Harvest

O.K., I admit I probably shouldn't have done it. But, really, who in their right mind would have expected this? But, then again, who do I know who's in their right mind? Sure, I mean, all the tales warn against doing it, but nobody ever suggests that this can happen. Come on. What? You look puzzled. Maybe I should start at the beginning.

Slowly?

Right.

Well, I had never really gotten into any trouble, though I'd harbored seditious thoughts on many occasions. I was just discreet enough to keep myself clear of overt political complications, as I liked to remain. I never would have expected the road I walked to lead to such an end. I mean, who expects to get into trouble for the politics of one's magic?

There it is, in a nutshell. Honestly, is it my fault that I didn't take such a consideration into account? If I did anything wrong, it was merely the drunkenness by which it became easy to choose loosely to perform the act. Really, though, who would have expected this?

Maybe it is my fault. Maybe I should have realized that such an act carried with it its own reality, that one could expect anything. Again, I don't know.

The problem is, it's too late, and They say that ignorance of the Law is no excuse. They don't listen when I suggest that a touch of publicity to that Law would still be nice. I mean, so it wasn't a friendly thing to do. Nobody ever before told me there was a law against not liking someone, and I would have called them a liar if they had. I mean, really. What's a little curse among friends?

Before you decide that I'm a lunatic, let me assure you that I'm not. I'm just as stable as you or your neighbor. I merely happen to disagree with most of you on one point: I'm a pagan (as opposed to a heathen). As a pagan, I see magic as a fairly common and straightforward thing, or maybe seeing it that way was what landed me in this mess. I don't know anymore.

Here's what happened: I got drunk and ritually evoked a certain Entity in the process of cursing someone I particularly dislike. Now, who would even suspect that anyone would be watching such a very private little transgression? But, there's the rub. The recipient of my unpleasant intent was very public, none other than the President of the United States, and such a one has guardians too numerous to count...

It all began the following day.

"Dr. Randall," intoned the voice on the telephone, "I've heard through a friend of a friend of your interest in magic, and I need a ghostwriter. I suppose I felt that the two were a powerful conjunction, and I just wondered..."

Well, I'd not been doing too well lately (cash flow, the real "writer's block") and was only too happy to have work drop from the sky. This really helped to cut the edge of the hangover from last night's disgruntled drinking spree, and I don't think I even thought to ask into the exact pathways by which my interlocutor had come to know of me. "I agree. That sounds like a wonderful conjunction," I silked, careful not to be too eager. "I'd love to hear more, but it sounds like we'd better meet, first. How do you wanna do this?"

We made an appointment to meet in her office the next day. Now, I really don't think that I can be faulted for taking the whole thing at face value, surprising or not. My unknown client-to-be ended the conversation by saying, "You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to this. I can't wait to get going."

The next day found me outside a midtown office building ten minutes early -- right on schedule. (I find that hunger and punctuality go hand in hand.) I noticed as I walked through the corridor/lobby and into the dumbwaiter that passed for the building's elevator that my client-to-be didn't appear to be doing much better than I was. This might not be such a windfall after all, if they didn't have any more money than this. Thus lost in somber -- aye, sobering -- reverie, I arrived in front of the agreed-upon door, 1339.

Only one fact was certain through the door's frosted window: no lights were on inside. The cracked window rattled in its pane as I knocked on the loosely latched door. "Hello?" I inquired. Nobody. One of the hazards of being early, I consoled myself as I settled back against the wall in cool quiescence. My cool lasted about half an hour, as well as my certainty that I had come to the right address. I considered that the office might well be empty, a possibility hardly unlikely considering the building's condition.

Drawing near the frosted glass, I strained casually to catch a glimpse of the chamber's interior through the transverse crack that split the pane. The exercise yielded eye-strain and an incipient headache, but nothing more.

OK, so I should have paid attention to the flaming green aural sparks which shot from the doorknob as I reached toward it (green being a color which I have always, in some contexts, associated with hazard). I chalked it up to the eyestrain and sealed my fate, grasping and turning the doorknob. That mechanism rotated without resistance until I felt the latch release. The office was unlocked. Puzzled, I slowly pushed the door open, stepping across the threshold as I did so, a greeting on my lips which died there.

Inside was something from a bad dream. Blood or something convincingly like it smeared the walls, broken by assorted portions of assorted creatures, and symbols crawled over the room like giant spiders. In the center of the room sat its only furniture and the only untouched surface, an apparently empty, dilapidated desk. Upon that desk was a glass-mounted photograph which faced the door. I couldn't make out the contents of the photograph through the glare that came from the window across from the door, a window through which the dried-blood hues of the setting sun were just now pouring. I nearly bolted on the instant, but there was something about that photograph on the desk.

Slowly, almost mesmerized, I walked into the room, so engrossed that I don't even think I heard the door close behind me. Crossing to the desk, I picked up and studied the photograph. Now, you tell me that you could have held onto it once you realized that it was a picture of you, from your own collection. I couldn't, and the picture dropped to the floor, the echo of its breakage coinciding with the voice that startlingly pierced through me from behind. "So. I wondered when you'd choose to attend us." To say that I spun would be to grant me a grace that my actions lacked, but it would convey the alacrity with which I responded to this unexpected greeting.

Three white-robed persons stood before me: a short, squat woman flanked by a tall, angular young man and his companion, a somewhat heavy, moderately tall and very cherubic elderly gentleman. From where they had materialized I have to this day no idea, for the hall had been empty when I entered and no other doors disturbed the walls of that unspeakable room. "Who...? What...? Why...?" I inquired with uncharacteristic eloquence of the somewhat toad-like woman. Only now was I beginning to recognize the voice from the phone and connect it with this unseemly apparition.

"Why don't you have a seat," suggested the dark young man, gesturing at the desk behind me. Angel-face just stood to one side, his arms crossed.

"No thanks, I'll stand."

"Oh, but we insist," husked the woman. She nodded to her two companions, and they came forward, flanking me on either side.

"Well, since you put it that way," I agreed, backing slowly around the edge of the desk until I felt the chair press against me. Her companions advanced as I retreated, one moving around my side of the desk, one around the other. I rather shakily took my seat, looking up at Stretch who stood before me. No sooner had I settled into the chair than I felt hands that could only be Angel-face's settle upon my shoulders, gently but insistently locking me in place.

"Dr. Randall," began the over-stuffed munch kin who seemed to be in charge, "you've been a very bad boy. It has come to our attention that you've meddled with some, shall we say, rather negative forces, and used them in a highly treasonable manner." I was starting to feel dissociated, and I began to suspect that maybe this was a dream. I heard the munchkin's words, but her toadish face seemed so serene -- I just couldn't stop watching the calm movements of those bloated lips as the fantastic words flowed forth. "There are penalties for such acts. I'm afraid that you've brought them upon yourself, if you know what I mean."

The dissociation seemed to be deepening. It was becoming uncomfortably similar to an induced trance-like state, and given the circumstances I found such entrancement unnerving (though I could do nothing to clear my mind). "You've got to be kidding," I gasped. "That's it, isn't it? This is some kind of joke. Who put you up to it?" The robed woman brought her face very close to mine, her eyes focused directly on my own and filling my field of vision. I felt myself transfixed by a sliver of spectral ice as she invaded my eyes.

I can't say that I remember much more of that encounter. If I try, all I can dredge up are memory-images so jumbled and disjoint as to be beyond words or description, images seen as if through the eyes of something which has nothing in common with the conditions of human perception. The next thing I knew, I was walking down a busy midtown street, unsure of how I had arrived there. I immediately noticed the shocked stares that greeted me as I walked, and as tactile sensibility returned an increasing sense of draftiness told me why. I noticed my nudity just as the voice of authority arrived on the scene, stepping from the squad car and pulling my hands behind my back as the ritual words of Miranda were invoked.

"...really," she was going on (and on, and on) as we left the precinct, "what you were doing there in such a condition. If you don't want to tell me, I guess there's nothing I can do about it. After all, I'm just the person you share your life with. But, if you don't want to tell me, well, I guess..."

The lingering dissociation coupled with a healthy sense of humiliation made it easy to block out Maude's tirade, and I let her words flow over me undistinguished as the sights and sounds of city traffic floated past my window. I always have found taxis to be soothing, even in New York City, and I was more than willing to let myself be carried within the ebb and flow of the tidal surge of the streets. We were nearly home by the time Maude began to wind down and I had recovered sufficiently to attempt an explanation for what had occurred. Most distressingly, however, the second I tried to describe that unspeakable room and the events therein, I was overtaken by a bout of projectile vomiting that left the curses of the cabbie ringing in my ears long after he ordered us from his vehicle and consigned our souls to Hell.

I began to suspect that I had been drugged, and reassured us both that everything would be fine once enough time had passed for my body to detoxify itself. This was an explanation that Maude could accept (especially knowing my past), and I settled into the safety of our apartment to await the return of normalcy.

Maude moved out the next day, and I can't really say that I blamed her. It was an idea that was starting to sound good to me. There's nothing like a night of finding yourself paralyzed on a bed which violently oscillates between floor and ceiling to make one less than enamored of remaining until the next night. My downstairs neighbor's ceiling showed the effects of my bed's repeated violent contact with my floor, and it took one healthy bribe to convince the building's super to forget about it and replaster the ceiling.

"Auras read and adjusted," read the sign in the window. "Authentic psychic astrologer and spiritual healer." Well, even someone who dabbles as I do normally doesn't pay any attention to these street-corner practitioners, but I didn't know of anyplace else to turn. Taking a deep breath, I rang the outer bell. The door buzzed in response only a few seconds later, and I stepped reluctantly into the tacky parlor with its inevitable trappings.

"Come in," came the thickly accented voice from beyond the curtained doorway that faced me from the back of the room. "I've been waiting for you." Yeah, sure, I thought. What a line. What was I doing here, anyway? Still...

I stepped into a twilit room, the subdual of its lighting magnified by the dark shades and heavy textures of the room and its contents. In this lighting, the white turban of the ancient mahogany-colored woman who sat at the room's small table seemed almost to float free in the gloom, its wearer receding into the dusky light. "Please, sit down," intoned the old woman as I stood for a moment in confusion, my eyes adjusting to the lighting (or, more properly, to the lack thereof). Shaking my head in an effort to clear my jumbled thoughts, I lowered myself with only minor hesitation into the waiting high-backed wooden chair.

"You're troubled. Unseen forces are at work in your life, and you don't know what to do about them."

I chuckled involuntarily. "Great line. Have you found anyone yet that it doesn't apply to?" I shifted uncomfortably in the spartan chair as the expected retort didn't come. I strained to see my hostess's face as the seconds dragged by, but only a dark, oval smudge was visible in the subdued lighting. My unease increased as the silence stretched, until finally I could stand it no more. "I'm sorry. Listen, I didn't mean to ... that is, it was rude of me to say what I did. Please. I need to talk to someone."

"You need more than that," the shadowy woman replied. "Unfortunately, it's too late. The die has been cast. I see about you the pall of a doom. I also see, however, that if you are lucky you may be able to survive it, to ride out its duration. If you are lucky, and if you learn."

"What do you mean, 'a doom'? What kind of doom? And what do you mean by 'its duration'? All I know is..."

"All you know," my seeress interrupted, "is that you have been visited with occult afflictions. I don't know the precise nature or source of them, though I suspect that you do. I suspect that the visitation has occurred because of occult transgressions on your part. Power is a balance, and every act requires its offsetting. You may take some hope in the fact that your doom is not permanent, else you would already reek of damnation sealed and accomplished. You have but a taint, a touch, the merest odor of corruption to you. Who put this upon you -- such as this requires to be enacted?"

"They said something about a Tribunal."

"They?"

"Yeah. Two men and a woman in white robes. They said something about a Law."

"So," she hissed, "you're a political." There was a moment of silence before the murky figure snorted in derision. "You must not be a very good sorcerer. If you were, you probably would have brought down a permanent damnation upon yourself as an example."

"Please, you've got to help me. What can I do?"

"Nothing, I'm afraid. The Law is absolute. You break it, the Balance is extracted."

"But, nobody ever told me about this. It's not fair. How can I be held responsible for a Law I didn't know about?"

"Ignorance is no defense. Come on, everybody knows that. You wouldn't expect a traffic court to let you off with that excuse. Why would you expect a magical court to do so? Besides, you're telling me that you never heard Black Magic has unpleasant costs? And you're a sorcerer? Save it for the rubes." The woman lapsed once again into silence. It seemed that the darkness of the chamber was deepening, as was my depression.

"How long will it last?" I pressed. "How long do I have to endure this?" I strained to see through the gloom, to see across the table to where my informant sat. All I could make out was a heavy, dark shadow, and even that became harder to distinguish with each passing second. There was no response. I became angry at being so treated, being so rudely ignored. "That's a fairly simple question, isn't it?" I insisted forcefully. "How long?" Still, there was no response.

I'd had enough of this. The thought ran through my head that the old woman was probably sitting there in the dark -- for dark it now was -- laughing at me. I'd cure that. Rising quickly, I strode to the curtained doorway and threw the hanging aside, letting in a diffuse but still revealing light from the parlor through which I'd entered. It is hard, now, to convey the true measure of my agitation and confusion when the gloom of that chamber was lifted for, though I could now see the entire room, nowhere was the ancient seeress with whom I had been talking.

Uncomprehending, I walked around the table, almost half believing that I would find the mahogany colored crone crouching down below its edge, afraid to face my wrath. It took me only a few moments to satisfy myself ("satisfy" -- indeed, such a strange turn of phrase for an experience which left such a chill on my soul) that I was alone in that room. I did, however, find an object upon the chair occupied previously by the old woman: a handmade and painted wooden rune. It was the rune of harvest, a definite period, or one year.

Well, it was clear that the old lady was playing games with me and had escaped through another doorway in the rear of the room when she had somehow turned down the lamps (I am certain to this day that the room had been lit by low, flickering oil lamps when I entered, though I could now see only glass-shaded electric lighting). I determined to give her a piece of my mind and wasted no time locating the doorway hidden behind yet another hanging curtain -- this doorway complete with a quite solid and, I found, securely locked door.

The question was still frothing about in my mind how the old woman had made it through that locked door in the dark without making a sound, when I heard the lock in question turn, its tumblers loud and sharp in their movements. Confused by the noise emanating from what I had been in the process of deciding must be an extremely precise and silent mechanism, I stepped back, dropping the curtain into place, and waited for my hostess to reappear. The door swung audibly open on hinges long overdue for oiling, and the air currents of its opening caused the curtain which hid the passageway from view to flutter and sway. I would have thought at that moment that my bewilderment at the recent turn of events could grow no greater, but I would have been completely though understandably wrong. In the next moment, an almost bone-white hand came into view, gripping the curtain and moving it aside as the body attached to that hand moved through the veil.

My caustic greeting gurgled forgotten in my throat as the figure entered that chamber: tall, slender, almost bleached white, and younger than I. She looked at me in shock for a second, before she demanded (in a classic Brooklyn accent), "What're you doin' here? How'd ya get in? 'M not open yet." She was glancing uneasily about the chamber, and I could feel her preparing to bolt back through the doorway behind her.

"Who are you?" I almost pleaded. "Where's the old lady who was here?"

"What? You on drugs?" she asked, becoming irate. "This place here's mine. Ain't nobody here but me." She was backing up, and was looking at me as if she expected me to explode at any second. "Now, you get out of here before I call the cops. You go, now, before you get hurt. I got a dog," she warned me, pulling a whistle from where it hung between her breasts on a neck chain.

Things were just happening too fast, and my mind was reeling under the strain of trying to follow the deformation which my reality had just undergone. I couldn't think clearly, but I realized that something had just gone very wrong and I was probably in no position to make it right. That dog whistle especially worried me -- under the circumstances it wouldn't have surprised me to see it summon Cerberus, itself. I tried to speak, to explain, but my throat had gone dry and words just wouldn't come, only an inarticulate squeaking. Panic gripped me, and I turned and fled that room. It took me an almost delirious moment to unlock the front door (I still cannot figure out how the door came to be locked, since I had entered unimpeded) and I then ran blindly into the street, nearly getting myself run down stopping the first taxi I saw.