A New Scene!

Jul 06, 2007 02:24

I haven't been sleeping well, lately.  I think it may be the heat or the craziness at work, but tonight, as I was lying in bed, I got a fantastic image in my head, and decided to first-draft it.  For a first-draft, I think it came out well.

No one had seen Jess in two weeks. Normally, that wouldn't be a big deal, but those that had gone by her apartment had whispered that she wasn't answering even though they could hear her muttering on the other side of the door, and what's worse, there was a strange smell seeping through the door.

I had never been one for barging into other people's business, and Jess was always a tough kid. True, Johnathan's departure had thrown her for a loop, but that was natural. She was coping, we all believed. There was bound to be an adjustment period, wasn't there?

But then the full moon came and she wasn't at the circle. In four years, that had never happened. The circle felt empty, that night, and I decided to pay her a visit. The summer before, we'd exchanged keys, in case one of us lost theirs or needed a place to crash. I decided if she didn't open the door, then I'd use it.

When I got inside the building, though, my plans changed. They'd said there was an odd odor coming from her door. That was an understatement. The main door to the building had been propped open and a fan was blowing out. Up the stairs at her floor, the window at the end of the hall was open with another, bigger, fan. In front of her door, it was sickening. Surely, I thought, someone had tried to talk to her about it, but a moment in front of the door answered that question.

She was whispering. It was a breathy sort of whisper, barely above the wind, but it was clear even through the door. Part of me thought that I must be imagining it, because it was much to quiet to be able to hear it, but it was there, nonetheless. I couldn't make out the words, like she was speaking in another language, but it was her voice, whispering on and on and on.

Somehow, that scared me more than anything else yet. I slid my key into the lock and shoved the door open. At once, the smell became a hundred times more powerful, and sickened me almost as much as the scene in front of me. Among the aromas of sweat and urine and rot and goddess knows what else, Jess was kneeling on the hardwood floor of her living room, surround by a circle of twine and cards and stones.

She'd lost thirty pounds, at least, and I could see her ribs right through the cotton pajamas she wore, partly because they clung to her with sweat and the oils of her skin. Her short hair was tangled and matted, and she rocked back and forth on her haunches. The muttered whispers issuing from her mouth as she rocked stopped as she turned to look at me with dark, bloodshot, sunken eyes. “Close the door.”

With one hand, I pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to my nose. With the other, I reached back and pushed the door shut, never taking my eyes off her. She turned back to the construct on the floor, rocking still, and started to whisper again.

I stepped slowly into the room, studying Jess's project. She'd pushed all the furniture out of the room and piled it in the halls and the kitchen to make room for it. Around herself, she'd driven three hundred and sixty small nails into the floor in a perfect circle. I'm not sure how I knew, but I knew that there were that many, that they were perfectly spaced around her in one-degree increments. She'd formed a solid circle by twisting a line of twine along the bases of each one, and then had made other lines connecting points on the circle. Among the mess, it took me a moment to recognize it. It was an astrological chart.

She sat in the middle, looking around it, muttering. Around it, there was a mass of tarot cards, runestones, alchemical symbols on scraps of paper, pictures of friends, and notes. It made no sense. “Don't touch it,” she muttered at me, “Don't touch it. You'll mess it up.”

How, I wondered. The signs for the astrological stations had been drawn on the floor around the circle in charcoal, and from the dark smudges it looked like she'd moved them several times. There were several different decks of tarot involved, too. At a glance, I could see three different Emperors, two Towers, four Five of Wands, and no less than seven Three of Swords, and they were a small number among dozens of cards clustered at points around the circle. She'd scribbled on most of them, dark marks denoting runes or nonsensical symbols or even just odd scribbles. Different versions of the same tarot card, I realized. It was like she was somehow fine-tuning them, denoting subtle variations in meaning. She was placing them at points where lines met the edges of the circle, and they seemed to branch off of each other in progressions, branching off each other. At other places around the circle were runestones, apparently floating free of the connections on the edge, along with the odd notes, the pictures, and the scraps of odd symbols from all manner of arcane philosophies.

While I stood staring, she fiddled with a calculator and a watch there in the circle with her, stopping now and again to flip through a book of tide and star charts. Every now and then, she'd reach out and unhook one of the cross-lines from the circle and move it one or two points, realigning the symbols and notes associated with it, and go back to more rocking and calculations.

“What are you doing?” I finally asked her.

She shushed me, clutching the calculator to her hollow chest. “I can almost see it. I can almost see.”

I wanted to ask her what she was talking about, but she went back to her rocking again. Besides, another moment later, I realized what the pattern was. Mind mapping. Like a lecturer scribbling out notes for a speech, she was mind-mapping in divination symbols, changing it from moment to moment as the universe shifted around her.

“I'm almost there,” she muttered, “Almost...” At that, she reached down next to her on the other side and took hold of something, just for a moment. A cold chill slid up my spine, and I stepped around the circle for a better look.

There, in the very center of the circle - jammed point down in the wood - was Johnathan's athame, still crusted in blood. My jaw dropped open and I could only whisper in shock, “Jessica...”

Her eyes met mine, tears rolling down her cheeks. “What? I need it. It's the anchor for the whole thing. The focus...”

“Couldn't you have at least cleaned it?”

“No. That's his heart. It's his heart, Max. I need it. I can't throw it away.” She clutched her fists to her chest and sank into a small fetal ball, still rocking endlessly. “I have to see. I have to find the answer. I'm almost there, I swear. Just let me focus, please...”

His heart, she'd said. Quite literally, the blood of his heart. She was looking for answers, 'googling' in the Spiritworld. “Jessica?”

“Shut up,” she whispered.

I leaned down so my face was at the same level as hers. “Jessica.”

She turned her head away, avoiding my eyes. “Get out. Go... go away.” She reached out, nervously fidgeting with a pile of symbols, realigning them. “I can't focus while you're here. I'll lose my place.” With the heel of her palm, she smudged out Pisces and redrew it with an angry scribble.

I had the sudden terrible urge to yank her out of the circle, scatter it all, pry every nail loose. End it, my every reflex told me. Get her the hell out of there. “You need food,” I said at last.

She didn't seem to respond, calculating and scribbling and whispering, but then, she didn't tell me to leave, either. I stood and moved for the door, a grocery list for a liquid diet moving through my head, when she whispered, “Thank you, Max.”

I didn't turn to look. I didn't say anything. I stepped out the door and added air freshener to my mental list.

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