The objects around us loom up out of the thick darkness like pale spectres – a broad table, barrels, sacks of herbs. Something hanging in the air bumps against my forehead – an earthenware lamp; it is dangling from an iron chain which disappears up into the blackness. Kelley lights it; its sparse gleam scarcely reaches down to our waists.
In front of me I gradually discern a grey stone wall about six foot square: we go up to it and see that it encloses a yawning shaft. “Saint Patrick’s Purgatory” is the thought that comes to my mind. Doctor Hajek has told me of this shaft and of the stories that are told about it. Its depths have never been plumbed; it is known throughout Bohemia, and people say that it leads straight down to the middle of the earth where there is a circular, sea-green lake with an island on which Gaia, the mother of darkness lives. Torches which have been dropped down have always gone out after a few fathoms, smothered by the poisonous gases of the darkness.
My foot stumbles on a stone the size of my fist; I pick it up and drop it into the gaping hole. We bend over the parapet and listen – and listen and listen, there is not the slightest noise to tell us the stone has reached the bottom. It has disappeared soundlessly into the depths, as if it has dissolved into thin air.
Suddenly Jane bends so far forward that I grab her by the arm and pull her back.
“What are you doing?” I cry; the air is so incredibly dry that all that comes out is a hoarse croak. Jane does not answer. Her face is distorted.
I sit beside her on a crate at the worm-eaten table and hold her hand, which is as cold as death from the icy air around.
Kelley, with the restlessness which we have learnt to interpret as announcing the advent of the Angel, has climbed up onto a pile of sacks and is sitting there, legs crossed, the pointed beard on his chin jutting out, his head thrown back and his eyes turned inward so that only the whites are visible, gleaming like milky glass. He is so high up that the light from the oil-lamp, the flame of which is stock still, like a ghost-light, illuminates his features from below, and the shadow of his nose is like an upside-down black triangle on his forehead, or a jagged hole deep in his skull.
As has been our practice since the days of Mortlake, I am waiting for his breathing to become deeper, so that I can begin the conjuration.
My eyes are fixed on the darkness before me; an inner voice tells me that there will be an apparition above the wall around the shaft. I am waiting for a green shimmer of light, but it seems as if the darkness there is getting deeper, thicker. Yes, there is no doubt, it is deepening, thickening; it is coagulating into a mass of incredible, inconceivable blackness compared to which total blindness would seem light. In contrast to it the darkness in the room around suddenly seems grey. And the black mass begins to take on the contours of a female form which then starts to tremble and hover over the abyss of the shaft like flickering smoke. I cannot say: I see it. With my physical eye I cannot see it. I see it with an inner organ which I cannot call my “eye”. It becomes clearer and clearer to my perception, ever more sharply defined, in spite of the fact that not the tiniest ray from the lamp falls on it; I see it more sharply than I have ever seen any earthly object. It is a female figure, obscene and yet with a savage, exotic, disconcerting beauty; its head is that of a gigantic cat: it is no living being, but carved, probably an Egyptian idol, a statue of the goddess Sechmet. I feel paralysis creeping over my limbs, for my brain screams: that is Bartlett Greene’s Black Isaïs! But the feeling of terror runs off me like water from a duck’s back, so complete is the hold the consuming beauty of the statue has on me. I feel the desire to rush up to the demon and throw myself headlong into the bottomless pit at her feet, crazed with ... with ... I have no name for the self-destructive urge which grips me in its talons. Then there is a faint tremor of pale green light somewhere in the cavern; I cannot find the source, the dull glow is all around. – – The figure of the Cat Goddess has disappeared.
Kelley’s breathing has become audible: slow and relaxed. The moment has come to pronounce the conjuration, which was given to me by the spirits so long ago. The words are from an unknown, barbaric language but I know them as well as the Lord’s Prayer. O God, they have been etched on my heart for many years now.
I am about to say them out loud
