Trumps of Doom

Chapter 3

Grief and anger shrink my world, and I resent this. They seem to paralyze my memory of happier times, of friends, places, things; options. Squeezed by the grip of intense, unsettling emotion, I grow smaller in my single-mindedness. I suppose it is partly because I have discarded a range of choices, impairing in some measure my freedom of will. I don’t like this, but after a point I have small control over it. It makes me feel that I have surrendered to a kind of determinism, which imitates me even more. Then, vicious cycle, this feeds back into the emotion that drives me and intensifies it. The simple way of ending this situation is the headlong rush to remove its object. The difficult way is more philosophical, a drawing back, the reestablishment of control. As usual, the difficult way is preferable. A headlong rush may also result in a broken neck.

I parked in the first place that I saw, opened the window, lit my pipe. I vowed not to depart until I had grown calm. All of my life I have had a tendency to overreact to things. It seems to run in my family. But I did not want to be like the others. They made a lot of trouble for themselves that way. The full-scale, all-or-nothing reaction may be all right if you always win, but that way also lies high tragedy or at least opera if you happen to be up against something extraordinary. And I did have indications that this was the case. Therefore, I was a fool. I told myself this till I believed it.

Then I listened to my caliper self as it agreed that I was indeed a fool — for not having seen my own feelings when I could have done something about them, for having displayed a power and denied its consequences, for not having at least guessed at the strange nature of my enemy in all these years, for my present simplification of the coming encounter. It would not do to seize Victor Melman on sight and try to beat the truth out of him. I resolved to proceed carefully, covering myself at all times. Life is never simple, I told myself. Sit still and gather, regroup.

Slowly, I felt the tension go out of me. Slowly, too, my world grew again, and I saw within it the possibility that S really knew me, knew me well, and may even have arranged events so that I would dispense with thinking and surrender to the moment. No, I would not be like the others…

I sat there and thought for a long while before I started the engine again and drove on slowly.

It was a grimy brick building situated on a corner. It was four stories in height, with occasional spray-painted obscenities on the alley side and on the wall facing the narrower street. I discovered the graffiti, a few broken windows and the fire escape as I strolled slowly about the place, looking it over. By then a light rain was just beginning to fall. The lower two stories were occupied by the Brutus Storage Company, according to a sign beside the stairs in a small hallway I entered. The place smelled of urine, and there was an empty Jack Daniels bottle lying on the dusty windowsill to my right. Two mailboxes hung upon the flaking wall. One said “Brutus Storage,” the other bore the legend “V. M.” Both were empty.

I mounted the stair, expecting it to creak. It did not. There were four knobless doors letting upon the second floor hallway, all of them closed. The outlines of what might be cartons were visible through several of the frosted panes in their upper sections. There were no sounds from within.

I surprised a black cat dozing on the next stairway. She arched her back, showed me her teeth, made a hissing noise, then turned and bounded up the stairs and out of sight.

The next landing also had four doors — three of them apparently nonfunctional, the fourth dark-stained and shellacked shiny. It bore a small brass plate that read “Melman.” I knocked.

There was no answer. I tried again several times, with the same result. No sounds from within either. It seemed likely that these were his living quarters and that the fourth floor, with the possibility of a skylight, held his studio. So I turned away and took the final flight.

I reached the top and saw that one of the four doors there was slightly ajar. I halted and listened for a moment. From beyond it came faint sounds of movement. I advanced and gave it a few knocks. I heard a sudden intake of breath from somewhere inside. I pushed on the door.

He stood about twenty feet away beneath a large skylight and he had turned to face me — a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark beard and eyes. He held a brush in his left hand and a palette in his right. He wore a paint-smeared apron over his Levi’s and had on a plaid sport shirt. The easel at his back held the outlines of what could be a madonna and child. There were a great many other canvases about, all of them facing the walls or covered.

“Hello,” I said. “You are Victor Melman?”

He nodded, neither smiling nor frowning, placed his palette on a nearby table, his brush into a jar of solvent. He picked up a damp-looking cloth then and wiped his hands with it.

“And yourself?” he asked, tossing the cloth aside and facing me again.

“Merle Corey. You knew Julia Barnes.”

“I don’t deny it,” he said. “Your use of the past tense would seem to indicate — ”

“She’s dead all right. I want to talk to you about it.”

“All right,” he said, untying his apron. “Let’s go downstairs then. No place to sit up here.”

He hung the apron upon a nail near the door and stepped outside. I followed him. He turned back and locked the studio before proceeding down the stairs. His movements were smooth, almost graceful. I could hear the rain on the roof.

He used the same key to unlock the dark door on the third floor. He drew the door open and stood aside, gesturing for me to enter. I did, traversing a hallway that led past a kitchen, its counters covered with empty bottles, stacks of dishes, pizza cartons. Bursting bags of trash leaned against cupboards; the floor looked sticky here and there and the place smelled like a spice factory next door to a slaughterhouse.

The living room, which I came to next, was large, with a comfortable-looking pair of black sofas, facing each other across a battlefield of Oriental carpets and miscellaneous tables, each of which bore several overflowing ashtrays. There was a beautiful concert-sized piano in the far corner, before a wall covered with heavy red drapery. There were numerous low bookcases filled with occult materials, stacks of magazines beside them, atop them, and alongside a few easy chairs. What could be the corner of a pentacle protruded slightly from beneath the largest rug. The stale smells of incense and pot lingered in patches. To my right, there was an archway leading to another room, a closed door to my left. Paintings of a semireligious nature — which I took to be his work — were hung on several of the walls. There was a Chagall-like quality to them. Quite good.

“Have a seat.”

He gestured toward an easy chair and I took it. “Care for a beer?”

“Thank you, no.”

He seated himself on the nearer sofa, clasped his hands, and stared at me.

“What happened?” he asked.

I stared back at him.

“Julia Barnes got interested in occult systems,” I said. “She came to you to learn more about them. She died this morning under very unusual circumstances.”

The left corner of his mouth twitched slightly. He made no other movement.

“Yes, she was interested in such matters,” he said. “She came to me for instruction and I provided it.”

“I want to know why she died.” He continued to stare.

“Her time was up,” he said. “It happens to everybody, in the long run.”

“She was killed by an animal that should not exist here. Do you know anything about it?”

“The universe is a stranger place than most of us can imagine.”

“Do you know or don’t you?”

“I know you,” he said, smiling for the first time. “She spoke of you, of course.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he answered, “that I know you are more than a little aware of such matters yourself.”

“And so?”

“The Arts have a way of bringing the right people together at the proper moment when there is work in progress.”

“And that’s what you think this is all about?”

“I know it.”

“How?”

“It was promised.”

“So you were expecting me?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting. Would you care to tell me more about it?”

“I’d rather show you.”

“You say that something was promised. How? By whom?”

“All of that will become clear shortly.”

“And Julia’s death?”

“That, too, I’d say.”

“How do you propose rendering me this enlightenment?”

He smiled. “I just want you to take a look at something,” he said.

“All right. I’m willing. Show me.”

He nodded and rose.

“It’s in here,” he explained, turning and heading toward the closed door.

I got to my feet and followed him across the room.

He reached into his shirtfront and drew up a chain. He lifted it over his head and I could see that it bore a key. He used it to unlock the door.

“Go in,” he said, pushing it open and stepping aside.

I entered. It was not a large room, and it was dark. He flipped a switch and a blue light of small wattage came on within a plain fixture overhead. I saw then that there was one window, directly across from me, and that all of its panes had been painted black. There were no furnishings, save for a few cushions scattered here and there across the floor. A portion of the wall to my right was covered with black drapery. The other walls were unadorned.

“I’m looking,” I said.

He chuckled.

“A moment, a moment,” he advised me. “Have you any idea of my major concern in the occult arts?”

“You’re a cabalist,” I stated.

“Yes,” he admitted. “How could you tell?”

“People in Eastern disciplines tend to run a tight ship,” I stated. “But cabalists always seem to be slobs.”

He snorted.

“It is all a matter of what is really important to you,” he said then.

“Exactly.” He kicked a cushion into the middle of the floor. “Have a seat,” he said.

“I’ll stand.” He shrugged.

“Okay,” he said, and he began muttering softly.

I waited. After a time, still speaking quietly, he moved to the black curtain. He opened it with a single quick movement and I stared.

A painting of the cabalistic Tree of Life was revealed, showing the ten sephira in some of their qlipphotic aspects. It was beautifully executed, and the sense of recognition that struck me as I regarded it was unsettling. It was no standard item from some head shop, but rather an original painting. It was not, however, in the style of any of the works hanging in the other room. Still, it was familiar to me.

As I studied it I had no doubt whatsoever that it had been painted by the same person who had done the Trumps I had found in Julia’s apartment.

Melman continued his incantation as I regarded the painting.

“Is this your work?” I asked him.

He did not answer me. Instead, he advanced and pointed, indicating the third sephiroth, the one called Binah. I studied it. It seemed to represent a wizard before a dark altar, and —

No! I couldn’t believe it. It shouldn’t —

I felt a contact with that figure. It was not just symbolic. He was real, and he was summoning me. He loomed larger, grew three-dimensional. The room began to fade about me. I was almost there. It was a place of twilight, a small glade in a twisted wood. An almost bloody light illuminated the slab before me. The wizard, his face hidden by cowl and shadow, manipulated objects upon the stone, his hands moving too rapidly for me to follow. From somewhere, I still seems to hear the chanting, faintly.

Finally, he raised a single object in his right hand and held it steady. It was a black, obsidian dagger. He laid his left arm upon the altar and brushed it across the surface, sweeping everything else to the ground.

He looked at me for the first time. “Come here,” he said then.

I began to smile at the stupid simplicity of the request.

But then I felt my feet move without my willing them to do so, and I knew that a spell lay upon me in this dark shadow.

I thanked another uncle, who dwelled in the most distant place imaginable, as I began to speak in Thari, a spell of my own.

A piercing cry, as of some swooping night bird, rent the air… The wizard was not distracted, nor my feet freed, but I was able to raise my arms before me. I kept them at the proper level, and when they reached the forward edge of the altar I cooperated with the summoning spell, increasing the force of each automatonlike step that I took. I let my elbows bend.

The wizard was already swinging the blade toward my fingers, but it didn’t matter. I put all of my weight behind it and heaved at the stone.

The altar toppled backward. The wizard scurried to avoid it, but it struck one — perhaps both — of his legs. Immediately, as he fell to the ground, I felt the spell depart from me. I could move properly again and my mind was clear.

He drew his knees up to his chest and began to roll even as I leaped over the wrecked altar and reached toward him. I moved to follow as he somersaults down a small slope and passed between two standing stones and into the darkened wood.

As soon as I reached the clearing’s edge I saw eyes, hundreds of feral eyes blazing from the darkness at many levels. The incanting grew louder, seemed nearer, seemed to be coming from behind me.

I turned quickly.

The altar was still in wreckage. Another cowled figure stood behind it, much larger than the first. This one was doing the chanting, in a familiar masculine voice. Frakir pulsed upon my wrist. I felt a spell building about me, but this time I was not unprepared. The opposite of my walk, a summons, brought an icy wind that swept the spell away like so much smoke. My garments were lashed about me, changing shape and color. Purple, gray… light the trousers and dark the cloak, the shirtfront. Black my boots and wide belt, my gauntlets tucked behind, my silver Frakir woven into a bracelet about my left wrist, visible now and shining. I raised my left hand and shielded my eyes with my right, as I summoned a flash of light.

“Be silent,” I said then. “You offend me.” The chanting ceased.

The cowl was blown back from his head and I regarded Melman’s frightened face.

“All right. You wanted me,” I stated, “and now you have me, heaven help you. You said that everything would become clear to me. It hasn’t. Make it clear.”

I took a step forward.

“Talk!” I said. “It can be easy or it can be hard. But you will talk. The choice is yours.”

He threw back his head and bellowed: “Master!”

“Summon your master then, by any means,” I said. “I will wait. For he, too, must answer.”

He called out again, but there was no answer. He bolted then, but I was ready for this with a major summoning. The woods decayed and fell before he could reach them, and then they moved, were swept up in a mighty wind where there should be stillness. It circled the glade, gray and red, building an impenetrable wall to infinites above and below. We inhabited a circular island in the night, several hundred meters across, its edges slowly crumbling.

“He is not coming,” I said, “and you are not going. He cannot help you. No one will help you. This is a place of high magic and you profane it with your presence. Do you know what lies beyond the advancing winds? Chaos. I will give you to it now, unless you tell me about Julia and your master and why you dared to bring me here.”

He drew back from the Chaos and turned to face me. “Take me back to my apartment and I will tell you everything,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Kill me and you will never know.”

I shrugged.

“In that case, you will tell me in order to stop the pain. Then I will give you to the Chaos.”

I moved toward him.

“Wait!” He raised his hand. “Give me my life for what I am about to tell you.”

“No bargain. Talk.”

The winds swirled around us and our island shrank. Half heard, half intelligible voices babbled within the wind and fragments of forms swam there. Melman drew back from the crumbling edge of things.

“All right,” he said, speaking loudly. “Yes, Julia came to me, as I had been told she would, and I taught her some things — not the things I would have taught her even a year ago, but pieces of some new things I had only learned myself more recently. I had been told to teach her in this manner, also.”

“By whom? Name your master.” He grimaced.

“He was not so foolish as to give me his name,” he said, “that I might seek some control over him. Like yourself, he is not human, but a being from some other plane.”

“He gave you the painting of the Tree?” Melman nodded.

“Yes, and it actually transported me to each sephiroth. Magic worked in those places. I gained powers.”

“And the Trumps? He did those, too? He gave them to you to give to her?”

“I don’t know anything about any Trumps,” he answered.

“These!” I cried, drawing them from beneath my cloak, spreading them like a conjurer’s fan and advancing toward him. I thrust them at him and let him stare for a few moments, withdrawing them before he got the idea that they might represent a means of escape.

“I never saw them before,” he said.

The ground continued its steady erosion toward us. We withdrew to a point nearer the center.

“And you sent the creature that slew her?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“I did not. I knew that she was going to die, for he had told me that that was what would bring you to me. He told me, too, that it would be a beast from Netzach that would slay her — but I never saw it and I had no part in its summoning.”

“And why did he want you to meet me, to bring me here?”

He laughed wildly.

“Why?” he repeated. “To kill you, of course. He told me that if I could sacrifice you in this place I would gain your powers. He said that you are Merlin, son of Hell and Chaos, and that I would become the greatest mage of all could I slay you here.”

Our world was at best a hundred meters across now, and the rate of its shrinkage was accelerating.

“Was it true?” he asked. “Would I have gained had I succeeded?”

“Power is like money,” I said. “You can usually get it if you’re competent and it’s the only thing you want in life. Would you have gained by it, though? I don’t think so.”

“I’m talking about the meaning of life. You know that.”

I shook my head.

“Only a fool believes that life has but one meaning,” I said. “Enough of this! Describe your master.”

“I never saw him.”

“What?”

“I mean, I saw him but I don’t know what he looks like. He always wore a hood and a black trench coat. Gloves, too. I don’t even know his race.”

“How did you meet?”

“He appeared one day in my studio. I just turned around and he was standing there. He offered me power, said that he would teach me things in return for my service.”

“How did you know he could deliver?”

“He took me on a journey through places not of this world.”

“I see.”

Our island of existence was now about the size of a large living room. The voices of the wind were mocking, then compassionate, frightened, sad and angry, too. Our wraparound vision shifted constantly. The ground trembled without letup. The light was still baleful. A part of me wanted to kill Melman right then, but if he had not really been the one who had hurt Julia…

“Did your master tell you why he wanted me dead?” I asked him.

He licked his lips and glanced back at the advancing Chaos.

“He said that you were his enemy,” he explained, “but he never told me why. And he said that it was going to happen today, that he wanted it to happen today.”

“Why today?”

He smiled briefly.

“I suppose because it’s Walpurgisnacht,” he replied, “though he never actually said that.”

“That’s all?” I said. “He never mentioned where he was from?”

“He once referred to something called the Keep of the Four Worlds as if it were important to him.”

“And you never felt that he was simply using you?”

He smiled.

“Of course he was using me,” he replied. “We all use somebody. That is the way of the world. But he paid for this use with knowledge and power. And I think his promise may yet be fulfilled.”

He seemed to be glancing at something behind me. It was the oldest trick in the world, but I turned. There was no one there. Immediately, I spun back to face him.

He held the black dagger. It must have been up his sleeve. He lunged at me, thrusting, mouthing fresh incantations.

I stepped back and swirled my cloak at him. He disengaged himself, sidestepping and slashing, turned and advanced again. This time he came in low, trying to circle me, his lips still moving. I kicked at the knifehand, but he snapped it back. I caught up the left edge of my cloak then, wrapped it about my arm. When he struck again, I blocked the thrust and seized his biceps. Dropping lower as I drew him forward, I caught hold of his left thigh with my right hand, then straightened, raising him high in the air, and threw him.

As I turned my body, completing the throw, I realized what I had done. Too late. With my attention focused on my adversary I had not kept track of the rapid, grinding advance of the destroying winds. The edge of Chaos was much nearer than I had thought, and Melman had time for only the most abbreviated of curses before death took him where he would incant no more.

I cursed, too, because I was certain there was still more information that I could have gotten from him; and I shook my head, there at the center of my diminishing world. The day was not yet over and it was already my most memorable Walpurgisnacht ever.