Ghostlight (12 page)

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Authors: Marion Zimmer Bradley

BOOK: Ghostlight
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The wide, spacious room looked inviting with the late-morning sun streaming in through the high, uncurtained windows. Truth set down her coffee cup carefully, out of the way of anything made of paper, and resumed exploring the material.
Odd. Both Julian and Ellis said that Michael was doing research here at Shadow's Gate, but this isn't an exhaustive collection on anything but Thorne Blackburn, and Michael doesn't seem to be researching him—and if Ellis were telling the truth about Michael being a, a “lay brother,” Michael would have access to the Vatican Library, wouldn't he? And the Vatican has the largest collection of books on sorcery in the world.
She filed one more thing away to brood about later; at the moment her business was backtrailing Thorne
Blackburn. Ellis had said there were pictures here, and Truth hoped they would tell her more than the confusing papers she'd stumbled across yesterday. They said one picture was worth a thousand words, after all.
Her heart beat fast with the sheer reaction of at last confronting the enigmatic spirit that had overshadowed her young adulthood. She was repelled by everything Thorne Blackburn seemed to stand for, but, approaching him with a scholar's discipline, she found she could consider even Thorne Blackburn with a certain detachment.
The collection that Julian had amassed was even more complete than she had thought the day before. As she browsed through the shelves and drawers, making mental notes on what areas to tackle in-depth first, she found numerous testaments to Julian's encyclopedic thoroughness.
A number of record albums—their reason for inclusion uncertain, except for the one by Glass Key that had a photograph on it of a very young Ellis Gardner behind a psychedelically painted drum set.
Several videocassettes carefully labeled as copies of Blackburn's media appearances, including his infamous Johnny Carson guest spot and the segment of
The Ed Sullivan Show
that only the live studio audience had gotten to see. There was a rumor that Blackburn had been on
The Dating Game
, as well.
A VCR stood ready in case she wanted to run any of these, and despite her self-control and best intentions, Truth felt the hair on her arms and neck stand up straight at the prospect of confronting a moving, talking image of Thorne Blackburn.
Grow up!
Truth scolded herself. A picture couldn't hurt her, and she'd have to delve more deeply than this into Blackburn's life if she meant to debunk him thoroughly. She'd run the tapes later, just to get them out of the way. Right now she had another goal in mind.
After a little more searching she found them: five
thick, old-fashioned photo albums, slightly battered and carrying a psychic aura of dust for all that they were newly clean.
They were stored archivally, lying on their sides on a wide bottom shelf, and Truth picked them up one by one and toted them over to the table. Set side by side, the five volumes nearly covered the surface of the long table. She pulled the nearest one closer to her and lifted the cover.
The album's pages gave off the sweet, musty smell of a long-shelved book as she opened it. These must be the original albums that Julian had found in the attic; these pictures ought to be removed, cataloged, copied, and conservation-mounted to protect them further.
Carefully she lifted the cover page. The pages were a rough, creamy oak-tag paper, and the pictures—some black-and-white, some color—were held down with small paper corners, or in some cases, yellowed and disintegrating Scotch tape. Some of the pictures had writing of their same ancient vintage beneath them in a slapdash, unfamiliar hand. Blackburn's?
Kate in the Hashbury
, one entry said cryptically, beneath a faded color picture of a laughing, dark-haired girl in an ankle-length, high-waisted dress and braided headband. Truth could see a slice of a white Victorian house in the background, an American flag hanging in an upper window. The girl wore tiny, square, wire-rimmed glasses with pink lenses, and a peace symbol flashed among the love beads around her neck. Across a quarter of a century she smiled into the lens of an unknown photographer, her hand raised in a “V” sign. A peace sign, Truth remembered, dredging up the fact from some well of antique trivia.
Kate in the Hashbury. Haight-Ashbury. San Francisco.
Kate.
Katherine.
Mommy.
Truth's lips moved soundlessly over the word. With a careful fingertip she touched the image.
This was Katherine Jourdemayne, and if Truth could somehow step into the picture she would stand face to face with a girl younger than she was, a girl who believed that love and magick could change the world.
She glanced at the other pictures on the page. All of them seemed to be taken in San Francisco sometime in the early middle sixties. One of them looked as if it might be Irene as she'd been then, the sagging lines of age erased, the white hair darkened to a flaming red.
Another photo that caught her eye was a picture of a man and woman, surprisingly respectable considering the company their photo was in. If Blackburn had taken these he must have known them, but who were they? She studied the picture more closely, finding something elusively familiar in the image. The man was somewhere in early middle age, Truth guessed, dressed in a faintly archaic sport coat and slacks. He looked vaguely Scots, with a high square forehead and a firm chin. Even in the faded picture his eyes were a piercing pale blue, and his bulldog stubbornness seemed an essential part of what he was.
The woman beside him was nearly as tall as he—uncommonly tall for a woman—with gray eyes and wavy pale hair. She reminded Truth oddly of Light, though the two women looked nothing alike, and the woman in the picture had the sort of face that is good rather than pretty. She wore a neat dress and hat, the counterpoint to the tall man's respectable clothing. After a moment Truth could make out a caption, written in faint pencil:
Colin and Claire—the loyal opposition—Golden Gate Park, 1966.
Colin MacLaren and Claire Moffat.
Truth's fingers itched to remove the photo and take it away with her, while her scholar's instincts kept her from doing so. Here was proof that Professor MacLaren had known Thorne Blackburn.
But it's not exactly a capital crime, is it?
Truth thought through her rising excitement.
I wonder if Julian will let
me get any of these pictures copied? A book's better with pictures. And I wonder if I could get an interview with Professor MacLaren. I know he retired from the Institute several years ago. I wonder where he is now? Dylan would know.
Thinking about Dylan made her feel oddly guilty, as if she'd done Dylan Palmer some treacherous harm. Truth examined her conscience scrupulously and couldn't think of any; it was true they hadn't parted on the best of terms, but that was no reason for this sudden pang of conscience.
Displacement. That's what the headshrinkers call it. You're worried about something, so you pretend you're worried about something else. Simple.
Truth gnawed her lip, wondering if she should give Dylan a call anyway.
And tell him what?
Sighing, Truth went back to the photos. Most of the pictures in this first book were captioned, but some were not. There was a picture of a deaccessioned schoolbus with the words MYSTERY SCHOOLBUS painted on the side and a group of people standing in front of it, Irene and Katherine among them. Katherine wore bell-bottomed jeans and a chambray shirt tied snugly beneath her breasts, and was smiling radiantly at the photographer. Thorne Blackburn. Always the photographer, never the image, as if he'd keep his secrets even from film.
She flipped through more quickly now, hunting fruitlessly for a picture of Blackburn. Near the end she was stopped momentarily by a studio portrait of a man in a cowboy outfit straight from a Wild West show—except for the alchemical symbols embroidered on his shirt and the stars and moons painted on his black Stetson.
The note under the picture said merely
Tex Arcana
, leaving Truth to wonder who—or what—he was. Or had been. But the past kept its secrets. She slid the first album away and drew another one toward her.
Blackburn at last.
On the first page there was a picture of Katherine heavily pregnant, standing next to Thorne Blackburn in an anonymous living room somewhere. He looked almost bashful, ducking his head and turning away as if he didn't want to be photographed. And young—immortal now, as only those who had eaten the apples of Avalon could be. Forever young.
Truth waited for the flare of self-righteous indignation that the sight of Blackburn always brought her, but now she felt only weary pain. The people in those photos, they'd all been so innocent then. No one had ever done anything like what they were doing before; how could they know how it would end—in ruins, in flames, in lies and broken promises? Had Blackburn even known—really?
She turned the page.
Truth had to smile at the pictures of Blackburn's acolytes in their lurid costumes; they looked like a cross between an Odd Fellows convention and a showing of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If they were supposed to be either inspiring or intimidating, they failed miserably. She wondered what
they
had thought their robes made them look like.
Truth reached the end of the album, and hunted through the other three until she found one with pictures from the time in Mexico. The album had several blank pages, several places where photos had been removed, leaving darker rectangles behind. She wondered why—and when.
Many of the pictures were faded with time or overexposed into illegibility, many were ciphers—uncaptioned, of people she didn't know. But others were more forthcoming, telling their stories across the years.
The Mystery Schoolbus, battered now, serving as backdrop to a crude camp.
Photos of rural Mexico, such as any tourist might take.
Photos of Katherine—and of Aunt Caroline, her dark
hair cut sensibly short, standing next to her twin. Each of the women held one hand of a diapered child about a year old, supporting its first unsteady steps.
Supporting
her.
Truth tried to summon up some interior resonance to the images she saw; some proof within herself that the infant in the pictures was her, and that these experiences were a part of her life. But no emotion would come; there could be no faith, only intellectual belief. She had the maddening sense of a riddle whose solution would explain her life and give it meaning, but the solution was just out of reach.
Truth shook her head. There were no answers in the past. Aunt Caroline had told her that often enough.
But Aunt Caroline had been telling her that for reasons of her own, Truth realized suddenly.
There comes an unsettling time in most children's lives when they must acknowledge that those who have raised them are as human, fallible, and mortal as they themselves. For the first time Truth thought—
really
thought—about Aunt Caroline as a woman Truth's own age or even younger, and wondered what that woman must have been like.
She had been a friend to Thorne Blackburn—the pictures were the final proof—if not a member of his Circle. She had been
here
at Shadow's Gate the night her sister died and Blackburn vanished.
Vanished. Every newspaper report had said so; the police had searched for him for weeks after Katherine's death. But Blackburn had vanished.
And gone where?
Truth shook her head, as if imagination were an unruly horse that had balked at the jump. She didn't know where he'd gone. And at the same time, what Aunt Caroline had said the last time Truth saw her came back to haunt her.
“The others. You must find the others.”
She turned the pages slowly, frowning meditatively.
What others?
She'd assumed at the time that Aunt Caroline had meant the other members of the old Circle of Truth—or at least their families. The newspaper stories had called Shadow's Gate a “hippie commune,” and mentioned children, though no names had been mentioned. And any “children” who had been here in 1969 would be her age or older today—hardly in need of finding.
But even if that had been what Aunt Caroline had meant, Julian seemed to be taking care of that with his ingathering.
“It's important for you to know you're not the only one. I failed the others—”
Aunt Caroline was a sick woman: dying, heavily medicated … .
Truth stopped at a photo that had been blown up to cover the entire page. Unlike the others it seemed to be glued down, the edges curling away from the adhesive. The backdrop was familiar—the photo was taken on the front lawn of Shadow's Gate—and it must have been taken professionally, because Blackburn was in it.
Twenty people, looking oddly like a graduating class of wizards in their long robes. Blackburn's Circle of Truth. She picked out Blackburn and Irene; herself, holding Irene's hand with one childish fist and clasping a stuffed monkey to her chest with the other; Katherine in a white robe; and Caroline beside her in street clothes, holding a baby.

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