In The House Of Secret Enemies

Book of Shadows

It had been a long day with absolutely nothing accomplished. I'd spent most of it grading a depressing set of mid-term papers that led me to wonder what I'd been teaching all semester in my graduate criminology seminar. After that I'd needed a drink.

Instead of doing the perfectly sensible thing and repairing to the local pub, I'd made the mistake of calling my answering service, which informed me there was a real live client waiting for me in my downtown office. The Yellow Pages the man had picked my name out of didn't mention the fact that this particular private detective was a dwarf: One look at me and the man decided he didn't really need a private detective after all.

With my sensitive ego in psychic shreds, I headed home. I planned to quickly make up for my past sobriety and spend an electronically lobotomized evening in front of the television.

I perked up when I saw the little girl waiting for me outside my apartment. Kathy Marsten was a small friend of mine from 4D, down the hall. With her blond hair and blue eyes, dressed in a frilly white dress and holding a bright red patent leather purse, she looked positively beatific. I laughed to myself as I recalled that it had taken me two of her seven years to convince her that I wasn't a potential playmate.

"Kathy, Kathy, Kathy!" I said, picking her up and setting her down in a manner usually guaranteed to produce Instant Giggle. "How's my girl today?"

"Hello, Mr. Mongo," she said very seriously.

"Why the good clothes? You look beautiful, but I'd think you'd be out playing with your friends by this time."

"I came here right after school, Mr. Mongo. I've been waiting for you. I was getting afraid I wouldn't see you before my daddy came home. I wanted to ask you something."

Now the tears came. I reached down and brushed them away, suddenly realizing that this was no child's game. "What did you want to ask me, Kathy?"

She sniffled, then regained control of herself in a manner that reminded me of someone much older. "My daddy says that you sometimes help people for money."

"That's right, Kathy. Can I help you?"

Her words came in a rush. "I want you to get my daddy's book of shadows back from Daniel so Daddy will be happy again. But you mustn't tell Daddy. He'd be awful mad at me if he knew I told anybody. But he just has to get it back or something terrible will happen. I just know it."

"Kathy, slow down and tell me what a 'book of shadows' is. Who's Daniel?"

But she wasn't listening. Kathy was crying again, fumbling in her red purse. "I've got money for you," she stammered. "I've been saving my allowance and milk money."

Before I could say anything the little girl had taken out a handful of small change and pressed it into my palm. I started to give it back, then stopped when I heard footsteps come up behind me.

"Kathy!" a thin voice said. "There you are!"

The girl gave me one long, piercing look that was a plea to keep her secret. Then she quickly brushed away her tears and smiled at the person standing behind me. "Hi, Daddy! I fell and hurt myself. Mr. Mongo was making me feel better."

I straightened up and turned to face Jim Marsten. He seemed much paler and thinner since I'd last seen him, but perhaps it was my imagination. The fact of the matter was that I knew Kathy much better than I knew either of her parents. We knew each other's names, occasionally exchanged greetings in the hall, and that was it. Marsten was a tall man, the near side of thirty, prematurely balding. The high dome of his forehead accentuated the dark, sunken hollows of his eye sockets. He looked like a man who was caving in.

"Hello, Mongo," Marsten said.

I absently slipped the money Kathy had given me into my pocket and shook the hand that was extended to me. "Hi, Jim. Good to see you."

"Thanks for taking care of my daughter." He looked at Kathy. "Are you all right now?"

Kathy nodded her head. Her money felt heavy in my pocket; I felt foolish. By the time I realized I probably had no right to help a seven-year-old child keep secrets from her father, Jim Marsten had taken the hand of his daughter and was leading her off down the hall. Kathy looked back at me once and her lips silently formed the word please.

When they were gone I took Kathy's money out of my pocket and counted it. There was fifty-seven cents.

I must have looked shaky. My brother Garth poured me a second double Scotch and brought it over to where I was sitting. I took a pull at it, then set the glass aside and swore.

Garth shook his head. "It can all be explained, Mongo," he said. "There's a rational explanation for everything."

"Is there?" I asked without any real feeling. "Let's hear one."

Someone was calling my name: a child's voice, crying, afraid, a small wave from some dark, deep ocean lapping at the shore of my mind. Then I was running down a long tunnel, slipping and falling on the soft, oily surface, struggling to reach the small, frail figure at the other end. The figure of Kathy seemed to recede with each step I took, and still I ran. Kathy was dressed in a long, flowing white gown, buttoned to the neck, covered with strange, twisted shapes. Suddenly she was before me. As I reached out to take her in my arms she burst into flames.

I sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat. My first reaction was relief when I realized I had only been dreaming. Then came terror: I smelled smoke.

Or thought I smelled smoke. Part of the dream? I started to reach for my cigarettes, then froze. There was smoke. I leaped out of bed, quickly checked the apartment. Nothing was burning. I threw open the door of the apartment and stepped out into the hall. Smoke was seeping from beneath the door of the Marstens' apartment.

I sprinted to the end of the hall and broke the fire box there. Then I ran back and tried the door to 4D. It was locked. I didn't waste time knocking. I braced against the opposite wall, ran two steps forward, kipped in the air and kicked out at the door just above the lock. The door rattled. I picked myself off the floor and repeated the process. This time the door sprung open wide.

The first thing that hit me was the stench. The inside of the apartment, filled with thick, greenish smoke, smelled like a sewer.

There was a bright, furnace glow to my right, coming from the bedroom. I started toward it, then stopped when I saw Kathy lying on the couch.

She was dressed in the same gown I had seen in the dream.

I bent over her. She seemed to be breathing regularly but was completely unconscious, not responding to either my voice or touch. I picked her up and carried her out into the hall, laid her down on the carpet and went back into the apartment.

There was nothing I could do there. I stood in the door of the bedroom and gazed in horror at the bed that had become a funeral pyre. The naked bodies of Jim and Becky Marsten were barely discernible inside the deadly ring of fire. The bodies, blackened and shriveling, were locked together in some terrible and final act of love. And death.

"They were using combustible chemicals as part of their ritual," Garth said, lighting a cigarette and studying me. "They started fooling with candles and the room went up. It's obvious."

"Is it? The fire was out by the time the Fire Department got there. And there wasn't that much damage to the floor."

"Typical of some kinds of chemical fires, Mongo. You know that."

"I saw the fire: it was too bright, too even. And I did hear Kathy's voice calling me. She was crying for help."

"In your dream?"

"In my dream."

My brother Garth is a cop. He took a long time to answer, and I sensed that he was embarrassed. "The mind plays tricks, Mongo."

I had a few thoughts on that subject: I washed them away with a mouthful of Scotch.

"Excuse me, Doctor. How's the girl? Kathy Marsten?"

The doctor was Puerto Rican, frail, and walked with a limp. He had a full head of thick black hair and large, brown eyes that weren't yet calloused over by the pain one encounters in a New York City hospital. He was a young man. The tag on his white smock said his name was Rivera. He looked somewhat surprised to find a dwarf standing in front of him.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Frederickson."

The eyes narrowed. "I've seen your picture. They call you Mongo. Ex-circus performer, college professor, private-"

"I asked you how the girl was."

"Are you a relative?"

"No. Friend of the family. I brought her in."

He hesitated, then led me to a small alcove at the end of the corridor. I didn't like the look of the way he walked and held his head: too sad, a little desperate.

"My name is Rivera," he said. "Juan Rivera."

"I saw the name tag, Doctor."

"Kathy is dying."

Just like that. I passed my hand over my eyes. "Of what?"

Rivera shrugged his shoulders. It was an odd gesture, filled with helplessness and bitter irony. "We don't know," he said, his eyes clouding. "There's no sign of smoke inhalation, which, of course, was the first thing we looked for. Since then we've run every conceivable test. Nothing. There's no sign of physical injury. She's just. . dying. All the machines can tell us is that her vital signs are dropping at an alarming rate. If the drop continues at its present rate, Kathy Marsten will be dead in two to three days."

"She hasn't regained consciousness?"

"No. She's in a deep coma."

"Can't you operate?"

Juan Rivera's laugh was short, sharp, bitter, belied by the anguish in his eyes. "Operate on what? Don't you understand? Modern medicine says there's nothing wrong with that girl. She's merely dying."

Rivera swallowed hard. "There must be something in her background: an allergy, some obscure hereditary disease. That information is vital." He suddenly reached into his hip pocket and drew out his wallet. "You're a private detective. I want to hire you to find some relative of Kathy's that knows something about her medical history."

I held up my hand. "No thanks. I only take on one client at a time."

Rivera looked puzzled. "You won't help?"

"The girl hired me to find something for her. I figure that covers finding a way to save her life. Do you still have the gown she was wearing when I brought her in?"

"The one with the pictures?"

"Right. I wonder if you'd give it to me."

"Why?"

"I'd rather not say right now, Dr. Rivera. I think the symbols on that gown mean something. They could provide a clue to what's wrong with Kathy."

"They're designs," he said somewhat impatiently. "A child's nightgown. What can it have to do with Kathy's illness?"

"Maybe nothing. But I won't know for sure unless you give it to me."

"Hypnosis."

"Hypnosis?! C'mon, Garth. You're reaching."

"Trauma, then. After all, she did watch her parents burn to death."

"Maybe. She was unconscious when I found her."

"God knows what else she was forced to watch."

"And take part in," I added.

"Assuming she did see her parents die, don't you think that-along with everything else-might not be enough to shock a girl to death?"

"I don't know, Garth. You're the one with all the explanations."

"God, Mongo, you don't believe that stuff Daniel told you?!"

"I believe the Marstens believed. And Daniel."

"You're right, Mongo. They are occult symbols."

I watched Dr. Uranus Jones as she continued to finger the satin gown, examining every inch of it. Uranus was a handsome women in her early fifties-good-looking enough to have carried on a string of affairs with a procession of lab assistants twenty years her junior, or so rumor had it. Her gray-streaked blond hair was drawn back into a ponytail, which made her look younger.

The walls of her university office were covered with astronomical charts, many of which she had designed herself. It was an appropriate decor for the office of one of the world's most prominent astronomers. But I wasn't there to discuss astronomy.

Uranus had a rather interesting dual career. As far as I knew, I was the only one of Uranus' colleagues at the university who knew that Uranus was also a top astrologer and medium, with a near legendary reputation in the New York occult underground.

"What do they mean?"

"They look like symbols for the ascending order of demons," she said quietly.

"What does it mean as far as the Marstens are concerned?"

Uranus took a long time to answer. "My guess is that the Marstens were witches practicing the black side of their craft. I'd say they were into demonology and Satanism, and they were trying to summon up a demon. Probably Belial, judging from the symbols on this gown. From what you've told me, I'd speculate that the Marstens were using a ritual that rebounded on them. The rebound killed them."

"Rebound?"

"The evil. It rebounded and killed them. They weren't able to control the power released by the ritual. That's the inherent danger of ceremonial magic."

"What 'power'?"

"The power of Belial. I assume that's who they were trying to summon. He killed them before they could exercise the necessary control."

I studied Uranus in an attempt to see if she was joking. There wasn't a trace of a smile on her face. "Do you believe that, Uranus?"

She avoided my eyes. "I'm not a ceremonial magician, Mongo."

"That's not an answer."

"It wasn't meant to be. You asked about the symbols on the robe, and I'm responding in the context of ceremonial magic. I'm describing to you a system of belief. It's up to you to decide whether that system could have anything to do with the fact that Kathy Marsten is dying. It's your responsibility to choose what avenue to pursue, and, from what I understand, you don't have much time."

I wasn't sure there was a choice. According to Dr. Juan Rivera, the practitioners of the system called medicine had just about played out their string. I risked nothing but making a fool out of myself. Kathy had considerably more to lose. There was a sudden ringing in my ears.

"All right. Within the context of ceremonial magic, why is Kathy dying?"

Uranus looked at me for a long time, then said: "Belial is claiming a bride."

"Come again."

"The gown: It means that the child was to be a part of the ritual. My guess is that her parents were offering her up to Belial in exchange for whatever it was they wanted. He killed her parents, and now he's taking her."

"You're saying that Kathy is possessed?" "Within the context of ceremonial magic, yes. And she will have to be exorcised if you hope to save her. To do that, you will need to know the exact steps in the ritual the Marstens were using. Needless to say, that's not something you're likely to find in the public library. And I don't mean that to sound flippant. Assuming that such a ritual does exist, it would have taken the Marstens years to research from some of the rarest manuscripts in the world."

The ringing in my ears was growing louder. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. It didn't do any good. "God, Uranus," I whispered, "this is the twentieth century. I only have a little time. How can I justify using it to chase. . demons?"

"You can't, Mongo. Not in your belief system. Because demons don't exist in your belief system. But they did in the Marstens', and Kathy Marsten is dying."

"Yes," I said distantly. "Kathy Marsten is dying."

"Consider the possibility that you are what you believe. What you believe affects you. The witch and the ceremonial magician perceive evil in personal terms. Belial, for example. Most men today prefer other names for evil. . Buchenwald, My Lai."

"She was talking about the mind of man," I said. ^"That's where the demons are. It's where they've always been. The question is whether or not evil can be personified. Can it be made to assume a shape? Can it be controlled?"

Garth shook his head impatiently. "That's all crazy talk, Mongo. You're too close to it now. Give it some more time and you'll know it's crazy. There's an explanation for everything that happened. There aren't any such things as demons, and you damn well know it."

"Of course there aren't any such things as demons," I said, lifting my glass. "Let's drink to that."

"Uranus, what's a 'book of shadows'?"

She looked surprised. "A book of shadows is a witch's diary. It's a record of spells, omens. It's a very private thing and is usually seen only by members of the witch's coven."

"A few hours before the fire Kathy Marsten asked me to get back her father's book of shadows. She said it had been taken by a man named Daniel."

Something moved in the depths of Uranus' eyes. "I know of Daniel," she said quietly. "He's a ceremonial magician."

"Meaning precisely what?" I asked.

"A man who has great control over his own mind, and the minds of others. Some would say the ceremonial magician can control matter, create or destroy life. The ceremonial magician stands on the peak of the mountain called the occult. He is a man who has achieved much. He works alone, and he is dangerous. If he took someone's book of shadows, it was for a reason."

"Then there could have been bad blood between this Daniel and the Marstens?"

"If not before Daniel took the book, then certainly after."

I didn't want to ask the next question. I asked it anyway. "Do you think one of these ceremonial magicians could start a fire without actually being in the room?"

"Yes," Uranus said evenly. "I think so."

"I want to talk to this Daniel."

"He won't talk to you, Mongo. You'll be wasting your time."

"You get me to him and let me worry about the conversation."

A Philadelphia bank seemed like an odd place to look for a ceremonial magician. But then nobody had claimed that Daniel could change lead into gold, and even ceremonial magicians had to eat. It looked like this particular magician was eating well. He was sitting in a bank vice-president's chair.

He looked the part; that is, he looked more like a bank vice-president than a master of the occult arts, whatever such a master looks like. Maybe I'd been expecting Orson Welles. In any case, he matched the description Uranus had given me; about six feet, early forties, close-cropped, steely gray hair with matching eyes. He wore a conservatively cut, gray-striped suit. There was a Christmas Club sign to one side of his desk, and beside that a name plate that identified him as Mr. Richard Bannon.

I stopped at the side of the desk and waited for him to look up from his papers. "Yes, sir?" It was an announcer's voice, deep, rich and well modulated.

"Daniel?"

I looked for a reaction. There wasn't any. The gray eyes remained impassive, almost blank, as though he were looking straight through me. I might have been speaking a foreign language. He waited a few seconds, then said: "Excuse me?"

"You are Daniel," I said. "That's your witch name. I want to talk to you."

I watched his right hand drop below the desk for a moment, then resurface. I figured I had five to ten seconds, and intended to use every one of them. "You listen good," I said, leaning toward him until my face was only inches from his. "There's a little girl dying a couple of hours away from here. If I even suspect you had anything to do with it, I'm going to come down on you. Hard. For starters, I'm going to make sure the stockholders of this bank find out about your hobbies. Then, if that doesn't make me feel better, maybe I'll kill you."

Time was up. I could feel the bank guard's hand pressing on my elbow. Daniel suddenly raised his hand. "It's all right, John," he said, looking at me. "I pressed the button by mistake. Dr. Frederickson is a customer."

The hand came off my elbow, there was a murmured apology, then the sound of receding footsteps. I never took my eyes off Daniel. He rose and gestured toward an office behind him. "Follow me, please."

I followed him into the softly lit, richly carpeted office. He closed the door and began to speak almost immediately. "You are to take this as a threat," he said in a voice barely above a whisper. "I know who you are; your career is familiar to me. I do not know how you know of me; I know of no person who would have dared tell you about me. But no matter. There is absolutely nothing-nothing-you can do to me. But I can. . inflict. You will discover that to your surprise and sorrow if you came to trifle with me."

It was an impressive speech, delivered as it was in a soft monotone. I smiled. "I want to ask a couple of questions. You answer them right and you can go back to changing people into frogs, or whatever it is you do."

"I will answer nothing."

"Why did you steal Jim Marsten's book of shadows?"

Daniel blinked. That was all, but from him I considered it a major concession. "You have a great deal of information, Dr. Frederickson. I'm impressed. Who have you been speaking to?"

"What do you know about the girl? Kathy Marsten."

His eyes narrowed. "Why?" Suddenly he paled. "Is that the little girl you-?"

"She's dying," I said bluntly. "Fast."

His tongue darted out and touched his lips. "What are you talking about?"

I told him. His impassive, stony facade began to crack before my eyes. He abruptly turned his back on me and walked across the room to a window, where he stood staring out over the bank's parking lot. Once I thought I saw his shoulders heave, but I couldn't be sure. His reaction wasn't exactly what I'd expected. He asked my about my role, and I told him that, too.

"I will need help," he said distantly. Then he turned and looked directly at me. "I will need your help. There is no time to get anyone else. We must leave immediately. There are things I must get."

"Daniel, or Bannon, or whatever you call yourself, what the hell is this all about?".

"Kathy Marsten is my niece," he said after a long pause. "Becky Marsten is-was-my sister."

"Then I'd say you have some explaining to do. Do you know why Kathy is dying?"

"I owe you no explanations," he said evenly. He studied me for a moment, then added, "But I will explain anyway, because the time will come when I will ask you to do exactly as I say, when I say it, with no discussion and no questions."

"You're out of your mind. Why should I agree to do that?"

"Because you love Kathy and you want to save her life. In order to do that, you and I must touch a dimension of existence the Christians call hell. To do that and survive you will have to do exactly as I say."

I nodded. I hoped it looked noncommital. "I'm listening."

Daniel's words came rapidly now, in an almost mechanical voice. He was obviously a man in a hurry, and I could tell his mind was elsewhere.

"I don't know the extent of your knowledge about witchcraft," he said, "but witchcraft is undoubtedly not what you think it is. It is a religion: a very old religion-an Earth religion. The Marstens and the Bannons have practiced witchcraft for generations. You will find witches in every walk of life."

For a moment I thought I saw him smile. He continued: "Some witches-some magicians-even become bank vice-presidents. For most of the Blessed, witchcraft and magic are a means to higher wisdom, toward becoming a better person. But there is a dark side to it, as there is to every other religion. I'm sure you're familiar with the Inquisition, not to mention the Salem witch trials where human beings were burned alive."

He paused, then went on: "In any case, Jim Marsten became interested in the black arts, in demonology, about two years ago. He was warned of the possible consequences to him and to his family. He chose to ignore these warnings. At a certain point I tried to get my sister to leave Jim, but she had already been corrupted by the dreams he had laid out for her. Then I discovered that they intended to try to summon the demon Belial. That ceremony involves the spiritual sacrifice of a child, and I knew that child would be Kathy.

"I knew there was no way I could reason with them-they were beyond that. But I could stop them, and I did-or I thought I did. I knew there was one place, and only one place, where the ceremony would have been recorded."

"The book of shadows," I whispered.

"That's right. A witch's holiest book. I took it."

"How?"

"How I do what I do is not important. Please remember that. What is important is that Jim and Becky apparently tried to proceed without the exact ritual in hand. They paid for it with their lives. Belial was released into our dimension, and he is sucking Kathy's life away from her."

It was crazy. Maybe I was going crazy. I heard myself asking, "How do you know you can succeed where the Marstens failed? What is your power? And where does it lie?"

"First, I know the ritual. That is absolutely essential for the exorcism." Again, there was a fleeting grimace around his mouth that might have been a half-smile, "I am a ceremonial magician. Dr. Frederickson. You come from an academic background, and you understand that to move up in your world requires study, perseverance. . and talent. The same holds true in mine. If you wish, you may think of a ceremonial magician as a witch with a Ph.D."

I tried to think of something to say and couldn't. I'd run out of options: I'd called Dr. Rivera that morning and been told that Kathy was now perilously near death. So I was along for the ride with the ceremonial magician, straddling a nightmare train of terror that I couldn't stop.

And I knew I was going to do anything the man called Daniel asked me to do.

At exactly twenty minutes of midnight, as instructed, I parked my car across from the hospital and got out. I lifted Bannon's knapsack from the rear seat, strapped it on my back, then headed across the street. I went around to the back of the hospital and started climbing the fire escape that would take me to Kathy's room, where I had left Bannon four hours before.

I stopped at the third floor, leaned over the steel railing and peered into the window on my right. There was a small night light on over the bed and I could see Kathy's head sticking up above the covers of her bed. Her face was as white as the sheet tucked up under her chin.

Bannon was lying on the floor beside the bed. He was stripped to the waist. His eyes were closed and his breathing was deep and regular. Sweat was pouring off his body, running in thick rivulets to soak into the towels he had placed under him.

Suddenly the door opened and a young, pretty nurse stepped into the room. Bannon was in silent motion even as the nurse reached for the light switch. He rolled in one fluid motion that carried him under the bed. He quickly reached out, wiped the floor with the towels, then drew them in after him.

The night nurse went up to Kathy's bed and drew back the covers. It was then that I could see a series of wires and electrodes attached to her arms and chest. The nurse felt Kathy's forehead, then checked what must have been a battery of instruments on the other side of the bed, out of my line of vision.

She gave what appeared to be a satisfied nod, recorded the information on a clipboard at the foot of the bed, then turned out the lights and left the room. I tapped on the window.

Bannon emerged from the beneath the bed. He was no longer sweating, but he looked pale and haggard, like a man who had finished a marathon wrestling match. He came to the window and opened it. I climbed through. He immediately began removing the knapsack from my shoulders with deft fingers.

"What time is it?" he croaked in a hoarse voice.

I glanced at the luminous dial on my watch. "Five minutes to twelve."

"We must hurry. The ceremony must begin at exactly midnight. Your watch shows the exact time?"

"Yeah. I checked it out a half hour ago." I was beginning to have second thoughts, to feel like the face on the front page of the morning's edition of some of the country's more sensational tabloids. "What happens if someone else shows up?"

"This is not the time to think about that." He paused, then added, "I think we will have time. The nurses have noted an improvement in Kathy's condition."

I resisted the impulse to clap my hands. "If she's better, what are we doing here?"

Bannon grunted. "She only seems better because I made it appear that way. But the effect is short-lived. Belial must be driven from her mind. Now, let's get busy."

Bannon quickly opened the knapsack and emptied its contents on the floor. There was a white hooded robe, a dagger with occult symbols carved into the ivory handle, two slender white candles in pewter candleholders. In addition there was a charred stick, a heavy lead cup, and numerous small containers, which I assumed contained incense.

The last object out of the sack was a thick volume of papers bound between two engraved metal covers. The symbols inscribed on the covers were the same as those I had seen on Kathy's gown. It was Jim Marsten's book of shadows.

Bannon donned the robe, then opened a small container filled with blue powder. He bent over and spilled the powder out in a thin stream, forming a large circle around the bed. When he had completed that, he drew a second, smaller circle at the foot of the bed, on a tangent with the first circle.

In his costume, he seemed a completely different man. No longer did there seem to be any relationship between the banker and the man-the witch-before me. He was no longer Bannon. He was Daniel.

"Time?" he asked in a strange, hollow voice.

"One minute of."

He placed the candles on either side of the foot of the bed and lit them. "You must stand with me inside the second circle," he said as he arranged the other items in front of him. "No matter what happens, remain inside the circle." He picked up the book of shadows and opened it to a section near the back, then handed it to me.

The book was much heavier than one would have suspected from looking at it. The metal was cold. The writing, in purple ink, looked like a series of child's scrawls. It was completely illegible to me. "Turn the page quickly when I nod my head," Daniel continued. "And remember not to step out of the circle-not under any circumstances."

"Look, Daniel-" I started to say.

"No," he said sharply, turning his head away from me. I tried to look at his face beneath the hood and couldn't find it. "There is no time for discussion. Simply do as I say. If you do not, you may die. Remember that."

I allowed myself to be led into the circle, and I held the book out in front me, slightly to the side so that Daniel could read it in the dim glow from the candles and night light. Daniel picked up the dagger and held it out stiffly in front of him while he removed a single egg from the pocket of his robe and placed it carefully on a spot equidistant between the two candles. Then he began to chant:

"Amen, ever and forever, glory the and power the, Kingdom the is Thine for, evil from us deliver, But-"

It was a few moments before I realized that Daniel was reciting the Lord's Prayer backwards. I felt a chill. The book of shadows seemed to be gaining weight, and my arms had begun to tremble. I gripped the book even tighter.

Daniel finished the inverted prayer. He stiffened, described a pentagram in the air with his arm, then stuck his dagger into the middle of it. Finally he placed his left palm in the center of the book.

"I command thee, O Book of Shadows, be useful unto me, who shall have recourse for the success of this matter. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost! In the name of Yahweh and Allah! In the name of Jesus Christ, let this demon come forth to be banished!"

He turned slowly, taking care to remain in the circle, continuing to describe pentagrams in the air. My eyes were drawn inexorably to the candles: There was no draft in the room, and yet I was positive I had seen them flicker.

"Belial! Hear me where thee dwell! Restore the sanctity of this virgin child! Leave us without delay! Enter this phial! Enter this phial! Enter this phial!"

There was no question: The candle flames were flickering. Daniel leaned over the book and began to chant from it. It was all gibberish to me, but delivered as it was in a low, even voice, the precisely articulated words gripped my mind, flashing me back over the centuries.

Daniel finished abruptly and stabbed the center of the book three times. Kathy's head began to glow with blue-white light.

I blinked hard, but the halo remained. There was an intense pain in my chest, and I suddenly realized that I had been holding my breath. I let it out slowly. Something was hammering on the inside of my skull. Fear.

Daniel pointed with the tip of the dagger toward the egg. "Enter this phial! Enter this phial! Enter this phial!"

The light flashed, then leaped from Kathy's head to the ceiling, where it pulsated and shimmered like ball lightning. And then the room was filled with an almost unbearable stench, like some fetid gas loosed from the bowels of hell.

The light had begun to glow. Daniel folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head. "Go in peace unto your place, Belial," he whispered. Then came the nod of the head. Somehow I remembered to turn the page.

There was more chanting that I couldn't understand, delivered in the same soft voice. There was a different quality to Daniel's voice now, a note of triumph. He finished the chant, paused, then whispered: "May there be peace between me and thee. Belial, go in peace unto-"

Suddenly the door flew open and the lights came on. I wheeled and froze. There was a ringing in my ears. Dr. Juan Rivera stood in the doorway.

"What in God's name-?!"

I started toward him, but suddenly Daniel's hand was on my shoulder, holding me firm. "Stay!" he commanded.

Daniel was halfway across the room when the sphere of light began to glow brighter. He stopped and stiffened, thrusting both arms straight out into the air in Rivera's direction. No word was spoken, and Daniel was still at least ten feet away from the door. Still, Dr. Rivera slumped against the wall, then fell to the floor unconscious.

The light skittered across the ceiling, stopped directly above the white-coated figure. Daniel leaped the rest of the distance, at the same time digging in his robe. He came up with another container. He ripped it open and began to spray a blue powder over Rivera.

There was a sharp hissing sound and the light shot from the ceiling to Daniel's head and shoulders. Daniel stiffened, then arched backward and fell hard against the floor, where he writhed in pain, his head now glowing brightly.

"Jesus!" I murmured, stepping out of the circle and starting toward him. "Oh, Jesus!"

"Stay back!"

Instinctively, I made a cross with my forearms, holding them out in front of me like some talisman. "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"

And then I was beside him. I grabbed hold of the material of his sleeve and dragged him back across the floor, inside the circle. Again there was a hissing sound, and the light shot to the ceiling. I continued to whisper: "Jesus!"

Daniel's voice, tortured and twisted out of shape now, came up under my own, like some strange, vocal counterpoint.

"Go in peace, Belial. Let there be peace between thee and me. Enter the phial!"

There was an almost blinding flash, and the light expanded, then contracted, shooting in a needle shaft over our heads and into the egg. The egg seemed to explode silently in slow motion, its pieces smoking, then dissolving in the air.

Kathy Marsten suddenly sat bolt upright in bed. Her eyes widened, and for a moment I thought she was going to speak. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out. Then she collapsed over on her side. I tasted terror.

"It's over," Daniel said. I could barely hear him.

It was a long time before Garth could bring himself to say anything. "You claim you saw all this?"

"Yes."

There was another long pause, then: "One of three things has to be true. For openers, either you've really fallen out of your tree, or you were hypnotized. I like the hypnosis theory best. Like I said before, it would also explain the girl's reaction."

"Really? How?" I found I wasn't much interested in "logical" explanations.

"I'm willing to buy the notion that this Bannon-or 'Daniel'-had something on the ball mentally. He hypnotized the girl, probably with her parents' help, and put her into a deep coma. It can be done, you know. Then he got you up into that room and ran the same number on you. Remember, you said the girl seemed to be coming out of it anyway."

"Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why? What was Daniel's motive? What you're saying simply doesn't make any sense. And don't try to tell me it does."

"How the hell should I know what his motive was?" Garth said impatiently. It was the cop in him coming out: He was having a hard time making his case. He went on: "Daniel was obviously crazy. Crazy people don't need motives for doing crazy things."

"What about Rivera?"

"What about him?"

"He doesn't remember a thing. He called me the next day to tell me Kathy had made what he called a miraculous recovery. I pumped him a little, gently. Nothing. I don't think he even knows he passed out."

"Which brings us to the third possibility."

"I can't wait to hear this one."

Garth paused for emphasis. "You were never up in that room, Mongo."

"No kidding?"

"Goddamn it, you listen to me and listen to me good! It never happened! That business in the room never happened!" He paused and came up for breath. He continued a little more calmly, "You didn't hear yourself on that phone: I did. I'd say you were damn near hysterical. When I got there I found you unconscious next to the phone booth."

"Back to square one: I fell out of my tree."

"Why not? It happens to the best of us from time to time. You were under a lot of pressure. You'd seen two neighbors burn to death, saved a little girl only to feel that she was in danger of dying. That, along with the witchcraft business, pushed you over the brink for just a few moments."

"Who pushed Daniel?" I said as calmly as I could. Garth was beginning to get to me. I was beginning to feel he had a specific purpose in mind, and I was hoping he'd get to it.

"Nobody pushed Daniel. Daniel fell. It's as simple as that. It blew your circuits. I think you dreamed the rest when you passed out after calling me."

"But you must admit that Daniel was real."

Garth gave a wry smile. "Of course Daniel was real. The coroner's office can testify to that. No, what I personally think may have happened is that he committed suicide. The death of his sister, his niece's illness, unhinged him. Unfortunately, you happened to see him fall and the shock. . upset your nerves. Made you imagine the whole thing."

Suddenly I knew the point of the conversation. "You didn't include me in your report, did you?"

He shook his head. "Only as the caller. . a passerby." He looked up. "You start telling people you tried to break into-or did break into-that hospital, and you'll end up with charges filed against you. There goes your license. Second, I don't want to see my brother locked up in the Bellevue loony bin."

"You're not so sure, are you, Garth?"

He avoided my eyes. "It doesn't make any difference, Mongo. You said the materials Daniel used are gone."

I glanced at my watch and was amazed to find that only twelve minutes had passed since I'd climbed through the window. Daniel had gotten slowly to his feet and laid Kathy back on her pillow. He still wore the robe, and no part of his flesh was visible.

"We. . must bring everything out with us," he whispered in a strained voice. "Clean. . everything."

There was no time to think, just do. I quickly checked Dr. Rivera. He was still unconscious, but breathing regularly. I heard footsteps outside in the hall. They paused by the door and I tensed. After a few seconds the footsteps moved on.

I used Daniel's towels to erase all traces of the blue powder he had used. When I finished I found him waiting for me by the window. He had replaced the objects in the knapsack and held that in one hand, the book of shadows in the other. I still could not see any part of his face or hands.

He handed me the knapsack, then motioned for me to go through the window first. I climbed through, balanced on the ledge outside, then swung over onto the fire escape. Then I turned back and offered my hand. He shook his head.

I frowned. "Don't you want to take that robe off?"

He shook his head again. "Go ahead," he mumbled. "I'll be right behind you." There was something in his voice that frightened me, but I turned and started down the fire escape.

"Frederickson!"

The texture of the voice-the despair and terror-spun me around like a physical force. He was suspended in space, one hand gripping the fire escape railing, the other holding the book of shadows out to me. Both hands were covered with blood.

"Destroy," he managed to say. "Destroy everything."

The book of shadows dropped to the grate and I grabbed for Daniel. His hood slipped off, revealing a head covered with blood.

The ceremonial magician Daniel was bleeding from every pore in his body: Blood poured from his nose, his mouth, his ears. His eyes.

And then he was gone, dropping silently into the darkness to be crushed on the pavement below.

Totally devoid of rational thought, a series of primitive screams bubbling in my throat, I picked up the book of shadows and half fell, half ran down the fire escape. I dropped the last few feet and raced to the white-shrouded body. It didn't take me more than a moment to confirm that the hospital would be of no use to Daniel.

I was the one who needed help.

I vaguely remembered a pay telephone booth across the street from the hospital. I raced down the alleyway toward the street, pausing only long enough to hurl the knapsack into one of the hospital's huge garbage disposal bins. It was only as I neared the street that I realized I was still holding the book of shadows.

I wouldn't remember telephoning my brother, or passing out.

I got up from the chair and pretended to stretch. "Okay, Garth, it's over. And if that's it, I'm going to throw you out. I've got a long drive to Pennsylvania tomorrow. I've traced some of Kathy's relatives."

"Witches?"

"Sure. But I wouldn't worry about it. The coven leader also happens to be mayor of the town. His brother is chief of police. A nice, typical American family."

Garth's eyes narrowed. "You're kidding."

"No, I'm not kidding."

Garth rose and walked to the door, where he turned and looked at me. "You sure you're all right?"

"Garth, get the hell out."

"Yeah. I'll see you."

"I'll see you."

I closed the door behind Garth, then went into the bedroom and sat down on the bed. I took a deep breath, then opened the drawer in the night stand and brought out the book of shadows. It was still covered with Daniel's bloody prints.

I brushed dirt off one corner and opened it to the pages Daniel had read from. The writing was still totally incomprehensible to me. But Daniel had been able to read it. Undoubtedly, there were others.

I wondered what some of my colleagues at the university would think of the book of shadows, of Belial. Summoning up a demon would make an interesting research project.

I glanced at the night stand and the small pile of change there. Fifty-seven cents.

I ripped the pages out of the book, tossed them in a metal wastebasket and threw a lighted match after them. There was nothing unusual about the flame.