corny, but we really are two ships
passing in the night."
"You're right
-
it does sound corny."
"Be serious, Lee. I don't want to lose
you."
"I don't want to lose you, either. Where's the
problem?"
"Life is the problem," she said in exasperation.
"You have your work in upper state New York. I have
school in Toronto. We live unconnected
lives. Our meeting is a freak. It
isn't part of anything that belongs to either of us."
"You know your problem?" he said in a tone only
half serious. "You think negatively. You're
always preoccupied with what you can't do, instead of doing
what you can."
"What have you ever done that you can preach about?" she
retorted. "I bet life was always easy for you."
"Would you believe I was once an overweight,
pimple-faced kid with asthma?"
She looked at him.
"Not hardly."
"It's true, though. One day I had an asthma
attack that nearly killed me. I was away from
home. No one knew what to do. I decided afterwards
that the world wasn't about to change to accommodate me,
so I'd better change myself until I could handle
the world."
"Through magic?"
He nodded.
"What did your parents say about that?"
Lee breathed a deep sigh.
"My father was a Baptist minister. I was supposed
to follow in his footsteps. You might say I was
cut out for the cloth."
"You, a minister?" Eliza laughed.
"That's what I said."
"What happened?"
"We had a parting of the ways."
"I hope he's not still mad at you."
"He's dead," Lee said quietly.
"Lee, I'm sorry."
"Don't be." He smiled at her. "We made
it up before the end. He wasn't such a bad old
coot
-
just too much starch in his collar."
A flicker of movement caught her eye. She
looked past the foot of the bed toward the small chest
of drawers, which had been shoved at an angle into the
corner. A grotesque parody of a human face
leered at her from the oval mirror. She screamed and
clutched at Lee.
It was an instant before she realized the face was only
a reflected image. She turned to the window in time
to see Mohan thrust his bare hand through one of the panes
of glass. Jagged shards flew inward with a crash that
echoed through the house. He began to tear at the wooden
cross-frame without regard to the remaining sharp
spears of glass lacerating his palm. His face
twisted and writhed in a snarling,
frost-bitten mask of horror.
In a single motion Lee rolled out of the bed and
picked up one of the unlit kerosene heaters from the
floor. He ran toward the window and threw the heater
at the glass with all the force of his upper body. The
window exploded outward. The heater struck Mohan
in the face. He grunted and flailed his arms as he
fell slowly backward. Lee had
to catch himself against the sill of
the window
to keep from following the heater
to the
snowy ground below.
Eliza hurried toward him.
"Watch your feet
,
his
he said sharply.
She stopped, realizing that the floorboards were covered
with broken transparent splinters. His own feet
left red oozing marks as he went to the bed and gathered
up the blanket, then threw it over the glass
fragments.
"Lee, you're bleeding
-"
He leaned out through the hole in the window and looked
down. She came up behind him.
"Is he dead?"
"Take a look."
There was no body in the drift of snow that lay
close to the house, only a broken section of gray
pipe and the fractured heater.
"He climbed up the lead drainpipe," Lee said.
"It tore loose when he grabbed for it."
Footsteps pounded in the corridor. The door
burst open and the others rushed in, then stopped to stare.
Eliza realized she was naked. She dived for her
pile of clothes and held them before her. Blushing, she
struggled to dress without exposing herself.
Lee seemed completely unconscious of his
nudity. He made no attempt to cover himself as
he calmly explained what had happened.
Hale gave a silent but emphatic curse.
"I should have guessed he could climb the pipes.
It's a wonder he didn't do it sooner."
"Don't blame yourself," Allan said. "No
ordinary man could make that climb."
"We'd better lock all the upstairs rooms from
the outside," Lee said. "If he gets in another
window, the door may slow him down.
"Lee, your feet," Amber said in alarm. "You're
bleeding."
"Come downstairs and we'll treat those cuts. Then
we'll tell you what we've been cooking up for
tomorrow." Hale glanced wryly at Lee's nakedness.
"Better put on some clothes. You're liable
to catch a chill."
Lee began to dress. Eliza caught Amber
looking at her with a cat-like smile of amusement.
At another time it might have irritated her. But she
realized there was no hostility in the look, only
playfulness. Eliza felt alert and intensely
alive. She suddenly saw the amusing aspect of
her position and could not help laughing out loud.
Lee stopped midway into his briefs and turned
to look at her past his naked buttocks.
"It's not that funny," he said dryly.

"Hurry," Hale said. "It's nearly sunset."
They pressed around each other in the windowless storage
room just outside the door to the black chamber.
Preparations for the ritual had consumed more time than
anticipated. As the shadows of afternoon lengthened,
Haven had gradually taken on an atmosphere of
electric tension.
It was New Year's Eve, the very day Brannon
had worked his remorseless will on the powers of darkness
nearly a century ago. In this room mad children
-
who knew how many?
-
had died horrible, painful deaths to satisfy his
warped illusion of destiny. There was a sense of
gathering malice all about them that waited only the
fall of night to unleash its hellish potency.
Eliza was the first to enter. She stopped on the
threshold and drew in her breath. A
n
imposing draped figure, its cowled face in
shadow, confronted her with its arms cross
ed on its breast. For a moment she thought Daniel
P. Brannon
had
returned from
the
grave. Then the figure
threw back
the hood and stepped aside to let her pass,
and she
recognized the strained pale profile of
Allan.
He was dressed in the magical regalia from
Brannon's trunk. The circlet of silver bound
a square of folded cloth into a cap on his head.
On the breast of the midnight blue robe hung the
massive silver and gold lamen. A
multicolored sash closed the robe. The ebony
rod was thrust into it. On his feet he wore painted
leather sandals.
Silently he indicated one of the points of a large
chalk pentagram drawn in white on the black
floorboards. She blinked water from her eyes as
she took her position upon it. The air hung thick
with acrid incense smoke that fumed from a charcoal
brazier inside a red chalk triangle. A
burning lamp in each corner of the room etched the
serpentine plumes that arose from its glowing iron bowl
against the blackness.
The triangle measured about three feet on each
side, its base fronting a point of the pentagram.
Inside it before the brazier rested the skull of
Michael Brannon. The sightless eye sockets
seemed to stare up at Eliza with mute accusation.
The two thigh bones of the child lay crossed in front
of the skull, reminding her of a pirate
flag.
In the open space in the middle of the pentagram were
arrayed a curved knife with a black hilt, a
small silver chalice, and a flat earthenware dish
with a granular white substance heaped upon it.
Allan pointed to where each of the others sho
uld stand as they successively
entered the
chamber. Eliza realized that she was on the left
leg of the pentagram. Lee took his position on the
right leg. Amber stood opposite her on the right
arm. Hale stopped on the left arm of the star
to Eliza's left. Allan closed the chamber
door and sealed it with an occult gesture, then
stepped onto the head of the pentagram and faced them with
his back to the red triangle.
"Before we start I want everyone to clearly understand the
danger of this experiment," Hale said. "Now is the
time to withdraw."
"Quiet, please," said Allan in a toneless
voice.
He bowed his head to meditate.
The harsh emotions of the previous day had not
completely subsided. Even though Hale lent his
support to the ritual he remained far from
enthusiastic. Eliza could feel the nervous darting of
his worried thoughts, and knew he was not fearful for
himself, but held himself responsible for their welfare.
He was afraid of any action that might put a
life in jeopardy.
Allan raised his head.
"We are gathered here to summon forth the tortured spirit
of Michael Brannon and give it rest. Remain
unafraid, for our purpose is justified."
He lifted his arms and looked heavenward, speaking a
short prayer in a strange guttural language.
Eliza wondered if it was the Enochian from which letters were
inscribed on the back of the lamen. It sounded like a
cross between Greek and Arabic to her untutored
ears.
Allan went to the center of the pentagram and took up
the clay dish in his cupped hands. Returning to his
place, he reverently touched his tongue to the white
powder that lay on it. He passed it to Amber on his
left.
"Taste of your mortality
,
his
he said.
Amber imitated his gesture, tipping her
tongue against the substance on the dish, and passed it
to Lee, who did the same and passed it to Eliza.
Hesitantly Eliza raised the dish and put out
her tongue. The familiar flavor reassured her.
It was salt, nothing more. She passed the dish
to Hale. He tasted the salt and gave it back
into the hands of Allan.
"Our flesh comes of earth. To earth it returns."
There was a dolorous note in his voice that chilled
them all. Allan replaced the dish and turned
to face the skull and bones in the triangle. He
drew out the black rod and raised it overhead.
Although Eliza could not see clearly because his back was
toward her, he seemed to grip the lamen hanging about
his neck in his left hand.
"Hear me, Michael Brannon! I summon you
by the power of these consecrated symbols which you know
well. Return to your former house of clay.
Manifest forth in the triangle appointed to you, for it
is the will of your Father in heaven that you be given peace."
The smoke-filled air above the brazier in the
triangle shimmered and swirled, but nothing further
happened. Allan turned calmly and slid the
rod back under his sash, and Eliza realized he had
only given the preliminary evocation. He
had not expected the spirit to respond.
"Revolve the pentagram," he said.
Eliza began to walk along the chalk line toward
Allan, who at the same time started toward Lee.
All of them followed the line of chalk that formed the
left side of the point of the star upon which they stood.
When she reached Allan's point she stopped and
faced the center of the pentagram.
"Zacare, ca, od zamran," they all chanted in
unison.
Allan had made them memorize the series of
Enochian words the previous evening. It was a potent
evocation commanding the spirit to coalesce and reveal itself.
Eliza walked toward the point where formerly Lee
had stood, but which was now occupied by Allan. The
pentagram revolved another fifth turn. Again they
recited the words, this time in more confident voices.
They continued on around the chalk lines in a
clockwise direction, pausing at each point
to chant, until once again they found themselves in their
original places.
As the pentagram revolved a subtle change
took place in the air of the chamber. It was not so much
a physical as a psychic transformation. When
Eliza shut her eyes the darkness behind her
lids pulsed and flickered with colored bursts like
fireworks. She became dizzy and felt as though she
were standing in the dark on a high place. When
she opened her eyes these impressions
retreated
but did not entirely depart.
"Kneel," Allan ordered.
Following his example, they knelt on the arms of the
pentagram facing inward. Amber's full lips were
compressed and her jaw tight. Lee gave the
impression of controlled excitement. Eliza
glanced at Hale. His brow gleamed with sweat even
though the room was cool.
Allan reached forward and drew toward him the
black-hilted knife and the silver chalice. With a
single quick motion he cut himself with the knife across the
left palm, then allowed his blood to drip into the
cup. When the drops ceased to fall he pushed the
chalice toward Amber and handed her the knife.
She took it with surprise and cast a questioning look
at Allan. This part of the ritual had not been
mentioned.
"It's necessary," he murmured.
Still she hesitated, looking at each of them. Lee
nodded to her slightly. Hale gave no
sign. Biting her lip, she pressed the point of the
knife into the heel of her left hand. The steel
indented her milk-white skin. She closed her
eyes and flicked the point across her palm.
Eliza flinched, feeling the pain of the other woman as
her own. The blood seemed to pause before it welled
into the line of the cut and trickled freely into the
chalice. In her apprehension Amber had cut
deeper than she had intended. It was a minute before the
scarlet droplets slowed. She put
the cut to her lips and with her other hand slid the knife
and cup to Lee, who opened his palm emotionlessly before
passing the knife to Eliza.
Her hand trembled as she took it. The sight of
blood on the polished steel made her squeamish.
She felt a faintness and firmly beat it down
inside herself. This was no time to be weak. Gritting
her resolution, she detached herself from her fear and
made a small cut on her left palm where it
extended from under the bandage, then held the cup close
beneath her sling as six or seven drops fell into it.
Quickly she passed the chalice to Hale, who bled
himself with a single efficient stroke.
Allan gathered in the chalice with both hands and
tipped it to his lips, then gave it
to Amber.
"Taste of your immortality."
With a grimace Amber tasted the blood and passed the
cup to Lee. It quickly rounded the pentagram.
Eliza was startled by the rush of animal strength that
suffused her limbs at its salty, metallic
flavor. In giving up a portion of her own
vitality, she realized, she had partaken of the life
forces of four others. The level of energy in the
chamber quadrupled, and the air began to vibrate with a
low hum that could be felt rather than heard.
Allan got up from his knees and indicated for them
to also rise. Turning, he emptied the remainder of the
blood over the triangle. He poured half on the
glowing embers in the brazier and half on the skull.
Steam went up where the warm blood touched the cold
bone. The smell of the incense grew more earthy. He
replaced the chalice in the
center of the pentagram, then faced the skull and
spoke to it in a resonant voice.
"Michael Brannon! Your hunger compels you
to reveal yourself. I command you, come forth!"
With the black rod he traced an emblem on the
smokey air over the triangle and vibrated a
series of barbarous words that were even harsher
than the previous Enochian phrase. The cut in
Eliza's palm throbbed by some hidden sympathy.
Allan mutely pointed the rod at the skull.
There fell a sudden calm broken only by the tense
breaths of the watchers. Even the writhing column of
incense seemed frozen in space.
A distant boom echoed through the floor beneath their
feet. None of them dared move. The silence continued
for the space of over a minute. When the tension was
becoming unbearable Eliza heard a shuffling step
outside the door of the black chamber. She listened
while the steps dragged across the floor of the storage
room. An image of Mary's frozen corpse
rose in her mind. She stared wide-eyed at Lee.
He gave her a look of reassurance and she felt
the strength of his courage. She turned with him to watch
the door. The footsteps halted just outside it.
Without warning the door exploded into a million
fragments. Eliza shielded her face from the flying
splinters and nearly fell. Lee caught her elbow
and held her steady. As the dust and billowing incense
smoke parted she saw a shadow framed in the naked
doorway. It stood swaying just outside the
plane of the room.
"Mohan!" Amber exclaimed.
Allan raised his hand for silence.
The brown face of the Sikh twisted with fury and his
eyes rolled. He was scarcely recognizable beneath
the mask of his swollen features. Patches of
gray on his nose and cheeks indicated severe
frostbite. Eliza cringed when she looked at his
hands. They were mere broken slabs of exposed bone
and bloody flesh.
A dark mass crawled over his shoulders like a thick
cloak of shadow. It played about his face, from time
to time obscuring it completely. At these moments his
features transformed into those of a snarling beast and his
eyes became burning points of fire. Then the
ugliness would melt and reveal the ravaged human
visage beneath.
"Enter, Michael," Allan said. "The circle
is open to you."
The thing surged forward, its face suffused with killing
lust. It stopped and swayed, baffled by the magical
barrier of protection around the room, which Allan had
renewed. Although the door was gone, the barrier
remained intact. Through the shifting smoke Eliza
saw the thin silver ribbon of the occult circle
spanning the gap at heart level with a pale
unearthly glow.
"By this rod and lamen of your father, come forth and show
yourself!"
It writhed in impotent fury, its limbs rippling
as light and shade played across them. Raising its
arms, it pressed inward. The barrier supported its
weight. Eliza watched with horror its broken
fingers
claw and dig at the strangely solid air.
"Zacare, ca, od zamran!" Allan chanted
rhythmically.
Some instinct made Eliza chant with him, and the rest
followed her example. She felt herself lifted and
borne up on the words, an organ in a vast living
body of immense power. The chalk lines of the
pentagram transformed into channels of vital force
that linked her spiritually to its power points. She became
five-fold. Lee and the others were different aspects
of herself, beautiful colors reflected in the
facets of a single great jewel. Fear left her.
She felt a deep welling forth of tranquil
assurance.
"Zacare, ca, od zamran!"
Each chanted word of the evocation buffeted the air and
made the lamps at the corners of the room flicker.
The thing that wore Mohan's shell cringed
away and tried to withdraw, only to find itself caught like
an unwitting fish on the endless string of words.
Eliza observed it passionlessly from the height of her
altered perspective as it twisted and fought
desperately for release. The awful power of their
five-fold will could not be broken. Inexorably they
began to reel in the human half of the Messenger,
tearing the unholy entity apart.
"Zacare, ca, od zamran!"
It threw back its head and howled. Even from her
stellar altitude the agony in the sound touched
Eliza, who knew that it did not issue solely from
a human throat. The thing began to thrash and beat at
Mohan's face with his mangled hands, reacting
with the self-destructive impulse of a wild beast
caught in a trap. An unseen force gripped his
body and shook it violently. One of his flailing
fingers struck him in the eye. The vacantly staring
orb dissolved into a pulp of bloody fluid.
Eliza tried to turn her head, but the power that held
the thing held her also and she could not look away.
The howling cut off as with the stroke of a knife and the
body of Mohan collapsed into a pathetic heap of
disjointed limbs. At the same instant Allan
broke off the chant. Eliza observed
without surprise that she and the others also stopped on the
same syllable.
In the smoke above the red triangle a pale standing
form slowly began to coalesce within a shimmering
cloud. The upper half of the apparition solidified
into the head and naked torso of a young boy. His face
shone with an angelic light. Brown curling hair
hung over his high forehead almost to the level of his
blue eyes. His nose was snub and his parted lips
feminine.
He trembled and stared about with a vague and fearful
wonder. When he saw the robed figure facing him
a contented smile of recognition soothed his
features. He reached out his arms but did not seem
able to touch Allan, although they stood quite close.
"I'm tired," the boy said in a high wavering
voice. "Can I go back to bed now, father?"
Allan raised the black rod in both hands, the
gold caps hidden in each fist, and extended it
horizontally over the head of the boy.
"Sleep, Michael," he said.
Eliza started and stared hard at his back. It was not
Allan's voice but the deeper, more powerful voice
of an older man.
A look of pure joy overspread the
face of the apparition. Like a distant object
obscured by mist, it faded moment by moment until it
was gone.
Allan did not turn or speak. The others stood
silent for several seconds. Eliza felt the force
that bound them together into one spiritual organism slipping
away. Hale let out a heavy breath.
"It's over," he said wearily. "Thank God."
"Wait," Lee said. He pointed to the doorway.
"Something's happening."
Wisps of smoke rose from the curved back of
Mohan's crumpled body. While they watched in
shock more began to stream from its limbs. The smoke
thickened and spread as it roiled upward. With a sudden
burst of heat and light the hair of the corpse caught
fire and blazed. Eliza put her hand over her
mouth and coughed as oily, noxious fumes from the
burning flesh enveloped her.
With horrible rapidity the body shriveled inward upon
itself. White bones became visible among the
flames. In moments even these crumbled to ashes.
Where the corpse had lain remained only a charred and
blackened depression in the floor.
Framed in the open doorway reared a bright and awful
presence. Fire crowned its head and
sparks danced in its eyes. It shimmered in a
shifting radiant cloak that might have been a garment
or a

part of its form, and seemed to float like a flame on
the air. Eliza felt a wild ecstasy emanating
from it that was not emotion as she knew it but more a
definition of its being. The face it turned upon them was
of unearthly and terrible beauty.

As the shimmering image hovered in the doorway the
paint on the jamb curled and burst into flames.
Eliza felt the awesome power of its heat even at
a distance of several paces. It beat against her face
and hands like the summer sun.
"The Salamander," Lee shouted over the roar of the
flames. "There's nothing left to bind it."
As though understanding his words, the elemental raised its
slender arms above its head. Tongues of fire
radiated from them like the pinions of a phoenix. With
an expression of celestial disdain it turned its
back on the watching humans and drifted away across
the storage room, growing brighter with each moment. Where
it passed, the walls exploded and began to burn with
furious intensity.
Eliza felt Lee's arms about her. She hugged
him and stumbled as he led her toward the flaming
rectangle of the doorway. The intense heat drove
them back, but not before Eliza saw that the entire
storage room and the corridor beyond it were one great
mass of burning. This time it was no illusion. The
smoke choked and seared her lungs. She began
to cough and could not stop. Lee was shouting something at her
but she could not hear him above the roar.
There's no other way out, she thought. Lee, Lee,
I'm sorry we didn't have more time.
A robed figure crossed in front of her
blurred sight. She blinked and wiped her streaming
eyes with her palm. What she saw could not be.
Yet the image remained distinct through the rippling
air.
In the antique magical costume Allan had
been wearing stood the tall and powerfully built
Daniel P. Brannon. He stared at her with
piercing dark eyes as though with recognition. Moving
with an aura of authority to the blazing doorway, he
turned his back on the flames and spread his arms so
that his body formed a great cross. The voluminous
sleeves of his robe blocked out the scorching heat.
Amber stumbled against Eliza. She
supported the hunched and coughing Hale with her
shoulder. Eliza took hold of Hale under his other
arm. Lee put his hand on her shoulder. Eliza could
barely recognize him through the smoke. She glanced
around but did not see Allan.
The robed figure turned toward the fire and stepped
into the flames. Remarkably he did not burn.
He looked over his shoulder and made a motion for the
others to follow.
"Come on," Lee shouted, his lips close to her
ear. She barely heard him.
He marsha
led them after the ghostly Bran
non, who turned his back on them with finality and
walked into the solid yellow wall of fire.
Eliza went first after him. She felt Hale's
hands pressed against her shoulders, but not the flames that
licked and fanned over her body. All around her was
uniform blazing light. She could not see where she was
or where she was going, but desperately pursued the
dark blue robe that danced before her vision.
A crash startled her and made her look behind.
Only then did she realize that she was standing outside
the house in the snow on the front lawn. Haven was
one mass of flames from end to end. She could
not remember leaving the house. Another wrenching crash
sounded as part of the roof fell in. Suddenly
exhausted, Eliza sat down in the snow and watched
the windows explode outward one by one with the force of
shotgun blasts.
Somehow she and the others had managed to reach the middle
of the lawn, a safe distance from the consuming fire. A
solid pillar of black smoke mounted the still
twilight air into a leaden sky. There were periodic
crackles as timbers fell in, and a great
explosion of sparks as one of the chimneys toppled
slowly backward.
Her mind began to function once more. She looked
around for Lee and saw him crouched over the robed
Allan, who lay motionless on the snow with his arms
spread. Amber and Hale stood nearby gazing down
with concern. Their clothes were scorched and soot-stained,
but their faces and
hands were unburned. Eliza went over and knelt beside
Lee. For the first time she noticed the coldness of the
snow against her knees through her corduroy pants.
"Is he hurt?"
Lee gave her a worried look.
"I can't tell. He won't wake up."
"What happened?"
"You saw
-
when he got out he just collapsed."
"I
must have blacked out."
"Are you all right?" He studied her face.
"I guess so. What happened to Brannon?"
Lee stared at her.
"I meant Brannon's ghost," she said, looking
at Amber and Hale.
They did not answer but watched her nervously.
"You must have seen him," she said with a frown. "He led
us through the fire."
"Allan led us out," Hale said. "God knows how,
but he did it."
"No, it was Brannon," she said forcefully.
"What did you see?"
Eliza related her version of the escape from the
house.
"You must have been hallucinating," Hale told her.
"We were all nearly overcome by the smoke."
Allan coughed and sat up. He groaned and put his
head in his hands, drawing up his knees to rest his
elbows on.
"What the devil happened?" he said.
"How did we get out in the snow?"
"Don't you remember?" Lee said.
"Sorry." Allan looked up with a rueful
smile. "After I spoke the final evocation I
blacked out."
Lee related what had taken place, and repeated
Eliza's remarks about Brannon.
"So that's what possession feels like."
Allan got up slowly and beat the snow off the hem
of his robe.
"You think that's what happened?" Hale asked.
"Had to be. I'd like to play hero, but I didn't
lead anyone anywhere. I don't even remember
banishing the boy's spirit."
With a low rumble another of the stone chimneys toppled
down and took part of a wall with it. A curtain of
sparks rose against the black smoke like stars. The
towering flames were bright orange in the gathering
gloom.
"There goes everything," Hale said softly. "My
notes. My video tapes. My research
material. Brannon's diary."
"More to the point," said Amber, "There goes our
clothes, our blankets, our food, and our
heaters."
"Someone may see the flames," Allan said.
"Not thirty miles away," said Lee. "We
better prepare ourselves to wait out the full stay."
"Lee's right," said Hale. "I'm going to see if
I can break the lock on the stable. At least it will
give us shelter."
"I thought you had the key," Amber said.
"I left it in the house. It's probably a
pool of molten brass by now. Coming Allan? I
may need you to go in through the window."
"Why not?" Allan said cheerfully.
He plodded through the snow after Hale, looking both
impressive and ridiculous in his long blue
robe. At the top of the lawn he turned and motioned
back to Amber.
"Come and watch."
Amber glanced at Lee, then at Eliza. She
sh
rugged.
"Why not."
They stood together following Amber with their eyes as she
trailed after the two men. She stayed well to the
side of the burning house, which began to fall in upon itself
in its final death throes.
Eliza turned to Lee and put her arm
around his waist, pressing her cheek into his shoulder.
"I can't believe it's finally over."
"Believe it," he said, hugging her close. "Without
Michael's confused spirit to bind it to Haven, the
Salamander had no reason to stay. It returned to the
elemental sphere where it belongs."
Eliza burrowed her face into his sweater,
smelling his male scent under the smoke that still clung
to it.
"I don't care if we are cold. At least
cold is natural. We know how to fight it."
He stroked her hair tenderly.
"There's another kind of cold that's harder to fight."
She smiled.
"I think the fire thawed it out for
good.
I
can't feel it anymore."
They kissed.
"What on earth are we going to tell the Mounties?"
she murmured, her lips close to his ear.
"We tell them the truth," Lee said. "That
Mohan went crazy, killed Mary, and burned
down the house. We just don't go into detail."
"Do you think they'll buy it?"
"They won't have any alternative. The fire
destroyed all the evidence."
She turned her gaze to the crumbling skeleton of the
house.
"When you get back to school I'll come to see you,"
he promised.
"You'll be so far away
-
in another country."
"Just across the border. I'll drive up on
weekends."
"Maybe I'll enroll in the Phoenix
Institute next term."
"We'd be glad to get you," he said seriously.
"We haven't got an empath."
"I'm a rare bird."
"You are indeed."
They were still kissing when they heard the bell. It rang
crystal clear across the placid waters of the inlet.
A lobster boat, its traps stacked high on its
stern deck, came into view around the stony point.
They waved and shouted. From the side of the boat a tiny
figure waved back. His greeting carried faintly
across the water.
[245]
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[246]
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About the Magic
That a being of spirit and a creature of flesh might be
fused to produce an unholy amalgam was a
belief common throughout the ancient world. Usually the
fusion was achieved by an act of sexual union. The
result was of two kinds: either a spirit with earth
l
y human qualities, or a human with the
supernatural faculties of a spirit.
The early Jews believed that the Sumerian demoness
Lilitu, whom they called Lilith, comes to men
sleeping alone to steal their seed for the purpose of
engendering spirits of the earthly realm
- that is, spirits who are barred from ascending higher than
the sphere of the Moon because of the weight of their
material part. Substantially the same belief is
found in the annals of the European witch trials,
where Lilith has been replaced by the anonymous
class of succubi, lustful female spirits who were
considered to be either the Devil in disguise, or
servants of Satan that steal semen from men who lie
sleeping (see
The Malleus Maleficarum,
Part I, Question 3). The result of these unions
between spirit mothers and mortal fathers results in offspring
of the first type.
In the Bible and at greater length in the Book of
Enoch we find reference to the other type of
amalgam, the progeny of human mothers and spirit fathers.
The Bible refers to these unnatural offspring as
"mighty men which were of old, men of renown"
(genesis 6:4). Again, during the witch trials
the part of the lustful fallen angels was played by a
class of spirits called incubi, male spirits having
carnal knowledge of mortal women.
Although less common, a similar union of spirit and
flesh might be brought about by magical means.
Babies stolen by the fairies in European legend
were said to be replaced by simulacra in every outward
respect identical, save that these "changelings"
were, like chicks hatched from the eggs of cuckoos,
apt to grow faster and larger, cry more, and to be f
e
y and strange. They were gifted with magical powers
such as second sight. The great magician Merlin
was reputed to be half-human and half-fairy.
In ancient times these mixed beings were by no
means all evil. In fact they were noted for their
wisdom and war skill. Many of the demigods of
classical Greece such as Dionysus,
Heracles and Aesculapius were engendered by gods
on mortal women. However in Christian times such
half-breeds came to be regarded as tainted,
foredoomed by their inherent nature to commit acts of
evil and serve the purposes of Satan.
"Salamander" was the name applied to Fire elementals
by the German physician and magician
Paracelsus, who lived at the beginning of the 16th
century. He divided the spirits of the sublunary world
into four classes based on the four elements then
thought to compose all of nature
-
Fire, Air, Water and Earth. Fire
elementals (spirits arising from one of the elements) he
called Salamanders. Air elementals were
Sylphs. Water elementals received the name
Undines. Earth elementals were called Gnomes.
Each class of elementals exhibits characteristics in
harmony with its element. Thus Fire elementals
are very hot-tempered, intense, consuming, bright,
active, energetic, being both beautiful and terrible
to look upon.
The name itself comes from the salamander lizard, which perhaps
due to its coldness to the touch was fabled to live and
thrive in the midst of flames. The power of this
lizard over fire was a common and ancient belief.
The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder, writing
around the time of Christ, records in his
Natural History
(book X, Chapter 86) that salamanders
extinguish fire on contact the way ice does.
When the
Italian Renaissance artist Ben
venuto Cellini was five, he writes in his
Autobiography that he, his father and his sister
witnessed a salamander dancing in the flames of their
fireplace.
Spirits such as Salamanders are summoned and commanded in
formal Western magic by means of a very specific
set of instruments and symbols. The contents of
Brannon's trunk are a fair description of the
working tools of a Victorian
goetic theurgist
-
a ritual magician who works through demons or
fallen angels. They have not changed materially in a
thousand years and are still employed today. Those
interested in some of the older forms of instruments will find
them described and pictured in that greatest of Western
grimoires,
The Key Of Solomon the King (clavicula
Salomonis),
Book II, Chapter VIII.
The noted English magician of the reign of
Elizabeth the First, Doctor John Dee, used
a similar set of instruments to initially contact the
angels who dictated, through his seer the alchemist
Edward Kelley, the letters and writings of the Enochian
language. The letters that appear on the back of
Brannon's silver lamen do exist. They, along
with the other letters of the Enochian alphabet, were
psychically perceived by Kelley on May 6,1583,
when they appeared in a light yellow color on the
page in front of him, allowing him to trace their
outlines exactly with a pen before they faded from his
sight.
The name of the angelic language comes from the
biblical patriarch Enoch, who was taken up
to heaven while still alive (genesis 5:24) and thus
was supposed to have dwelt with the angels and learned their
wisdom. Enochian played a significant part in
the magic of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn, a secret occult society of
Victorian England that contained among its members
the famous poet W. B. Yeats and the infamous
wizard Aleister Crowley. It would seem highly
probable that Brannon was affiliated with the Golden
Dawn,
perhaps through his Masonic links
-
the founders of the Golden Dawn were Freemasons.
Along with the Enochian alphabet and language,
Dee and Kelley received a set of nineteen
different Keys or Calls intended to be used in the
evocation of various orders of the angelic hierarchy.
These Keys are both potent and poetic. Most of
them contain some variation on the Enochian phrase
Zacare, ca, od zamran
(move, therefore, and show yourselves), and it is these words,
or their variants, that constitute the actual
Enochian command of evocation that compels the spirits
to appear visibly before the magician. The Keys
form an integral part of the system of Hermetic
magic used in the Golden Dawn, in the goetic
theurgy of Aleister Crowley, and in the Satanism
of Anton LaVey.
The evocation of the soul of Michael
Brannon within a triangle on the floor of the
black chamber, using smoke from incense and burning
blood to lend his ghostly shade perceptible substance,
is strictly in accord with the dark practices of
necromancy. The raising of the ghosts of dead souls
is extremely ancient. Usually it is done
to gain knowledge only the dead may be expected
to possess. In the Odyssey of the Greek poet
Homer, written perhaps in the 8th century BC, the
hero Odysseus travels to the Land of the Dead where
he raises the shade of the prophet Teiresias the
Theban to consult about his future. Following the
detailed instructions of his lover, the sorceress
Circe
(odyssey,
Book X, lines 517-40), Odysseus
attracts
the ghost of Teiresias with the fumes of warm blood
newly spilled from the throats of sacrificed
black sheep. The pale shivering dead are unable
to resist the lure of vital blood, which, as it says
in the Bible, "is the life of all flesh"
(leviticus 17:14).
In medieval magic evil or dangerous spirits are
evoked, or called forth into tangible
presence, within the bounds of a triangle. The
description of this figure is explicitly
provided in the medieval grimoire of the
Lemegeton
or
Lesser Key of Solomon the King:
"it is to be Made 2 foot off [away] from the
Circle, and 3 foot over [i.e. overall
-
three feet on each side]. Note, this
[triangle] is to be Placed upon that Cost
[i.e. coast, or direction of the compass] the Spirit
Belongeth; etc
-
Observe the [Moon] in working, etc" (british
Museum Sloane ms. 2731).
The magic circle in which the magician and his
assistants stand provides a barrier impassible
to the demons summoned into being within the triangle, and
made visible by means of the rising smoke of incense and
blood. To be perceived such spirits must take on a
body of smoke or mist. In the black room the
pentagram drawn in chalk on the floor with a single
unbroken reflecting line takes the place of a more
conventional circle, but is no less
potent a protection. The unusual step of placing
the triangle within the larger circle of silver
established by Brannon is taken in order to use
its power to rend the Messenger asunder. Michael
Brannon is compelled to enter the triangle, yet
the Salamander cannot pass the silver barrier
-
hence they must separate.
It remains for me to say a few words about tumo and
lung gom lest the reader imagine that these are
fabulous inventions. Both existed and were used by the
magicians and Buddhist monks of Tibet down
to modern times. They are a form of hatha
(physical) yoga designed to enable an
individual to survive in the harsh winter climate
of the Himalayas. Tumo speeds up the
metabolism of the body so that it actually becomes
warm to the touch. Monks learning the technique were
accustomed to engage in contests with each other, in which they
sat in the snow naked and allowed wet sheets to be
wrapped around their shoulders. The monk who dried the
most sheets with tumo was declared the winner. Lung
gom is a leaping run that allows rapid progress
to be made through deep snow. Those who travel with
lung gom do so in a waking trance, and
appear to observers to be almost weightless (see the
excellent description in Alexandra
David-Neel's
Magic and Mystery In Tibet,
Chapter VI).
[blank page]
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  THE THREE BOOKS OF OCCULT
PHILOSOPHY Completely Annotated, with
Modern Commentary -- The Foundation Book of
Western Occultism by Henry Cornelius
Agrippa edited and annotated by Donald Tyson
Agrippa's
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
is the single most important text in the history
of Western occultism. Occultists have drawn upon
it for five centuries, although they rarely give it
credit. First published in Latin in 1531 and
translated into English in 1651, it has never
been reprinted in its entirety since.
Photocopies are hard to find and very expensive.
Now, for the first time in 500 years,
Three Books of Occult Philosophy
will be presented as Agrippa intended. There were many
errors in the original translation, but occult
author Donald Tyson has made the
corrections and has clarified the more obscure
material with copious notes.
  This is a necessary reference tool not only for all
magicians, but also for scholars of the Renaissance,
Neoplatonism, the Western Kabbalah, the
history of ideas and sciences and the occult tradition.
It is as practical today as it was 500
years ago. 0-87542-832-0,1,080 pgs., 7
x 10, softcover $29.95
  Prices subject to change without notice.
  RITUAL MAGIC
  What It Is and How To Do It
  by Donald Tyson
  For thousands of years men and women have practiced it
despite the severe repression of sovereigns and
priests. Now,
Ritual Magic
takes you into the heart of that entrancing, astonishing and
at times mystifying secret garden of
magic.
  What is this ancient power? Where does it come from?
How does it work? Is it mere myth and delusion,
or can it truly move mountains and make the dead
speak . . . bring rains from a clear sky and calm
the seas . . . turn the outcome of great battles
and call down the Moon from Heaven? Which part of the
claims made for magic are true in the most
literal sense, and which are poetic exaggerations that must
be interpreted symbolically? How can magic be used
to improve
your
life?
  This book answers these and many other questions in a
clear and direct manner. Its purpose is
to separate the wheat from the chaff and make sense of the
non-sense. It explains what the occult revival
is all about, reveals the foundations of practical
ritual magic, showing how modern occultism grew
from a single root into a number of clearly defined
esoteric schools and pagan sects.
0-87542-835-5,288 pgs., 6x9, illus.,
index, softcover $12.95
  Prices subject to change without notice.
  RUNE MAGIC by Donald Tyson
  Drawing upon historical records, poetic
fragments, and the informed study of scholars,
Rune Magic
resurrects the ancient techniques of this
tactile form of magic and integrates those methods
with modern occultism so that anyone can use the runes
in a personal magical system. For the first time, every
known and conjectured meaning of all 33 known runes,
including the 24 runes known as "futhark", is
available in one volume. In addition,
Rune Magic
covers the use of runes in divination, astral
traveling, skrying, and on amulets and
talismans. A complete rune ritual is also
provided, and 24 rune worlds are outlined. Gods
and Goddesses of the runes are discussed, with
illustrations from the National Museum of Sweden.
0-87542-826-6,224 pgs., 6x9, softcover
$9.95
  Prices subject to change without notice.
  RUNE MAGIC CARDS by Donald Tyson
  Llewellyn Publications presents, for the first
time ever, Rune Magic Cards created by Donald
Tyson. This unique divinatory deck consists of
24 strikingly designed cards, boldly
portraying a Germanic "futhark" rune on each
card. Robin Wood has illuminated each rune
card with graphic illustrations done in the ancient
Norse tradition. Included on each card are the
old English name, its meaning, the phonetic value
of the rune, and its number in Roman numerals.
Included with this deck is a complete instruction
booklet, giving the history and origins, ways of
using the cards for divination, and magical workings,
sample spreads and a wealth of information culled from
years of study. 0-87542-827-4,24 two-color
cards, 48-pg. booklet $12.95
  Prices subject to change without
notice.
  HOW TO MAKE AND USE A MAGIC
MIRROR
  Psychic Windows into New Worlds by Donald
Tyson
  Tyson takes you step-by-step through the creation of
this powerful mystical tool. You will learn about:
tools and supplies needed to create the mirror;
construction techniques; how to use the mirror for
scrying (divination); how to communicate with spirits; and
how to use the mirror for astral travel.
  Tyson also presents a history of mirror
lore in magic and literature. For anyone wanting
their personal magical tool,
How to Make and Use a Magic Mirror
is a must item. 0-87542-831-2,176 pgs.,
mass market, illus. $3.95
  CASTLE OF DECEPTION
  A Novel of Sorcery and Swords and
Other-Worldly Matters
  with Seven Short Essays on the Reality of
Matters Supernatural
  by Ed Fitch, illustrated by Bill Fugate
  Here are demons, and spell vs. counterspell,
and the magick of sex in witch-rites so the
Good may triumph over Evil!
  Here is the lust of Vampire-Sorceress held
bondage to Demon King, and used to enthrall the
Blond Witch-Queen so that her magic to defeat the
demon is thwarted.
  Here is the Lord and Lady of Wolves who turn
their own special magic to the aid of Tanithia the
Witch and her Lover, and teach them to shape-change and
flee to safety with the world pack.
  Here is the Witch-finder, whose blind fanaticism
places him in inadvertent service to the demons, and
nearly prevents Tanithia's final victory
over the dark forces.
  The seven short essays at the end of the book
include The Reality of Demons, Vampirism,
Ritual Magick, Animal Communication,
Shape-Changing, Sex Magick, and
Witchcraft. 0-87542-231-4,304 pgs.,
51/4x8, softcover $6.95
  Prices subject to change without notice.
  THE COMMITTEE by Raymond Buckland
"Duncan's eyes were glued to the destruct
button. He saw that the colonel's hand never did
get to it. Yet, even as he watched, he saw the
red button move downwards, apparently
of its own volition. The rocket blew into a
million pieces, and the button came back up.
No one, Duncan would swear, had physically
touched the button, yet it had been depressed.
his
  The Cold War is back in this psi-techno
suspense thriller where international aggressors use
psychokinesis, astral projection and other psychic
means to circumvent the U.s. intelligence
network. When two routine communications satellite
launches are inexplicably aborted at Vandenberg
Air Force Base in California, one senator
suspects paranormal influences. He calls in
a writer, two parapsychologists and a psychic
housewife -- and The Committee is formed. Together,
they piece together a sinister occult plot against the
United States. The Committee then embarks on
a supernatural adventure of a lifetime as they
attempt to beat the enemy at its own game.
Llewellyn Psi-Fi Fiction Series
1-56718-100-7,240 pgs., mass market
$4.99
  Prices subject to change without notice.