Outside, the night is ringed with whispers
The wind, it howls with winged shadows
Slow, the winds and minds are drifting
From caverns, let's make our souls to houses
Wind, break down all walls between us
Oh earth, build up a wall around us
Let beauty and truth like fire surround us
Keep us from the wolves who've found us!
from "Walls for Wolves"
by The Dark Shadows
Frank looked around the room for the thousandth time. There were
people here, people he knew, people he liked, had even loved in another
time, another life that lurked within the life he was wearing now. They all
smiled to see him, they all clasped his hand and he clasped back; but God!
their eyes, their haunted eyes!
And what a familiar look that was, reminding him so of a mirror.
They had agreed to meet at Monica's apartment, at her suggestion.
Frank of course had no place of his own, unless one counted the underside
of the train bridge in Portland, and was staying at the hotel with Nancy,
whose place was in Boston. Reid did have an apartment, but, as he had
explained, he'd sort of let things fall apart. They needed a positive
atmosphere for this reunion, needed it more than anything. And Monica, who
had it together more than anyone else in their group, in fact more than
most normal people could provide that.
There was a downside. Monica's decorating tastes ran toward the
esoteric. Her living room, which also served as her ritual chapel and
dining room (it was not a very large apartment), had a decor that suggested
a woodland grotto, with lots of dark forest green and earthen brown. There
were branches and stick-woven baskets placed strategically around the room;
live plants and dried dead ones were ubiquitous. Every table held a vase of
some sort, as well as a candle, a small statue, and an assemble of stones.
Books lined the walls, though most were hidden by an array of sticks and
pagan knickknacks that utilized the same shelf space; and even the
literature seemed to have been chosen for its color scheme as much as for
its content.
The problem, from Frank's perspective, was that the sticks and
statues cast the walls with shadows, and the shadows merged and moved at
the corner of his eye. It was worrisome, though he tried not to let his
nervousness show.
Monica noticed Frank's agitation, and stepped over to his chair
while the others were getting reacquainted. "Yes, Frank," she said,
reassuringly, "There are spirits here. But they're all friends of mine.
They protect my home. If you find them staring at you, just introduce
yourself and it'll be all right. OK?"
Frank had seen psychiatrists, had been hospitalized; he knew when
people were condescending to him, humoring him; and he knew Monica was
sincere. "Hello," he said to the bearded man looking out from between the
fronds of a large fern, "I'm Frank Fontaine. I'm an old friend of Monica's."
It did seem to work. The bearded man kept staring (Frank couldn't
always see him, but he knew he was still there), but the mood of his
presence lightened considerably.
Conversation in the room dipped when Frank began talking to empty
space, but Monica shook her head, and Reid and Nancy shrugged and continued
catching up on each others' lives. At that moment they were comparing
medications.
Monica bent over a candle in a glass stand, the center candle in a
layout of three. She made a gesture with her hands and touched a match to
it. Frank jumped as the shadows in the room came suddenly to life, jumping
and twitching to the movements of the flame, then laughed at himself for
being startled.
"Can you get the lights, Nancy?" Monica said. Nancy reached over to
a nearby lamp and shut it off. Frank took care of the lamp nearest to
himself; Reid reached around the wall and flicked the wall switch in the
kitchen. The candle became the sole illumination in the room.
"Not to interfere or anything," Nancy said, "But what exactly are
you doing, Monica?"
"I'm creating a glamour," Monica replied, facing the candle with
her eyes shut. "I'm putting a wall around the room. We're going into
hiding. Shhh."
"Hiding. I see."
"I have no problem with that," Reid said. "None at all."
"I could do with a bit of hiding," Frank added.
Monica touched a stick of incense to the candle flame. It caught;
she let it flame for a few moments, then blew it out. Smoke from the
glowing ember that remained trailed visibly up from the stick, forming
whorls and ghosts in the air above Monica's head.
"Whether you wish to admit it or not," Monica said, softly, "There
are forces around us all, very dark, very negative. For the next hour or so
they won't be ale to find us."
"Oh, I believe you about the dark forces," Nancy agreed, "Just not
about the possibility of hiding from them."
Monica smiled. "But this is my area of expertise, Nancy. You're in
the hands of a professional."
Monica walked slowly around the room, carrying the incense, waving
it, letting the smoke trail and form ephemeral wisp-patterns. The smell the
stick gave off was simultaneously sharp and sweet, with hints of jasmine
and sandalwood. She took the incense into the kitchen, the bedroom, the
bathroom, then finished her rounds where she had started, at the candle.
She picked up a small bowl and held it before the candle. It was
made of clay and decorated with obscure symbols. She placed it back upon
the table, then repeated the procedure with a different clay bowl. Then she
poured the contents of the first bowl into the second; "Salt into water,"
she said aloud. She shook the bowl gently, then dipped her fingers into the
bowl; she cast her wet fingers at the wall, and drops of salty water flew
off into the recesses of the room.
"I get it," Frank said, "The elements."
"What?" asked Nancy.
"Air and fire... the incense; earth and water... the salt water."
"What's that do?" Reid asked.
"Shh!" Monica said, softly, but sharply.
She retraced the path she had walked with the incense, this time
scattering the water. When she had finished she returned the bowl to its
place upon the altar.
"There," she said. "What I just did was a banishment of ill
influence and a summoning of the positive virtues of the four elements. As
my ancestors did, and yours, back through the farthest reaches of
antiquity. You can't see it, but there's now a sphere of magical energy
surrounding us and this apartment. A good one, too; I can feel its
strength."
Frank reached out with his mind and realized that he did, indeed,
feel safer than he had in a long time. He supposed that the dream-demons
could still come if he bade them; they were, of course, a part of his mind,
or, it could be said, were using his mind as a sort of doorway. But why the
hell would he want to summon them? He put any thoughts of darkness out of
his mind, and found that he did so quite easily. His respect for Monica
grew.
"So," Nancy said, "What shall we talk about?"
There was a pause. "Patriots have a good team this year," Reid said.
Everyone laughed, and a bit of the tension dissipated. "We need to
talk about what's happened in the past few weeks," Monica said, "And what's
going to happen in the next few, and, most of all, why."
"Fine," Nancy said.
Everyone stared at one another, at the candle, at the wall. Finally
Reid cleared his throat. "All right, I'll start. Frank and Nancy, you don't
know it, but you're talking to a dead man."
"You're kind of animated for a corpse, Reid," Nancy said.
"It's true, though... only a few short days ago I woke up in the
Arkham morgue. Kind of an unusual morning, even for me." He looked at their
eyes, and answered the question they weren't asking. "Suicide. And don't
tell me you've never considered it."
No one said anything to that. Reid continued. "I think I crossed
over for a moment... I don't really remember it all, but what I do remember
frightened me; and yet I woke up feeling hopeful. I don't know how else to
describe the feeling. Terrified, but hopeful." He laughed. "I can't
describe it any other way."
"Do you remember what it was like?" Monica asked.
"Well, it wasn't 'Beyond and Back'. All I remember is darkness, and
floating... and Firth. I know he was there."
Everyone's eyes shifted about the room. Frank looked at Reid. "I
see him, too, when I close my eyes... and sometimes when I don't."
Nancy and Monica nodded. Reid nodded. "We share a madness. I knew
it as soon as I woke up; knew that I shouldn't have assumed I was the only
one, knew that I had to track you all down. And not for some kind of
misguided group therapy; I had a sudden realization that none of this was
over, that it wouldn't ever be over until we'd taken a stand, of some kind,
until we'd stepped back into the past somehow and made things change... I
don't know how, I just know it's something we've got to do."
Monica looked at Reid, then at the rest of them. "When Reid came to
my shop a few days ago and said words to that effect, although it seemed
insane I knew he was right, somehow. Does any of this jibe with what the
two of you have experienced?"
Frank cleared his throat. "I've had a tough time of it, you could
say, I guess you could. But lately I've felt somehow... clearer, that's the
only way to say it. The world seems smoother, less jagged. Almost as if a
path were clearing for me, a path through the jungle. Do you see what I'm
saying?"
Everyone agreed, and they did see, after a fashion.
"Haha," Frank continued, "A few months ago we couldn't have even
had this conversation... I couldn't have focused long enough. It's a
strange malady; inside, you're aware that your mind just isn't working
right but damned if you know what to do about it. So you just let it carry
you along, hoping the clearer days will outnumber the fogged ones, hoping
the visions will fade to the background and not jump at you biting.
"Then when Nancy showed up, my first instinct was that it would
spoil everything, that she'd bring the demons back in full force. After I
thought about it for a while, I realized that she might actually be part of
the clearing process; whatever forces are at work in our lives, bringing us
together is essential to the plan, to our hope and despair."
Nancy spoke. "I have to say I felt a goose-on-the-grave sense of
destiny when I stumbled across Frank in Portland, of all places. But my
first clue that something was up came a few days before that when I ran
into another old 'friend' on the streets of Boston. Which raises another
issue..."
Nancy leaned forward. "Alex Horowitz. What the hell is his role in
all of this?"
There was an awkward silence. "Well, come on," Nancy said, "I'm
betting you all think like I do... that little weasel has something to do
with what's happening around us."
"We don't know that for sure, Nancy," Reid stated.
"But you didn't bother to invite him to this little soiree, now did
you?"
Reid grinned. "No, we did not. And mostly because I think we do in
fact agree with you. And even if I felt for some dog-forsaken reason that
he should be a part of our plans, whatever they turn out to be, I wouldn't
have invited him without the agreement of everyone in this room..."
"Which you'd never get," Monica said.
"Amen to that!" Frank agreed.
"Well," Nancy said, "The issue here isn't whether to invite Alex to
our tea-party. The issue is, 'what if he's already here?"
"Umm," Reid said, "A brief head-count only shows four people in the
room, unless Monica's got him tucked away in a closet...?"
Monica grinned. "You're welcome to check. Seriously, Nancy, if you
mean that he's here in some sort of spiritual sense I don't feel his
presence..."
"I mean that he's here in the sense that this 'drawing together' is
his handiwork in one way or another. You all remember what a freak he was,
all that occult idiocy that dear Professor Firth inoculated him with... it
only stands to reason that his feet are still on that path, only in this
time he's sure to have walked much farther into the deep dark woods..."
"You're right about that, Nancy," Monica said, "I haven't had
anything to do with Alex since the old days, though I have run into him
occasionally; but, being in the occult business myself, after a fashion, I
have many acquaintances that travel in his circle. They're generally the
type I try to gently encourage to shop elsewhere, pointy-bearded
Crowleyites and other Left-Hand magicians..."
Reid arched an eyebrow. "Beg pardon?"
"You know, what the media would term 'devil worshipers'. Black
magic. The willing embrace of the Dark Energies."
"Oh, like Darth Vader," Reid said, grinning.
"Yes," Monica said sarcastically, "Like Darth Vader." She
punctuated the statement with a theatrical rolling of the eyes.
"Do these Darth Vaders talk about Alex at all?" Frank asked.
"Some of them, the ones that know we went to school together.
They'll mention in passing that they saw Alex at this get-together or that.
Apparently he's developed quite a reputation as a sorcerer."
"Wow. Just like Mickey Mouse in 'Fantasia'." Reid whistled.
"And remember what happened to Mister Mouse," Nancy added.
"The forces spun out of his control," Monica nodded.
Monica nodded. "Whatever it was that happened to us all thirty
years ago - and don't worry, that's not a subject for discussion tonight,
except in the most tangential of ways - I think we can safely say that what
occurred was not what we had planned..."
There was a round of nervous laughter.
"...but that was because there were at least two people present who
had an agenda of their own, one which we can only guess at. But I will say
this; I strongly suspect that Firth and his little apprenticed were as
shocked in their own way as the rest of us."
"Well, if that's so," Reid said, "And assuming that Alex is somehow
weaving our lives together like so many river reeds, what's his motive? I
mean, he screwed up once..."
"If at first you don't succeed..." Nancy said.
"But," Frank spoke up, "It could just as well be that Alex is just
like us..."
"Don't say that," Nancy said.
"I mean in the sense that whatever is happening in the Universe is
pulling him along by the nose in the same way it is for us..."
Nancy shook her head. "No. I know what you're saying, but... no.
Alex is involved here. I just know it."
"I agree," Monica said. "I did some readings on this subject, and
they seemed to point in that direction. It would be in his character."
Reid looked at Monica. "Did the cards tell you anything else, like
anything you think we should know?"
"Not really. I don't like to bring questions dealing with... this
business... to my cards in the first place. The powers involved make my
usual familiar spirits nervous."
"When you say, 'Not Really', Monica," Nancy said, "That tells me
that, in fact, you do know something else we should know. Really."
All eyes were on Monica. She sighed. "I always make it a point to
keep back information from my clients if it involves issues over which they
have no power. If I suddenly received, in the proverbial 'flash', the
precise moment, date, time and manner of your death, Nancy, it's not likely
that I would relay the message."
"Why not? Don't I have a right to know?"
"Maybe not. First, I could be wrong... it happens. Often. The
Forces are whimsical that way. Second, and this is equally important, it
may not be something that you were meant to know, in the cosmic scheme of
things... it's like I snuck a peek in your file in St. Peter's desk; no
problem if I keep it to myself, but very bad karma if I go blabbing to you."
"The argument could be made," Reid said, "That the mere fact that
you have been 'given' the information and the opportunity to tell it to
Nancy might mean that it was indeed information that she was 'meant' to
know." He grinned, the very same grin that electrified the dais when he
battled for the Miskatonic Debate Team thirty years ago.
"Or that the information is given as a temptation to me, to see
what kind of a metaphysical gossip I am. Either way, I wouldn't do it."
"And you're now dodging the issue," Nancy said, taking a drink from
a can of soda on the small table in front of her. "What did the cards say,
Monica? What does our future hold?"
Monica lowered her eyes. "Death. For real."
The room was gravely quiet for a moment. Then Frank asked the
question. "Who?"
Monica smiled slightly, sadly, and shook her head slightly. "I
don't know. It may not even be one of us. It may be all of us. But it's
very real. It's a shadow that waits... if we go through with this. A risk
we all have to be aware of. I want to be absolutely clear about this. If we
proceed, someone will die."
Eyes swept the room, studying each others faces. Then Reid spoke
up. "Look, I hate to think someone else might die because of a decision I
made; that does give me a bit of a pause. But my own death? Not really a
big concern, guys. If I'm the one that's gonna die, I say let's go for it!"
Nancy nodded. "I'm with Reid, I guess. I mean, I'm terrified of
death, no lie, but life isn't really all that cozy either. I'm just as
scared of another fifty years or so of a living nightmare. I'll risk it."
Frank raised a finger. "Did you do any readings about what the
outcome will be if we just walk out of here tonight and go back to our
lives, such as they are?"
Monica smiled that same sad smile. "Yes. I did. Things go on. Some
of us fall into despair, some into madness. My own days would be haunted by
the horror that I had taken the wrong path when it mattered critically. But
I could tell that without the cards. Even if we all decided to ignore this
energy that is trying to resurrect our past, I would still have to take
some action. And I've read for that as well."
"And?" Nancy asked.
"'Destruction' was the most frequently recurring answer."
"Well," Reid said. "That isn't good."
Monica shrugged. "I look at it this way. Death awaits us all
eventually. It's nothing I particularly fear; my experience in all of this
-" she waved a hand around the room to indicate her occult accouterments -
"Has left me with a pretty solid certainty that there is another sort of
existence on the other side of life, one which may even be better than the
existence we know now. Or maybe not. 'What dreams may come...'"
Frank laughed. "Werewolves!" he said, in way of explanation.
"What are you talking about?" Nancy said, speaking for everyone.
"If you dream about werewolves, what dreams may come will give
men... paws!" He waved his hands in the air to illustrate and everyone
burst into laughter.
"Christ, Frank," Reid said when the tumult dies, "I'd forgotten how
damn funny you could be!"
"Haven't had much to laugh about, lately," Frank said. "But it
feels good to be with people for a change. I never thought it would. I'm
actually having fun, can you believe it?"
Everyone nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean," Nancy said. "There's
something comfortingly familiar about us all being together again like
this."
"It feels strong," Reid said. "It makes me confident. Like I really
could take on a few demons."
"It IS strong," Monica said. "It's a powerful energy. I felt it
when Reid walked into my shop, felt it even stronger when we all sat down
together in this room. Despite the blackness around us, and the shadows
hovering over our past and our future, I feel... hopeful."
Everyone grinned at this. It meshed with their own feelings. Behind
the blackest cloud, the sun still shone.
"Then we're all in," Frank said. "Now, what exactly are we going to
do?"
Reid grinned. "I have something to show you."
He reached out and pawed through a pile of papers. "I mean, we've
been talking about the way things all feel like they're being pulled
together by mysterious forces, like our lives are in other hands than our
own; but this is just too much."
He held up a sheet of newspaper, the same page that he'd seen in
Monica's shop. The headline, "Plasma Miasma to Reform", caused gasps and
dropped jaws from the two who hadn't seen it already, much as Reid had
expected it would.
"Let me see that article," Nancy said, reaching out to grab the
paper from Reid's hands.
"I don't believe it," Frank said, shaking his head.
"It's true, all right. The circle closes, closes in on all of us,"
Monica said.
"'The Plasma Miasma'," Nancy read out loud, "Once local legends but
now almost forgotten, have stepped out of the shadows of the past.
"'Known for regional hits such as "Get Out of My Mind" and "Beyond
the Tide", the 'Miasma were once the biggest band in Arkham's
well-established hippie scene in the sixties. For a while it was thought
that they might have even broken through nationally, until tragedy struck.
"'After a concert ended in violence as a Miskatonic University
professor murdered one of his students in a case that is still considered
'open' by the local police, the band fell apart.
"'"It was devastating to us," Miasma keyboardist Andrew 'Fire'
Brisbane said in a recent interview, "Poor John (Symonds - the band's
guitarist) went over the edge, mentally; and the rest of us just fell
apart. A waste, a total waste."
"'But the passage of time has allowed the members of the band to
come to grips with the disaster of the past' - ha! - 'and now they've
regrouped to take another shot at the music world.
"'"We're going to play some gigs, do some recording, see what
happens," Brisbane elaborates.
"'With the exception of Symonds, who is still indisposed, the
group's entire 1968 lineup, heard on the band's two albums, 1966's "Flip
Your Wig with the Plasma Miasma" and 1967's "Scenes from a Halloween Dream"
has returned for the reunion. Joining Brisbane, who doubles on lead vocals,
are Drummer Daniel Hawthorne and Bassist Willie Falcon. Falcon and
Hawthorne had moved out of the area, but have moved back for the summer in
order to work with the band.
"'Replacing Symonds on Guitar is a talented local teen, Gene
Chandler. "He's got the perfect sound, and a total feel for the band's
music," Brisbane explains. "As well as youthful vigor, which us old
wheezers can sure use. Plus the whole reunion was his idea."
"'The new Plasma Miasma plans to play some local clubs in the near
future. Check club listings in this paper for details.'" Nancy put the
paper down, and Frank reached over and took it from her.
"Well, there we are," Monica said. "Do you see the same future I do?"
"I think so," Nancy nodded.
"What do you mean?" Frank asked, looking up.
"I mean that this bit of information, which fell into our laps by
pure chance by the way, by which I mean it was not chance at all... this
information points us to the next step. If we dare to take it."
"I say 'yes'," Nancy affirmed.
"And Reid and I are already agreed. We just wanted your input. But
the vote must be unanimous. Frank?"
"I'm still not sure what you want to do..."
"I think you know," Reid said.
Frank did know, but it was an idea which terrified him at the same
time that it thrilled him. He looked from face to face, then finally
grinned.
"What the hell. Let's do it."
Monica nodded. "Then it's settled." She raised a glass. "To the
Miskatonic Acid Test - Mark II!"