Inside, the tiny shop was neat and sparse. Built-in shelves covering the walls held books, tarot decks, incense, crystals, and jars of herbs. Floorboards creaked as the woman led me to the back where a square table was placed against the wall with two facing chairs. On the table were a small lamp with a dark red shade and an oblong box of fine grained wood that seemed almost golden in the pool of light cast by the lamp.
“Please,” she said, gesturing to a chair, then seated herself and opened the box. The tarot deck inside was wrapped in pale silk. She extracted the cards from the fabric, shuffled them thoroughly.
“I’m Lavinia. Tell me your given name?”
“Justin,” I replied and took the hand she offered.
“I’ll lay out the cards one by one and we will discuss their meanings. Have you had a tarot reading before?”
I shook my head. “Never,”
“Each card has a meaning. Both right side up and reversed. I lay them out in a cross and each position is for a different aspect of your life journey.” She turned a card over and placed it in the center of the table. It showed a man facing away, looking out over a barren landscape. Three staves were planted upright in the earth behind him.
“Three of wands,” she said. “This is your present. You face obstacles. Frustration.”
I nodded, my attention half there, half still mulling over the scene at Jutting’s house. “Yes. That’s a fair characterization.”
She turned over another card, placing it on top of the first at an angle. It showed a man in a white robe and red chasuble holding a wand above his head. In the foreground, laid out on a kind of altar, were a cup, a sword, a pentacle, and a staff. I stared at the card, amazed, flashing back to the room in Jutting’s basement—the cup, the dagger. Above the figure’s head, an infinity sign floated in the air.
“The magician. Reversed. This is your challenge. The problem you’re trying to solve. Interesting. I’ve never seen the magician in this position. What could it mean?” Her eyes turned inward and she stared through me. She was silent for a moment. I watched her face. Her skin was smooth and damp with perspiration, shining in the lamp light. Suddenly, her eyes focused and looked at me first with curiosity, then with an almost imperious glare. “Mortal,” she said, her voice hoarse and deeper than it had been. Goosebumps rose on my arms. “The magician plays with dangerous forces. He pierces the veil.” She paused for a moment and a deep shiver ran through her body. “He gazes on things he should not see. Half in one world, half in another. He is powerful in the material world but his soul withers. Soon, he will breach the veil. The two will become one and both will be annihilated. The balance is maintained.” She stopped speaking and her whole body trembled for a moment as another shiver ran through her. She closed her eyes. When she opened them she was herself again. She took a shuddering breath and touched a handkerchief to her forehead. “They were speaking through me. What did I say?”
I stared at her. I didn’t believe in ghosts or spirits or supernatural phenomena emanating from an invisible, non-material world coexisting with our own. But something had been speaking through her. It was clear. My skin was still prickling. Maybe it was just another aspect of her psyche—a message from her unconscious mind. I couldn’t answer. The still, damp air between us felt charged. I could almost feel it—an uncanny sensation of something unseen looming close. “You said that the magician plays with forces and sees things he shouldn’t,” I replied. “He’s half in this world, half in another. Power he gains here is reflected in atrophy of his immaterial self.”
“Yes. The magician reversed is a deceiver. He is a trickster who weaves illusions and is caught in his own illusory world. Fooled by his own trickery. Others in his wake are pulled in. He might make terrible decisions due to his inability to tell fact from fiction. The image he presents can never be trusted. Always look for signs of deceit.” She stopped speaking, looking inward again.
Was she talking about Jutting? The more I considered it, the more I thought the only true thing I had heard or seen at Jutting’s house was the accidental glimpse of his basement. Everything else had seemed almost like an elaborate performance. Maybe he was the Magician, spreading lies while plotting to pierce the veil between two worlds like Cellini in the Coliseum. I looked up from the cards and her eyes were distant. She seemed to have gone away again. Both of her hands were flat on the table, pressing down hard. The muscles in her forearms were tense. Her eyes opened and like before they bored into me with an alien gaze.
“Justin Vincent, heed our warning. The magician is dangerous.”
“That’s enough!” I jumped up, knocking my chair over with a loud crack.
Lavinia came back to herself, looking confused. “What happened?”
“Sorry,” I said, digging in my pocket. “How much do you charge?” I put a twenty pound note on the table. “Is that enough? I have to go.”
I walked to the door and glanced back. She was watching me, head tilted slightly. For a moment, I had a sensation of tilting—as if the shop was rising into the air and I was falling away into space. “Be careful,” she called to me.
“I will. Thanks.”
Back on the street, I walked fast, weaving around groups of weekend revelers, unaware of my surroundings. It took a few minutes for my heart rate to calm. Finally, in a taxi on my way back to Hammersmith, the fog cleared from my head and I was able to think. Even with some distance from the experience, I was still spooked. The thing that bothered me most was that the second time she
