Tales From the Black Chamber (9 page)

Suddenly, the blurry, indistinct lines of a face appeared in the darkness. Anne watched, riveted, as they sharpened into the features of a boy. A little black boy of about eight, who was squinting mightily. All of a sudden, he seemed to see her, and his eyes popped open in surprise. He smiled guilelessly and started pointing at her, then turned his head to talk to someone to his right. She couldn't hear a thing, but saw his lips moving as he was excitedly describing something—probably her—to someone out of sight.

Anne didn't know what to do. She waved, and he waved back. Then with a final ripple, the picture dissipated and the face in the mirror was her own again.

Anne looked around the bathroom, somehow expecting something to be different. She thought for a moment about whether she should just write all this off to fatigue, and possibly incipient mental illness, when common sense kicked in.

She knocked at John's bedroom door. “Just a second,” he called, appearing a moment later in a Redskins T-shirt and sweatpants. “What's up?” he asked, looking puzzled.

“Uh, look, I know we're both tired and overworked and stuff,” Anne said, screwing up her courage. “But something very weird just happened to me. If it was fatigue, it wouldn't bother me. But I don't think it was, and it was very strange, and I thought I should tell someone.”

“Fire away,” he said, concern and sympathy in his eyes.

“Well, either I saw something odd, or I'm going crazy, and I'm pretty sure I'm not going crazy, even given the events of the last couple weeks.”

John's eyes opened a bit wider, and his face grew graver. “Tell me and I'll believe you. We've spent enough time together that I know you're the farthest thing from crazy.”

“Okay.” Anne took a deep breath. “I saw a face in the bathroom mirror.”

John looked startled, but not shocked. “What kind of face?”

“Well, that's the odd thing, it was a little boy. A little black boy. He seemed very friendly and when I waved at him, he waved back. Then he disappeared.”

“Oh crap,” said John. He quickly scanned the hallway for something, and not finding it, said, “Okay, Anne. Here's what we're going to do.” He reached behind him, grabbed a little ladder-back chair from a writing desk, and placed it in the middle of the hall. “Sit here,” he said, stepping out of his room and closing the door behind him. “I'm going to just close all these doors here,” he said, doing just that. “And now I'm going to go get Steve.”

“Should I be worried?” Anne asked after she'd sat down.

“No. Well, yes, sort of. But no, nothing's going to happen to you. You're fine and you're safe. Just trust me on this, ok?”

“Um, sure. Can I have an explanation? I mean, this—” she vaguely indicated his activity by waving her hand in a tight circle, “this isn't exactly a normal reaction. You know something.”

“I do. And I'm inclined to tell you about it. But I need to talk to Steve and we've got to do something first. Sit tight. Don't worry.” He walked over to the linen closet, took out a stack of sheets and towels, closed the door, and went quickly down the stairs.

Anne crossed her legs and wondered,
What the hell is going on here? Are these guys crazy? Are they in on this? Have I actually been kidnapped?
Her worries were not allayed when, after the sounds of distant conversation passed, Agent Hunter and John came up the stairs, each with some towels and sheets over his arm and a man-of-action expression on his face.

Steve went into John's room, and John went to Anne's door. “Do you mind?” he asked.

Anne shrugged and smiled, shaking her head, “Be my guest. In for a dime …”

When he went in, Anne leaned forward and peered after him. She was baffled to watch him drop a hand towel over the makeup mirror that sat on the dressing table in the room, then hang a khaki-colored bed sheet over her bathroom mirror.

Agent Hunter came out of John's room and went into the hallway bathroom, his face tight with grim duty and his hands full of the good cheer of a pink and white floral sheet.
Okay
, Anne thought,
if it weren't a cliché and didn't remind me so much of what just happened, I would say I was through the looking-glass
.

After John and Steve had checked all the other bedrooms and carefully draped every mirror with Bed Bath & Beyond's finest, they met on the landing.

“Uh, guys?” Anne started. “I know I should be concerned or something, but that was the goofiest thing I've seen in a while.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be,” said John, one corner of his mouth turning up. Agent Hunter just shrugged, his Joe Friday mask slipping a bit as his eyes rolled in embarrassment.

“Okay, let's go downstairs and talk about this,” said John with a sigh.

“Let's,” said Anne, popping out of the chair.

They sat down at the kitchen table. “I'll make some coffee,” offered Agent Hunter.

“Okay, Anne,” said John. “Let me preface this conversation with a job offer.”

“You lost me,” said Anne, who couldn't have been more surprised if he'd broken into song.

“I'd like to offer you a job with the, ah, Coolidge Foundation. Mildred was our Librarian and book expert. We need to replace her. It's a good gig. The money is good—six figures after taxes, with bonuses at irregular intervals—though surely not what you'd make with Hathaway & Edgecombe. On the other hand, D.C.'s cheaper than New York, and you won't have to worry about a mortgage. The Foundation owns the house on Linnean Avenue, as well as all the books in it, and you'd get to live there rent-free for your entire career as Librarian. Plus, you get to curate one of the most unusual collections of books in the world. What do you say?”

“I'd say I'd have to think about it for quite a while.”

“Well, here's the thing,” said John, his brow furrowing. “I really can't explain what's going on here unless you work for the Foundation.”

“What?!” Anne pushed back from the table in surprise. “That makes
no
sense at all. And, frankly, it's a kind of blackmail. I mean, obviously I want to know what's going on, but to make me give up my job for less money, move, and work for an entity that you won't even describe to me?”

“Yep,” said John. “That's exactly it. Look, I don't make this offer lightly. Frankly, I'm only doing it now because of what happened to you. I've been thinking about Mildred's replacement for a while, and I very much respect your intelligence and knowledge of books, particularly of occult works, in which our collection is particularly strong. Moreover, your bravery in the face of those lunatics with submachine guns surprised and impressed me. And all the people I talked to when we were checking up on you after Mildred died said wonderful things about your character, judgment, and decency. I think you'd be an excellent candidate for this job, which—as I've mentioned repeatedly to your frustration—is more than a little strange. I'm not saying you'll have to face gun-toting madmen every week, but I can promise you you'll never be bored.”

Agent Hunter laughed. Anne turned to him. “What do you think about this, Agent Hunter? Will you tell me something, or will you do your cigar-store-Indian impression?”

Agent Hunter smiled with genuine warmth. “Take the job,” he said softly with a little smile and slight nod. He handed her a coffee cup. Anne looked into it, then up at the ceiling, as if trying to find a key that would suddenly make sense of all this.

“Okay, fine. I'll be your librarian,” Anne said, thinking,
I can always quit when this is over and go back to H&E.

“Very well,” said John. “I know you can't really know what you're committing to, but I'm going to take that as a serious acceptance.” He offered his hand and Anne shook it, resignedly.

“Now can you tell me what's going on?” asked Anne.

“Well, what happened to you is good, in a way. We have some idea what we're up against. Not who specifically, but what kind of person.”

“I'm just as baffled as I was a few minutes ago,” said Anne.

“Okay, let me ask you something that'll sound random but will eventually make sense. Do you know what
The Key of Solomon
is?”

“Ha!” Anne laughed. “Of course I do.
Clavis Solomonis
. It's the most important and complete early-modern grimoire available. The oldest known copy is fifteenth-century, in Greek, and it shows up in at least Latin, Italian, and English as early as the sixteenth century, and by the seventeenth it'd even been translated into Hebrew. It was probably extant in French and German as well, though we only have exemplars of the former from the eighteenth century and after and none of the latter. I once brokered a sale of a particularly nice eighteenth-century Latin edition printed in Cracow.”

“Did you read it?” John asked.

“Of course!” said Anne. “I love that kind of stuff. And I'd read sections of it in college for a History of Magic class.”

“What did you think?”

“It's fascinating and provides amazing insight into the mentality of the world of the day. It's the dark side of the religiosity of the Middle Ages.”

“What about the content
qua
content?”

“What do you mean?” Anne asked. “The theory of magic or the spells themselves?”

“Either.”

“Uh, kind of fun, but I wasn't exactly worried that reading one out loud would, you know, summon the demon Caacrinolaas who cometh forth like a dog and hath wings like a griffin.”

John laughed. “Nice. That from
The Key of Solomon
?”

Anne felt herself smirking a little. “No, Wierus's
Pseudomonarchia dæmonum
. You might be confusing
The Key of Solomon
with the so-called
Lesser Key of Solomon
or
Lemegeton
, which largely reproduces Wierus's hierarchy of demons but adds some neat-o symbols for each of them.”

John laughed again. “Okay, ok, you know
way
more about these books than I do. But do you think there's anything there?”

“What do you mean?” Anne asked, puzzled. “Do I think there's any real magic in there? No. I mean, you could change your psychological state pretty dramatically with auto-suggestion, and you could easily get other medievals to believe that you were a magician and then affect them by suggestion as well.”

“I remember your saying that you were interested in monsters as well as magic, right? Vampires, werewolves, and so forth.” Anne nodded. “Now, even if you don't believe in vampires and werewolves, you do believe there's a kernel of truth somewhere behind the myths, right?”

“Sure. There are a whole range of theo—”

John cut her off. “But you dismiss the possibility of a kernel of truth behind magic.”

“No, I just told you—”

“Not a subjective psychological reality. An objective, physical reality.”

“Yes, I dismiss that.” Suddenly the penny dropped. “Wait a second, are you telling me that what happened in the bathroom upstairs was
magic
?”

John leaned back. “Yes. It was magic.”

“There's no such thing.”

“Well, then, congratulations. You've either got a sizable brain tumor or you've had a psychotic break.”

Anne stared at John, then turned to Agent Hunter. “Are you buying this, Agent Hunter?” Hunter just nodded. “Okay, you guys are nuts. I'm out of here.” She stood up.

“Anne, please. Look, let me ask you an academic question. In medieval necromancy, what sort of spell requires a mirror of some sort and a sinless, innocent child to look into it and report what he sees?”

Anne sat back down, crossed her arms, and chewed on her left little finger's nail. After a long minute, she growled, “A scrying spell.”

“Which you use to …”

“Spy on someone. Find someone.”

“And we know—”

She cut him off. “That there's someone after me who's a little too interested in a book with exorcism rituals. Which are the Godly converse of necromantic demon-summoning rituals.”

John just nodded.

“You've got to be kidding me,” Anne said, rhetorically. John and Agent Hunter shook their heads.

“Okay, playing along here … because I'm temporarily at a loss to think of a different scenario. How does the scrying spell lock in on me?” Anne asked.

John said, “Usually they've got to have a connection to you. We know they were in your office. Do you ever, say, clip your fingernails at your desk?”

“Eww, no.” She thought for a second. “But I had a hairbrush in the bottom drawer.”

“Aha,” said John.

“Sue me, I'm a girl.”

“Manifestly.”

“A girl with, what, a necromancer problem?” Anne asked with a mixture of sarcasm and bafflement.

“I'd say so.”

“So, what, I can't look in a mirror ever again? How am I supposed to comb my hair—well, I guess the lesson is you never brush your hair lest a black-magician gets ahold of it.”

“You can use the toaster or a computer screen or something. Just nothing glass with a silvered backing. Until we find the guy.”

“You seem awfully familiar with this,” Anne said with a hint of accusation.

John shrugged. “I heard about it happening once before.”

“So, how do we find the guy?” she asked.

“Well, we know three things. One, he's using a little black boy as his scryer. So he's probably not in North Dakota. More likely a big city or the rural South. Two, he's got access to significant amounts of money. Machine guns aren't cheap, nor are hit men—unless they're his partners in hoodoo. And three?” he pointed to Anne.

“What? I'm supposed to know?”

“Who were necromancers in the Middle Ages?”

“Well, strictly speaking—avoiding the case of natural magicians, like herbalists and witches and alchemists and the like—it was usually someone literate, often familiar with Latin as well as religious rites. Which means weirdo fringy priests, deacons, and other minor clergy.” John nodded approvingly. “Wait a second,” Anne objected. “Are you saying we're looking for a Catholic priest? That's nuts.”