CHAPTER TWELVE

BEFORE THE TAXI HAD CLEARED CENTRAL PARK, THE CABBIE squirmed around and, with a speculative grin on his chubby face, said, “You just coming from a party?”

“Yes. A party.”

“Did you have a good time?” he asked, much too intimately.

Chandal frowned. “Not really.”

“Oh.”

By the time they had reached Central Park West, the broken rhythm of the ride with its stop and go action began to churn Chandal’s stomach. A steady pounding began in her chest and a fine perspiration broke out across her forehead.

Her mouth felt full of cotton, and when without warning the cab made a sharp turn which threw her heavily against the door, the nausea started to gather in her throat. The taxi leveled off again, continued on smoothly. She let herself relax, and leaned back in her seat. Grateful for a moment of hushed quiet, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander.

Then, very abruptly, the cab stopped.

The sound of the cabbie pushing up the meter’s flag brought Chandal out of her stupor. It was a nasty sound. The sound of shock. Cataclysmic. It made Chandal feel that the familiar world was in some strange way meaningless, or rather, that it no longer had the meaning that she had always taken for granted.

“Three-eighty,” the man announced after a brief silence.

Chandal fumbled in her pocketbook and handed him a five-dollar bill. “Thanks,” she said wearily, and closed her purse without waiting for change.

“Right.”

Even before she opened the car door she had realized that something was wrong. She closed her eyes and opened them again—squinted into the darkness.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“What?” the man barked, himself having been lost in thought.

“This is the wrong street.”

The cabbie peered from his window. “Three West 85th Street. That’s the address you gave me. Three West 85th Street.”

“Are you sure?”

“Hey, lady—I don’t make up addresses. Here, see.” He held up his clipboard. “I write each call down on my sheet. Three West 85th Street.”

Chandal stared out, caught by the sudden image of the brownstone that loomed out at her. She still didn’t know where she was or what she was doing here, but she was drawn by the sight of the brownstone’s somber façade. All reason, all foresight, all judgment were momentarily suspended in her mind.

“Hey, lady. You all right?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“Look, if you want—”

“Thank you. This is the correct address. Thank you.”

“Suit yourself.”

As if on cue, Chandal stepped out onto the pavement. She shut the car door behind her. What she felt was an overwhelming sense of guilt, a lust for punishment.

“That must have been one hell of a party!” boomed the voice behind her. The engine roared, human and mechanical sound blended, faded, and then the street fell hushed.

Incomprehensible—to her at least—and unbearable as well. Yet, here she stood, unwillingly, in front of the lost brownstone of her memory. Despite its recent renovation, its somewhat modernized alterations—it was, unmistakably, the same brownstone that she and Justin had lived in for more than a month before....

She observed the building with eyes that recorded details no camera could now know. As it had appeared that first day Justin had taken her to meet the two sisters. And now it all came back to her. The long narrow windows, vacant and eyelike, black with soot, that almost entirely sealed off the outside world. The zigzag crack, which extended from the roof of the building and made its scarlike way down the wall, vanishing just above the second-story windows. The faint glimmer of stained glass, whose distorted Gothic images seemed to dance in place above the front door. The bodiless faces, decomposed vines. The eyes that stared with sockets void of light, of life, above the thin line of blackened brick that formed the window ledges. A world, Chandal thought, condensed to a small plot of real estate. Detached, mysterious. A world which had no affinity with the neighborhood, but which reeked of the dull, sluggish reality of the two sisters who lived within.

Christ! Chandal now clutched her pocketbook close to her. Twice she had told herself to walk away, not to remain standing in front of the brownstone. But it was a request outside the limits of comprehension for her. Mistake or not, she was here now. This was her real reason for coming to New York. Wasn’t it?

Leave now.

Quit it.

Turn away. Walk away.

No!

She stepped closer.

Blood turn to stone. Stone to fire. Burn. You will burn.

She stopped herself. It was a dangerous thought, mean to frighten and weaken her. To trick her out of her resolution to remember. She had to remember. Must remember. She had no right to fear for her safety... nothing. She mustn’t fear. She moved closer.

“Open it remains,” whispered the voice within her, ‘‘and we can close it nevermore.”

Chandal stopped, her face peering upward, her white hands limp against her black pocketbook. She remained motionless for several minutes, as if fallen into a deep trance.

Then she heard it, the shrill cry, coming from the third floor. Distant voices shouted, came closer, pulled her back away from the flames that shot from the windows as though propelled from a blow-torch. A confused clamor of action around her. Frantic movement as the flames roared through the building; the fire jumped upward, a living, blazing tongue running along the pitched roof, licking and hissing its way across the entire front of the building.

All at once an old woman’s face appeared at the window. Chandal remained motionless—their eyes locked. It all seemed to be happening now in the old woman’s eyes. The violet orbs dilated swiftly as she gazed down at Chandal. They seemed to expand enormously as her voice whispered seductively: “Let me enter you. You may enter me. We will become one.”

In the next instant, the glass rectangle of the single window was blackened over with smoke and grime. The old woman’s face vanished, then emerged again from the darkness. Her face muscles twitched violently, her voice an incoherent wail carried by the wind from the burning building. She made this horrible sound without moving, with only her mouth working. Little tufts of her hair caught fire. Her eyes began to ooze from their sockets. Her blood beneath her skin began to boil.

“Birth is not a beginning,” wailed the old woman. “Death is not an end!”

Chandal grinned.

And so did the old woman as she thrust her body forward against the glass. With a crash it burst open, and she almost fell headlong into the street. She straightened herself up, her eyes flamed red with passion, her nostrils opened wide and quivering. Like a beast gone wild she pulled back her lips to bare her small yellowish teeth. She hissed:

“When you see the blood, when you see the blood, I will pass, I will pass into you.”

Chandal listened to the woman’s calm, sleepy voice. Her words slipped into Chandal’s ear like a drug, which after being injected, had the effect of engulfing Chandal’s memory like a soft cloak, making it seem as though it had never happened.

And then it did happen.

The old woman jumped, her body falling through the air like a rag doll, until it smashed on the pavement before Chandal’s feet. The blood splattered onto Chandal’s dress, hands and face.

Chandal had screamed.

Was screaming now.

In the next instant she was running into the night.

The pig squealed and coughed blood as the knife ripped open its stomach. It screamed until it was dead. Only then did the others in the room begin to scream, to howl with laughter.

Candles flickered, their flames dancing within the darkened room. Grotesque shadows festooned the floor, walls and ceiling, while a cacophony of distorted human forms danced and shrilled before a crucifix turned upside down. Overhead a figure formed, with the teeth of a shark and a goat’s head and the tail of a serpent.

The old woman stood center, erect and robed, reading out the incantations. The veins in her neck swelled, saliva formed at the corners of her mouth, and still she ranted until exhausted.

“Overthrow the Almighty,” she shrieked. “Bring all things to a low degree. Use toilet seats for your thrones. Use their thrones for your toilet seats! Turn above to below. The way to rise is to descend. Justice through sin... sin through justice....”

The woman stopped. Gasped for a breath of the putrid air, laden with the odor of rotted wood, candle wax, incense and sweat. In the brief pause she clawed at the flesh between her breasts, taking away a pendant. Lifting it to her lips, she kissed it, and then spoke, “Every evil in the world has been gathered into the bloodstone. Let us worship it!”

Screams rose, while bodies shuddered.

“Overthrow the world!” the woman screamed. “Abolish it! Create an everlasting bonfire. A fiery consummation where the black truth will blaze, will be seen, will be felt, touched, heard—goodness, let it burn up and become clean, become one with Ahriman. Ahriman is all. Let the aged spirit of Hell become one with the young. Let the young bear children. Let all children become the sons and daughters of Ahriman. From this world to the next: from utility to creation... Let Ahriman become King. Let Ahriman become King, and then cometh a new beginning, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and all power.” With her final breath, she gasped: “Let Ahriman become King!”

Chandal’s head throbbed, her eyes burned, her heart ached. She opened the door to the carriage house, flicked on the main light. The breakfast dishes were still on the table, spattered with crumbs, jam and dried egg yolk. She took off her shoes, went upstairs to the bedroom, slipped out of her dress and got into bed.

She wondered why it had taken her so long to get home. Her emotions were diffused. She remembered going to the brownstone, remembered fleeing into the night. But what she could not remember was what she had done after that. She closed her eyes, but nervous exasperation forced them open again. Blinking, she peered intently into the thick darkness above the skylight. The stars were hidden by a thin mist and the moon floated lazily in the endless atmosphere. Panes of glass squeaked in their window frames, the wind moaned around the house, her body felt numbed as she explored an icy corner of the bed. I am going to sleep, she told herself, I am going to sleep. She buried her face in the pillow.

In the next instant, tears flooded her eyes. Suddenly she felt very young and alone. The night of the fire remained indelibly etched in her mind. Over and over she relived that one horrible moment, the confrontation with the old woman just prior to the woman’s having lunged to her death. Again and again Chandal challenged her memory, listening, hoping, yet in the end she had to acknowledge she did not know what had happened, what the old woman had been trying to tell her. If she was trying to tell her anything at all. Perhaps Chandal only imagined the woman was talking to her prior to her jump.... If only she had someone to turn to. She was unable to banish from her thoughts painful reminders of Ron. Oh, God—help me. Please help me. Guilt weighed heavily on her conscience. For what, she wasn’t sure. Sometimes it seemed as if the night would never end and sometimes it seemed as if it had always been night.

Sometimes...

She wiped the tears from her eyes.

Sometimes... the thought escaped her consciousness, and she found a kind of momentary mystical justification for everything.

From somewhere far off, the phone rang. She was too tired to answer it.

She turned over on her stomach, and then mindlessly passed into a deep sleep.

After a moment, a slight cool breeze moved through the room and, as soundlessly as a serpent slithering through grass, it whispered:

“Age, pain and deformity beget despair. Despair begets discontent. Discontent begets evil. The unification and fusion of this aged evil spirit with young and healthy bodies is our mission. Let the young dream dreams, while the old see visions. Let the sun turn into darkness and the moon into blood. Henceforth, let the kingdom of God be closed.”