The Paradise Prophecy

roll of pages.

“You’d better close them now,” he said.

Callahan nodded, and keeping the flashlight steady, she closed her eyes and listened as he flattened the pages out next to the manuscript. She knew he was checking to see if they lined up.

But then he went still. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

“The pages…”

“What? What about them?”

LaLaurie paused. Then he said, “They’re completely blank.”

44

I don’t fucking believe this,” Callahan said.

Both she and Grant had their eyes open now and were staring at the pages in shock. And they were definitely blank.

Grant said, “This is what I’ve been guarding for fifteen years?”

Callahan turned to him. “No, you were guarding somebody else’s casket, remember? And it looks like someone slipped in here and switched out the pages.”

Grant looked resentful. “They’d have to get past me and a double-locked metal door to do it. And I can assure you, Agent Callahan, this didn’t happen on my watch.”

“So you’re here twenty-four/seven?”

“Well, no, of course not, but-”

“They weren’t switched out,” Batty said. He had carefully lined up the pages next to the manuscript and the edges matched. He had no doubt in his mind that these were genuine.

“So what are you suggesting?” Grant said. “That this is some sort of cruel hoax? That our first guardian made the whole story up?”

Batty didn’t respond. He was thinking back to his vision, to what the poet had told him.

I had several sheets of paper in front of me, my finger etching itself into them as if controlled by another being.

His finger, not a pen. Etching itself into the pages.

Then a thought occurred to Batty. “What have you been told about these?” he asked Grant.

“Certainly not that they’re blank.”

“You’ve spoken to the angel Michael, I assume?”

“He doesn’t ring me up every day, but I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t recruited me.”

“And he said nothing about this?”

“It’s my understanding he can’t read the pages himself. None of the angels can. They need humans to translate. In fact, I’d say they seem to need us for quite a few things.”

Batty nodded, his mind still clicking away. “Both Ozan and Gabriela were trying to decode Milton’s verse in Book Eleven. Except they had the wrong Book Eleven. Were you told at any time that the pages were encrypted?”

“Yes,” Grant said. “But I’m not sure why. It’s just a story that’s been handed down through the generations of guardians.”

“Then maybe that’s what we have here. Encrypted pages.”

“What are you thinking?” Callahan asked. “Invisible ink?”

Batty shook his head. “Invisible ink wasn’t invented until the nineteenth century, by a guy named Henry Wellcome.”

“Is there a bottom to that well of information you draw from?”

“I hope not,” Batty said. Then he reached for the book bag and brought out the copy of Steganographia. “You remember what I said this book was really about?”

“Of course. Steganography, cryptology.”

“That’s what the experts discovered when they broke the code and I’m sure that’s what Ozan was using it for. But the thing that frightened Trithemius’s friends and convinced them he was an occultist is that on its surface it’s a treatise on how to pass secret messages through spiritual entities.”

“Right. But that was just a cover story. Trithemius said so himself.”

“But what if he was lying to protect his reputation? What if he really was an occultist, and these really are recipes for communicating through spirits?”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said. “Slow down a little.”

“In my vision, Milton told me he was visited by another being in the middle of the night. That it forced him to etch these pages with his finger. He was blind, so he couldn’t know that the pages were blank. But they were clearly a message from a spirit.” He picked up the copy of Steganographia. “So what if we were to use one of Trithemius’s incantations to decode that message?”

Callahan thought about this. “I think you might be on to something.”

“I hope so.”

He placed the book next to the blank pages and cracked it open. It had been a while since he’d studied the thing with any depth, and as he stared at the words, he wasn’t sure which incantation to choose. Remembering what had happened to Rebecca, he didn’t want to summon up the wrong spirit.

He read through them all carefully, then finally found one that seemed most appropriate. A simple, straightforward summoning.

“All right,” he said, “Keep your fingers crossed.”

Both Grant and Callahan stepped back slightly is if they were afraid they might get in his way. He quickly scanned the page in front of him, committed the incantation to memory, then touched the stack of blank pages and closed his eyes.

Then he said, “O magne spiritus, si placet, mecum communica nuntium his in paginis. O magne spiritus, si placet, mecum communica nuntium his in paginis. O magne spiritus, si placet, mecum communica nuntium his in paginis.”

For a moment nothing happened and Batty was afraid it hadn’t worked. Then he felt heat in his hand and his fingers began to tremble. He half expected them to take a life of their own and begin writing across the page. Instead, the pages themselves began to glow, infused in a warm yellow light.

Grant and Callahan stepped back even farther, shielding their eyes, as the glow grew stronger, then a fountain of light rose toward the ceiling, illuminating the entire room, a shimmering image appearing at its center.

Batty didn’t back up. Didn’t move. Didn’t shield his eyes.

His gaze was transfixed on that image, and a strange feeling welled up inside him. A feeling of warmth. Not physical warmth, but a sense of emotional fulfillment that enveloped him like a loving embrace.

The embrace of a mother and child.

A father and son.

A wife and her husband.

Then the image in the light began to take on form and substance and Batty’s chest seized up, tears springing to his eyes. His mouth dropped open and he wanted to say something, wanted desperately to form words, but there were no adequate words for what he now saw.

The image smiled, and the warmth inside him doubled. Quadrupled. He was weak with it. Drunk with it. And not just his fingers were trembling, but his entire body.

“Hello, Batty,” she said, in that subtle Louisiana drawl.

It was Rebecca.