Alternate Gerrolds (28 page)

“You’re right,
I
can’t—but what if you don’t have a choice in the matter?”

“You
always
have a choice,” she said.

“You don’t know my next-door neighbors.”

She raised an eyebrow at me. A raised eyebrow from Sara McNealy is enough to curdle milk.

I refused to be intimidated. “My next door neighbors are destroying my life,” I said. “They’re noisy and intrusive. They’ve upset my whole life. My writing is suffering. And I can’t afford to move.”

Sara scratched her nose. “Negativism starts by blaming the other person. It’s a way of avoiding personal responsibility.”

“I’m not avoiding personal responsibility,” I said. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“What result do you want to produce?” Sara asked.

“I want them to move away. Very far away.”

She nodded. She was thinking. Lydia studied us both. Sara was turning over ideas in her mind. She said, “You could invite an evil spirit to move in with them. But that’s dangerous. Sometimes the spirit decides it would rather move in with
you
.”

“No, no spirits, thank you. Is there some other way?”

“Are you willing to pay the price—time off your life?”

“I’ll earn it back with increased writing time. Won’t I?”

Sara didn’t answer that. At the same moment, we both noticed that
there were suddenly other customers waiting—
and listening
. Sara put down the copy of
Chaos Theory
she had been browsing through and drew me carefully aside, leaving Lydia to ring up another large royalty for Stephen King.

“Listen to me,” Sara said softly. “Witchcraft is a very specialized form of magic—you’re trying to control the physical universe with experiential forces. That means that you need to create a specific context and appropriate symbology with which to control those forces. I prefer to do it with symbolic magic rather than calling on spirits. Sometimes when no spirit responds to your call, new ones are created out of nothingness, and that can be extremely dangerous. Young spirits are…well, they’re like kittens and puppies. They leave puddles.”

“Can’t I just animate the life force of their property or something?”

“It doesn’t work that way.” She frowned. “You’re going to have to give me the whole story if you want me to advise you.”

I took Sara by the arm and led her to the specialty-coffee shop next door. She had hazelnut coffee with bay leaves. I had fruit-tea. I can’t stomach caffeine. I told her about the Partridge Family from Hell; I didn’t leave anything out. I even told her about Princess, the unfettered cocker spaniel who never missed a chance to run up onto my porch and bark
into
my house.

Sara listened intently to the whole story without comment. Her dark eyes looked sorrowful. I could understand why she was such a good witch. Most of it was good listening. When I finished, she said, “You have a great deal of negative energy bound up in these people. That’s a very expensive burden you are carrying. It needs to be released.” She made a decision. “I’ll help you.”

“How much will it cost?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Witches don’t work for money. Prostitutes do. Witches take …
favors
.”

“Okay, I’ll read your manuscript,” I said with real resignation.

“Sorry, I have no interest in writing a novel.”

“Thank God.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I don’t want your soul. Writers’ souls are usually very small anyway, and not good eating. Too much gristle.” She reached over and patted my hand warmly. “We’ll talk about your firstborn later, all right?”

I assumed she was joking.

Sara showed up seven o’clock, carrying two shopping bags.

“Ahh,” I said, thinking I was being funny. “Did you bring the right eye of a left-handed newt? The first menstrual blood of the seventh virginal daughter?”

“This is California,” she said. “There are no virgins. No, I brought pasta, mushrooms, bell peppers, tomato sauce, olives, garlic bread, salad and a bottle of wine. Let’s eat first, then we’ll plan. Did you get the Cherry Garcia like I asked?”

“Of course, I did.” I took the bags from her. “But I really have to say I miss the old traditions of witchcraft.”

“Do you want to dance naked around a bonfire at midnight?”

“Not particularly.”

“Neither do I. Open the wine.”

After dinner, we cleared the table and spread out our plans. “First of all,” Sara said, “You have to decide what power you want to invoke. Who are you calling on to do the deed?” She handed me a printout. “You don’t want to invoke the powers of Satan, whatever you do. Dealing with demons is also dangerous; for the most part, the demons are only facets of Satan anyway. You don’t want to do anything that puts your immortal soul in danger. I’m just showing you this to give you some sense of what you’re going to be dealing with.

“Lower down, you have the lesser spirits and the spirits of the dead. Also not recommended. Spirits usually have their own agendas. They’re very hard to control and almost never grant requests. Spirits are deranged.”

I scanned the lists with very little interest, then passed her back the printout. “Let’s stick to white magic, okay?”

“Right.” She passed me another set of pages. “See, the thing is, you have to invoke
some
power to energize the spell. Otherwise, it’s like a new Corvette, all shiny and beautiful, but without an engine it isn’t going anywhere.”

“Yeah, I just hate it when that happens.”

She ignored my flippant interjection. “The problem with western magic is that as a result of the pernicious influence of Christian theology, westernized magic has anthropomorphized everything; we’ve given personalities to supernatural forces. It gives them
attitude
. It makes them impossible to deal with. But when we go back to the eastern disciplines,
we’re operating in a whole other context. The truth is that the flows of paranormal influence are directly linked to the yin-yang flow of solidity and nothingness, of creation and destruction, of beingness and non-being. Real magic happens when you align yourself with the flows of chaos and order. When you ride the avalanche, you need only a nudge to steer it. If you want to have a profound effect on the course of events in the physical universe, without running the risk of a serious causal backwash of energy, you have to create a spells that are in harmony with what the universe already wants to do. From what you’ve been telling me, it seems to me that the universe already
wants
to do something about these people next door. All you need to do is give it a focus.”

I wasn’t sure I understood anything of what she said, but I nodded as if I did.

Sara wasn’t fooled. “Listen to me. Remember what I said about negative energy? You can’t afford it. You are a fountain of creative power. You can’t risk having your spring contaminated. You have to act now before you are permanently polluted. But whatever you do—you have to make sure that you don’t do
greater
harm to yourself.”

“What are you recommending?” I asked. She sounded so serious.

“Think of the peacock,” she said.

“Pretty. Loud. Pretty loud.” I free-associated.

“Do you know what a peacock eats?”

I shook my head.

“It eats the poisonous berries. It thrives on all the toxics that other birds won’t touch. And it turns them into beautiful peacock feathers. That’s the peacock—it takes nastiness and turns it into beauty. That’s your job. Find a way to take all that stuff about the neighbors and turn it into something useful and rewarding and enlightening.”

“A nice bonfire is the first thing that comes to mind. We could dance naked around it.”

“It’s time to stop being silly,” Sara said. “You asked for my help. That’s why I’m here. What kind of spell do you want to cast and what power do you want to invoke?”

“I want a spell that’s quiet and unobtrusive. Inconspicuous. It shouldn’t call attention to itself. No fireworks. No explosions. No ectoplasm, no manifestations, no mysterious cold spots. Just something that makes them
go away
.”

“That’s the best kind,” Sara said.

I was looking at the list. “Let’s invoke the power of the universe,” I said.

“Huh?”

I pointed at the organization chart. “Look, all the power flows from the top. Let’s go to the source. Let’s call upon the universe to activate the spell.”

Sara thought about it. “It might be overkill.”

“There’s no such thing as overkill,” I said. “Dead is dead.”

“How big an impact crater are you willing to live with?” she asked. “Remember, your house is well within the blast radius.”

“We’re going for gentleness, aren’t we?”

“Gentleness is not delivered with a firehose,” Sara said.

“Good point. We’ll have to be careful.”

“There could be side effects. You’re probably going to get hit with some of them. Are you sure you want to do this?”

I nodded. A thought had been lurking at the back of my mind for three days. Ever since Sara had first begun coaching me. Now it was ready to blossom forth as a full-blown idea. I handed her my notes. forty-three ideas. Forty-two of them had been crossed off. Only one remained.

Sara looked at it. She frowned. She narrowed her eyes. Her eyebrows squinched together. Her lips pursed. All of the separate parts of her face squinched up for a second, then relaxed, morph-like, into a big happy grin. “I think you may have real talent in this area,” she said.

She took her pen and underlined my note.
Love-bomb the bastards!

At a quarter to midnight, we began. I went out to the back yard and flipped off every circuit-breaker. There was no electrical power at all to the house. There would be no contaminating fields of magnetic resonance. The computers had all been unplugged. The batteries had been removed from every radio and flashlight.

Sara gave me a diagram, and I began to lay out a complex pattern of thirty-nine votive candles. As I went around the room, lighting them, I recited a simple prayer of absolution. “May this light give me guidance. Help me align myself with the flows of universal power.”

When I finished, I began unwinding a long yellow cord around the
room, putting a loop around each candle as I strung a spiral pattern leading to an empty plate in the center. I sat down at the outside of the spiral and held the other end of the cord. I began winding it around the fingers of my left hand. The power would flow from my heart to the empty plate. And back again.

I looked to Sara. She nodded. I hadn’t forgotten anything.

“Hello,” I said.

I waited a moment. If the universe was listening, it hadn’t given me any evidence. But then again, the universe never gives evidence of its involvement. It’s just there—the ultimate in passive aggressive.

I took three deep breaths. I closed my eyes and took three more. I waited until I thought I could see the candle flames through my closed eyelids. Then I waited until I was certain we were no longer alone.

“Hello,” I repeated. “Thank you. I apologize for any intrusion this action of mine might represent. I only wish to serve the flows of the universe, not to impede them. And I hope that the universe will let me be a part of its grander plans.”

I waited. This time I got the feeling that some
thing
was waiting for me.

“My neighbors,” I said. “The people who live in the house next-door. Particularly Bryce, Lyn, Vanessa, Jabed, Jason and Nolan. I believe that they have been impeding the natural rise toward godliness. Perhaps it is through no fault of their own. Perhaps it is because they have been seduced by the darker flows of nature. Perhaps there are reasons for which I have no language. Whatever forces are at work, I believe that they are at odds with the natural flow of universal power and goodness.”

I glanced over to Sara. She was watching me intently. She nodded and smiled.

“I believe that somehow they have become separated from their own abilities to connect with others and feel compassion. I believe that are unable to know the effects they have on the people around them. I believe that they do not see the pain they leave in their wake.”

With my right hand, I placed a bowl on the empty plate in the center of the room. I poured red wine into the bowl, then I placed a single roseblossom in the wine. “I offer you this gift,” I said. “I do so freely and with no thought of personal reward or gain. I ask nothing for myself, nor for anyone close to me. I ask only that you grant my neighbors an opportunity to join your larger purposes, to swim in the flow of universal
spirit that heads inevitably toward the light and glory of enlightenment. Please help direct their energies toward goodness and joy.”

I bowed my head. “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Thank you for letting me serve you tonight.”

And—maybe it was the sudden breeze from the door—but every single candle in the room went out simultaneously.

“Nicely done,” said Sara, after a long startled silence. “
Very
nicely done.”

The next morning, I felt rather silly for having gone through the whole silly ritual. But I made up my mind to wait a week. Or two. Or even six.

Nothing happened at first.

Then, one horrible weekend,
everything
happened. Lyn and Bryce were out somewhere. Vanessa had invited 500 close friends to a backyard bash, with 600 decibels of heavy metal rock music and illegal fireworks. Jabed and Jason were sitting on the roof of the garage throwing cherry bombs into the dancers, which triggered a spate of angry gunfire between members of two rival gangs who were trying to crash the party from the alley-side of the yard. In the ensuing panic, several automobiles were smashed into each other as people tried to flee—a dead-end street does not lend itself to an orderly evacuation. In the confusion, Nolan found the box of fireworks and managed to light both them
and the house
on fire. By the time the police and the fire department arrived, the structure was sending fifty foot flames into the air and I was hosing down my roof and praying that the overhanging tree wouldn’t catch. The fire crew couldn’t get through the mass of cars to the fire hydrant, and even if they could have, it wouldn’t have done any good because someone had crashed into it, knocking it off, sending a high-pressure fountain spraying high into the air where it made an impressive, but otherwise useless, display of uncontained aquatic energy. They ended up taking one of the units around to the alley side and backing it into my backyard so they could pump the water out of my pool and onto the neighbor’s roof. It took them twenty minutes to knock down the blaze, leaving the house a charred and waterlogged mess. By the time they were through, there were over twenty police vehicles on the block, three ambulances and four news vans.