The world is a circle
A heart is a circle
Our lives are enclosed and infinite, too
I feel all encircled
When I look at you
So, smile
Breath my name
Close the circle
from "Close the Circle"
by "The Gods of Sleep"
Reid Campbell paced the floor. This was a big step. Maybe it wasn't
such a great idea to trust decisions made while dead.
Maybe he should try it like the Persians, who considered all
decisions made drunk while sober and vice versa. Consider all decisions
made while dead while living, and vice versa...
Probably be a tough sell as a self-help mantra. He should probably
wait a bit before getting the bumper stickers printed up.
It was weird the way things just fell into place. Like everything
was meant to be or something. One minute he's walking in the door of his
apartment after shaking off the shroud, with a crazy plan but no idea how
to implement it, the next he's turned on his TV and been handed the answer.
"I'm here with Monica Holmes," the announcer said, "Owner of the
Silver Veil occult bookstore. Monica, how often did Justin McHenry come
into your store?"
"Just the one time."
"Did he seem disturbed or out of the ordinary in any way?"
"I could tell he had been messing around with forces beyond his
control, dark forces. I advised him to straighten up and fly right."
"But that wasn't in the cards?"
"No."
"Any idea that he was homicidal?"
"Of course not."
"Was he a devil-worshipper?"
Monica sighed. "He was involved with dark forces. Some would say,
the Devil, I suppose. I just saw a mixed-up kid who had waded in over his
head and thought he could handle it."
"Thank you, Monica." The reporter turned to the camera once again
to deliver her summation. Mixed-up kid, psychopath, satanist... which
describes the real Justin McHenry?
The camera cut away back to the newsroom where the anchor sat in
front of a graphic showing a wild-eyed teenager being led away by police
under a caption "High School Rampage", done in a faux spray-paint font.
"Have the police given any indication to what degree Satanism played a part
in these killings?"
"Police aren't speculating at this time."
"Was McHenry involved in a coven, and do police anticipate more
arrests?"
"We have no information on that at this time. But if what Monica
says is true, then it appears Justin was the proverbial 'lone nut'."
"Thanks Mary,"
Reid walked to his nightstand and picked up his phone book.
As it turned out, Reid was not the only person with his TV tuned to
the Miskatonic Channel. Monica's line was busy the first time he called;
too anxious and excited by the sudden dovetailing of events to wait and
call back, he had simply thrown on a coat and headed over to the Silver
Veil Occult Shoppe, which was located in a suitably historic (ie; run-down
and dingy) section of Arkham.
He had never been there, of course. After the sixties here was no
way in Hell, literally, that he would have anything deliberately to do with
mystic arts or mumbo or its cousin jumbo; it sought him out readily enough
on its own without him chasing after it. Monica apparently had seen things
differently. Somehow she'd come through everything and still wanted to know
more; she'd wanted to take charge of the ghosts, the demons, the talking
shadows. And good for her. She could play with the wisps and weird-birds
all she liked. Reid wanted no part of it.
Until now.
He drove past the poorly-marked side street twice before he finally
noticed the battered street sign. "Jerusalem Terrace". Quaint. Sounded like
a bible-thumper's rest home. He pulled down the street and parked alongside
the curb.
Monica looked up as he walked into the shop, and, after a
double-take that would do Matthew Perry proud, her jaw dropped almost to
the well-swept floor. "You'll never believe who just walked through the
door," she said into the telephone she had cradled to her chin.
Reid walked up to the counter and gave Monica his biggest, widest,
friendliest smile. She grinned back. It was an electric moment, as if they
hadn't seen each other in thirty days instead of thirty years. She held up
a finger to say, "I'll be with you in a minute."
Reid looked around the shop. Very tidy; and well decorate with
dried plants and tapestries. There was a very antique feeling about the
place, a very welcoming feel. Books everywhere, almost like a library. Reid
liked it.
"It's Reid! Can you believe it!" she said to the person on the
other end of the phone. "Yes, the same one. Oh, good, good, a little
haggard but don't we all?"
Reid suddenly realized that the person on the other end of phone
must know him as well; someone from the old days? Who else could it be?
"Oh yes, I agree, hell of a coincidence," Monica said, "Bearing in
mind that I don't believe in coincidences. Let me see what's up with Reid
and I'll call you back. Can you give me your number?"
Monica scribbled a phone number on a scrap of paper on the counter,
said goodbye, and hung up. "Reid Campbell," she said, in an astounded kind
of voice.
"In the too-real flesh," he replied, with a flourish.
"You'll never guess who that was on the phone."
"Sammy Davis Jr.?"
"Hardly. Nancy. Nancy Bishop."
Even though he had half expected to hear that name, or one of the
small handful of others, the sound of it spoken aloud nearly made him
swoon. He shook his head to clear it.
"That is too weird."
"Ahh, but weird is my business."
"Not me. Sales is my business. Weird is my life."
"I gather you caught me on the tube as well," Monica said. "Odd
that everyone was watching this time; I've been on TV before."
"Not as odd as you might think. I've been planning to get in touch."
"Really? After all these years. Couldn't control yourself."
"I never could control myself. That's the whole problem with me.
But that's another story. Today's tale is 'Reid Campbell wants to reunite
the Miskatonic Bunch'. What do you think?"
"I'd say you're crazy except -"
"What?"
"Nancy. She wasn't alone. Frank Fontaine was with her."
"No kidding! What's up with that?"
"She met him up in Portland. He'd been living on the street. He's
apparently in pretty bad shape, mentally, though no worse than some, I
suppose. Nancy's only slightly better herself."
"I believe that. I've had my share of bad days. How are you doing?"
"Physically? Healthy as a tigress. Financially? Head above water,
nothing more. Romantically? It is to laugh."
"I meant, 'mentally'."
"Quite well, considering I'm a witch who runs a spook shop. How's
about you?"
"Oh, good, good..."
"Lie to me some more, why don't you? Even a bad psychic could see
right through that little hem-haw, and I'm a quite good one if I do say so
myself."
"All right. I've been doing incredibly poorly. I'd say my life has
fallen apart, but it's been too long since I can remember it as having been
together. In fact I just committed suicide. Botched that as well. Typical."
"Suicide? Well, that would explain the black undertone to your
aura. Still..." She shook her head sadly.
"Yeah, well, it worked out for the best. I think. I got an idea, a
flash of insight, an epiphany, you could say. It seemed so right when I
thought of it, then I began to doubt it, but then out of the blue I saw you
on TV, and now Nancy, and Frank... it's like it's all coming together of
its own accord. It's kind of spooky, really."
"'Spooky' is nothing new. To any of us, I'd imagine. What was this
flash of insight, Reid? Some new get-rich-quick scheme?"
Reid laughed. Few things about his life were constant; Monica had
zeroed in on the one that had remained true of him since he was a small
child... he was always looking for that quick, easy break.
"Not this time! This one's more of a 'Get Out of Hell Free' card."
"You have my attention."
Reid looked around the room. He found his attention drawn to a
poster on the wall, a mandala that seemed to be comprised of intertwining
branches of some gnarly tree, hawthorn perhaps. The deign grabbed the eye
and drew the viewer into it, deeper, deeper. Reid turned his head, met
Monica's eyes.
"We have to go back to where we left off. Where it all went wrong.
Back to the Acid Test."
Monica's jaw dropped. "Are you insane? Don't answer that. Rhetorical."
Reid grinned. "I won't, 'cause I don't need to. But I'm dead
serious about what I said. We absolutely must do it. We must re-live the
Miskatonic Acid Test."
"Whatever for? I mean, what's the first lesson from 'The Exorcist'?
'If demons are dreaming, let 'em sleep'. Sound, sound advice."
Reid leaned closer to her, across the counter. "Monica," he said,
"Are your demons really asleep?"
Monica glanced down at the newspaper on the countertop, and the
huge screaming headline that it bore: "Three Dead in High School Rampage".
"If they are," she replied, "They've started dreaming about me."
There was a photo beneath the headline, captioned "Youth, 17,
Arrested". The photo showed a teenage boy being led away in handcuffs. And
not just any boy. It was Justin Penrose, the boy who had come to her store
for a reading.
And who had said - who had been the vessel that voiced the message
- that there would be another Acid Test.
She hadn't taken much stock in what he had said; negative spirits,
which Justin had most assuredly been possessed by, tended to zero in on the
weaknesses of the people opposing them and exploit them with unsettling
lies and half-truths. What had upset her had been the cool confidence of
the spirit, which was apparently calling itself "Beal" when it was around
the boy but which she suspected would be more quickly recognizable to her
by the name it went by when human, Firth.
Reid saw the track of her eyes, but said nothing. He'd seen the
news reports. "Look, Monica, it's no secret that we were all pretty much
demolished by what happened at the Acid Test..."
"What happened?" Monica said, crossly. "What exactly did happen at
the Miskatonic Acid Test, Reid? Oh, yes, we saw Billy Smythe die. But what
exactly did we see, Reid? What happened?" She had become extremely agitated
at this point; realizing it, she held her hands up, palms up, stop, stop,
and lowered her eyes to the blank spot on the table before her.
"I don't really know," Reid said, quietly. "I wish I did, but when
I think of it my mind rebels into a series of chaotic vignettes and the
sort of dreamscape juxtapositions that would comprise the waking world if
Dali, Goya, and Bosch were God the Creator - oh, Christ, that would be
Godrah, the three headed monster..." He trailed off, laughing in a
discomforting fashion.
Monica looked at him as if seeing him for the first time, not sure
if she liked what she saw but at the same time liking this new perspective
on Reid. She laughed as well, warmly. "You can't control it, can you? That
sense of humor. You must be a barrel of laughs at funerals."
"I'd have the corpse in convulsions. That's why they kicked me out
of the morgue. Too irreverent for heaven, too funny for Hell. But
seriously, folks..."
Monica began straightening up the countertop. "Remember that peace
rally?"
"Abbie Hoffman?"
"Of course. That was priceless." Hoffman and Reid had agreed before
the rally that, as a bit of theater, Reid would pretend to heckle Abbie
from the crowd as he made a speech. "Abbie told me afterward that you were
so funny he almost lost it and gave away the game."
"I wish we'd taped it. He kept riffing off my, and I'd zing right
back at him; I don't think the crowd ever really got it, but what a day!"
"There were a lot of good times. The Volition Coalition. We really
had something there."
"What were we thinking with a name like that?" Reid asked,
rhetorically. "I mean, come on! Political movements are supposed to have
names like, 'International Brotherhood of Like-Minded Realists' or
'Students for a Better Tomorrow'."
"I think, if you'll remember, someone was on a semantics kick and
thought that 'Volition Coalition' sounded no more or less silly than any of
the other movements. And we were more of a philosophical than political
group anyway."
"Can't really separate one from the other, but I guess that was the
point."
"Yes. It was a kind of dada statement."
"That's right, I remember now. Dada. Haven't heard that word for
years."
"The more absurd the world gets the less it needs absurd art forms."
"You're probably right. I find I'm laughing more and enjoying it less."
Monica straightened out the counter again, arranging some polished
stones in a display box. "So how do we go about re-building the universe?"
"I'm not sure. I think, if this is meant to be, you know, in a
mystical sense..."
"You don;t have to explain your terms to me. Witch shop, remember?"
"Of course. If this is meant to be, the means will show itself."
"And if the means doesn't appear, then it's not meant to be?"
"I have a feeling that won't be the case."
"So suddenly you're psychic. Maybe I should hire you. Want to do
some readings for me?"
"Sure!" Reid reached for a deck of tarot cards on the far side of
Monica's counter. In doing so, his arm brushed a stack of books that Monica
had placed there. They fell to the floor with a loud rustle.
"Sorry!" Reid said, reaching quickly for the pile. Monica bent over
at the same time. Their eyes found the article at the same moment.
From the stack of books, a copy of the Arkham Echo,the local arts
and music weekly, had separated itself and had fallen open on the floor.
The article stared up at them in bold, clear letters.
"It's Not Over 'til it's Over" was the main headline. But that
wasn't what they'd seen first. No, they'd both instantly noted the sub-head.
"Plasma Miasma to Re-Form."
Neither of them said anything for a moment. Then Reid burst out
laughing.
Monica joined in. "Everything should be so easy."
Reid was shaking his head. "Next time remind me to ask for a
million dollars."