The 37th mandala : a novel (15 page)

"Thanks."

He found Lilith in the tiny kitchen, screwing lids on bottles of holy water. A box of empty bottles sat on the counter, and the tap was still dripping. She jumped when he touched her in the small of the back.

"Oh, my God," she said when she saw him. "I thought you were Norman."

"You said you wouldn't do this sort of thing," he said, picking up a damp bottle.

Lilith looked furious. "Norman isn't qualified to bless a sneeze. I don't want anyone jeopardized by his negligence."

"You're not a priest."

"My blessing is better than any
Christian
minister's."

"Still... it is fraud."

"And as soon as I can find another job that suits me, I'll be calling the Better Business Bureau. In the meantime ..." She shrugged and capped the bottle, wiping her hands on her black jeans. "How was your trip?"

He kissed her on the neck, encircling her with his arms. She smelled of the incense and oils she'd been mixing and measuring all morning. Wormwood, myrrh, and benzoin. "Come to lunch and I'll tell you all about it. I have permission to steal you away for an hour."

She pushed him away unexpectedly, arching back to give him a worried look. "Derek ..."

"What?"

"I do have to talk to you, but not now. I need more than an hour."

"Is something wrong?"

"It's too complicated. I'm coming under suspicion."

"Suspicion? Of what?"

"People think—they think I'm your woman. Ms. A."

"They what? That's ridiculous. Who?"

"I told you, I don't want to—not right now. Can I see you tonight?"

"Of course. But all you have to do is tell them to fuck off. They shouldn't be bothering you."

"That's easy for you to say. The fact is, people assume she's out there somewhere, and she must be someone you know. I don't know if you realize it, but there are a number of lost souls around who've become obsessed with these mandalas of yours. They come in every day and hang around asking me questions. At first Norman kicked them out because they hadn't bought anything since the book; but now they've caught on. They buy charcoal or single sticks of incense, so he refuses to bother them. He won't even let
me
tell them off. They give me the creeps."

Derek looked over his shoulder, as if he might see some of them coming down the hall.

"That's right," she said. "I'm surprised there weren't any out there when you came in."

"You're talking about a bunch of New Age flakes. What are you afraid of?"

"These aren't.. . they aren't the usual crowd, Derek. You've managed to attract an element I've never met before."

"Great," he said. "I'll have to use the back door now."

"It's not funny. I need my privacy."

"But it's insane. Just tell them to leave you alone."

"I'm getting too much attention. Yesterday there was an Asian man here, asking about you. Fortunately Norman wasn't around or he might have let on that I knew you. He came in because we had signed copies of
The Mandala Rites
, then he started asking if you ever came in, where you lived, things like that."

Derek's flesh began to crawl. "Who the hell was he?"

"I don't know. I didn't ask. He spoke English very well, but with an accent. I don't know what kind—you know, Pacific Rim. He looked like a businessman, and he wouldn't let on why he was asking about you."

"I don't get it."

"Neither do I. But I'm warning you, Derek, I'm going to have to pull out of this situation if it gets any more intense. I don't need this kind of energy in my life right now."

"Pull out of what situation? The shop?"

She looked him in the eyes. "No. Us."

"You can't—you can't do that because of other people, Lilith. You're going to let them rule your life, your relationships? I mean, what do I—is it my fault?"

"Maybe. You created this whole scene, Derek. It's your livelihood, not mine. I can't let it take me off my path, and mine has nothing to do with your mandalas. Do you understand?"

He felt as if a cold, blunt metal rod had been thrust straight through him. "Yes," he said. "I understand. Our relationship is based on what you want; it doesn't have a thing to do with me."

"You know how I feel about you, Derek."

"No I don't! I don't know a goddamn thing unless you tell me."

She reared back, unshaken, cool, as if she had expected him to flare up.

"Even if I told you, Derek, you wouldn't believe me. You don't believe anything. That's your policy. The thing that makes me sad sometimes is it's painfully obvious that deep down you
want
to believe
everything
, unquestioningly. You don't even know which questions to ask—that's why you accept all the standard explanations of reality. I think once upon a time you must have been pretty gullible." She laughed after she said this; he had felt his face change, but couldn't be sure what he'd given away. "You were, weren't you? But you've built a wall—more like a fortress—around everything in you that's naive or childlike, everything having to do with trust and faith. And now nothing gets through. Nothing I can imagine, anyway. I've tried to reach you, wherever you're hiding, but it would take more strength than I have. More violence, possibly; and I'm not willing to go that far. Something's going to bring that fortress down someday, and then look out. I hope nobody's standing near you when it falls."

"You're afraid," he said coldly. "Afraid of a relationship."

"That's not what you want," she said. "I'm sorry, Derek, but it's not."

"Do you love me, Lilith?"

"Love you? I can't even touch you. You push the whole world away."

"That's a convenient way for you to see it, while you're pushing me away."

"I have to get back to work."

She slipped past him, down the hall. He stood there shaking, his face aflame. He couldn't face the shop again, its fool customers ransacking shelves full of fakery. He made his way out the rear into a small parking lot and strode up 15th Street to the orange crags of Corona Heights. Fog was pouring over the ridge, a gray mass smothering the stones, and soon it smothered him as well. Wrapped in fog, the city hidden from sight below, he could almost believe he was alone in the universe. Almost. Lilith was right.

Michael took one last look at the face of the postcard, which he had picked up in Memphis last summer. It was a picture of Graceland. He hoped Derek Crowe wouldn't think the message itself was a joke. Elvis didn't seem an appropriate flip side to the mandalas, but it was the only postcard he had been able to find, rooting through drawers while Lenore showered. He had filled it out without telling her, not wanting her to know the extent of his concern, not wanting her to panic or be afraid in any way. He had convinced her to call in sick, and done the same himself, resolving to look after her until he was convinced she was stable. He dropped the card at the mall post office, on his way to Sears to grab a DieHard.

As he drove toward his mother's house with the battery, he felt alternately stupid and scared.
Stupid
, because Lenore was apparently fine now; her blackouts, or whatever they were, had not recurred, and they probably had nothing to do with the mandalas anyway. He half suspected that Lenore was simply getting drugs from Tucker and lying about it.
Scared
, because a moment later he would find himself completely convinced that the mandalas were at work and would return before long—certainly before Derek Crowe could come to their aid. He figured it would take the card three days to get to California. That meant three days minimum before Derek Crowe called. He could hold out that long, but he felt so isolated. Maybe ... maybe he should do another rite tonight, try to contact Elias Mooney in the astral or wherever he had gone, and seek the old sage's assistance. If nothing else, it would make him feel like he was doing
something
.

When he reached his mother's house, he went straight to the garage and popped the hood of her car. He was tightening the cable clamps when he heard the back door slam and her footsteps slogging through the thick mulch of sodden leaves on the unraked lawn. She leaned over his shoulder, her breath reeking of beer and coffee. It wasn't quite ten o'clock.

"What's wrong with Lenore?" she said.

He straightened so fast he caught his forehead on the corner of the hood. "Ow! Jesus! What do you mean?"

"I called over there to see where you were. Phone must have rung twenty times before she answered."

"She's not feeling too good. She called in sick."

She looked skeptical, waiting for him to go on.

He leaned on the hood until it clicked shut. "What are you staring at?"

"What's she got?"

"Flu or something, how should I know? I can't afford to take her to the hospital so some doctor can charge us a hundred bucks to take her temperature."

"She's doing drugs again, isn't she?"

"And you aren't?"

"Don't start that! Your wife is the one with the problem! All I did was ask where you were, and she started raving at me—obscene filth, if you'd like to know. Words I never heard before. God knows she didn't learn them from you; and if she did, you didn't learn them from me."

Michael froze, then turned and headed toward the house. He picked up the phone in the kitchen and dialed his own number. The phone rang a dozen times, twenty, but Lenore didn't pick up. He finally put it down.

"Well?"

"She must be sleeping. You probably woke her up, that's why she sounded incoherent. With fever she gets delirious."

"But with drugs she gets nasty, and she was nasty. She doesn't care what she says to her own mother-in-law! If you heard what she said to me, garbage I can't even pronounce. You can't imagine—"

Suddenly he
could
imagine the words. Words right out of
The Mandala Rites
. To his mother's addled ears it could have sounded like any foul thing she wished to imagine.

"I'll talk to her," he said.

"She needs more than talk. If you ask me, she needs psychiatric help."

"Who doesn't? I have to go."

"What about my car? Does it work?"

"See for yourself."

As he crossed through the living room, he surprised Earl in a transaction with a tall young man in a shabby black jogging suit. The kid, who could have been younger than Michael, jumped, startled, and spastically started stuffing a plastic bag into a zippered hip pouch—but not before Michael saw what was in the bag. Black capsules.

Earl smiled defensively, swaying toward Michael. "Hey, buddy boy. You fix up your ma's car?"

"Good as new," Michael said, pushing past him. He wasn't really surprised, and he didn't want to think about what he was seeing. All he cared about at the moment was Lenore.

"Uh, this here's a friend of mine," Earl started.

"Yeah, right." Michael rushed out, leaving the front door open.

Lenore was sitting on the couch, heaps of yesterday's laundry piled up around her. She was still in her bathrobe, her hair wet and tangled. The comb hung halfway down, caught in snarls. Her eyes seemed clear and focused—but they weren't focused on him or on anything else he could see. It took her a moment to realize he was in the room; and then her expression soured, as if she were absorbed in something far more interesting and reluctant to deal with him. It was the look she gave him when he interrupted her at work on one of her math problems, or the puzzles she had worked compulsively when they'd first moved to Cinderton. They had been her only addiction for a brief time.

"Did you talk to my mom?" he asked.

She crossed her arms, narrowed her eyes, watched him with suspicion.

"Lenore ... are you okay? Did you have another—another blackout?"

"
Shngaha
, " she said.

"What?"

Her eyes strayed to the ceiling, making him glance up. Tucker, he thought. Tucker had bragged once that he had a few designer varieties, new drugs. Anything could happen with those things. Lenore might have taken something like that; and who could guess at the effects, especially when you mixed them with magic? He listened for Tucker's muted voice or footsteps, but heard only the usual muffled music.

"Lenore?" he said.

She didn't move.

He touched her shoulder but she still didn't move. His heart began to pound. Her skin was chill. He began to wonder if the universe were as neutral as he liked to believe ... or if neutrality was a more awful thing than he'd realized.

She caught his hand, a gesture as startling as it was sudden. She pressed his palm against her mouth; he felt her teeth and tongue against his skin.

"Are you okay?" he asked. "You were just sitting here—"

Her pupils were huge; more evidence that she was doing drugs. Tugging harder, she drew him down onto her, shifting back on the couch so that they could lie together in the scattered clothes.

"What're you doing?" he said, though he already knew. Her hands were on his back, pulling at his shirt; her breath felt hot on his neck. He must be crushing her. Her robe fell open. The sounds she made were broken bits of words, nothing that made sense at first, but he wasn't really listening now.

"What's with you?"

There was a trace of a smile on her lips, but little else in her expression except urgency as she worked his pants down over his hips and pulled him closer to her.

Drugs, he was thinking. It has to be drugs. She's never like this except when she's loaded. Never that interested in sex without some extra internal stimulation—or something to numb her....

He tried to throw off the tangle of thoughts for a moment, to let himself enjoy the sensations. He lowered his head, slid his hands up along her back to grasp her shoulders from behind. Her cold hands moved down his back; her nails dug into his buttocks.

Then he realized that she was chanting, making wet, clicking sounds timed with his thrusts.

"
Silsiliv zezizn maoan, nylyvyl olornon ahrixir memt-hocha
..."

The sounds smothered him. Suddenly it was all too much. What was she invoking? What would be consecrated by the mixture of their juices?

He pulled out and drew back, feeling as if he had just struggled up from the bottom of a lake. Lenore gasped anxiously but made no other sound, lying there with her eyes still closed, hardly seeming to breathe. Her words trailed off, but not before he recognized them.

Somehow she had managed to memorize the whole seventeenth Rite, the major sex ritual in Crowe's book. How had she pronounced it flawlessly in the midst of passion, and drugged to boot? That ceremony had stumped him; it was the single one he couldn't do alone. And now, given the perfect opportunity, he'd backed off in fear.

Fear of what?

He couldn't ignore the fact that he had been aroused; if he could manage to get out of his head for a minute he might still be able to find some satisfaction. Maybe if he took a little of whatever Lenore had taken. He looked around for a joint, even a roach, but saw nothing.

Her eyes were completely shut now, her teeth clenched and starting to chatter. He swept his hand across her brow, brushing her hair aside to feel if she was feverish.

In doing so, he revealed the bright wound on her forehead.

Michael went cold when he saw the mandala burning there like a brand: an intricate, spidery tattoo, as detailed as the illustration in Crowe's book, down to the central mouth of gnashing teeth, the rim of glistering eyes. It was the thirty-seventh mandala, sharp and clear. He rubbed at it, but it would not smudge. Lenore made a moaning complaint and he pulled his hand away. Flustered and frightened, he hurried down the hall, consoling himself with simple acts. He washed in the bathroom, waiting for his thoughts to clear, but they were dense and thickening. There was too much going on here, more than he could handle alone. He needed some advice.

Elias, he thought. Now.

He went into his temple room and opened a drawer in his altar. There were heaps of loose paper, volumes of his magical journals, bits and pieces of thaumaturgical equipment he wasn't currently using. At the back of the drawer was a stack of audio cassettes and a few envelopes bound with a thick leather cord. These were the only things he had of Elias Mooney's. He untied the stack and dug his old tape player from another drawer; he plugged it into the socket beside the altar and inserted a cassette, then sat cross-legged on the floor and set the volume low.

Elias's voice crackled out in midsentence, bringing back clear memories of the time when Michael had received these taped letters once or twice a month. Those had been troubled times. Worse than these? Perhaps not ... but Elias's words had always filled him with courage and reassurance and spiritual guidance. He needed them as a sort of touchstone for contacting Elias now.

"—now, without offending you, Michael, I have to say once again that it is absolutely essential you forgo drugs of any kind. They do have a place in magic, but they have been so abused by modern practitioners that it is practically impossible to use them properly now. The realms to which they give access have been polluted by the millions of untrained, undisciplined tourists who've invaded the astral regions in the last thirty years, with the aid of hallucinogenics. In a way, the so-called nonaddictive drugs—such as lysergic acid and mescaline—are even more dangerous than the opiates, which merely lead to oblivion, for that is a featureless void whose essential characteristics can never be altered, and from whose effects it is sometimes possible to recover. But the undisciplined mind may never recover from an unguided trip through the peyote world, and the reverse is also true. The depredations done to the peyote lands are as terrible and irreversible as those done by modern civilization to the native people's material environment. Just as the sacred Black Hills were mined and stripped of their soul, the ecology of the astral has been seriously wounded. And as it decays, so must this world, which is no more than a dream of the denizens of that place ..."

The words affected Michael like a mild hallucinogen themselves. He closed his eyes and let them wash over him, trying to recover his state of mind at the time this tape first reached him.

He recalled he'd had a very bad experience with some mushrooms, and had actually broken down and telephoned Elias and confessed the nature of his experiments—even knowing the old man's prejudice against drugs. It had been getting dark and he was all alone in an empty apartment, with night pouring down over the windows like a bottle of ink spilled from the eaves; and he had hugged the phone to his ear and clung to the old man's gravelly voice with all his soul. Elias had dispatched some of his elementals to watch over Michael, then told him to ground himself by gazing at a piece of polished copper. Michael was afraid to stray beyond the circle of light cast by the single lamp where he sat holding the phone. "There's something near you," Elias said soothingly. "Something on your person." "I don't even have a penny," Michael whimpered. "Look down. I see copper. It's small, but it's enough." Looking down, Michael had seen a bright copper rivet on the watch pocket of his blue jeans, and the sight of it had affected him like the touch of a woman's cool, strong hands. The metal of Venus, its small glow a reassurance and a beacon, held him steady even after Elias hung up. And after eons of sitting in solitude with nothing but that tiny orange sun to warm him, he had heard a key in the lock and light fell into the room down a hall that was at least a thousand miles long, and Lenore came in, amazed when she saw him, laughing and sarcastic when she heard his story, because her terrors were so different from his.

Two days later this tape had arrived. It was partially a reproval, however sympathetic, and partially an esoteric lecture on why a refined white boy like Michael was genetically and culturally unsuited to receive the sacraments of the psilocybin spirits. Elias did not believe there were any drugs suited for Michael; pharmaceuticals were soulless. Best of all was to learn to release the body's own natural compounds, the subtle chemicals for which receptors had existed in the brain long before anyone had ever chewed a mushroom or ingested poppy tar or smoked the dried, serrated leaf of cannibis. But this required discipline, self-mastery, and patience; which meant that few in this day and age would ever experience these effects except by accident, in moments of extreme pain or pleasure, when the body released them spontaneously.