Dark Arts Read online

  “No, it’s not about that, everyone here has heard what you and my son do, and I think we all like it,” Allen paused for a moment, looking to Sam, who was nodding.

  “Vivaldi could not have written the Four Seasons without the Tritone,” Sam said, taking a moment to wheeze before going on. “There are no objections here.”

  “I haven’t heard the record,” Gladys said. “But my niece has loved it, Bernie sent her a copy when she could not find it in New York.”

  “And I know,” Allen said, “You guys have been paying the price for the dream you share on the road for three years. I’ve watched you start with a school bus rotting from the inside that you fixed up, do a turn across the northern states, then get a record deal. Everyone was excited, I think I was as excited as both of you, then you were back on the road, pushing that vinyl, and you started on a low when you found out most stores didn’t get the record. It’s been harder ever since, I’ve seen it, not the whole story, not how low things have really gotten, but I get it from the tone of my son’s letters, from his calls. You’ve been doing your father’s work to keep the wheels on the road, everyone here knows it, and it was all right, he taught you everything whether you liked it or not. Members of the Circle have actually benefited from your skills, placing orders through Angelo, or through Grant. It’s been good, watching you work connections, bring things to the region, but now things are different, now you’ve found something and you’re headed for a dangerous path.”

  “This book,” Max said, reaching into his jacket.

  Samuel lurched into a coughing fit, Gladys took a step back, clutching a small bag hanging from a string around her neck, and Allen put his hand on Max’s. “You can leave that where it is.”

  Maxwell withdrew his hand without taking the book out and poured a glass of iced tea for Samuel. He accepted it gratefully. “I’ve come by that, and a piece of stone, looks like wood, but I’ve never seen the like.”

  “That explains more than you know,” Allen said. “That book is powerful, have you read it?”

  “From cover to cover, it’s fully translated,” Max replied. “Completely mad too, a lot of laws, rituals, and a list of names, a few I remember from lessons. Not all bad, not all good, like it’s written by someone who just didn’t care how the book was used,” he replied, consciously making an effort to accommodate their apparent belief in the book. “Not recommended for summer reading.”

  “That’s what we were afraid of,” Allen said. “Is there a section on the Covenant?”

  “At the end,” Maxwell said. “It’s what my father was looking for on and off most of his life, lives up to the lessons he gave me. The section refers back to a lot of the previous parts of the book, how those passages break the rules. Doesn’t’ always go into details about consequences though. I guess to a believer it’s either a horror show, or a kind of ‘how to break the world’ manual. That Covenant deal is simple, but strict, not easy to play with.”

  “It exists?” Gladys asked quietly. “The pact between the High Lords and the Gods? The laws are there?” She pointed at his jacket, where the book was neatly tucked into his inside pocket.

  “Laid out in fine print. A man proves his power by resurrecting himself, then surrenders to the will of the Heavens – that’s the translation, none of this ‘Gods’ business – and the heavens take him, restoring him to a natural death. For their part of the deal, the Masters of All keep the primordial darkness, the power of all things and the cycle of life in balance, so mankind can’t monkey around with the order of things on their own.” Max cleared his throat then and recited one of the final lines. “’Upon the hill, Witnesses chosen during a new dawn beheld their Master ascend as a being of light. All gathered felt the whole love in his being, the truth of his heart, bathe them and hold them. Then the Witnesses did travel, sharing the light that followed them.” Max took a moment as his head spun and his fingers tingled. He shook it off and nodded slowly. “The end is brighter than the beginning,” Max said quietly. “Horror show of darkness and things that hunt human like a lion hunts elk.”

  “No more quotes for now,” Samuel said quietly. “Especially from the beginning. The first translator died before he reached the end, transferring the text from Ancient Greek to Latin. I know you may not believe it, but that book contains knowledge that can unlock a fount of power in someone with the right upbringing.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Maxwell said, his back straightening. “My father wouldn’t let me forget how incredible I could be if I minded my lessons with him, if I took a moment to be open to it. I know his books and lectures better than I knew him, thanks to all this.”

  “He was his lectures,” Allen said. “Whether we like it or not, that was his life, and he was hard to deal with sometimes because of it, but he was a good man on the whole.”

  “Helped a lot of people,” Samuel said. “Helped me too.”

  “I knew him differently,” Maxwell said. “Too tired to get in a row about it, so we’ll leave it at that. Now, I need a buyer for this, and Angelo isn’t touching it, he isn’t telling me who made the order either. So if any of you could help me, I’d appreciate it. This cash is a new life for Bernie and Scott,” Max said forcefully. “I can sell this, give them each four thousand for whatever schooling they want, because this band is going nowhere, and I’ll take the other two thousand to figure out what I want to do. It’s the least I can do after dragging them on the road with me for a couple years.”

  “Max, I had no idea,” Allen said.

  “This last tour was hard,” Max said. “Zack is on his way out, and I’m pushing him on, good riddance, and we’re not finding a new howler, so that’s it. I’ll quit so they don’t feel like they’re leaving me, some dreams just gotta end before they start taking what you love away.”

  “So, you were going to give most of the money away,” Gladys said, a strange expression on her face that seemed joyful and sad at the same time. Max hadn’t seen it before. “So they could have a future.”

  “The plan,” Max said, nodding. He started pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket, then remembered he was sitting beside Samuel and put them back.

  “We’ll pay you to keep it then, get a collection,” Samuel said, his breath rattling.

  “No, you’ll just make the connection between me and the customer, then he’ll pay me. Doesn’t make sense to pay me to keep this thing,” Max said.

  “That book and the stone both have power of their own, aside from the knowledge the book contains,” Allen said. “It’s important that they stay with you because you were trained to handle exactly what those things can do. As much as you hated every minute of it, now that training is important in the presence of something so spiritually influential. The book and especially the stone have most likely already imprinted themselves on you. Things that powerful do that, and it’s not good to have them passed around, the fewer people they’re attached to, the better. You have to be the bearer, I’m sorry.”

  “This stone couldn’t be more dead. If it’s petrified wood, then it’s been a tree, got cut off, died, then got old, and turned to stone. It couldn’t be more dead, it can’t know anything, it can’t do anything,” Max said, so irritated by how ridiculous it was that these people, one of whom he’d respected for over a decade and saw as an adopted father, were so concerned with superstition.

  “All right,” Allen said. “I’ve always respected your point of view, Max. Now I’d like you to give us just a minute to listen, then you can ride off, or go drop yourself in the lake, whatever you like.”

  “All right,” Max said, leaning back in the old wooden chair until it creaked.

  “Spirits follow the Dawn Shard around, it is used to attract them for rituals. No one knows for sure where it came from, we don’t know exactly how it got to North America, or why it was brought here or by who, but we do know that it has been in the wild for too long. We have seen it in pictures with politicians, musicians and artists over the las
t few years, and then we heard it had been brought together with the dangerous book you’re holding, which is actually perfectly safe as long as it is in your hands.”

  “Why is it safe with me, but it nearly gave Samuel here a coronary?” Max asked.

  “You read what it said,” Gladys said. “You don’t believe, and even if you start believing, you’ll never use it. Your father trained you too well, and you are too strong to be tempted.”

  “I’ve come to call that a stubborn streak,” Allen said. “But it’s true nonetheless. That book will tempt anyone in this room many times more than it would you. We’ve all lost people we’d be tempted to break the natural order for, and some of us would want to extend our lives. We’d like to think that we could resist, but you never know until the opportunity presents itself.”

  “If you followed most of the non-sacrifice passages in this book, nothing would happen, because it’s a fiction. All it did was cost me gas money, force me to talk to some unsavory characters that each had a unique and terrible smell, and get me shot at while I was looking for it. If that’s power, then it is massive, but other than that, it’s a book, just a bloody old book.”

  “Max, just try to believe for a minute,” Gladys pleaded.

  Max put up his hands. “Fine, because I know you’re good people with some strange business, but the good sort nonetheless.”

  “All right, to the point. That shard has a demon attached to it,” Allen said. “We don’t know it’s name, but it is an inhuman who has never been alive on this earth. It collects the souls of the talented and desperate. We’ve managed to find evidence of it and the shard together going back to 1938, but that’s just for musicians. Gladys found evidence that one of the earliest people to have dealings with that demon was Pope John the Twelfth. All of them rose to high power or fame, and they were all twenty seven when they died.”

  “I’m not twenty seven,” Max said. “Safe for a few years.”

  “This is when we think you’ll be approached, right now.”

  “I knew it was going to happen before the Dawn Shard was a part of this, thank you,” Sam said.

  “Yes, we know,” Gladys said. “Not everyone has good sight in both worlds.”

  “I’ll trade my third eye for a good lung,” Samuel said. He turned towards Max, gravely serious. “It’s on you, son. That demon is going to approach you with temptations you cannot imagine, and it will be just as you’re starting to believe. You’ve tried for a while to be famous on your own, to get recognized for all your hard work, and you see that road coming to an end. I know what that’s like, more than you know.”

  “All right,” Max said quietly. “That’s as much as I can take. I’m sorry you’ve got fewer days ahead than behind,” he told Sam. “But I’m going to take a few of these.” He pointed at the platter on the table. “Then I’m going to get some gas from the shed, top up my bike, and disappear for a few hours.” No one said anything more as he pushed one-quarter sandwich in his mouth and took two more in each hand then left.

  III

  Maxwell didn’t intend to ride to his father’s gravesite, but he was rolling down the pebbly drive into the old graveyard before he realized it. The once whitewashed church standing by the graveyard was being reclaimed by the forest, abandoned before Max arrived in Canada. One wall had fallen in, and the eastern side had fallen outwards. Rotting pews were barely visible beneath the wreckage of the simple old wood shingle roof. The entrance, really an archway thee feet deep set into the low front wall, still stood, its door absent now, though Max could remember the finely carved cedar of the heavy door, with its iron handles. He drove onto the flat stones that marked the end of the graveyard path in front of the church, grabbed a blanket from his saddlebags and walked to the quiet plot where his father was laid to rest.

  A few dead branches had fallen across his father’s grave and those surrounding it. The grass was a little long, but lush and green. Max took some time to clear the branches away from several plots, throwing them into the bush surrounding the quiet site.

  When he was finished he looked at the simple grey stone. There was a pentagram with oak leaves around it above his father’s epitaph, which read:

  Charles Foster

  Father

  Community Leader

  He will be missed.

  1910 - 1969

  There was a ritual his father insisted on when Max was given the first ring that didn’t have much meaning beyond the aesthetic. Anything that didn’t have religious meaning had to be left by the door. Max maintained a version of that ritual, pulling a silver ram’s head, a pentagram, the circular Seal of Julius, and a treble clef ring off his fingers. The Seal of Julius and pentagram were religious symbols, but they meant little to him other than looking flashy and feeling good on his fingers. He put them all on top of his father’s rounded gravestone, hung his leather jacket on one side, and lay down beneath it, using his folded blanket as a pillow.

  The smell of the earth and humid air surrounded him, he listened to the sounds of birds and rustling leaves for a while before beginning the next part of his visit. The long shade allowed the grass to grow thick and richly green. With the tall trees surrounding the small graveyard, it was difficult to tell what time it was, but Max knew it was early afternoon. To him it had already been a long day.

  “Miss having you around, old man,” he said, looking through the clearing in the trees to the scantly clouded blue sky. “Don’t know what they want from me this time, but I’m pretty sure it’s my fault for picking up the trail you were following most of your life. Got what you were looking for, what you didn’t even tell Allen about. I think they actually believe it can resurrect the dead, change the world.” He never knew his father as a young man, he was forty-five when Max was born, still vital, but turning grey. Most of his memories of his father were of him leaving and returning.

  There were the lessons, which were unavoidable. Max learned about different religions, their origins, the laws of the magical universe, and the ‘old ways’ as Max’s father and his friends referred to them. He enjoyed most of the history, but the so-called practical side seemed pointless, as good as well wishing and hand wringing while looking up at the stars for a response.

  In all the rituals and so-called magical circles Max was forced to attend, the most magical sensation he had was a case of the goose bumps. The most common feeling he endured was having to go to the bathroom after the first forty minutes. None of the high magic, incantations, prayers, invocations, charms, or anything else seemed to do anything in the world. He could recognize the comfort faith brought to some people, and that there brand of paganism seemed to keep a large community together, but that’s where the benefits ended for Maxwell.

  When he fell asleep exactly, Maxwell didn’t know, but he started awake when his head rolled onto his recently healed ear. He opened his eyes in time to see the headstone begin to move, and rolled out from under it. The granite fell forward with enough weight to crush his head and shoulders. He got to his feet and stared at the blank side of the stone, wide-eyed, a rotten, churning feeling in his gut.

  A chill wind pulled at his shirt and hair. Looking up, he could see the church standing as upright as it was when the congregation was in service, and the wrought iron fencing standing around the small graveyard. At the end of the lane was an arching tree with people hanging from nooses on three main branches. The men and women slowly twisted in the wind, and Maxwell recognized the scene from an old picture, but couldn’t quite remember why they were killed.

  A slender hand landed on his back, and he turned. It was a young boy. The family he hung with was around him, looking to Maxwell mournfully. “Free us. Take us to water. Give us peace.”

  A movement caught Max’s eye, and he looked to the doorway of the church. The boards weren’t white the way a whitewashed shingle building should be, they had the glisten and yellow color of bone. The figure in the doorway was square-shouldered, tall, his narrow face stern, and
the clothing he wore shifted as though it was made of shadow. It felt as though the man’s steel grey gaze weighed Maxwell down. He took a step back and tripped over his father’s downed gravestone.

  The clear day had returned, the cool air replaced with the thick, humid heat of the afternoon and the tree at the crossroads by the end of the church’s drive was gone along with the people who hung there.

  Maxwell picked up his rings and tried to pull the corner of his jacket free from the stone. “Fucking geezer!” he shouted as he fought to retrieve his leathers. “I’m either stoned or you were right, but it doesn’t matter now, because I’ll never be back to clear your grave!” he freed his jacket and put it on.

  The thought of those sandwiches being drugged seemed ridiculous, but less so than having waking visions of dead families, so in a demonstration of distaste for everything his father believed in, he bent over and shoved two fingers down his throat. He gagged and vomited up less than half of what he ate, mostly forcing bile up. By the third try, he was down with one knee on the tombstone and one on the grass. He didn’t notice a car pull in on the side of the road behind him.

  The light touch of a hand on his shoulder startled him out of the desperate act of trying to regurgitate the quarter sandwiches he’d had possibly hours before. He spun around, falling backwards.

  It was Miranda, beautiful with the blue of the sky behind her, wearing a summer dress so light he could see the bathing suit she wore underneath. It was in a new style, flashy, the sort of thing Farrah Fawcett would wear. She looked almost as worried as Bernie, who was standing behind her. He dropped to one knee to attend to Max. “What’d you take? What’s the reaction? Was it the LSD?”

  “Fucking sandwiches,” Maxwell replied, still stunned enough to reply honestly, but not so out of his mind that he couldn’t recognize how ludicrous the answer was. “They must’ve drugged me with the sandwiches,” he explained. It still sounded ridiculous aloud, and he surprised himself with an involuntary snicker.