Mary’s heart began to accelerate as she felt the energy surge beneath her feet, rooting her to the spot. Busy commuters on their way home pushed past her gruffly, tutting their annoyance at the dishevelled woman and black mongrel dog who were hampering their progress along the congested street.
Mary’s body shook as the pulsing energy resonated through her spine, almost lifting her up off her feet. Her eyes snapped shut. For a moment, her mind was filled with strange visions of a flaming pyramid, a raven, and a stone as old as the world. She felt her life quicken, as the dark line of energy rushed through her.
The sound of the dog barking wildly at her side eventually broke the trance. Released from its grip, she fell to the ground in a heap, her oversized coat crumpling around her like a collapsed tent. A moment later, she felt the dog’s tongue licking her cheek, its breath cool against her hot skin. She rubbed away the soreness in her neck. A heavy fatigue took hold of her, as if the marrow of her bones had turned to lead. Mary tried to get up, but she stumbled forward. Eventually, she got to her feet, a deep look of confusion clouding her face. It shouldn’t have been there. It was out of place.
Mary shook her coat free from her shoulders, dropping it to the pavement. Instantly, she felt the gaze of passers-by turn in her direction. She was wearing an oversized vest top that revealed her bare sinewy arms. Her skin was criss-crossed by a web of crude homemade tattoos, connected by countless lines and symbols all inked into her skin. A large number of the lines came together at a single focus point several inches below her throat. In a circle surrounding the junction point, the words ‘St Paul’s’ were etched into her chalk-white skin.
Mary had woken up to a different world on her twelfth birthday. She did not find it; it had always been there deep inside her, waiting to be discovered. At first, her parents labelled her strange visions as merely the utterances of a ‘sensitive child’, but as time went on, it became clear that Mary was different, even disturbed. With each passing year, her perception of the hidden world became more acute. She began to see auras, strange-coloured fields pulsing gently around the extremities of people and animals. It wasn’t long before she understood that the aura of one person could connect to the aura of another, like hands joining across an unseen world. Her lifestream had connected to the black dog by her side, and now their perception was joined, not bound by time or space.
As her abilities grew, she began to perceive other pathways of energy ebbing and flowing around her. Through the energy fluctuations passing along her body, Mary experienced the city as a vast unseen topography, and her mind was like a compass needle charting the invisible lines of current. She quickly learned to distinguish between the light and dark energies flowing in the city.
After a series of strange apocalyptic dreams, Mary began to hear voices compelling her to map the invisible landscape of the city on her body. She did it herself with a needle and pen ink; the transformation of her body into a living map taking months of excruciating work. As she pricked out the lines of energy into her skin, she gradually realised that many of them joined at the focal point of St Paul’s Cathedral, built on the ancient hill of Ludgate. This terminus was represented by a crude black circle below her throat, like the gemstone of a necklace hanging around her neck.
Mary dropped her eyes down to her chest and then traced the path of the line from the St Paul’s terminus beneath the indent in her throat along her clavicle to a crudely carved symbol of a cross on the shoulder. Something was wrong. The direction of the current now surging under her feet didn’t agree with her map. It was the same for many of the lines of current flowing through the ancient City of London. It was as if their course had been displaced by something massive, like a black hole deforming the contours of the invisible map. She had never experienced anything like it before. Whatever it was, it was dark and powerful and exerted an irresistible force. A hot flush rose up her neck, and she swallowed loudly.
Hitching up her skirt, she crouched down and recovered her coat from the ground. Something heavy shifted in its lining. She slipped her hand into the pocket and poked her fingers through the hole. Fishing around, she soon located the hard exterior of the object. Instantly, she saw it in her mind’s eye—Aaron’s Rod, the fabled jewel-encrusted staff of the first High Priest of the Israelites. Touching it sent a flutter of unease across her chest.
Her stare met the bright eyes of the dog standing alert next to her and then roamed out towards the darkening horizon. The London skyline suddenly seemed threatening and hostile. The Reckoning was fast approaching.