A Scatter of Stardust (13 page)

And, on the face of it, it was such a harmless thing to do. Who, in this day and age, would take witchcraft seriously? Everyone knew how harmless it was.

Harmless?

He shivered to the cold numbing his bones and felt terror as the blur in his sight began to advance across his vision.

He blinked and the blur retreated until it remained a blur. He took her hands and held them and fastened her eyes with his own.

“You have known Lefarge for a long time, haven’t you?”

“Yes, Mark, a long time.”

“You have talked to him. Told him about us. Told him all about me?”

She nodded.

“Why did you give him my photograph?”

Her eyes darted to the empty frame on the bedside table. They held guilt when they returned. He tightened his grip on her hands.

“Didn’t you know what power you were giving him?”

“He took it, Mark. He demanded it and I couldn’t refuse. He — ”

“He threatened you with — something?” The pattern was plain. Profess a belief in the power of spells and the threat of a spell will terrify. Sandra believed in witchcraft and so had made herself vulnerable to those she considered to be her superiors in the mystic arts. But there had to be something else. He probed, questioned, used all his trained skill to discover what it was. Lefarge must at one time have given her proof of his power. It came as a shock to find what it was.

“He made something for me.” Like others, Sandra found relief in confession. “He — ” She pulled free her hands, rose, went to a small cabinet. She returned with something in her hands. “He made this.”

*

It was a bundle of thin twigs bound at each end with human hair and sealed with black wax. The twigs were wrapped around a variety of contents: a tie, a bloodstained handkerchief, hair and fingernail clippings in transparent bags, threads of fabric from a suit. He held it in his hands and looked at her. He knew what it was. He had written a treatise on such things while at college, a psychological study on certain aspects of superstition.

It was a love charm.

Delicately he probed at the contents of the twig bundle. The tie he recognized; the handkerchief bore his monogram, his blood. He remembered when he had cut a finger and used it for a hasty bandage. Sandra had taken charge of it and promised to wash it for him. The hair? He could guess that it was his. The threads had come from one of his suits. The clippings? Sandra had once given him a manicure.

But there was only half a tie. The handkerchief had been ripped down the center.

“Lefarge made this for you? Why?”

“I wanted you,” she said simply. “You didn’t seem to be interested in me so — ”

“So you had him make you a love charm,” he said bitterly. “Did you honestly think that this was necessary? That it would work?”

“You love me,” she pointed out. “You asked me to marry you — after the charm was made.”

“I would have done that in any case,” he said dully. Then: “Why didn’t you marry me when I asked?”

“Because — ” She bit her lip, tears glistening in her eyes. “Oh, Mark, can’t you understand?”

Holding the thing in his hand, he could understand well enough. Burn the charm and the charm and the love it was supposed to generate would die with it. But Sandra hadn’t destroyed the charm even though she had gained what she wanted, or what she had imagined she wanted. Did she refuse to marry him for fear that he didn’t really love her, that he was attracted to her only because of the charm?

Surely she was woman enough to be wanted for herself alone? Was the charm, the thing she believed holding him to her, the thing which also kept them apart?

Mark hoped that it was.

He thrust the thing into his pocket and rose and looked down at her.

“Get your coat,” he ordered. “Take me to Lefarge.”

“But — ”

“Take me to Lefarge.”

*

It was a long way through narrow streets and winding alleys to a small house with a lowering roof and a door heavily carved in mystic symbols. The dawn had strengthened as they walked, the city-bred birds greeting it as enthusiastically as their country cousins, and it was early day when they arrived. Mark stared at the house. Two windows flanked the door. Three windows ran below the low roof. All were closely shuttered.

“Sandra, do you have a key?”

“No. Shall I knock?”

“And warn Lefarge?” Mark stepped to one of the lower windows and tried to peer into the room. Thick curtains blocked his view. He took the dagger from his pocket and forced the blade beneath the sash. The wood was old, rotten. It yielded to the pressure of the steel. Mark strained, moved the dagger, strained again. The lock yielded with a snap.

The room was small, smelling of must and damp; a library from the books which lined the walls. Mark closed the window, drew the curtains and, by the flame of his cigarette lighter, found his way to the door. Sandra, breathing unevenly, was close at his side.

“Do you know where his workroom is? You know what I mean.”

“Upstairs.” She caught his arm. “Mark, do you know what you’re doing?”

“I’m doing what has to be done.” He wasn’t exaggerating. The cold was like a nagging toothache and the hateful blur had drawn his nerves to screaming pitch.

Sandra was afraid. He could tell it from the way she clutched his arm as they crept up the stairs. Her breathing was harsh and, when he gripped her hand, he found it moist with perspiration. Perhaps she had reason for her fear. She believed in a terminology he found ludicrous, but change the terminology...

He opened a door at the head of the stairs and stepped into the past.

The room was big, running the full length of the house, decorated and adorned with images and paintings, masks and idols which must have known the smoke of sacrificial fires in the darker parts of the world. A parody of an altar stood at one end, black candles beneath the homed visage of a goat, whose ruby eyes glittered as if from inner fires. Pentagrams and esoteric symbols marked the bare, wooden floor. Vigil lamps burned before nameless shrines.

Mark stood looking, reminded a little of Sandra’s study, and yet to this her room had been a place of harmless make-believe. This place was vile. It reeked of animal waste and the smoke of pungent herbs. It stank of burnt offerings and smoldering incense. Things had been done in this room which no law, however tolerant, would have permitted.

The other half of the room reminded him of an old-fashioned apothecary’s laboratory. Jars, boxes, containers were filled with powdered herbs, seeds, mummified remains of unidentifiable creatures, strange liquids and stranger pastes. Lefarge, Mark guessed, ran a prosperous business supplying the peculiar ingredients deemed essential to the proper observance of magical rites.

He hunted through the room as Sandra stood, wide-eyed, by the door, then paused, baffled. What he looked for wasn’t in this room. It must be somewhere else in the house. The kitchen, perhaps?

He led the way downstairs to the region at the back of the house where the kitchen would normally be.

Lefarge was waiting for them.

*

He looked just as Mark remembered. The same thin, black hair hugging the narrow skull in an exaggerated widow’s peak. The same beard and moustache. The same deep-set eyes. He wore a dressing gown, tight belted around his waist. Embroidered slippers covered his feet. He was smoking a long, thin cigar.

“Sandra!” He made a little bow. “And Mr. Conway! How delightful.”

“Is it?”

“Of course.” Lefarge knocked ash from his cigar. He glanced at Sandra. “I confess that I had not expected this pleasure, my dear, but you are always welcome.” His eyes moved to Mark. “You, of course, I have been expecting for some time.”

“Then you are not surprised?”

“Naturally not. But this is no place for discussion. I suggest that we meet again this evening at the same place and with the same company as before.”

“So that I can admit that I was wrong?” Mark shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t do that.”

“Indeed?” The tip of Lefarge’s tongue delicately moistened the comers of his mouth. “You know, Mr. Conway, I hardly think that you have any choice in the matter.” He examined the tip of his cigar. “Don’t you think that it’s getting rather cold? Colder than, shall we say, last night?”

Mark shivered. Damn him, the man was right. He had been cold before but now it was growing worse. It took an effort to restrain his teeth from chattering. Sandra noticed it and caught at his arm.

“Mark. Why not do as he says?”

“No.” Irritably he shook off her hand. “I brought you here for a reason,” he said harshly. “I want to show you just how stupid a belief in magic is.” He looked at Lefarge. “All that rubbish upstairs; do you believe that its use is essential to gain concrete results?”

Lefarge shrugged. He leaned casually against the large refrigerator in a comer of the kitchen. Smoke from the cigar veiled his face. From the uncurtained window came the sounds of a waking world. Prosaic sounds. Comforting.

“I’ll put it another way,” snapped Mark. “Would you say that it was necessary for a radio engineer to utter an incantation every time he soldered a wire?”

“The two things are not the same,” protested Sandra. “Mark, you — ”

“I refuse to be dazzled by esoteric jargon.” He didn’t look at her. “If a thing serves no useful purpose to achieve a result then that thing is simply window dressing. Science is a method of dispensing with such window dressing. Magic will remain nonsense until such time as any magical experiment can be repeated at will and the results predicted — and then it won’t be magic, it will be science.”

“You are shivering, Mr. Conway.” Lefarge’s voice was a feral purr. “Do you still insist that magic is nonsense?”

“I do.”

“And your vision, isn’t there a little something you would rather not look at? Still nonsense, Mr. Conway?”

“You have done nothing I could not do myself, Lefarge. Our methods may differ but the results would be the same.”

“Hypnotism?”

“That and drugs and suggestion. I could hex a man so thoroughly that he wouldn’t know hot from cold, night from day. I could convince him that he was blind, deaf, crippled. I could make him doubt his very existence and give him illusions which would send him out of this world. Magic, Lefarge, or science?”

“You are a stubborn man, Mr. Conway. How far must I go before you are willing to admit that in this world there are things you do not understand?” Lefarge leaned forward, pointing with the cigar, his back against the refrigerator. “I could kill you. You know that?”

“I know it.”

“And still you deny the existence of my powers?”

“I only deny the existence of magic. I know exactly what you are doing and how you are doing it. I can break your hex, Lefarge, and I can do it without incantations, the mixing of witch brews, ceremonies or the summoning of invisible powers. I can do it now.”

“Impossible!” Sweat shone on the high forehead. “My power is too great for such simple breaking. I have allied myself to terrible beings and their strength is as my own. Be humble, man, before it is too late!” He actually believed every word he said. Mark listened to the stark conviction of his voice and wondered just how close the man was to insanity. He put his hand into his pocket.

“You cannot break the spell which binds you,” insisted Lefarge. “Only I can do that with the proper safeguards and precautions, which must be used if the power is not to recoil.”

“You are wrong.” Slowly Mark drew his hand from his pocket. Light from the window splintered against the polished blade, the brazen hilt of the dagger. “Magic is what you choose to call it,” he said gently. “I have come armed with my own magic of cold steel. Stand away from that refrigerator, Lefarge.”

“No.”

“Stand away!” His patience was exhausted; the time for playacting over. Roughly Mark pushed Lefarge to one side. He jerked open the big, white-enameled door. He bared his teeth at what he saw within.

*

It was a flat board, painted, covered with lines, signs, symbols, none of which he understood. He lifted it from the frost-covered shelf and set it on the table. Something moved sluggishly, and he crushed it with his thumb. He was sweating despite the waning cold. The blur left his sight.

“How did you know I was terrified of spiders?” His eyes moved from Lefarge to Sandra. “Of course, you would have told him that.” Thoughtfully he studied the board.

His photograph stared back at him, rimmed with melting frost, half-covered by the remains of a bloodstained handkerchief, the shreds of half a tie. Mingled with the scraps were strands of hair and nail clippings. About the photograph, resting on various symbols, were oddly shaped pieces of stone, the dried seeds of some plant, fragments of animal tissue he was unable to identify.

Lefarge’s hex.

It had worked, Mark could not deny that. By some means, not magical because magic was only the name given to the inexplicable unknown, an affinity had been established between himself and this board. An affinity so close that he had felt the numbing cold of the refrigerator, had sensed the horror of the spider glued by its legs to one side of his pictured eye.