The Angel of Eden (37 page)

“But to close the knot he needed a suitable candidate. Someone weak. A personality barely formed. A fetus in the womb.”

Thunder rolled in my head. I felt as though I was suffocating. I shook myself to get some sense back. “What are you implying?”

“Bennet told me you're experiencing nightmares. Sleep paralysis. You're losing your own identity, Madison. It's come slowly at first but it's speeding up, isn't it? Those men in Kandovan thought they'd killed Helmstetter. They were mistaken. When he died he was no
more than a husk. And that's what you're becoming now. The breaks will grow stronger and much more frequent. They'll happen during the day when you're awake, not just when you're sleeping. They'll begin to merge, the personality of John Madison becoming more and more transient. George Helmstetter will be renewed. He didn't just spawn you. He possessed you.”

Strauss gave me an icy smile then. “But Helmstetter did not bargain on my seeking revenge.”

At that moment, Loki bared her teeth and howled. While we were talking she must have crept right up to his feet without either of us noticing. Strauss reared back in surprise, angled the gun down haphazardly, and fired.

The bullet tore through his thigh. His body jerked and he crashed into the fire grate.

Fifty-Five

T
he gunshot deafened me. For an instant I thought I'd been hit and terror had made me numb to the pain. I leapt over to Strauss, pulled him away from the fire, ripped off the now flaming scarf and threw it back on the coals. I used my jacket to beat out the flames in his hair and then put my hand on his neck to feel for a pulse. I couldn't find one. His skin felt slippery where I'd torn away the scarf.

One of the fire-grate pickets had punctured his temple when he fell; blood now surged around the injury. His body shuddered with convulsions. I waited. Despite my sense of horror, a new feeling welled up inside me. A manic, exuberant joy. I'd escaped what minutes ago I thought would be certain death.

Loki had retreated into a corner. I picked her up, grabbed my jacket, and plucked
The Steganographia
off the desk. As I hurried out I cast a longing gaze back at the artifacts in the cabinet, remembering Strauss had promised them to me in exchange for retrieving the book. I couldn't afford to be found with them now.

I thanked God Strauss had chosen such an out-of-the-way place. I got a plastic bag from the trunk to wrap my jacket in, charred by the flames and stained from Strauss's blood. I'd dispose of it later.

After a two-hour drive I judged it safe to stop at an all-night service station. I parked the car near a row of tractor trailers and sank my head on my arms. From the time I'd walked out of Strauss's living room I'd been on autopilot. The adrenalin had finally subsided, leaving me shaking.

Was Strauss right about Helmstetter invading my identity, slowly taking me over?
“You're a dangerous man, John, in more ways than one,”
Bennet had said. Did she sense something about me that even I wasn't aware of? Memories of my last sojourn in Iraq came back to me. Things I couldn't make sense of at the time. The two apparitions in the Kutha throne room who hadn't attacked me but instead signaled some kind of bond. My lack of compassion for the violent acts I'd carried out. How I'd felt at times. Not evil, just coldly amoral. Had those been Helmstetter's emotions coming to the surface?

No, it was impossible. Strauss was insane, his virulent hatred of Helmstetter so extreme that he'd concocted a bizarre fantasy about me. I felt utterly drained. It was all I could do to lift my head from my arms and sink back on the headrest. I stayed that way for hours, not dozing but not able to summon up the energy for much else either. When I revived, I started up the Porsche and sped off again.

April 21, 2005
New York

Weeks went by before I realized Strauss hadn't lied to me. Although I'd been feeling restless and out of sorts, I had just about persuaded myself there was nothing to fear.

Then Strauss's prediction began to come true.

A balmy day beckoned, the signs of spring just beginning to make themselves felt. I took Loki to the dog park in the square. She was no longer in a cast and had learned how to play with other dogs. A woman sat down beside me and unclasped the leash from her spaniel; he ran off suddenly and the leash fell from her grasp. I bent down to pick it up for her and something shifted, as if a plane of glass had suddenly dropped down between us.

“Thanks,” the woman said. I barely heard her. The hum of traffic became a loud chorus in my ears. I felt nauseated. “Thank you,” the woman said more loudly and held out her hand for the leash. I dropped it on the bench and got up without acknowledging her.

A memory had come to me. I was a young boy, perhaps twelve—no more. I wore a dirty pair of jeans that were too large for me and a man's faded shirt. I was in a farm field, all alone. A windy day and cloudy. In the distance I could see a rickety old farm-house and dilapidated red barn. I'd flattened down the dried corn stalks to make a rough circle and looped a piece of twine around the neck of one of my mother's hens. When I tightened the loop, the hen struggled and flapped its wings in panic as its air was cut off. I passed my hand over its neck. The twine seemed to disappear. The hen scrambled up and ran away.

Not my memory. It belonged to someone else. My father. A boy raised on a dirt-poor farm who grew to become a gifted magician. A man who embraced dark knowledge and used his own son as a vehicle to renew himself. I shuddered and tried to wrench myself from the memory. To force my own personality back again. The drone of the traffic subsided. My vision cleared. Loki ran toward me. I picked her up and pressed her to my chest as if her warm body could obliterate my fears.

I was fracturing, the shell splitting just as Strauss had predicted it would, and now the new being, George Helmstetter, was emerging. I made my way home, almost unconscious of crossing the street, taking the elevator, opening my apartment door, removing Loki's leash. I collapsed onto my sofa in front of the long unused fireplace, terrified that another false memory would come to haunt me. This first schism during wakefulness had come entirely unbidden and out of my control. I now had a ringside seat to my own destruction.

Once some time had passed I calmed down a little. There had to be a way. Maybe some knowledgeable person could guide me in overcoming the process of disintegration. My mind cast about wildly. And then I remembered something Veronica Sills had said.
“There's always a way out if you know the way in.”
My glance fell on
The Steganographia
sitting in the glass cabinet. Could I recognize in its pages the rituals Helmstetter had followed to achieve his transformation? I did, after all, have a perverse ally—the ability to call upon Helmstetter's own memory. He'd done the hard work by deciphering the book; my task would be to recall the steps he took and find a way to reverse them. That gave me some hope of staving off the metamorphosis. But I knew I had little time.

The next day I left New York with Loki and rented a cabin in the Catskills close to the Devil's Path where my friend and I had hiked months before. If pushing myself to physical extremes had helped ward off the sleep paralysis then, it might also delay Helmstetter's resurrection now. I rose early every morning and spent hours scaling the path, choosing the most hazardous portions of the route, concentrating on the climb as a way to force back my fears. Evenings were devoted to studying Trithemius's book. All this achieved a balance of sorts but I made no real headway.

Early spring in the Catskills often brings uncertain weather. One day it'll be fine and warm, the next brittle cold with high
winds and frost, especially at higher elevations. On this morning I'd tried to free-climb a particularly difficult stretch, a high precipice of limestone off the official path. I should never have attempted it alone. If I met with an accident, no one would know. Even with a partner it would have been foolhardy. It had turned very cold and the cliff was slick with a fine patina of ice. About three-quarters of the way up I reached a brim of rock so narrow it could hardly be called a ledge. I balanced on it to get my breath and looked below me to a hundred-foot drop, jagged, slippery rock all the way down.

It had not been a good day. I'd felt especially despondent, hopeless about ever being able to reclaim my peace of mind. So easy to just slip off. And my choosing more and more perilous routes, I saw now, unconsciously pointed me in one direction. Perhaps that was the best way. Having so far failed at unearthing Helmstetter's method, I could cheat my demon father by ending it for us both.

Just then a shadow passed over me. I craned my neck and spotted a giant bird—a vulture. Its wingspan had to be at least seven feet. I'd never seen one that size anywhere in the state.

When it settled on the lip of the precipice above, a warmth stole over me. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but the bird had a strange presence. It seemed to bond with me, to give me courage. It took off suddenly with a graceful lifting of its huge wings, and as it soared upward it reminded me of that other being. The ancient priest I'd met in Eden, the vulture its emblem. The presence who had guided me into an unknown night, who I now realized was with me still, had never really left my side.

As I watched the bird grow smaller until it was only a dot in the sky, I sensed I would win the battle with the man who sired me.

Notes

Part One

Chapter 6

Chapter 18

Chapter 20

Chapter 23

Part Two

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Part Three

Chapter 45

Chapter 47

Chapter 52