Poe (33 page)

It’s a crossword puzzle. There are quite a few erased letters—he got most of the words wrong the first time—but it’s complete. The next folded ball is also a completed crossword puzzle. Which is strange, because his biggest complaint about my writing was the long words I used. On the third crumpled ball I find notes in the margins, neat handwriting that’s easily recognizable—Ernest’s. Maybe he was working with Nate, because the next page appears to be a vocabulary list: “precipitous,” “equivocate,” “unction,” “obdurate,” “rubescent.” Maybe that’s why he’d gone down to The Stacks in the first place: not to eavesdrop but to learn.

Christ, Nate was trying. He was really trying to be a better editor.

The very idea collapses my legs from beneath me, and I drop to the floor, my back sliding against the wall. Blood rushes to my head; I can feel it pounding thickly—and a visceral heat, a burning rage,
starts to roil in my stomach. I reach into my pocket for the gun. The cool, smooth handle feels heavy, and good.

Then I catch a glimpse of a slip of paper that has fallen behind his desk. I reach out, unfold it, and find a handwritten note scribbled with the blood-red Sharpie I’m so used to seeing on my copy.

Ernest. 125 East Elm Street. 4
P.M
. Bring the smokes
.

I jam the paper in my back pocket and race out the door.

The Cape Cod homes on East Elm Street are small and simply kept; a few have gables, and all of them have neat stamps of front lawn. The towering elm trees are old and big. Their thick branches create an arch and cast spotted shadows on the recently shoveled sidewalks. But the street is completely deserted; not a single car in a driveway or a barking dog—not even a cat in a windowsill.

What if Ernest’s gone too?

I step on the gas, passing by 130 East Elm Street—empty; 128 East Elm Street—empty; until I see 125, the only Cape on the street with wooden shingles. I sigh with relief when I see that under a white metal carport is a light blue Prius, its trunk open. I pull over to the side of the road and watch for a moment.

Ernest comes out the green front door, trying to heft a cat carrier into the backseat. He slips, and I jump out of the car and jog over, worried he could break a hip. But as soon as he sees me, his eyes grow wide with terror and he almost drops the cat; it yowls a complaint as it slams against the wire screen. Maybe Ernest thinks I could be the killer.

“Here,” I say, ignoring the fear in his eyes and grabbing the handle of the cat carrier. “Let me help you with that.”

Ernest’s lip trembles, and he nervously glances at his front door.

This is just plain
ridiculous
. “Ernest, do I really look like the spleen-eating type?”

“And what, pray tell,
does
the spleen-eating type look like?” asks Ernest.

“Seriously, Ernest, if half a century of smoking hasn’t killed you yet, I don’t think a serial killer has a chance.”

He gives just a hint of a smile. “Lung cancer I could handle,” he says. “Let’s just say the beheading got my attention.”

“Well, when I murder you I’ll be sure to remember that. No beheading, I promise. But where should I stab you first? Do you have any preferences?”

Ernest sighs wearily. “Smart ass. Get the cat—I don’t want Herman to freeze to death in the car. And come inside. I have something for you.”

Suddenly I get a prickly feeling, like someone’s watching. I quickly look up and down the street—no one’s there. Maybe it’s the quiet that feels wrong; it’s like a neutron bomb has hit—all the people are gone but the buildings still stand.

I grab the cat carrier (Herman is a victim of too much kibble largesse—the damn thing must weigh about sixty pounds) and follow Ernest into the house. I’m immediately struck by the sheer quantity of books. Shelves line the hallway and the small living room. There are even shelves built into the wall by the stairway, all stuffed with hard and softcover books, each looking well read, with cracked and sun-faded spines.

“It’s a good thing we don’t get earthquakes,” I say. “You’d be buried alive.”

Ernest chuckles and crouches down to let Herman out from his cage. “Some people have children. I have books. Much more interesting and they never ask me for money.”

We watch for a moment as Herman waddles over to a spot on the carpet and starts to lick at his long gray fur.

“No,” continues Ernest, “the biggest danger here is fire, of course. This place would go up in about five, ten minutes tops.” He says
this with no regret, as if that were an interesting possibility he might entertain just to see if he is right or not.

“So you said you had something for me. The translations?”

“Yes… well,” says Ernest, and instantly his smile fades. He gestures me into his living room awkwardly and says, “Here, sit.” The only place I can see is an ottoman covered with books, which I gently place on the floor:
Greek
–
English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains
;
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems
;
Thus Spake Zarathustra
.

“A little light reading?” I call out. I can hear him puttering about in the hallway. There’s an antique rolltop desk across from the ottoman where I’m sitting, but before I can snoop, Ernest shuffles back into the room with a paper Stop & Shop bag in hand.

“There was a day when writers actually
read
,” he grumbles. “They could quote Keats and Socrates. Now anyone with a keyboard and a fifth-grade education can call themselves a writer.”

I feel this slight is pointed at me in particular, but I don’t take the bait. Instead I politely wait as he settles in a dusty green armchair next to the desk. He gently pulls out the leather-bound book, then the velvet-wrapped pages, and hands them to me.

“You should burn these,” he states matter-of-factly.

I’m shocked. Ernest, obvious bibliophile who actually sniffs books like an addict, is advocating I go
Fahrenheit 451
on them?

“Why?”

“Why indeed,” says Ernest mildly, as if he’s trying to remember himself. He lifts the knees of his pant legs and then leans back in his chair, crossing a leg. “I don’t know how it happened, but I’m an old man, Dimitri. I was born in 1921—just after the First World War; the Great War they called it, as if any war could be great. But when I was about your age, I couldn’t wait to sign up for the second one, the war that would end all wars. I’d heard the horror stories, but to be honest, that wasn’t why I went. You see, I had naïve ideas about
heroism, valor, and honor. And I didn’t want to miss my
chance
to prove myself.”

I can’t help but note a tone of bitter irony at the word “chance.”

“And I got it, all right. Boy, did I get it.” He pushes up his left sleeve, and what I see stuns me. A straight line of numbers tattooed in faded blue ink, the exact color of the blue veins I can see through his translucent skin.

“My plane was shot down over Poland. Not many survived the camp. And what I saw… Well, what I saw will be the stuff of my nightmares until the day I die. You can’t possibly comprehend what a place like that turns you into. What I did to survive. It took decades for me to forgive myself.”

For a moment he seems to drift away, and a shadow falls across his face. A hushed quiet hangs between us until he smiles grimly. “‘Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’ That’s Nietzsche again, by the way. Knew his stuff, that man.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a philosopher.”

“I’m not anymore. I like to take things as they are these days. Wake up, eat my oatmeal, feed the cat. Simple things. Living under the shadow of pure and unadulterated evil has that effect. But reading these books of yours, well, I got excited again by ideas, by new possibilities… until I started to get the distinct impression that these books were somehow reading
me
. And it felt like I was living under that shadow again.”

“I’m not sure I understand—”

“You don’t need to. And you don’t want to. Just leave it alone. Move on. Be a young man with a pure conscience. Have a happy life.”

I mentally replay the scene from the night before, sitting by the fire eating lukewarm beans with Elizabeth, Amelia, and Lisa. How even there I felt like I was on the outside looking in. I pensively play
with the ring on my finger. “Maybe happy lives are for other people. Other families.”

“‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ Tolstoy.”

I meet Ernest’s eye. “You want to know where I got this ring? My father. Of course, he didn’t bother explaining what it meant.”

“Maybe your father didn’t want you to know. Maybe he thought you were better off
not
knowing.”

I’m momentarily stunned into silence. I can feel all my memories suddenly reshuffling themselves, trying to reshape themselves from this new perspective—his distance, his silence, the almost militant absence from my life. How delightful it would be to think that it was somehow all for my benefit, that he was trying to protect me from some great danger. A part of me would like to believe it but can’t.

“Too bad he never mentioned that,” I say with a bitterness that surprises even me.

Ernest sighs deeply.

“Are you saying you didn’t translate them?”

“I translated what I could in the time I had. I’m a scholar,” says Ernest grimly. “You give a scholar an unpublished esoteric book by a famous historical figure, and they’re going to translate it. Over in the desk you’ll find a journal.”

I stand slowly and walk over to the desk, rolling up the top. Sitting on a leather ink blotter is a gray linen-covered journal. Ernest reaches down, and I’m amazed that he’s able to lift Herman to his lap; I’d have thought the weight would dislocate a few discs in his lower back. He doesn’t look at me while I flip through the pages.

I read the first line. Ernest’s handwriting is neat and precise. “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the Tree of Life and eat, and live forever. (Genesis 3:22)”

The room seems to shift slightly then, and for a surreal moment I wonder if I’m just dreaming, that I could be asleep but don’t know it.

“This isn’t possible,” I mutter. I turn the page and find a neat table of contents that gives me pause:

An Extremely Powerful Conjuration for Summoning Fiends

The Conjuration of the Fire

Concerning Pentacles, and the Manner of Constructing Them

Blood Sacrifice and the Death Curse

“Apparently the death curse works best with the blood of a newborn baby burned in its placenta,” says Ernest coolly, stroking Herman.

“Are you serious?”

“There’s some interesting mention of spleens as well. The epicurean human organ of choice for demons. Apparently makes them more resistant to exorcism. By the way, your
Book of Fiends
is missing quite a few pages. The ones dealing with exorcism, judging from the table of contents.”

For a moment I’m speechless. Possibly a first in the life of Dimitri Petrov.

“But it’s not—it can’t be
real
.”

“Whether it’s real or someone believes it’s real, what does it matter? Look at this.” He holds out his tattooed arm for my inspection.

My heart clenches. The first row of a grid I’ve become all too familiar with.

6   32   3   34   35   1

“Interesting, wouldn’t you say? Ever seen them before?”

“Yes,” I whisper.

“Are you feeling all right? Your face just went a little pale there.”

I swallow and try to center myself. “Define all right.”

“Yes, well,” continues Ernest, “according to my translation, these numbers are the first row of what the books call a magic square. Each
magic square represents a demon or angelic spirit. So let’s see how your math education pans out—add up these numbers and what do you get?”

Focus
. I do the math quickly. “It’s one hundred and eleven.” A strange low humming begins to vibrate through the room, rising up from the floorboards. Although Ernest doesn’t sense it, Herman apparently does. The cat leaps to the floor and frantically scoots behind a bookshelf.

“I haven’t seen him move that fast in a decade,” says Ernest. “One hundred and eleven is the summation for that
row
. But look at the whole table. I flagged it for you.”

Quickly, with a trembling hand, I turn to the page he’s marked with a Post-it.

Impossible
. I add up the rows once, twice, three times to be sure. What I’m thinking could not be possible. “Six hundred and sixty-six.”

“Puts the whole ‘evil empire’ in a new perspective, doesn’t it? Not many know that Hitler was intrigued by occult notions. I had the distinct misfortune to be a part of an experimental control group. Now I wonder if they were scientific experiments, or… the other kind.”