The 37th Mandala

29

The first time the buzzer rang, Derek ignored it. He had just switched on the ten o’clock news and was expecting no visitors. Bums on the street were always pressing buttons just to irritate those with homes. Usually they didn’t bother any one apartment more than a time or two.

This time, however, the buzzer persisted. The only possible unannounced visitor he could think of was Lilith. He jumped up and pressed the intercom switch in the hall.

“Who’s there?” he said.

He heard nothing but traffic.

Once more: “Who is it?”

This time a voice, blurred and unintelligible. Some drunk or crackhead. If he started insulting them over the intercom, they might well come back to the buzzer all night. He knew of people who’d been killed for smaller offenses.

He went back to the sofa, but the buzzer sounded before he could sit. Now it rang continuously.

He stormed down the hall and out the door, convinced that by the time he got to the street the pesterer would be long gone. He rushed down two flights of spiraling stairs to the lobby, followed by the buzzing from his apartment. Reaching the glass doors, he saw two shapes silhouetted in the entryway, one of them fingering the button. He threw open the inner door, but not the cage that kept them out. “What do you want?”

Michael Renzler stepped back into streetlight, translated from shadows.

“Jesus…” Derek clung to the door, only shock preventing him from slamming it in their faces. They looked as if they’d hitchhiked all the way from North Carolina; exhaustion had carved the flesh from the boy’s already bony face. His wife’s eyes were sleepy and seductive, looking him up and down. She gave him a soft, worn-out smile. He twisted the latch on the iron gate and let her in—she drew Michael with her.

“What are you doing here?”

“You got my card?” Michael said in a low voice as he passed Derek. They trudged up the stairs as invited. Derek fell in behind them. “I didn’t have your number, uh, so we had to just come. When I wrote it I didn’t really have any idea how bad it could get.”

“Your card? What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t get it? Well… I didn’t have much room to write anyway. We’d still have to explain everything.”

“Do you mean you—you flew out here just to see me?”

“Flew?” Michael said. “No, man. We drove.”

“My God, that fast?”

“I don’t know for sure what day it is. I haven’t had much sleep since we saw you.”

“Well… here’s my apartment. Door’s open.”

Lenore stopped at the threshold, and he looked her over as he beckoned her in. Her hair was greasy, falling over her smudged face and forehead, into her eyes. She pushed it back with grimy fingers, and he saw with dismay the mandala reproduced on her forehead. He didn’t say anything, hoped his face hadn’t betrayed him, but his thought was: Oh, God, another fanatic.

Could her life really have been so empty that she’d embraced the mandala cult after one hour’s mediocre lecture?

“Why don’t you come in?” he said, since she seemed to be waiting for an invitation. She smiled back at Michael, then went inside.

Derek locked the door after them. Michael surveyed the living room with plain disappointment, as if he had expected to find a museum of occult artifacts, tribal masks, ancient ritual implements. There were no visible clues to Derek’s occupation.

Lenore’s eyes drifted about, finally coming to rest on Elias’s box, which had been sitting out near the sofa; he’d been unable to bring himself to haul it away, to make a decision about the thing one way or the other.

“Let me clear some room,” he said hastily, stooping for the box. He carried it into the bedroom and shoved it back into the closet, feeling vaguely embarrassed. He came back to find Lenore stretched out on the sofa watching TV, her eyes borrowing vigor from the reflected glare of advertisements.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

No answer from Lenore. Michael followed him into the kitchen.

“I know this is really unexpected,” Michael said, “I mean, really unforgivable. I wouldn’t have done it if things hadn’t gotten so serious. I was pretty scared, on my own. It seemed like you’re the only person who can help us, the only one who knows what’s going on. And Lenore really wanted to come.”

“She did? But why?”

“It was the Rites, ” Michael said. “The night we met you. We did a ritual and… and they came through. Through Lenore, I mean. They didn’t talk through her, not at first—except she recited parts of the keys she couldn’t have known. But we had a very intense ceremony, and they sort of got in and got out of control. Then Lenore started getting weird. She must have some sort of natural, you know, psychic talent. She’s been channeling them. Speaking their language, seeing things I can’t explain, doing things… well, I’ve seen some pretty strange stuff in the last few days myself.”

“Have you?” Derek said. It didn’t surprise him that the boy was delirious; but was it true that Lenore too was cracking up? Or was the kid projecting his own occult fantasies on his wife, using her as a way of getting closer to Crowe? Queasily, Derek wondered if Michael were using his wife as some sort of offering to him.

“What did you want me to do?” he asked.

“Well, you’re the mandala master. There’s nothing in the Rites about this.”

Derek found himself checking to make sure Lenore couldn’t hear them. The TV held her hypnotized. He kicked out the plastic wedge that kept the door from swinging shut and went to the refrigerator to busy himself with milk and coffee, anything to give himself time.

I have attracted not one but two lunatics, he thought. I did this to myself, by pretending to be an authority on something that does not even exist except in the minds of the mentally ill (including Elias Mooney and Etienne and all the rest—even down to that stone-age tribe in Cambodia). And now he expects me to enter his madness on a rescue mission. By accepting his story, and acting on it, he supposes that I will verify the complete reality of his delusions.

I can’t have these people in my house, he thought.

“I don’t know quite how to approach this,” Derek said after a few moments, choosing his words carefully. Preparing coffee was a ritual, and he took his time about it, setting up the filter, grinding the beans, measuring scoops into the cone. “I thought I was clear in the Rites that the mandalas don’t come at my beck and call. In fact, they didn’t really come to me at all. They came to—well, Ms. A. I just happened to be there. Neither of us could summon them unless they felt like coming; and once they’d said what they’d come to say, they went away, and that was that. Basically, Michael, everything I know about them is in my book. If we were going to find out anything else—I mean, some way of dealing with your wife’s condition—we’d have to get them back again, wouldn’t we? And there’s no reason to think they’d come. It’s not like Ms. A and I haven’t tried calling them back to tie up some of the loose ends. In fact, my publisher recently begged for a sequel, more of the mandalas’ philosophy, but I doubt they’ll ever oblige us.”

Michael began to gnaw on his thumb as the gravity of Derek’s disclaimers began to make clear the futility of his cross-country trip. “But… but, Mr. Crowe, they are here. Lenore’s channeling them now. You can—you can ask her.”

“And you think they’d tell us how to banish them? Why would they do that?”

He heard the door creak. Lenore stood in the entry. “Michael, can we go to bed soon?”

“Lenore, we’ve got—” Michael turned desperately to Derek. “I’m sorry, Mr. Crowe, we’ve just totally barged in on you. We’ve got to find a place to stay. We’re completely wiped. Even if you can help us, it’s not going to happen tonight. I saw a motel just up the street; we’ll see if they’ve got rooms and… and maybe we can talk to you tomorrow, when we’ve had some rest.”

Lenore looked disappointed; her eyes fixed on Derek, and he found himself saying “Look, why don’t you two stay here for the night?”

“What? Seriously?”

“That’s a sofa bed in there. I’ve got extra blankets. You just—you’ve come all this way to see me, I’m not going to send you out so soon. Tomorrow I’ll take you somewhere you might be able to meet people who can help you. Friends of mine, whose advice I’d trust. As I say, I really can’t tell you more about the mandalas than I’ve already written—but maybe that’s not the only possible solution.”

“Wow,” Michael said. “That’s incredibly kind of you.”

“It’s the least I can do,” Derek said, with a little nod to Lenore. She rewarded him with a slight smile.

“I’ve got to get our stuff out of the car—there’s not much, but I don’t want it to get stolen.”

“Do you need help?” Derek asked.

“No, it’s not much. I’ll be okay.”

When Michael was gone, Lenore came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. The coffee was brewed; he poured her a cup and she sat warming her hands on it, inhaling the steam.

“I guess Michael told you what’s been happening to me,” she said. “It must sound pretty insane.”

“Well… no…” he said weakly. His eyes caught on the mandala tattooed in the middle of her forehead. She went crosseyed trying to see it herself, and smirked.

“I can explain that,” she said, rising and walking slowly toward him.

‘I’m sure you can.” Relief…

“The mandates gave it to me. And they brought me to you.”

She brushed past him, into the living room, as he stood dumbfounded. “Where’s the bathroom? Wait, I see it.” She walked out of sight.

Derek groped for his own cup, sloshed coffee into it, and drank it down. He had scalded his mouth so much recently that he hardly felt a thing. The caffeine hit his nerves in a concentrated burst. He paced around the kitchen, listening to the water running, thinking of her in there. Jesus. This was trouble, all right. And he had just asked it to spend the night.

Obviously she was the one behind their jaunt. What had drawn her to him?

What if she saw my photo on one of my books and started fantasizing? It’s common enough. Unhappy people are constantly forming attachments to people of reputation, stalking them. I’m an occult celebrity. She could have heard I was coming to town. Long before the lecture night she could have memorized some of the Rites, planning her possession, scheming to convince Michael that only I could help her.

But, my God. If she would really go to all that trouble, she must be even more unstable than her husband. Yet… how focused, how elaborate her plans, and how successful she had been.

She had come to see him.

This is crazy, Derek thought, suppressing a thrill. I can’t be so hard up that I would dream of getting involved with a neurotic, manipulative fan. Not to mention a married one.

And you hypnotized her, he thought. You’ve already planted yourself deep inside her mind, you idiot.

He realized he could hear the shower running, then a steady toneless murmur that sounded like Lenore gargling. The sound grew louder, droning on and on, rhythmic and monotonous, familiar.

She’s reciting the Rites, he realized.

And for a terrifying moment, he believed everything Michael had told him, every word of Elias’s story, every syllable scrawled in the ledgers. He believed in the power of a dead skin and the existence of every demon haunting the old books he’d studied to concoct his own volumes.

He clenched his eyes and held his breath and waited for the moment to pass.

The belief went away, but the fear—not quite.

30

“You know what drives me crazy?” Michael said, striking his fist into the palm of his other hand. He sat in Derek’s kitchen, slurping coffee, while Lenore slept in the darkened living room. Michael looked as if he should have gone to bed days ago; but apparently he had been awake so long that it was habitual. Soon Derek would beg exhaustion and crawl away.

“What’s that?” he asked, as politely as he could manage.

“I get jealous that… that they used Lenore instead of me. I spent years preparing myself, learning rituals, purifying myself in body and spirit—and nothing real, nothing definite has ever happened to me, nothing I couldn’t explain away, until Lenore invoked that mandala. I’d never seen any phenomenon I couldn’t interpret as coincidence or a stray draft, you know? But Lenore… Lenore, who couldn’t give a shit about the occult, who does drugs, all those things that are supposed to make you unclean—they come right through her. The preparation, the discipline, those things don’t even matter. They’re a crutch for people who don’t have the aptitude and never will. You can take piano lessons from day one and you’ll never be a Mozart, you know, unless you’re born Mozart. The mandalas ignored me. They went straight to Lenore. All I am now is, like, her fucking chauffeur.”

“Maybe you have some kind of inner strength or stability she lacks,” Derek said, humoring him.

“So? I mean, I know that—but is that so great? Isn’t the direct experience worth more? I mean, she’s seeing things, living things I can only imagine. Why her?”

“If it’s any consolation,” Derek said, “you’re not the first to ask. It’s been this way through history.”

“What do you mean?”

Derek felt himself warming to the subject, which drew on research he’d never been able to find a use for in writing The Mandala Rites. He’d never had a moment’s conversation with anyone who might have appreciated all the invisible work he’d done; he hadn’t felt able to discuss it with Lilith, because it would have made him appear too sincere in his work, and then she would have ridiculed him further for his hypocrisy.

“Well, apart from my own case—and remember, I got the complete mandala texts secondhand, rather than by direct revelation—you must be familiar with John Dee.”

“Sure. One of the great wizards of all time. Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer.”

“He was also an accomplished mathematician and cryptographer. An intellect, I mean.”

“Well, magic was an intellectual field back then—natural law. Plenty of great thinkers were involved in the occult.”

“Plenty were burned for it too,” Derek said. “But what I’m saying is that Dee could never put aside his intellect and simply experience the mysteries. He was obsessed with divination, but he lacked the talent for it. He had to hire someone else to use his ‘shew-stone.’”

“Edward Kelly!” Michael’s eyes brightened. Derek saw that Michael was equally proud of his arcane research. “Aleister Crowley thought he was Kelly’s reincarnation!”

“Yes, and Kelly did all John Dee’s scrying for him. He was the channeler, like Lenore and my friend Ms. A. All Dee did, like me, was write down what Kelly saw. Kelly had the visions, but he didn’t have any understanding of them. To Dee, it was a miracle; to Kelly, it was a job.”

“That’s what I’m saying. It’s unfair!”

“Then there’s William Butler Yeats.”

“The poet? Yeah, wasn’t he an initiate in the Golden Dawn?”

“And a great enemy of Crowley’s. He once changed the locks on the temple headquarters to keep Crowley out.”

Michael broke out laughing. “Really? I didn’t know they knew each other.”

“Yeats got himself into a situation similar to our own. Have you read A Vision? He and his wife were experimenting with automatic writing, when suddenly the spirits began writing to Yeats through her. They gave him an entire cosmology for his poetry, a whole set of symbols linking the personality of man to the phases of the moon.”

“Really? So you’re saying he was like too intellectual, so they had to go through her to get to him? Like, he was too hard to reach directly….”

Sure, Derek thought. You’re so intellectual ….

He said, “Perhaps it’s the same with you and me. We’re too—too much in control, too controlling. Maybe it’s in the male ego, the way we’re wired.”

“That reminds me of another theory of mine,” Michael said suddenly, rising from his sulk. “Sometimes I think we’re like the left and right hemispheres of brains. We’re incomplete on our own. Say I’m the logical left-hand sort, and Lenore is the intuitive right-hand type. She experiences everything directly, then I analyze it. They possess her and fill her with energy, but I have to work out their instructions. Maybe we’re supposed to form bonds with other people, a single consciousness made up from two. We’re like separate cells, but we can’t exist without each other. Maybe that’s the lesson of the mandalas—that’s what they’re trying to tell us. We have to all come together. Maybe I shouldn’t be afraid of what’s been happening. But when Lenore goes away and they come around, I can’t help being frightened. This is the sort of thing I always dreamed would happen, but somehow I never imagined it would be so… well, dark.”

“Are you afraid of them, Michael?”

Michael stared at him, red-eyed, embarrassed. “I hate to use the word evil; I never believed in it, really. But I’ve started to think I know what it means. Did it ever occur to you, Mr. Crowe, that the mandalas might have lied?”

“What do you mean?”

“They say they’re all sweetness and light, working for the good of humanity, but what if that was just meant to sucker us in? Build a big cult and then—and then turn on us. I mean, how would we know? There’s no way to check on them. But I’ll tell you, what I’ve seen of them so far—it’s sort of at odds with everything they told you to write.”

Derek was beginning to grow uncomfortable. “I don’t know if we need to suspect them of outright lying. Maybe we just don’t understand them.”

Michael considered this, and Derek began to scream internally. Tell him, went the scream. Tell him the truth.

But once he confessed, there would be no way to contain or control the truth. He was not prepared to sacrifice his reputation. Not yet.

He nodded toward the living room.

“She seems quiet enough now,” he said. “I don’t know her, but there’s nothing unusual in the behavior I’ve seen.”

Michael nodded. “They’re taking it easy. I haven’t really sensed much activity since we got to California. Maybe they’re afraid of you, and they’re lying low; maybe they know you’re going to help Lenore.” Michael surely saw that this statement made Derek uncomfortable, for he quickly added, “Or maybe they know she needs rest. They don’t want to burn her out.” He sighed, looked around. “Speaking of which, I think I’d better get to bed.”

Derek rose to take his cup and rinse it in the sink. “Sleep in as late as you like. If you need anything, just knock on my door.”

He left Michael undressing in the dark living room. He stumbled into his bedroom and sank down on his bed, feeling absurdly like a prisoner in his own home. He desired Lenore, he realized, but also feared desiring her. It wasn’t her husband that frightened him. If something happened between them, and Michael were to discover, it would be merely pathetic. What he feared was any dramatic change, anything that might catalyze a crisis. Fear had entered his home in the form of two obsessed fans who had tracked him all the way across the country, coming to haunt him with his own incantations.

What did they really want from him?

31

Michael woke unhappily, uncertain of the hour, wishing he could sleep at least as long as he had driven. It was novel not to wake up cramped and stiff in the front seat with the sound of other cars rushing past. For days his first act upon waking had been to twist the key in the ignition. Now that he found himself with no immediate purpose, he felt aimless and hollow. And last night’s conversation with Derek Crowe had not heartened him or given him much hope either.

The blinds were pulled to keep the living room dim, but judging from the sounds on the street outside it was already late in the day. The bedsheets were rumpled where Lenore had lain, but she was gone. He rolled out of bed and went into the kitchen, and found her heating last night’s coffee. She gave him a sleepy smile.

“Good morning. Can you believe we’re here?”

“Believe it? I remember every inch of that fucking road.” He put his arms around her, absorbing some of her warmth, putting his face against her neck though she turned away as if his breath were wretched. “How are you this morning?”

“I’m good,” she said. “I really slept last night. I feel almost human.”

“You don’t… you’re not having trouble, then?”

She looked around, at the air above them, and shrugged. “I don’t feel anything this morning. It’s almost as if it never happened.”

“Why?” Michael said. “Why would they force us out here and then just leave?”

“I don’t know, Michael, but I’m not going looking for trouble, if that’s what you mean. I feel normal this morning—do you know what that’s like? Do you want me to start getting crazy again?”

“No,” he said hurriedly, but it was with a pang of embarrassment. He realized he had been selfishly wanting her to have another powerful fit, so that Derek Crowe would believe their story. Crowe obviously thought they were nuts; last night he’d had the sense that Derek could scarcely tolerate him, and had asked them to stay only out of pity. He had begun to suspect there was less to Crowe than he’d believed; he seemed genuinely at a loss when faced with Lenore’s condition. Michael couldn’t bear to face the fact that he might not be their salvation after all but merely another dead-end. If one of the trances came on right now, Crowe might prove as helpless as any of them.

Maybe San Francisco itself had calmed Lenore. It was supposed to be that kind of place. They had been bogged down in Cinderton—not in the same kind of deadly ruts they’d carved for themselves in New York, but in a tedium just as suicidal in the long run. San Francisco was supposed to be a haven for people with divergent and eclectic beliefs—people like them. Maybe they’d end up staying here, if luck was with them and they fell in with the right people. Maybe a change was what they had really needed, and the mandalas had spurred their cross-country flight to spare them some worse fate back in Cinderton.

At that thought, he suddenly remembered Tucker and Scarlet, and the TV image of their house….

Crowe hadn’t heard about the deaths, obviously; but it was only a matter of time. If he didn’t pick up a paper and see one of his mandalas implicated in a ritual killing, then the police themselves were bound to come to him, asking his opinion. He was the mandala expert, after all. Someone might remember him leaving with the Renzlers after his lecture. The cops would work all that together, weaving a trap that Michael and Lenore and maybe even Crowe himself might never escape. Their alibis—the truth itself—sounded like sheer madness.

No, it wouldn’t do to stay around Crowe much longer. If he couldn’t help them, then he would only harm them. And they’d be bringing trouble on his head if the cops found out they’d stayed here even one night.

He left Lenore in the kitchen and started packing their bags. They could check out the motel a few blocks up the street, or—better yet—move on to someplace farther from Crowe. But they had to move quickly. It had cost more to cross the country than he’d expected, but the remaining cash would last a few weeks if they found the right place. Best of all would be a temporary living situation, with some roommates; and then he had to think about getting a job. All that would take time. And it hinged on Lenore’s stability. The mandalas could return at any moment; this was just a lull, he felt, a moment of peace before they returned. He hated to mention that possibility to Lenore. She’d had plenty of lucid moments in the last few days, but none of them had lasted. The mandalas weren’t going to give her up so easily.

The door of Crowe’s bedroom clicked open, and the man made a dash for the bathroom, blinking over at Michael as if startled to see him. Michael peeked into the kitchen.

“Crowe’s up,” he said. “I’m just going to run this stuff up to the car. Why don’t you get ready?”

“What’s the rush?” she said.

“Lenore… just do it, all right?”

She gave him a blank look. He realized her eyes were not on him at all, but fixed in the air above his head.

Here it comes… he thought, and headed for the door.

It was a windy day, fog blowing over the tops of the tall apartment buildings, setting the signs of Chinese restaurants swinging, shaking the little plastic pennants strung outside corner stores. To Michael it felt warm by comparison to the climates they’d left behind. He walked slowly up the street, under the weight of their bags, in no mood to enjoy the atmosphere of San Francisco. Fisherman’s Wharf, Coit Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge. How could he care about any of these things? Besides, none of them were visible from here. Derek Crowe lived in a seedy neighborhood. Half the people coming down the street toward him looked like junkies or bums, their faces scabbed and sunburned, hair all matted, their ragged clothes dark with grime. The others on the sidewalk wore business suits, moving briskly through the slower-moving pedestrians as if they occupied two different worlds. He didn’t trust either group, didn’t fit in here.

He rounded the corner where he’d parked the car and came to a sudden stop.

A meter maid stood by the Beetle, writing a ticket.

He crossed the street as fast as he could, heading for the motel.

That’s it, he thought. That’s how it starts. They’ll run a check on the car. Maybe they’ll stake it out, wait to see who comes for it. Even if it doesn’t happen yet, it will.

We’ve got to dump the car. Smartest of all would be to just ditch it here. There’s nothing in it that we can’t live without. But it’s too close to Crowe, and I don’t want to drag the guy into this. We’re just going to have to hurry.

He was panting by the time he reached the motel. It was an old motor court, looking weirdly out of place among the tenements and office buildings. It had been refurbished, repainted, given a trendy face-lift—Route 66 nostalgia. The no light was off in the vacancy sign. He dragged his bags into the office and soon had a key.

All the units were built facing a courtyard with a kidney-shaped swimming pool. There were palm trees in big cement planters, leaves skritching in the fog, and country music coming from a bar across the patio. He climbed the steps to the balcony and found the door to their room. Just then the sun came peering through the gray swirls of mist—white and watery, but still the sun.

“Fuckin’ A,” he said, suddenly elated, a big grin breaking out of nowhere, like the sun through the fog. “California!”

32

Derek Crowe wandered into the kitchen, combing his wet thinning hair, looking awkward in a bathrobe. Lenore couldn’t help but think of the picture on his book, Crowe wrapped in a gimmicky cape. This was the real Crowe. Still, the mandala

presence was strong around him. There was a solid core to the man, a presence that transcended his crowded kitchen and the cramped apartment. He was, like her, being looked after. It was with a feeling of wordless solidarity that she poured him a cup of coffee and handed it to him. He looked surprised and pleased.

“Thank you,” he said. “I imagine you’re hungry. I don’t have much in the house, but you’re welcome to it.”

“I’m fine,” she said, sitting at the table. He smiled nervously, then sat down across from her.

“Did you sleep well?”

There wasn’t time for small talk. It was essential that they not waste a single moment together. “Mr. Crowe, I’m worried about Michael.”

He looked hesitant. “He—I’d say he’s worried about you.”

Lenore snorted. “I’m a strong person. I’ve been through a lot, enough to toughen me. I can take almost anything. But Michael—it’s not only that he’s weaker… it’s that… have you seen his mandala?”

Derek smiled uncomfortably. “Now, Lenore, I don’t have that—ah, ability.”

“Have they told you anything lately?”

“We haven’t been in touch.”

“Well, I can see them,” she said, convinced that he should know everything she knew. Perhaps that was part of her role here, to put him in touch again with the mandalas; maybe his work was not yet done. “And Michael’s looks sick.”

“Sick? Is that possible?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“You two are both under the misapprehension that I know more about the mandalas than is in my book.”

“I haven’t read your book,” she said flatly. “I know them from direct experience. From moving among them, and with them, and trying to figure out what they want. I know they’re not exactly alive like you and me. You wouldn’t think they could die—but what if they can? What if they have a life cycle of their own? Something so slow they’re practically immortal?”

“A fascinating idea,” he said. “You’re really in communication with the mandalas all the time?”

“Mostly. And it’s hard to tell sometimes, I’ve gotten so used to it. At first it all seemed strange and different, but it’s starting to seem normal now.”

“I’d like to… to ask you about all this sometime,” he said. “Sometime when I can take notes. If you’re going to be around for a while, I mean. Maybe if I put questions to you, you could put them out to—to the mandalas, and they’d give us both the answers. It’s occurred to me, you know, that maybe they’d like me to put out another book.”

“Mr. Crowe—”

“Derek, please.”

“Derek, I think Michael is in some kind of crisis. His mandala is breaking up. I’ve seen others attack it, and it’s weak—maybe too weak to defend itself much longer. If they can kill it, if it can die, then what happens to Michael? I’m afraid for him.”

“Well, I understand that. But the mandalas, almost everything about them, is a mystery, isn’t it? How can we hope to know them so soon, when they’ve only just revealed themselves? You sound as if you’ve been very close to them for a few days, but all that’s done is raised more questions in your mind than I ever thought to ask.”

Lenore tried to suppress her growing frustration, to keep it from turning to anger. “Michael thought you were the expert. He thought you’d have the answers for us.”

“I’m very sorry, Lenore. I tried to explain to your husband my part in all this. And… I had the impression that you had your own reasons for coming here.” He gave her a sly look, one with a variety of possible interpretations. She did not like most of them.

“I was drawn to you,” she said. “Coming here was part of the solution to a puzzle I’ve been working out. Now I’ve done that part and I don’t see where it fits in. It’s not finished yet.”

At that moment the buzzer sounded.

“There he is now,” he said, and jumped up with obvious relief. A minute later Michael came into the kitchen, breathing heavily. He looked worse than ever, as if by admitting her fears she had brought them into sharper focus. If only he could see the things that slashed the air just behind him, spiny mouths opening, poison tongues, all of them pricking and stabbing his mandala. The thing shivered and recoiled and clung to Michael with pitiful desperation; no more coherent than a cloud, it could scarcely hold itself together, let alone shield Michael from attack.

Michael’s face had grown silvery and transparent, so that she could see the veins beneath his skin and the tumbling of mercurial corpuscles; the squelchy sound of his bones sliding and sloshing in lymph-soaked tissue sounded loud as a radio turned up full blast. She sickened to think of her own bones trapped and smothered in flesh, except for teeth standing like outcrops of rock, small peaks protruding from a thick red sea. The hairs on his skin were like seared trees clinging to a wasteland, their bark and foliage like hardened excrement. He metamorphosed further before her eyes, evolving into something ratlike and sickly, timid and malnourished. He looked… used up. His usefulness just about exhausted. His head seemed wrapped in a clotted, crumbling fog, a dry yellowing brittle mass like a tide-pool creature left too long in the hot sun—a fragile pod about to burst.

She flinched when he touched her but instantly regretted it. She still loved him, didn’t she?

“Got us a room at the place up the street,” he said. “We won’t have to bother you again tonight, Mr. Crowe.”

“You’ve been very little bother,” Derek said. “But I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable with some privacy and a place to spread out.”

“We should get out of your hair right away. You ready, Lenore?”

“I guess so,” she said. “But what are we going to do all day, Michael? We can’t just sit in a room.”

“Mr. Crowe said he knew a place where we might meet some people who could help us.”

“That’s right,” Derek said. “It’s a big occult shop, Hecate’s Haven. They have a bulletin board and roommate listings; a lot of people just come in and hang out. You might find someone who can help you. And a place you can stay. If you like, I’ll come along. I can introduce you to my friends, and we’ll see what they can do for you.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Michael said.

“I think it’s a good idea,” said Lenore. She was trying to figure out some way to stay near Crowe, despite his pretense that he knew less of the mandalas than she did. At least he already believed in the mandalas and knew something of their power. If something started happening to Michael’s mandala, he wouldn’t automatically think they were crazy.

“I think we’ve been enough trouble. Mr. Crowe probably has plenty of work to do on his books.”

“I’m between books right now,” Derek said. “And I—I owe an old friend a visit over there. If you’re anxious, we could leave any time.”

“I’m just… I’m worried that the car might not make it. It’s on its last legs.”

“The bus runs right to the place,” Derek said. “Or we could take a cab.”

“Come on, Michael,” Lenore said, “don’t be ridiculous.”

“All right then,” he said. “Are you ready?”

Lenore scurried to make sure she had all her things, but there really wasn’t much. Michael stood in the hallway, urging her to hurry. He rushed down the stairs ahead of them. Lenore lingered with Derek as he locked the front door’s deadbolts.

“You see what I mean?” she said. “He’s not himself. Something’s getting to him.”

“Probably exhaustion. Well, I’ll take your word for it. I imagine his mandala can look after him. Even if it is sickly, how long could something that ancient take to die? How many human lifetimes?”

The thought made Lenore shudder. What if the deterioration was only beginning for Michael? What if it went on and on, worsening gradually; what if it had been well under way since long before she’d been able to see his mandala… before she’d even met him… before he’d been born?

“Michael!” she called out suddenly, wanting the reassurance of his presence. She chased him down the stairs, catching hold of his hand on the street in front of the building. Michael paused at the corner, holding her back for a moment as he peered around at their car.

“Okay,” he said, “hurry up.”

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Come on.”

Michael drove nervously in the city’s frantic traffic. She could see his nerves were as brittle as his mandala. “I’m used to the highway,” he said after nearly colliding with a city bus. “Everything happens slower there.”

Last night, as they emerged from the Treasure Island tunnel and began to climb between the light-strung girders of the westernmost span of the Bay Bridge, Lenore’s eyes had gone from the glittering lights of the San Francisco skyline to a huge wheel of cloud that had gathered in the midst of the stars like a black whirlpool. The only reason she could see it was because the city lights cast a bluish pall on the belly of the low cloud, illuminating strands of vapor dangling down like tendrils, swaying in the high wind as if groping through the tops of the jeweled pylons, reaching toward the car.

Michael hadn’t seen it. To him, it was just another cloud. He hadn’t seen how it whirled and clenched; how the swaths of enfolding vapor slowly sloughed away, revealing the hard black tegument beneath; how the irising teeth, gleaming in the city-glow, snicked open and shut as it wheeled above the towers like a whirling crown.

It’s like the city’s guardian, she had thought. Presiding over everything. This is what called me here—this is what’s drawn us all this way. My own mandala, a smaller version of this….

Beneath it, she could see myriad other mandalas soaring and flitting about, smaller but brighter, swirling in as if drawn by the mass of the greater. They spun between the skyscrapers, spiraling in like satellites gently drawn to earth.

And closing her eyes, she had known herself as one of them. One of many drawn in on the spiral path to some gathering she could not quite imagine.

Why? What were they all doing here?

Derek Crowe guided them to Market Street, which was a straightaway. The sky this morning was gray, low and oppressive, as if they were living just beneath a lid of fog. Pedestrians hurried about with heads bowed into the wind, holding their coats closed at their throats. After traveling a mile or so, Lenore saw specks of blue above. The fog thinned as they went on, until she saw twin peaks ahead of them, two mounds like pale-brown breasts, one of them topped with a skeletal red and white tower that seemed to sway in and out of the mist. Nearer, looming up suddenly, was the crest of a hill with loose reddish rock piled atop it like a tumbled Stonehenge. Derek pointed out a parking space near an ornate building with curved oriental eaves, like an Asian temple.

As they walked up to the front of the pagoda-roofed building, Lenore was astonished to see that the windows were full of occult paraphernalia: Goat skulls and the frayed leathery shapes of desiccated bats were the first things to catch her eyes. Derek threw open the doors as if he owned the place.

“Welcome to Hecate’s Haven,” he said.

The shop was busy. Lenore looked around at the slowly prowling customers, picking through spinning racks of pamphlets and paperbacks, pulling jars from shelves. There was a man in a black cape, as if it were Halloween. A green-haired girl was buying a cinnamon-red candle shaped like a penis and a black wax vulva with a wick. Every day was Halloween in here. The place smelled of incense and paraffin soot and dried, musty herbs—exactly like the stores in New York where Michael had often dragged her on his occult shopping sprees. The long glass cases were full of jars, and the jars afloat with eyeballs, frogs, white snakes pickled in formaldehyde. Candles burned along the far wall; the incense she smelled was smoking in a brazier near the cash register.

Derek held them at the door for a moment, studying the crowd. “That’s my friend Lilith over there. Let me see if she’s got a moment. It looks busier than I expected.”

Lenore slid her hand through Michael’s arm and looked up at his mandala. The thing was throbbing; she could almost hear it gasp. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m all right. How about you?”

They were interrupted by a growing murmur from the crowd. Derek, picking his way toward the counter, had become the center of attention. Half a dozen customers had closed in and were bent to him, asking eager questions or simply staring, drinking in the sight of him, their faces bright and eyes wide. Crowe’s discomfort was plain, but it had no effect on his fans. Their mandalas bobbed and hovered near the ceiling like whirring balloons, fighting for position, urging them closer to Crowe. For the first time she had a sharp picture of his mandala, gray and damp-looking, sticky as flypaper, covered with roaming mouths that gaped at the room. The other mandalas darted closer to that one, arranging themselves around it, sometimes flicking out their tentacles like coiling tongues, dipping the tips into the mouths of Crowe’s mandala as if feeding it or indulging in deep kisses. But sometimes the teeth of his mandala snapped; the mouths champed shut, cutting off the tendril-tips, and the injured mandalas skittered away, dragging their puppets with them, the humans dazed and frightened-looking. Crowe’s mandala was gray as a fungus, like something long dead, but it looked like the strongest one in the gathering. The others were eager to pay it obeisance.

“What’s going on?” Michael said.

“Whoa!” said a voice to one side. Lenore turned to see a blond boy standing there, a kid with long hair and a downy mustache, gazing enrapt at Derek Crowe. “You know who that is?”

“Derek Crowe,” she said.

“Yeah! He looks just like his picture, doesn’t he? Man, I was waiting—I thought he’d never come around again! They say he’s supposed to be at Club Mandala tonight, for the grand opening! But this is even better—I mean, it’s intimate!”

His eyes fixed on her forehead. “Awesome!” His finger darted out, as if to touch the mandala, but she jerked away. “You—you’re really into it, aren’t you?”

Lenore gazed at him, saying nothing. She could feel her mandala moving over the kid, suppressing him, turning down his excited light. He dimmed visibly. His grin shrank a little, and he ducked his head slightly, lowering his voice. “Sorry. Hey, you know who else is here? You see that lady over there? You know who that is?”

She followed the kid’s finger. He was pointing at a woman behind the counter, tall and slender, rather severe-looking. She looked angry about the disruption Crowe was causing.

“That’s Ms. A!” the kid said.

“Ms. A?” Michael said. “Really?”

“It’s gotta be her. She’s like Crowe’s best friend, and her name is Lilith Allure. With an A!”

Michael leaned to whisper in Lenore’s ear. “This is insane. Look at Crowe. We can’t go through that.”

Lilith marched out from behind the counter, firmly seized Crowe by an arm, and strode to the rear of the shop, clearing a way through the crowd with sharp commands. She took him through a door and slammed it shut behind them.

“I don’t think this is such a good idea,” Michael said.

The crowd had begun to whirl about, angrily circling the absence at its center where Derek Crowe at been. Lenore knew it was only a matter of time until they spotted the mandala on her forehead and realized she had come with Crowe. She was about to receive for herself the attention Derek had escaped.

“You hear about those rituals down south?” the kid was saying. “It’s really starting now—”

Michael put his arm around Lenore, rushing her out the door before the boy had finished speaking. It pained her to leave Crowe behind, but she knew it was the wisest thing for now.

“Do you mind?” he said when they were outside. “We can come back later. We can look up Crowe when it’s not so crazy here. We… I don’t know, Lenore. We have to put our heads together. We have to figure out what we’re doing. We have to talk about some stuff.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Because there’s some things I have to tell you. I’ve been keeping from you. I’m not sure why. You really should know.”

“Things like what?” she said, suddenly afraid. She didn’t like the edge in his voice. What could he possibly know that she didn’t? Didn’t she see everything—so much more than Michael?

He opened the car door for her. The rocks on the peak above the shop looked black instead of red now, as the afternoon sun sank toward them. An ice-crystal halo blinked into existence around the sun, and she looked for a mandala to fill the outline of that rainbow wheel. It was empty white air, though, an optical effect and nothing more. No shimmering pale sun guardian watched over the city.

Michael took a moment to look at the map, then shoved it into the glove box and started the car. She didn’t ask where he was going, but after a while it became obvious that he didn’t have any particular route in mind: He just kept heading west. They had been traveling west for days. Apparently he wanted to go until he could go no farther.

More than anything else, Michael worried her. She had seen him as ratlike before, a diseased animal, but now he was not even that. When she reached out for the reassurance of touch, she felt not flesh and bone beneath her hand, but cold machinery. Holes yawned in his skin, festering places where the life had been burned away. Down inside him, gears and pistons worked brokenly like malfunctioning extensions of the car, giving off a scent of sweat and machine oil. She raged silently at his mandala: What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you help him?

But that might have been a mistake. It seemed to bring the sickly mandala to the attention of her own. Hers made a few teasing strikes at Michael’s faltering guardian, stinging lashes of the black whips. It darted at the ill one like a wheel of razors, slicing deeply into it, dancing back. Lenore pleaded with her mandala to leave him alone, but to no effect. She could not join in the torture; she herself must do something to protect Michael. But what?

They passed out of the crowded streets, leaving behind the clashing walls and screams of traffic. They entered avenues of soothing geometry, tall white blocks with stucco faces and roofs of Spanish tile. They drove past squat windowless hutches, speckled green and brown, which quivered like amphibian eggs about to hatch. Michael had started talking, quite intent, but nothing he said made sense; it was all in a language she had forgotten. Once the words might have meant something—tucker, scarlet, murder, police—but she had left that entire world of signifiers behind.

Suddenly the sea appeared before them, fog pouring in through the mouth of a channel. It was magnificent in any world, but to Lenore’s eyes the fusion of dimensions rendered it almost unbearably beautiful. They drove along a narrow road, crawling past violet lawns, through trees of thorn and ivory. Layers of distant hills rose on the far side of a channel; the terrestrial sun glared through momentarily, scorching the fog. Then, taking the star’s place, a stark orange orb like a blind eye peered through, dripping a tainted manna, striking at the stunted trees and blighting the foliage, turning the landscape into a desert where only things of scale and metal could possibly survive.

Creaking, he turned to face her. His eyes were gone. When he moved his jaws, she hardly heard a thing. She shrank from the warring mandalas that writhed and gnashed the air above their heads. She had to stop it somehow, before Michael was hurt. She felt no fear for herself, but he was weak.

Suddenly something in the car gave way. There was a raw clanking somewhere underneath them.

“Fucking Crowe’s fucking paper clip!” said the Michael-thing. He pulled the car off the road, driving through brush. He yanked his door open and stumbled out, gesticulating at the car with emotions she couldn’t grasp. She joined him in a small glade of broken glass and rubbish, just out of sight of the road.

How close they were to the sea! Here the cliffs came up abruptly. She lost herself in the sight of the horizon smothered in coppery mist. In the mouth of the bay, she saw the coiling struggles of huge metallic creatures spouting bloody foam. Great bells rang, deep voices echoing between the cliffs of the channel. A bridge ran over the water, a frail piece of orange metal stretched out to an implausible thinness, with specks of life crawling over it. Cars or insects, or a fusion of both.

The Michael-thing moved first toward the car, then toward her, then back to the car. It leaned into the car and began pushing the vehicle across a stretch of din. The car rolled, gathering speed, crashing through branches, juddering past her. She watched in joyous release as it flew from the edge of the cliff and toppled out of sight. The sound of its crash was ecstacy.

The Michael-thing stood watching where the car had gone. It swayed like a heap of metal about to topple. She didn’t want to touch the thing but it twitched toward her, lifting splintered fingers in supplication or farewell. She realized that it was about to grasp her in a mockery of affection, sinking its corroded grips into her flesh. The thought was more than she could bear. She spun aside, barely eluding it. Her mandala dipped between them, and she felt a moment’s human sadness, for the husband-thing could not last much longer. It had served its purpose in bringing her to Derek Crowe. Nothing it did from now on had any meaning whatsoever. Its life was over. It had passed from significance. Nothing of Michael was left in it now; she could hardly remember the affection she might have felt.

Her mandala flew in furious motion, blurring like a black wheel of razors. It sliced into the amorphous mass of the husband-thing’s guardian, cutting it open like a seed pod full of tiny rose-colored beads. The specks of life went flying, scattered like jewels from a broken necklace, spraying down the cliffs toward the sea, some floating aimlessly into the sky.

And then the Michael-thing, the husband-thing, disappeared. It didn’t run away or cast itself over the cliff; it simply ceased to be. Lenore forgot it had ever existed. She didn’t question how she had come to this place, for that was irrelevant now. She had somewhere to go, and her mandala would get her there.

33

“So,” Lilith said, latching the door, turning to face Derek in the narrow hall lined with boxes. “You had to come in here today of all days. You know half the people out there are getting ready for that Club Mandala bash tonight? You’re their dream come true, walking in here like that.”

“Lilith, I—” Derek was breathless, practically in shock. He had never been mobbed before. “I only came to ask you a favor—”

“I don’t hear from you for days, and then you show up like this? You’re starting a riot.”

“I didn’t know this would happen. How could I?”

“If you wanted to talk to me, you should have called me at home. In private. This isn’t the place for a discussion. You’re making everything worse, as if it weren’t bad enough already. And what about this thing in North Carolina?”

“What thing?” he said.

“This ritual sacrifice. Which of your fans is responsible for that?”

“What are you talking about?”

She looked at him in cool disbelief. “I can’t believe you haven’t heard. It’s not exactly in the headlines, but they’re all buzzing about it.” She pointed down the hall. The store was loud with whistling and disappointed cries. “Weren’t you just out in North Carolina?”

“Of course,” he said.

“There was a murder there—a double murder actually. I’m surprised you haven’t been questioned about it. Someone painted a nice big mandala on the wall in the victims’ blood.”

Derek went cold, thinking of Chhith/Huon, the ritual murders around Phnom Penh. But Chhith wasn’t in North Carolina; and the Renzlers had just come from there, crossed the country so quickly that they might have been in flight.

“Do they know who did it?” he said.

“Some crazed couple, supposedly. But they can’t find them.”

“A couple,” he murmured.

“Now what?” she said. “Derek, where are you going?”

He didn’t know himself. He couldn’t go out the front door, and what good would it do to escape out the back? The Renzlers already knew where he lived. What he ought to do was find out exactly what the story was with this sacrifice, and then—what? Call the police? If he didn’t turn them in, he’d come off looking like another Charles Manson. He’d stopped into Cinderton for one night’s lecture, accepted a ride to the airport, and somehow brainwashed his fans into murder. He’d spent a good deal of time with them, time unaccounted for on that dark road. They’d be painted as zombies, his witless slaves, and he the mandala master. Of course, he’d have an alibi, wouldn’t he? Their friend had come to fix the broken car….

He mustn’t let it get to that point. This was time for extreme damage control.

“I need your help,” he said.

“I told you before, I can’t get sucked into this. I’ve tried telling those people out there I’m not Ms. A, that we didn’t meet till after you wrote your book. But it’s futile. They want to believe in me.”

“Lilith, please, I know this is all fucked up, but I need help! I may be in trouble. Real trouble.”

“You just figured that out?”

“Would you take a look out there? There are two people, they came in with me, a young guy and a girl, a girl with hair that’s sort of henna black and red. They’re both in black leather, punk types.”

“They came in with you? I don’t believe it.”

“Just look, all right?”

She went to the door, opened it a bit, and peered out. It had greatly quieted in the shop. “I don’t see anyone like that,” she said after a minute.

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

They’ve run off again, Derek thought. They must have thought I was on to them. Or else they just panicked in the crowd, like I did.

Lilith shut the door again. “Who are they?”

“Just…” Should he tell her, the way things stood between them? No. Not yet. “Just some people who’ve been following me around.”

“Congratulations, Derek. You’ve finally got yourself a cult!”

“You know,” he said, feigning slowly dawning comprehension, “they’re from somewhere in the South. I think that’s a North Carolina license plate on their car. You know, I… I might have seen them at the lecture I gave in Cinderton.”

“Are you serious?”

“My God…” he said quietly. “Lilith, what if it’s them?”

“Then I suggest you call the police. You should call them anyway, and volunteer your services. Say you heard about the murder, offer to tell them everything you know about the mandalas. Convince them you don’t believe a word of the stuff you’re pushing, that you made it all up, and you’ll be off to a good start. Tell the truth for once!”

That, undoubtedly, was exactly what he should do. But Derek hesitated.

“Of course,” Lilith added, “you’ll have to live with the fact that this cult you invented, on the spur of the moment, has been responsible for at least two deaths so far. I say ‘at least’ because there are other stories going around.”

“I didn’t—” He stopped himself.

“Didn’t what?”

Didn’t invent it, he’d almost said, but that was the one thing he could never say.

“I didn’t tell anyone to kill,” he said. “Nothing in the book says anything about sacrifice or murder.”

“How do you know what it says, Derek? Half of it is gibberish. When people do invocations like that, the words mean what they want them to mean; they conjure whatever’s inside them.”

“Can you call me a cab?”

“Call it yourself,” she said sharply. “I have to get back to work. You need to make a plan, Derek. If I can help you, in some reasonable way, let me know; I’ll think about it.”

“Thank you, Lilith. You’re a good friend.”

“Too good for you, I know.”

“Well…”

“I’m pissed at you, Derek, for bringing this down on me—on all of us. The world doesn’t need this right now. If you’d only held your tongue, stayed in advertising. I’d have respected you then. But what you’ve been doing, it’s just wrong. I don’t know why I humored you for so long. I guess love blinded me a little.”

“Love?” he said.

She scowled and rolled her eyes. “It’s too late for that. For us. Maybe you’ll get yourself together. Find someone else. I hope so.” He stood with his mouth open, hands hanging. Lilith turned into the kitchen where the phone was. He heard her dialing.

I deserve this, he thought.

He had been waiting all his life for the bad thing to happen. For the cosmic vengeance. For what he deserved. It was hard to believe, sometimes, that it ever would come, since on a rational level Derek didn’t believe in the sort of universe that would stoop to notice the transgressions of a pathetic little grub like himself—as if the morals of a grub would overlap with the morals of the universe, which after all was nothing but particles and waves, infinite cold prickled by radiation, space-time warped and puckered by forces he would never understand, but which he took on faith to be completely devoid of moral character, completely lacking in interest in him as an individual, grown man or young man or small boy.

And yet… and yet…

The unreasoning part of him still cringed and cowered, still waited for judgment, still waited to pay (with interest) for the death he had caused as a young man and for the horrible manner of that death, whose worst aspects were a secret he had carried in him forever, since the only other person privy to those moments of shame was herself the one he had killed.

So, yes, he had always expected trouble, vast and unbearable trouble, trouble on a scale beyond reason and centered exclusively on himself. He had gone looking for it, you might say. And now it was on its way, winging—no, whirling—swiftly toward him. It knew where he lived. It was his and no other’s; he had made it his own.

He was almost relieved to know it was finally here, and he was in the middle of it, sink or swim. At last, he was going to pay.

34

Pushing the car over the cliff was easier than Michael expected, but as soon as it began to roll away from him he doubted the wisdom of it. He’d have been better off ditching it in a bad neighborhood where it would get stripped or stolen. Sending it over a cliff in broad daylight was bound to attract attention. At the very least he should have removed the license plates. But the car was gone, even as doubts came up with the sounds of the crash. The same inner voices that had made the decision now hung around mocking him. You fucked up big time!

He turned to Lenore, but something stopped him. It was like a different person standing there—someone he didn’t know. A stranger stared out from Lenore’s eyes.

He said her name, but she didn’t seem to hear it. She looked around as if she didn’t see him, then turned and moved off through the shrubs. He watched her go, unable to move. “Lenore!” he called. She was gone. He took a few steps toward the springing branches into which she had plunged, and then the world lurched out from under him.

Even on all fours, crawling, he felt unstable, as if he were about to go spinning away. He threw himself flat, dug his fingers into the earth, and held on; but pressed flat like that, with his eyes closed, the sensation of whirling was even stronger. He could not lie there for long. He must rise. He should follow Lenore, hard as it seemed. She shouldn’t be alone, in her condition.

A storm ripped at him with invisible fingers; it felt like a maelstrom tugging him into its center. He looked up, wondering how to regain his feet, and saw that somehow he had slid or crawled closer to the cliff’s edge, in the very tracks of the Beetle. He was close enough to see how the weeds and brush had been crushed and snapped by tires; how the sandstone edge had crumbled under the car’s weight. He could see the ocean, gray as the fog, ruffled up by the wind—but it was not the wind he felt dragging him toward the edge, hauling him over.

He squeezed his eyes shut again, though it made his dizziness worse. Blind, he could no longer tell which way he was facing, or where he was being pulled. In a way it was better not to know.

He made a conscious effort to calm himself, to clear his mind. It was obvious that if things went on this way, he was going to die very soon. He must be sure he understood that and kept his thoughts calm, so he could meet his death face-on, fully conscious, bringing to it everything he knew, everything he had learned, everything he could possibly manage to hold onto.

Michael believed in no particular god. He didn’t expect any divinities to come running if he put out a psychic SOS. Prayer was calming but too complicated. And desperate prayer would only add to his anguish and terror and confusion. He didn’t have salt or water; no athame, bells, or chalices. He could chant mantras or visualize the Clear Light or rack his brain trying to remember some Sufi songs. But none of those things came naturally to him.

Instead, he cast a circle.

He had only to think of it and it was there, surrounding him. A circle of white fire, like the ones he had drawn in his temple room. Those had failed to keep the mandalas out, but then, keeping things out was not the true purpose of a circle. Magic circles were meant to keep things in, to concentrate and focus whatever energy was summoned. And right now Michael was concerned with keeping himself together, in one psychic piece, so that if the worst happened he wouldn’t be scattered all over the place at the moment of transition.

He felt remarkably calm. He felt, in fact, like a compass needle: bobbing, floating, weightless. The circle spun around him, a thin white wire, severing him from whatever force was trying to murder him. He felt detached from everything, as if sitting on a high rock in the midst of a raging current.

I don’t have to go anywhere, he thought. I’m at the center of this circle, and this circle is at the center of the universe, because every point is equally the center.

The vertigo passed. He opened his eyes, half expecting to see the line of white fire burning and sizzling around him in the damp weeds. He was several feet from the cliff, lying in the drag marks his body had made between the tire tracks. Merely raising his head seemed to call up the astral wind again. It tried to catch him by the jaw and pry him up and pull him all the way over….

He concentrated on the circle, concentrated on hanging in suspension like a compass needle—or like a weather vane, pivoting to keep aligned with the wind but unmoved. Gradually he got to his knees, and then to his feet, crouching, hunching, rising upright. Nothing else seemed to be affected by the wind. The branches of the shrubs and trees bobbed gently in a normal coastal breeze. The “wind” he felt would have torn the needles from the pines had it been real. The thing to do now was to move straight into it. He bowed his head, thinking of the circle, and pushed forward. In this manner he came to the asphalt road and crossed that; then climbed an embankment leading up into parkland, the cat-piss smell of eucalyptus enveloping him. It got easier as he went on, and he began to mistrust his navigation. The wind might read his intention and still steer him into disaster.

He veered off at a shallow angle, as an experiment, and found that he could deviate slightly from directly opposing the force. He lurched a few yards and clung to a tree; from there he dashed to the next, and then to the next. Eventually he crossed another road, staggering. Several cyclists whirred past, politely averting their eyes. But by the time he reached the edge of the park, the worst had passed. He could walk steadily whichever way he chose. It was easy to find the way he was not supposed to go, for that remained the most difficult. But by zigzagging across the streets and sidewalks like a meandering drunk, he managed to tack against the resistance; and in this manner he passed among apartment buildings and shops, down a long avenue that brought him once more to parkland. He feared he had circled around on himself somehow, but this place was different, full of people.

He came across a party in a grassy grove, a ring of people dancing to music played on a bone marimba. Michael’s path, the safest path, led right through them, and he followed it in a trance. They parted for him, spiraling around to close him in again, unwinding to release him on the far side of the grove. He went on through matted ivy clotted with trash, a man sleeping in a blanket caked with dried mud, and came out of the trees to see buildings again, and above them a distant row of hills. Atop those hills stood a strange geometrical skeleton, all in fine red and white, straddling the city, shredding the mists. He remembered it from earlier that day, rising above the occult store. He realized then where he must go.

Michael headed down the street, with the cold sea wind at his back and the not-wind at his cheek. He felt cut loose, floating free as a piece of debris blown skipping down the avenue. He moved in wide arcs, spiraling in on his destination. He advanced while appearing to avoid. Thus he slid down the sidewalk until he finally glanced up to discover he was on Haight Street.

Punks and hippies and grungers and bikers and beggars crowded the street like guests at a great masquerade party. Faces drifted toward him, mouths muttering, wild eyes watching, and then past. At first he only stared at these apparitions as if they were weird balloons blowing by; but gradually he realized that they were speaking to him: “Greenbud-acid-crystal-meth-crack.” All run together, like the faces themselves. He grabbed a bearded kid by the sleeve, searching the air above his head for something he didn’t really expect to see, although he knew by now that to see nothing meant nothing. He didn’t have the eyes for that kind of sight… not always.

“Hey,” the guy said, “what, you want meth? Best on the street, right here.”

“I’m looking for some rocks,” Michael said.

“Oh, sure.” The kid looked around briefly, then nodded toward a doorway. “I can get you rock. Show me your cash.”

“No, rocks. I saw them on a hill, a bunch of big rocks.”

The kid looked at him in surprise. “What? You mean, like, rocks? Rock rocks?”

“Yeah, red rocks. Sort of like Stonehenge.”

“You must mean Corona Heights. Indian Rocks, sure. You going up there tonight? Watch out for poison oak. You want acid? I got a few tabs of Hello Kitty.”

“I want to get to the bottom of that hill, under those rocks.”

“Yeah, okay. Take Haight down to Divizz—take a right. Go a few blocks and you’ll see ‘em.”

“Thanks,” Michael said, moving on.

“Sure you don’t want anything? Even a joint?”

“I have to stay pure,” he said, and he was flying again, through the street party, through the violet dark, everything luminous and laughing. Despite his fear and his dread of what might have become of Lenore, he felt a strange exuberance. He descended a dark grade to a street called Divisadero, turned right and followed it along a tall cement wall. He stopped dead as the headlights picked out an enormous mandala stenciled in spray-paint above the street, with two smaller circles flanking it like sundogs. Under them, someone had painted an elaborate, stylized “37.”

He nearly stepped back into traffic. Horns sent him running.

When he looked up again, he saw the dark bulk of the hill above him and the jumbled shadow of its rocky crown. He looked downhill toward a distant crossroads, and there he saw the corner beam of a Thai pagoda.

He realized he couldn’t feel a breath of wind.

35

In a still moment, as he lay on his bed drinking (not having called the police, the answering machine shut off in case anyone should call, such as Bob Maltzman, expressing concern over this latest threat to the popularity of the mandalas), Derek could hear himself crying: May….

I love you, May….

But that really meant nothing now. Soon he would get to stop crying. If trouble wanted him, he would give himself up to it completely. If he didn’t survive the reckoning, then at least the pitiful voice inside him would be silenced. The whimpering thing that had made others suffer would itself be put out of its misery.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Come on!” Staggering upright, going to the closet, and kicking hard at the box inside. “Come and get me!”

His foot tore through cardboard. The old carton burst along its seams, and the black and red notebooks spilled out on the floor; but the skin still hid within. It was shy and had to be coaxed.

“Come out, you ugly bastard,” he said, reaching down into the box. Picking it up and shaking it, literally, by the scruff of the neck. “It’s just you and me now. This is between us.”

And then… and then… he was standing before the mirror on the back of his bedroom door, listing slightly in the poor light, wondering how it had gotten so dark, how long he’d been drinking, why he was so fucking cold….

Oh, yeah… he was naked. He had stripped off everything except his black stockings. Notebooks lay scattered all over the room, but there was no sign of the skin. He was swimming in murk; ugly gray things stirred the air near the ceiling. He’d drunk enough to destroy his vision. Drunk so much that the spots danced before his eyes, whirling and spinning and having a wonderful time. When he moved, spots came down and clung to his skin.

He put a hand to his arm and felt the flesh crackle. Another to his chest—felt it all crackly-rubber and repellent.

The skin…

…clung to him stickily. He had drawn it on, and now it felt affixed by sweat and suction, as if it were melting into him. He couldn’t writhe out of it. It must have stretched to accommodate him. It had always looked like such a small skin, but it was sufficient. It lay upon his shoulders like a mantle; the seam ran up his belly, between his nipples, and otherwise it was as seamless as Derek himself. He wondered why he didn’t feel more surprised, more horrified.

Probably, he thought, because you did it to yourself. If you did it to yourself, you can’t possibly find the thing too unattractive.

But notice, you had to be good and drunk before you really found the wherewithal to do such a thing. You had to get yourself to black out before it was really possible.

And now that you’re here… what?

What…?

The answer came slowly, but it came. He smirked at himself in the mirror, dancing sideways, twisting around to watch the mandalas spinning on his back. He was still very drunk. He pulled on his underwear, careful not to wrinkle the skin; the elastic band snapped tight on his waist, sealing the hide to him further. Then a clean shirt, crisp and slightly stiff, though he couldn’t much feel it. There was a layer between him and the rest of the world now, a comforting protective barrier. He tucked the tail of his shirt into a pair of pressed slacks he’d picked up from the cleaners only yesterday, in preparation for the grand opening.

That’s why you didn’t call the police, he said, as if it had ever been an issue. You had to get ready for the Mandala Ball. And now you’re ready. You’re dressed to the teeth. You even have your long Johns on. Although Etienne’s father surely wasn’t named John. Maybe they were long Jeans.

He was not the sort to laugh at his own jokes. It required grim determination to get his shoes on, to tie the laces. His hair was in very bad shape, but he felt convinced that no one would care. And a good thing too, because now the buzzer was buzzing. There had been just enough time to accomplish what he had. So, yes, it had been a very busy day after all, even though most of the time was occupied in lying here getting drunk enough to do what needed to be done.

The buzzer buzzed and buzzed. Imitating the sound in his throat, Derek went into the hall. He was halfway down the stairs when he thought about his door and how much time it would have taken to lock the deadbolts. It really was not possible to go back up and do all that when he was right in the middle of his grand descent.

He flew out the front gate and onto the street, and there was Etienne standing by the rear door of the limousine, holding it open for him. Inside, Nina was patting the seat beside her, so he knew just where to go. And here came Lenore Renzler, rushing up between Derek and the car, coming so fast out of nowhere that he plunged right into her and the two of them tumbled forward into the compartment, falling onto the soft red leather, their arms and legs tangled, everyone breathless and laughing.

Etienne bent to look inside the car, and Nina gazed at Lenore with fascination. They both stared at the mandala in the middle of her forehead; they seemed quite enchanted with it.

“Well!” Etienne said happily. “It looks like you belong with us!’ “How wonderful!” said Nina. “Mr. Crowe is bringing a date!’

36

Michael was relieved to see Crowe’s friend, Lilith Allure, still at the register, stuffing parcels into a bag. She glanced up as he closed the door behind him and called out, “We’re closing in five minutes, so make it snappy. Actually, could you flip that sign behind you?”

He turned the sign on the door so that open/abierto faced into the room. He wandered forward, ready to collapse. With no struggle to sustain him, he did not know which way to turn. He put his palms on a display case and leaned there, looking down upon rows of carved crystals, glass eyes, amulets etched in metal and inscribed on scraps of parchment, rolled into tiny scrolls. Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck was fanned out across the lower shelf, the huge cards alive with grotesque, exaggerated figures in lurid colors. He stared at the Death card, the skeletal king with a reaper’s blade, and thought of the one comment every modern reader felt obliged to make when that card came up: “The Death card doesn’t mean death.” No, of course not. It signified change, the end of a cycle, transformation, making way for something new; it could refer to a relationship, a way of life, an attitude—to almost anything other than the end of a life span, the demise of a corporeal body.

But sometimes, Michael thought, Death meant death.

He wheeled around, choking on the incense that drifted through the shop—wheeled and saw posters of Kundalini serpents forming helixes inside a meditator’s body; an enormous lotus with an OM syllable at its center; John Dee’s elaborate Sigil of Aemeth; and a Tibetan mandala whose rings of concentric colors were a frightening reminder of his present situation. The Vajrayana Buddhists said the entire cosmos was a mandala, a sacred circle. Of course, they were not referring to the mandalas that had recently destroyed his life. But there was something in the night, in the oblique path he had described across the city, that reminded him the mandalas were not everything. They were circles inside of greater circles.

He could hear an old black woman talking to Lilith, just down the counter: “… and this demon, see, it bite me. Every time I move a way it don’t like, every time I think a thought I not s’posed t’have, you know, I feel it bitin’ my shoulder. It on there all the time, ridin’ me. You see it? That aura reader, she tell me she see it, but she want too much money get rid of it. So I tell her I comin’ to you. You see it, don’t you?”

“Look,” Lilith said, “I’m already late for closing.”

He imagined how his own story would sound to her, no matter how carefully he framed it. She, who listened to the litanies of the mad all day long, would treat him just like any other, sending him on his way with candles and amulets. That’s ten dollars. Blessed Be, and come again.

But then, she was Ms. A. She had spoken to the mandalas. Spoken for them. She would understand the situation.

When he caught her eye, she stiffened a little. Michael smiled.

Finally she ushered her last customer out and turned to Michael, who was waiting near the door.

“Make it fast,” she said. “I’ve got a ritual to get to.”

“Are you… is it true that you’re Ms. A?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said, moving quickly back. “Just get out, all right?”

“Please, I—I’m a friend of Derek Crowe’s.”

“I’m not Ms. A. Can’t you people get that through your heads? I don’t hang out with Derek Crowe, I didn’t know him when he wrote his book, and he sure as hell never hypnotized me.”

Michael sagged with disappointment, all his fear and fatigue welling up in him in that instant. He could feel his eyes tearing; suddenly his hopes, his optimism, seemed worthless.

“Someone said…”

“If you’re really Derek’s friend, ask him to introduce you to Ms. A. And please give her my regards.” She opened the door to him, holding her keys in the lock. He didn’t move. “What? What’s the matter?”

He found he couldn’t move. The wind again—the tugging. He grabbed onto the doorframe, knowing he must move properly to avoid it; he must strike like a jeweler’s chisel cutting into diamond, finding the one and only path that would extricate him from this moment.

“Why are you crying?” she said, her voice carrying to him as if through a roaring wind. He swabbed his eyes with his sleeve.

“I just… I came so far,” he found himself saying. “Can I please—can I get some water?”

She stared at him, rigid, then rolled her eyes and swirled her tongue in her cheek. “Come on,” she said. “Back here.”

He lurched gratefully after her, into a hall leading off the shop. She led him to a small kitchen cluttered with boxes and packing materials. She filled a paper cup from a rusty faucet, and watched while he drank.

“Uh… have you got a bathroom?” he asked.

“Here.”

She pointed out a door off the hall. “I’ll be up front. You do your business then come on, get out of here. How far did you come, anyway?”

He opened the door into a dark room, fumbling inside for a lightswitch. “My wife and I,” he said, “we drove from North Carolina.” He shut the door before she could reply.

He peed then washed his face, wiping it dry on his shirt because there were no towels. He went quietly into the hall, hearing voices. A voice. Lilith was talking to someone, but he heard no reply. As he stepped into the front of the store, she hung up the phone. Smiling now.

“Was—did you call Mr. Crowe?” he asked. “To check on me?”

“No, I had to call my coven and explain why I’m running late.”

“That’s all right, I’ll—I’ll leave you. I’m sorry I bothered you. I thought maybe I could talk to the mandalas directly, through you.”

She regarded him quizzically, still smiling. “You know, I don’t ordinarily do this, especially not after hours, and with someone I don’t even know… but I have a feeling about you. I feel that I—I’m supposed to help you. Does that sound crazy?”

“No,” Michael said gratefully. “Not at all.”

“Would you, maybe, like a Tarot reading? Would you have time for that?”

“Yes!”

But here came the “wind” again. The room was beginning to spin. He steadied himself on the counter, convinced he was on the right track. That’s why the opposition had begun to intensify. He must bear up under it.

“My cards are in my car. It’s up the street a block or so—away from the parking meters, you know? I’ve got my special deck in there. You just… you stay here and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back and then I’ll give you a special reading. I can see you really need it.”

“Sure,” Michael said. “Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.”

“Good.”

She put her keys in the door, twisted the deadbolt, and rushed out, casting him a nervous backward glance. As she started down the steps into the dark, he realized she had left her keys hanging in the door. She would need them to get into her car. He pulled out the jangling mass of metal and opened the door, heading after her.

He almost collided with Lilith at the bottom of the steps. She was standing stock still, face to face with a man he couldn’t quite see.

“Sorry,” he said. “I—”

Then he saw the gun in the man’s hand, held on Lilith but turning to cover him as well. He realized that in his hurry he had given in to the steady insistent pressure. He had allowed himself to be flung out from the center.

“Who is he?” the man asked Lilith. “Another friend of Mr. Crowe?”

“Fuck you,” she said. “If you’re looking for Derek you can find him yourself.”

The man made a little jab with his gun, and Lilith stumbled into Michael. The man urged them away from the store, into the dark, goading them on. To Michael it felt like plunging down a long dark slope, into the whirlpool’s mouth.

For one instant, before he turned, the man’s face was just bright enough to see. There was plenty to absorb in that instant: deep scarring, a twisted expression, and a rubbery knot where the man’s left ear had been raggedly torn away.