Black Light

apologies as the Lodge’s cat ran to meet him at the head of the stairs.

“I’m sorry, but you are very ill when I give you salmon. Please forgive me.” The cat regarded him through contemptuous yellow eyes before stalking out of sight.

Slowly, Balthazar made his way through the Orphic Lodge’s labyrinthine halls. Past rooms where stacks of books tottered beneath windows draped in velvet the color of claret and very old port, but smelling of myrrh and lemons; past rooms filled with blown-glass globes strung like drying gourds across the ceiling, globes which, if one peered into them, revealed tiny seashores aglitter with azure surf and crimson sails cast like confetti upon impossibly distant swells; through doors that opened without a touch as Balthazar’s shadow grazed their panels, and by other doors that in all his years he had yet to see inside; and last of all, through a corridor filled with monastically simple rooms all made ready for the annual autumn retreat.

Finally he reached the end of the east wing. He walked down the servants’ stairway to the kitchen. There he found a reassuringly utilitarian demesne, and hot coffee in the old electric percolator. His cup and saucer were set reproachfully beside it, along with a plate of Kirsten’s ginger cookies and another note—

Tolle moras!

semper nocuit differe paratus!

—K

Don’t delay! Even when prepared it is dangerous to postpone what must be done! He laughed. “Very well, Kirsten. I won’t delay…”

He poured his coffee, feeling the profound melancholy that always assailed him at the thought of the pharmakos, and looked up. High above one of the gleaming institutional stoves a plaque was suspended. Its legend swirled in gothic lettering, blue and gold and emerald green:

OMNIA BONA BONIS

All things are Good with Good Men. The motto of the Benandanti, “the Good Walkers,” “Those Who Do Well.”

Though sometimes—this was one of them—Balthazar felt more like an unwilling gaoler than a good man. For several minutes he stood, sipping his coffee and watching the twilight deepen. At last he crossed to the kitchen door and stared outside. A short distance away there was a small declivity in the lawn, four or five feet across, and just beyond the shadow of the encroaching woods. In the middle of the hollow stood a pillar, man-high, thrusting up from the tangle of grass and weeds like an overgrown grave marker.

But it was no grave marker. It was a herm, a granite stone that was thousands of years old, filigreed with lichen and bird droppings. Its base was just wide enough that Balthazar could have wrapped his arms around it, and it narrowed very slightly toward the top. Words were carved up and down the column, some in ancient Greek characters, others in Latin, and the most recent—going back only a few centuries—in English.

WITHIN A GREATER GNOMON ALL THE NIGHT

The herm was crowned with a carven man’s face. Time had softened it, so that the features were blurred, the cheeks pocked and bearded with moss. One side of the nose had been chipped away. But you could still make out the deep-set, almond-shaped eyes and thin curve of its mouth, and see quite clearly the outlines of ivy twining through its hair and around the broken stubs of two small horns poking from its head. Once upon a time, and very far away, the herm had been venerated. More recently, like others of its kind, it had been thrown down by an angry mob of Puritans. The Benandanti had salvaged it and brought it here, where students on retreat thought it one of the Lodge’s myriad oddities, like the winged homunculi in Brother Vaughan’s study, or the housekeeper’s narwal tusk. Those impertinent enough to question Kirsten about the herm were told brusquely that it was a sundial.

But it was not a sundial. It was an oubliette, a prison; and Balthazar Warnick was its keeper. Now he stared out at the somber pillar and once again sighed, recalling Giulietta’s face and putting off his duty for one more minute.

“Ah, me…”

It had been warm enough that Kirsten had left open the door leading out onto the veranda. Moths fluttered against the screen, and he could smell damp earth where she had watered the rows of fuchsias in their hanging baskets. On its shelf an arm’s-length away, the kitchen Timex glowed faintly.

Crack.

Without warning the sound ripped through the kitchen. Echoes trailed after it throughout the Lodge like gunshots. Balthazar jumped, then raced onto the veranda, the screen door banging behind him.

Above the western mountains the clouds had darkened to black and violet. But directly overhead the sky was a strange flat silvery-gray that gleamed like falling rain. As Balthazar stared down onto the lawn he winced and shaded his eyes—the silvery light hurt, as though he gazed into an unshaded incandescent bulb. At the same time there was a weird murkiness to the light: it cast no shadows, so that when he tried to focus on individual objects below—a clump of hostas, the stone birdbath that Kirsten religiously filled each morning—he found them shadowed as by heavy fog.

But a fog that coruscated and gave off threads of metallic brilliance, and made a shrill sound as it did so; a fog that hummed. Sweat stung Balthazar’s eyes as he fought to see something in the deathly haze. The humming grew louder, but no matter how he struggled to find its source he could not. It seemed to come from everywhere, a horrible resonate note that made the air shiver, so that he imagined he could see individual atoms dancing like beads of water upon a red-hot stone.

And then he could no longer hear the note, but only feel it, a vibration that made his very bones tremble. The pressure in his ears became a spike driven through his temples. Around him the silvery air wheeled and sang, as though it were a pool that had been stirred by some great ship’s passing. There was a stifling smell; when he breathed he tasted burning leaves.

“What is it?” Balthazar screamed into the shining vortex; but could not hear his own voice. “What is it?”

And then an answer came to him. The roaring did not diminish, but it began to focus, so that he could track its source: a point some twenty yards down the sloping lawn. The whorl of silver light thinned like mist before the sun. The humming faded into silence. Balthazar took a deep breath and gazed out upon the lawn.

The last streamers of uncanny light were lifting. Overhead the night sky was a calm sweep of indigo strung with stars. Yet at the same time a faint glimmer still hung about the grass, so that he could see the shadows of tiny cloverheads, the serrated edge of a fern. The charred odor faded. A sweetly vegetative fragrance filled the air, a scent that made Balthazar think of fruit ripening and then rotting in the heat. When he swallowed, pollen rasped the back of his throat, and he coughed.

In answer, low laughter sounded from somewhere below. Balthazar looked but could see nothing but the tops of ferns moving as though stirred by the wind. Suddenly he cried out.

“No!”

He ran from the porch. Fingerlings of light flashed around him, and again he heard that soft mocking laughter.

“No,” Balthazar repeated, and stopped.

The herm had been destroyed. It lay upon the grass in two pieces, severed through the middle as though someone had taken an ax to it. A black streak ran across the granite’s coarse veining. Balthazar stooped to touch it. When he withdrew his finger, it was greasy as with soot. He sniffed, grimacing at the reek of sulphur, then stood and walked slowly around the fallen pillar.

The head had been driven a good six inches into the ground. Upturned earth surrounded it like black foam. In the lingering twilight it seemed to glow, so that Balthazar could see every detail of the carven visage: its oblique slanted eyes, the mouth upturned into a faint smile, hair curled tightly as bunches of grapes atop its head. Beneath its face the legend could still be clearly read: