XV. Occult Plots of a Millennial Persuasion

The Book of Splendor is more than a book, more than a collection of spells, more than I was ever capable of fathoming. Generations of men could spend lifetimes combing the world for lost secrets, eldritch incantations, and scribblings of antediluvian madness yet still fail to match a fraction of its depths. In feverish confusion I sought the Light and in return it bequeathed a still-beating piece of itself unto me. Gone forever then was my desperate war for sanity, replaced by the devastating noise of serenity.

For the unworthy it is a membranous horror, a grotesque lump of flesh bound in luxuriant hair and gleaming brass. Its knowledge is a whisper spoken only to those with ears to hear. Then and only then will their eyes behold all that could or can be written within. Cradled in Marcel’s arm, opened to just the right place where blood has run fresh and then dried, Penelope sees something new.

Spreading across both pages runs a splendid filigree of winged aberrations. Within the ornate frame is a landscape of a towering megalopolis standing within concentric rings of land. Behind that city, floating in mid-air behind towering spires which defy known physics, is a triangle, and within that triangle is a lush, verdant forest of pine with snow-capped mountains in the distance – a window into another world.

“Dorian,” Penelope shouts. “Run!”

Our brother stands there, motionless, eyes locked straight ahead and wide, unblinking. His pupils dilated in the dim moonlight. His arms are locked at his side, perfectly straight, yet every now and then his fingers may tremble, perhaps a subtle jerk of the shoulders, an occassional twitch of a knee, or a faint quiver of the lip – ticks and flinches that betray a deep anxiety.

Marcel levitates up from the obelisk and glides over my sister, rotating in mid-air and landing between them. “Why should he run? He’s going home.”

“Peh-puh-Penelope,” Dorian whimpers.

“Let him go,” my sister says, charging at the vampire. “Or I’ll–” She freezes in place then floats a few inches up from the ground, arms and legs flailing about helplessly. Marcel’s other hand is raised with his fingers contorted like claws. When he jerks his wrist back, my sister floats over to him, arms and legs flailing about like she’s drowning.

“Or you’ll what?” he asks. “I don’t think your sister will be saving you this time.” Marcels smirks and waves my book in front of her as a taunt. “Although, I will admit, it is impressive how you broke her seal on the old shack. I tried everything I know and couldn’t get the door to budge, but you – POW!” He chuckles and performs an explosion with his hand, sending her reeling about in the air and hanging upside down. “If it weren’t for you, I would never have been able to get it.”

That’s when my sister begins to wonder if Crowley is who put her up to this. Perhaps he was their spy, following her all these years, tracing her every move, until the day when she would encounter my book. Or, perhaps, he sought the book for his own diabolical ends, to surpass his own occult limitations. When Marcel waves his hand in the air, drawing her nearer, he provides a clue.

“I don’t know why Crowley wanted your sister’s book.” His pupils dilated then constrict. “It looks like you don’t either – yes, I can read your mind.” He smirks and runs a finger through his long hair, tossing it back. “Although I can see why – as long as I have it, her protections won’t work against me.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, that depends on what you’re going to do,” he replies. “I could let you go. After all, you did me a big favor – I would have never thought to use a car battery, how do you and your sister come up with so many novel ideas?”

“I guess we’re just smart like that,” Penelope says through clenched teeth.

“No, no, no,” Marcel replies. “Smart is not the word to describe it, it’s faustian – and the dream! Even the most skilled of human magicians can’t fend off a psychic attack in a dream. Although, you didn’t really do that one yourself, did you?” He smirks. “That was Olivia.”

“So, what happens if you let us go?”

“Us?” Marcel takes a step back and waves his hand to our brother. Dorian jerks into motion and glides toward him. He wraps his arms around Marcel and the vampire leans back into my brother’s embrace, stroking his cheek. Penelope recalls the cover to Dorian’s book, ‘The Wallachian Waif’, how Petra fell back into the arms of her Count, how Marcel and Dorian look exactly like them here in the graveyard.

Dorian’s eyes stay fixed to the middle distasnce but his ice-blue irises begin to wiggle – darting about frantically, until finally moving jut enough to look at our sister. “Huh-hel… I… I can’t...”

Marcel kisses him on the cheek. “We are going home,” he says. “You are free to go, unharmed, if you don’t try to stop us.”

“And if I refuse?”

Marcel huffs. “If that’s the way you want to be, then fine.” He steps away from my brother and begins to fly up into the air, carrying Penelope with him. Staring her down, suspended above the Nosferatus who are growling together as if in ritual chant, he cocks his head to the side. “No, I don’t know why they tried to kill your sister. They never tell me anything.”

He waves his hand again and Penelope is sent careening back the way she came, towards Rukriz, towards the roiling mass of clouds and fog. The open cemetery plots and bowing Nosferatu recede into grey nothing as the tendrils of mist swallow her. Then it feels as though she is no longer soaring but drifting, passed along by ephemeral cilia.

#

The laws of physics hobble and confound our angle of the world, in ways that even the brightest and most capable minds today fail to grasp. Gravity, inertia, entropy, obstacles though they may be, when they are gone, when the flow of time and the distance between lands becomes immeasurable, it instills a vertigo of the mind. When cast into the mist by the force of Marcel’s psychic power, Penelope loses all sense of place. Soaring through the umbral fugue is like falling up through molasses, flowing in a river of soup that drags her in, like an esophagus swalling her into the abyss.

She lands upon a hard surface and skids to a stop. Coughing when the air knocked out of her returns, Penelope’s heels graze against a smooth, hard surface – perhaps a wall. “Dorian, hang on,” she sputters, using what leverage she can grasp in this murky haze that reels and spins like a centrifuge. She stumbles from a twinge in her side. Not a broken bone, not quite a bruise, nonetheless a nagging pain she stifles.

Running back with one hand planted to her ribs, my sister calls out, “I’m coming!” Then on and on she charges, the supernal, inverted vapors sliding off her like the miserable stench of futility. On, and on, and on, much further than she knows Marcel threw her. Much further than wherever in some house or inside the manor she landed is from the cemetery.

Then a dark mass appears to her left. It solidifies into a doorway, carved with runes and adorned by a wreath. Little candles of wax burn low and fat, their wax spilled out onto the framing and floor. The magical seals of Mami Hrobar – she must be in the manor, and that must mean this is the closet that Doctor Arthwitte was sealed in. Breeathe ragged, Penelope jiggles the locked knob then gives the door three timid knocks.

“Doctor Arthwitte?” she whispers, pressing one ear close to listen for his snoring. There is a rough, dull scrape of wood dragging on wood, followed by the sound of footsteps, heavy footsteps, and the excited clicking of the Nosferatu’s claws. Some inhuman strength pounds against the door, knocking my sister aback. Mami Hrobar’s wreath rocks up and down, nails and onions rattiling until it all collapses on the ground in an oily heap.

The bulbous candles flicker out and begin hardening, then the knob turns, slightly, cautiously, ever so slowly, until jerking hard to the left and snapping, falling apart as pieces and heavy, metal thuds. The door pops off its hinges, rattles loose, and begins to fall forward. Penelope shrieks and throws her arms up to defend herself, but the crash never comes.

Gnarled, black talons erupting from the fingertips of a once human hand catch the door and slowly guide it to fall on the side. Standsing before her, face sallow and gaunt, hair ragged and hanging in sweaty clumps on his head, eyes the same red glow as the Nosferatus, is Herr Raubtier. Large fangs packed too tightly into his mouth bulge out his lips and extend his jaw, leaving his speech low yet slurred.

“Ah, Miss MacClane. You should not be here.”

“You seem reasonable,” my sister replies. “Thanks, that would have hurt.”

He chuckles, flashing a glint of fang. “A courtesy between scientists.” Herr Raubtier extends a hand and raises her up to her feet. “A tragedy, really. All the marvels of modern technology, a wealth of knowledge across history, yet we still can’t predict the future.” He turns and marches back into his bedroom, arms crossed behind his back. His fingers spasm from the pain of his newfound claws, his jaw popping every now and then from its distension. “All we can do is react to the present accordingly.”

“What are you going to do?”

He turns and steps around a stool in the center of his room. Hanging above it, secured firmly to the rafter, is a noose. Herr Raubtier clears his throat, “As I said, it would be better if you were not here.”

“So, your cure doesn’t work,” Penelope says, disappointed. Though she harbors no ill will for the man, she understands the dire implications for Doctor Arthwitte. There’s little chance he avoided the same fate.

Taking the noose in his hand, Herr Raubtier chuckles. “You’re a smart girl, you know this is another type of cure. Guns are less reliable than you would imagine, and the Hrobars insisted I quarantine before we could find my rifle. Luckily I had my old survival pack in the closet – ever prepared.”

“Where are they?” Penelope asks.

“Hiding, hopefully. I wish they’d take the opportunity to flee but they will never leave this village. Their roots are deep. This is why time is of the essence.” He steps up onto the stool. “I know all their hiding places; I can’t risk some subconscious memory in my mutated state being able to track them down.”

“But you’ll die.”

“Will I?” He grins, laying the noose around his neck, draped over his shoulders. “I was promised a new life upon the completion of my tasks here in Rukriz. However, if I waste too much time with you, my mental faculties may deteriorate to the point that rebirth is impossible.”

“You mean the psychic vampires, they’ll reincarnate you?”

“Is that the name you made up for them?” Herr Raubtier asks. “Quaint. Nosferatus. Psychic vampires. Perhaps you shouldn’t be an adventuring detective and work in something more imaginative. You would certainly live longer.”

“They steal human life and use it to keep themselves alive, seems like a fitting description.”

“I’d wager every living soul in the world is a psychic vampire in your esteem then. Tell me, is the newborn babe in its mother’s arms a vampire? Is a wounded bird nursed to health by a veterinarian stealing their life essence? Everyone demands something of someone to exist.”

“I wouldn’t describe them like that.”

“Perhaps the Watchers would.”

“Who are the Watchers?” Penelope asks. “Crowley said they tried to kill Olivia – are you working for them?!”

“They’ve been known by many different names over time. Shell companies and parlor clubs, whole governments, but at the bottom of it is always… the Watchers.” Herr Raubtier tightens the noose around his throat with a sharp jerk. “You truly have no idea what you’ve become involved in, do you? Does it anger you?”

“What?”

“Not knowing,” Herr Raubtier muses. “When I first met them, I was… mortified. Everything I thought I understood about the world, medicine, history. All of it was a lie, we were never masters of our own design. They were always there. Guiding us. That even our rebellions were dominated by them. Even your sister, the most powerful sorceress in hundreds of thousands of years, lost to them. What makes you so sure you stand a chance?”

“I’ve survived so far.”

“I’m sure you have, and tell me: where is your brother?” A beat. “Where is your mentor? For that matter, do you know where you are? Do you even know why I’m here?”

“The fog responds to electromagnetic radiation,” Penelope says. “I’ll use that to find a way out. I’ll work the rest out after.”

“Electromagnetic…” Herr Raubtier’s voice trails off. “You are not playing in a laboratory or performing research for some medieval quack. You are tilting at gods.”

“Odd for a scientist to talk about gods.”

“Are you afraid yet, Miss MacClane? Make no mistake, it takes every ounce of my restraint to not leap across this desk and tear open that tiny throat of yours with my teeth.”

Penelope gulps. “Is that what you want to do?”

“I want for nothing. Moments after my body expires, I will live on again, courtesy of our benevolent masters. What about you?” Herr Raubtier kicks the stool out from underneath himself with a firm kick. His body drops and the rope snaps – along with his spinal cord.

Penelope wakes with a frightened gasp, laying adrift in the miasmic soup. Heel to the wall, she rises the same as she did before. Could it be that she was unconscious, or perhaps asleep? Maybe the fall left her delirious. Her deep inhale stings her side far worse than before, and it takes considerably more effort to rise than it did before.

She examines her surroundings to find the inside of Herr Raubtier’s room. The door is busted from its frame and cast out in the hallway. His desk scattered with old notes and his latest failed cure. She takes a step forward and spies the stool, knocked over and laying on the floor. Then something moves, swings in close from a heavy rope, and brushes against her shoulder. Penelope does not look, merely takes a deep gulps and trudges out of the room. However, she once again has undeniable proof that the angle of dreams is more than capable of crossing into our angle of the world.

#

“Where are we going?” Dorian feebly asks.

All around him the Nosferatu have formed a circle, arms interlocked, an unearthly glottal choking sound coming out from them in an alien choral. Marcel has taken bones from a nearby pile of char and crushed it in his palms, spreading the powder around my brother in the shape of a triangle. High above them the starry night sky twinkles, but somewhere between them the stars become dull. The sky in that small space over them has grown pocks like choppy water, demarcating a vague shadow overhead.

“We aren’t going anywhere,” Marcel says, beaming. “We’re staying right here; we’ll just bring more of the world into the fold.”

There are many who rise to the challenge of ascension but fall for lack of proper footing. Ever eager to attain whatever ambition they seek: the power to enact their whims, to bend the will of others to theirs, or to simply gain base pleasures, their downfall is always the same. Not merely hubris or pride, but a lust, an avarice, the overwhelming desire that can only spring from absolute deprivation. The pathway to the Light is singular, but there are many failed paths within the fold.

Marcel does not realize it, but he is attempting his ritual out of place. The heavens, the pawns, evertything is out of alignment – but he does not care. For him this is the moment of reconciliation, the great destiny he was born for, and he will have his star. Sprouting from my book, just barely poking through the leathery vellum, emerges legs like than of an arachnid, chitinous and crooked.

Dorian shivers but still remains pinned to the ground. “How did you do it?”

“Find the book? It wasn’t easy – usually I’m good at detecting these sorts of things. At first, I was worried my great grandfather had hidden it from me as a test.” He smirks, “Now I know he wasn’t the one hiding it.”

“But the door was hidden. The dirt was firm. How?”

“Like this.” Marcel waves a hand over the earth and the earth moves with it, parting like sea water and piling into mopunds on eaither side. With another flick of his wrist the soil returns to its original place, untouched, as if nothing moved at all. “Can’t you do that?”

“No, I’m not a vampire.”

Marcel scowls, “I’m not either.” With the snap of his fingers the Nosferatu cease their gurgled mass and spread out in a wider circle, allowing him to step into the triangle, standing over my brother.

“Why are you letting me speak?” Dorian asks. “You didn’t let me have this much control before.”

“I don’t want to control you.”

“Please let me go.”

“All of you are so strong willed for humans. That’s why the Star Queen was able challenge the Archons. It’s how your sister fought back in her dreams. You share their blood.”

“I’m not like them,” Dorian whimpers. “I’m useless.”

“You’re right. Your sister wants to learn about the world so she can control it, to make it better. She wants Power. The Star Queen was no different, but you… you want to understand people.” He places a palm on my brother’s chest while his constricting and releasing pupils stare right through him. “That’s why you read those ‘useless books’ isn’t it? Because you’re alone. You don’t want control or power… you just don’t want to be alone.”

“Because I’m your star?”

Marcel lets out a little laugh. “Yes.” He points up to the night sky, now even more obscured just overhead where a parallel triangle is forming in the air. “But not out there, in here.” He places a hand over my brother heart. “I don’t want to be alone either. That’s why they made me a human, to hurt the same way, to feel the same way, and now I’ve found you.”

“What makes me so special?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Marcel coos, sitting down to rest in my brother’s lap. “They don’t give me anything other than orders. Or worse.” He lifts his fallen hair back over an ear and smiles, places the book next to my brother, and then embraces him, resting his cheek upon Dorian’s chest. “It’s why they were never able to kill the Star Queen… but we could open the gate with the one power they never had.”

“How are we going to open it?”

Marcel’s eyes meet his. “Love.”

The Nosferatu each take a step forward then plunge their black talons into their bellies. Wet, hot blood spills out onto the ground, spewing from their mouths and orifices. Something stirs, and the roiling fog cloud beyond ceases, dissipating away, returning normalcy to our angle of the world. Still, that ominous black triangle over my brother grows darker.

“But we–”

Before my brother can finish, Marcel’s lips touch his. The Nosferatu spasm wildly then fall to their knees, their blood spilling out until it trickles to nothing more than a few drops. One by one they fall, their bodies spent, their purpose fulfilled.

“Now you’ll never be alone again.”

“Then why can’t I move? You said you didn’t want to control me.”

“I’m not, it’s the triangle, see? You’re bound to it, so it will protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

Marcel smiles. “From the beginning.”

Shadows undulating within the triangle above them burn away in a ring of cyan fire. Where once was a night sky there is now a panoply of horrors. A forest of trees, gnarled and bulbous with shrieking faces like knots. Horned imps wearing beaked masks play trumpets riding beasts of burden with cloven hooves and spined backs. They drag plow sized ribcages behind them, tilling a soil that bleeds excrement. That cyans fire which burns from the portal spins out around it like sparklers casting a trail.

At that moment, Penelope emerges through the open hole where a cemetery gate once was. With the fog cleared, running back to the graveyard was no trouble. However, an odd twinge still pangs her when she draws too deep of a breath gasping at the grotesque display before her. Then a curious tapping on her boot distracts her from the ominous ritual occurring. She looks down to find my book, slender appendages barely poking out as they recede back into the pages, followed by an excited, chitinous chirruping.

My sister takes the open book and hurries towards our brother, pinned down by Marcel. Penelopes takes them in: the triangle of bone and scattered Nosferatu viscera, the swirling vortex of energy crackling overhead, or how the moon seems to take on a strange, umbral shadow which projects out all around it.

Inspiration is not only born out of necessity. Sometimes, fear and ignorance can comingle into a creativity all their own, and as my sister takes in the portait bled out on the pages, she decides the best recourse is improvisation. Penelope claps the book shut as hard as she can and the spinning halo of of energy spins out into a little line. Then a horrendous crack runs up the middle of the portal and it explodes into a rain of shards that dissolve before reaching the ground.

Sonorous and booming, a loud pop echoes over them and Marcel is flung from my brother and back, landing back against a granite tombstone that topples over, and him with it. Penelope runs to our brother who slowly realizes he can move and gets ups, dusting off his shoulders.

“Are you okay?” she asks, clutching my book. “What was that?”

Dorian coughs, “He said it was a gateway. He was trying to bring something here.”

“Like what?” Penelope opens my book to examine the portrait, but the blood has drained, receded, returned into itself and left smooth vellum in its place. She flips the pages but one after the other reveals the same nothing.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Marcel says, flying up from behind the overturned marker. “I’ll have to make more of them now.” He curls his fingers into claws and holds one hand out at my sister. Dorian steps between them and Penelope sticks her head out from behind him.

Marcel’s brow furrows as he squints his eyes, screws up his lips, then swings his opposite hand out in the same fashion. Perhaps his powers were spent in that ritual, or, perhaps, Penelope closing my book severed his connection which bypassed my protection. When his gaze shifts from my book to her hairpin, Marcel realizes that his will can no longer penetrate mine.

“Penelope, what’s going on?” Dorian asks.

“Not so strong now, are you?” Penelope scoffs. “Your little psychic attacks were a lot tougher in my dreams.”

“What are you talking about?” Marcel snarls. “I don’t know how to do that. My mother does.”