Chapter 19: Mass Arraignment
"Keep your eyes on me," Erik said as he turned her head away from the pandemonium.
He sat cross-legged facing her, his candle and flask on the floor. He took the grimoire from her hands and flipped through the pages.
"Has this happened before?" she asked him.
"No, never. I don't know what I did wrong." He frowned down at the book. "I did everything exactly, perfectly correct. Just as I did thirty years ago. The pentagrams go in a certain direction—and they have to be completely closed…" He stared up into nothing and struggled for a solution.
The quaking console table shed roses and candles in all directions. It was hard to think with all the knocking in the walls.
"Well, what happened when you tried this before?" she asked. "I mean lately."
He shrugged. "Nada. No spirit even showed."
"You're kidding."
"I'm not. I think… I think they're here because of you."
"Me! I only held your book."
"Well, perhaps you inspire me. I didn't try much on my own, to be honest. I—I mostly prayed instead." He raked shaking fingers through his hair. "This isn't my favorite thing to do."
"I know." She straightened his gore-streaked necktie. "Try not to think of the past. You're not going to hurt them this time; you're the only one who can save them. It's like… seventy wrongly-convicted felons need your exoneration."
"Well, I wish I could give it to them! I don't know how. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I did everything the way I'm supposed to."
"Then you're not wrong! You're right. You just have to make them listen to you."
"I can't, Christine! I'm just a novice. I'm in over my head."
"Bullshit. You have a gift. How'd these souls awaken thirty years ago? You did it, on your first try. You've just got to do this on your own terms. Think outside the rules. The laws never box you in as a judge. All that matters is that justice is served." She took the candle and flask from the floor and thrust them into his hands. "Court's in session. Take the bench, Your Honor."
He sat before her holding the tools of his dark art while chaos continued around them.
At last he took action and returned to the grimoire. He tore out a couple of blank pages from the back of the book. "We'll have a mass arraignment," he said, pulling a ballpoint pen from his inside jacket pocket. "I'll summon everyone at once."
And with intense concentration despite the noise, he copied all seventy names from the journal exactly as they had been written thirty years ago by his younger hand. Then he folded the pages like an envelope so that none of the names were facing out.
"Hold this closed for me, please."
While she pressed her fingers over the seam of his pages, he stripped off his suit jacket. A pistol hung from a holster under his left arm, which startled her so much that she forgot what was happening. She never realized he packed heat. Given their recent experiences, the extra protection made sense, but it was no help at all in their present situation.
He hadn't noticed her alarm. He opened his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves. Then he reached into the little leather bag and frightened her further by producing a nine-inch stiletto switchblade with a bone-white handle.
Her eyes widened. Those are illegal!
He sprung open the blade and sterilized it over the candle flame, then passed the candle to her.
"When I tell you, tip the candle and let the wax fall on the paper to seal it."
Before she could ask him what the hell he was doing with a switchblade, he dragged the point across the palm of his left hand and grunted in pain. Held his fist over the folded paper, and the first drops of blood fell onto the seam. She moved her fingers out of the way.
"Now, the wax."
She tipped the candle, and hot, white wax mixed with his blood to seal the pages. Suddenly he grabbed the candle from her and dripped wax on his own hand to seal his wound.
"There," he said, flexing and flailing his cut hand. "Now they're bound to my will. Just like the first time."
"You mean you cut yourself every time you performed a summons for your friends?!"
He shrugged. "It doesn't work otherwise. They're probably still bound to me from the first time, but doing it again might help." He stood and tossed the wax-sealed packet out of the circle. It landed in front of the shuddering console table, inside a triangle etched into his floor. "Now we get to work."
They knelt again in the circle, she showed him the grimoire while he held the candle and holy water and recited the Latin. He had to raise his voice over the constant knocking in the walls. He turned the page and read all the names aloud, one after the other.
The temperature in the room dropped until his breath left his lips in wispy plumes. Her ears and fingers grew numb. In the deep shadows by the window, the telescope spun slowly on its tripod.
The knocking stopped.
With a whoosh and a flash of light, the packet of names on the floor combusted in green flames that reached halfway to the ceiling.
Erik screamed as his cut hand caught fire as well. The flask of holy water shattered on the floor; the candle fell from his fingers and rolled out of the circle before she could catch it. He pulled his bloody handkerchief from his pocket with his other hand and smothered the flame. Wrapped the handkerchief around his palm. His twisted features tensed with restrained temper.
In the sudden silence, she could hear the incense sizzle in the brazier behind her. Heavy smoke carpeted the floor.
The candle was still burning where the wall had stopped its roll. Erik crawled to the edge of the circle and reached for it.
"Erik, no!" she cried, breaking her oath of silence. "You can't!"
"I need it."
"Maybe it's just a prop." She pulled him back. "Like your gavel. You can still take control without it."
The candle's flame guttered and went out.
"Your words have real power. You just need to issue the order." She dipped her fingers in the holy water soaking into the floor, then traced them over his distorted lips. "God works through your words."
He smiled warmly at her. Kissed her mouth with his wet lips. "Igual."
He stood and held the open grimoire. From the look on his face, there was no mistaking that his command was law both on Earth and in the next world. The folded list of names still burned, and by the light of those unnatural, green flames he issued his final order, in a thunderous voice that brooked no argument. As he completed his command, he raised his right arm high and pointed towards Heaven.
Fierce, howling wind spun in cyclones towards the burning packet, blowing white roses everywhere and all but ripping the damask curtains from their rungs. His telescope spun out of control. The low-lying smoke whipped up before their eyes and obscured the dark room in further shadow.
The triangle etched on his floor in front of the console table erupted in pure, blue light that reminded her of his once cornflower-colored corsage. The light climbed in a column to the ceiling, where blinding white light poured down as if someone opened a trap door in the attic. It hurt her eyes, but she didn't want to turn away. Spirits soared heavenward within the blue column, and they were no longer the loathsome corpses that she had seen at the CJC. These were the peaceful, shining faces of redeemed souls. They danced like fireflies in the column of light and rose through the portal that'd opened in Erik's ceiling into the Next world.
Faint, irregular chimes accompanied their dance. It was beautiful, mesmerizing, like a distant harp. The spirits, she realized, were laughing and cheering.
She rose on shaking legs and put her arm through Erik's.
As the last spirit passed, the column rolled up behind it, and then spirit and column and cyclone all passed through the blinding portal, which closed silently behind them, leaving Christine and Erik in the dark.
The rain crackled distantly. She choked in the lingering, acrid smoke.
He fell at her feet. "My Portia! My sorceress! You blew them away with your charm. 'I stand indebted, over and above, in love and service to you evermore.'" He kissed her ankles. "But let me complete the banishing ritual just in case."
She couldn't see what he was doing, but as she listened, she remembered the sign of the cross and then the pentagrams in the four cardinal directions and then his invocation of the archangels and his strange finale: "About me flames the pentagrams, and in the column shines the six-rayed star."
Even without his candle, his pentagrams flashed in the smoky haze before she was again plunged into darkness.
He coughed and pulled open the curtains. Apparently, he was in no more danger outside of his circle. Despite the distant sound of constant rain, tranquil afternoon light illuminated his disorderly room: roses and ashes strewn all over the floor, his candle burned out in its cracked cylinder against the wall, his mother's picture divorced from its shattered frame. There were scorch marks within the triangle etched on his floor, and on the ceiling above it. A pall of smoke hung over the scene.
He heaved open the windows and shrugged back into his jacket. In the haze, he was only a smoky silhouette before the window.
"Your hand!" she cried suddenly. "Is it all right?"
"It hurts like hell," he croaked, his voice raspy from the pervasive smoke. "But—" He choked again on the smoke, wracked with coughs that had him doubled over. "Gah! Phew! This smoke's getting worse."
Which didn't make any sense, because there wasn't any fire. Not even an ember of incense smoldered in his brazier. Still trembling, she went to turn on the light.
She gasped when her palm found the wall. "The wall is hot! The wall is burning hot!" She glanced to the door, saw it framed in a thin line of orange light, saw more smoke seeping in from the top… And a terrible realization sank into her soul. The smoke, the distant roaring that she mistook for rain… "Erik! The house is on fire!"