Harper thought Penny would never fall asleep. He’d been lying next to her in his bed for what seemed like hours. She was afraid to sleep on her own. He’d reasoned that if the ghost came back, at least he’d get to see it, too. But he realised too late that having her there would cut back on his time with the Magic Book. Finally she’d dozed off.
Harper slid out from under the bedcovers and crouched on the floor by the bed, making sure Penny hadn’t been disturbed. She turned over on her side and exhaled. So far, so good.
He slid under the bed and pulled out the box. As per the ritual he had developed, he slowly lifted out each item and placed them around him on the floor: small notepad, larger notebook, special pen, and leather pouch—which now held the shell casing from Whitby and two sea snail shells. Harper took the casing out of the pouch and fondled it. He knew what it was because Grandad had taught him. Grandad still had his great-grandad’s service weapon from the World War in his bottom drawer under his folded pyjamas. It was a secret; you weren’t supposed to have them.
It was a beauty, too: a Webley revolver that fired a .455 cartridge. Grandad let Harper hold it, and showed him how to break and reload. He had a .38 as well. Grandad made Harper solemnly promise to do him a favour and shoot him if he ever got too barmy. He told Harper to bury him with the .455 and keep the .38 for himself. Harper thought that was so hilarious he fell down on the bed laughing, but later he pretended to stand up and take an oath. He knew Grandad was just having a laugh. Plus he loved his Grandad. Harper would never shoot him, and not just because he had guns and bullets and chocolate in his pyjama drawer. Grandad had some other cool stuff from the big war, too, like a silver embroidered picture of the Taj Mahal and a jungle helmet.
Harper wished he had Grandad’s guns and helmet now. Or even Grandad himself. He might know how old that casing was, and what it might have been used for. It was even possible, Harper calculated, that someone had shot at Dracula with it. Dracula was undead, after all. And it was a well-known fact that he favoured Whitby. Why on earth couldn’t it then follow that the immortal Vlad the Impaler popped ’round to Whitby now and then? Even to the present day? One must always be prepared, that was what his Grandad said.
The rest of Harper’s arsenal consisted of a stub of candle (even though he didn’t have any matches), one of Potter’s old I.D. tags, a miniature ship in a bottle that Mum had bought him in Whitby, and … the Magic Book.
He slowly unfolded the dusty green velvet.
Terra, Rectificando, Occultum, Lapidem, he whispered as the cloth opened flat and the book lay before him. The gilding on its cover glinted in the moonlight that fell through the tall bedroom windows. Harper turned the pages.
“I, Harper the Hammer Wielder, do here command you,” he whispered as the fragile parchment rustled under his fingers.
He picked up his smaller notepad and started to copy some of the symbols. But was hard to concentrate, he was so sleepy.
Harper’s chin dropped to his chest, and he dozed.
Then woke with a start.
The candle stub was standing upright on the floor, and the candle was alight.
The pages of the book were turning on their own.
Faster and faster they flipped by. Harper held his hands back and sat mesmerised.
Finally the book stopped turning its pages and lay open. The candle flame quivered.
Harper bent over, heart pounding, and squinted at what was printed there.
There was an engraving of something that looked like a big ice cream cone, titled The Hermetic Ray. The illustration showed the Ray pointing downward, with light shining out of its pointed end onto trees and hills, rivers and the ocean, while stars and planets whirled in the sky above.
The Indigo Ray will link with the Purple Ray, and much that is now dark will be brought to light, the Book said. The Lord of the Violet Ray, under whom all the Masters of the Western tradition serve in this present phase of Evolution, is also Lord of the Elements, with power to command the waves and storms. From the darkness, there will dawn cycle by cycle of spiritual perception, mental illumination, and astral glory.
Harper’s eyes burned. What did it mean? The Book clearly wanted him to see it, to understand it. He raised his head slowly, cautiously, and glanced around the room. Nothing. No ghost, no one else other than the lump that was Penny snoring in the bed. Harper wished more than anything that Evan were here. He’d know what it all meant. But it sounded like whoever possessed this Ray would more or less conquer all.
Harper studied the picture of the Ray with its spores of light or inspiration or whatever they were spraying out of its tip and across the firmament. There were dark, reddish-black splotches on the page. Blood? He ran his finger over them and felt a thrill.
Was he meant to find this Ray thing?
He must be. This was what the ghost wanted him to see, was trying to tell him. This was why he’d been shown the Book—so he could find the Ray and solve everything.
He blew out the candle and carefully stowed his treasures back in their box except for his small notepad, which he stuffed in the pocket of his hoodie. All the while, he kept an eye on the sleeping form of Penny. She didn’t stir under the flowered coverlet, her hair spread like an octopus across the pillow.
Once everything was safely stowed under the bed, Harper slipped through his bedroom door and crept down the corridor in his socks. He’d bet anything there was a secret passageway. That was what he needed to find. The passageway would take him to the Ray.
Harper tapped quietly on the walls as he went, stopping, listening, tapping lightly, then moving on.
Terra Rectificando.
GONG. Harper nearly peeled out of his skin.
But it was only a clock, marking the time from a room somewhere nearby. There were clocks all over this house, in the entryway, the corridors, along the gallery, and in the rooms, sometimes buried under piles of junk where you couldn’t even see them. Harper waited out the gonging, counting eleven.
He caught his breath, eyeing the corridor leading to his parents’ door, in case they came out.
All remained quiet, dark except for the blue shivers of moonlight that made their way into the hallway from some of the open bedroom doors.
He proceeded slowly, tap, tap, tapping on the wall as he went.
Hadn’t his mum said she found some kind of a door, bricked up in a wall?