“ALL WHO GATHER TODAY
ARE SERVANTS OF THE ONE
WE CALL UPON THE POWERS THAT BE
AS WIELDERS OF THE ANCIENT FLAME
WE PRAY TO THE DARKNESS OF OLD
WE ARE THY SERVANTS
WE ARE THY HANDS AND FEET
AND THY EYES AND EARS
LET THY FIRE
LET THY DARKNESS
ENTER US NOW AND FOREVER
SO THAT WE MAY DO THY WILL
AS SERVANTS OF THE ONE
WE INVOKE THE POWER THAT DESTROYS
FOR WE ARE ONE WITH THY POWER
NOW AND FOREVER
WE ARE ETERNALLY ONE.”
Like in Umara’s cavern, a presence enters the room. But unlike the puja she performed to call upon the divine, this invocation has summoned a choking vibration that I have unfortunately experienced before: in Brutran’s living room when the Cradle pushed me to commit suicide; in a cheap motel in London when I murdered Numbria; and high in the Rocky Mountains, when the Cradle invaded Matt’s mind and forced him to kill me.
A cold tendril of fear touches my heart and with it I feel a mounting pressure at the back of my skull. I’m not sure how to resist but my intuition tells me it will only get stronger if I fight it. All I can do is let go and trust in the grace Krishna has promised will always be with me.
Everyone below us and around me sits with their eyes closed. Except for Lark, who stares at me with eyes suddenly so bloodshot the whites look as if they have been painted red. Even before he asks, I know what’s going to be demanded of me to be a member of the Lens.
“Alisa Perne,” he says softly, “it’s the custom when joining our lineage to make an offering to the powers that be. The purpose of the offering is twofold. It strengthens the powers we call upon while at the same time it confirms your commitment to those powers. Do you understand?”
“No. What is this offering?”
“A blood sacrifice.”
“Can I offer a chicken?”
“It must be a human sacrifice. Whom do you wish to offer?”
Umara had hinted I might be forced to give up a member of my group to be accepted into the Cradle’s inner circle. I consider a possible candidate. It’s a grim business.
Lisa Fetch. I’m 99 percent sure she’s the mole. True, the evidence against her is circumstantial, but there’s a lot of it.
By chance, out of the blue, Lisa and her cop boyfriend, Jeff, came to my home the morning of the night the Telar first attacked me. Before Lisa showed up, I knew nothing about the IIC. But even when Lisa introduced me to them, told me how evil they were, she supplied me with not a single fact that helped protect me from them.
Lisa worked for the IIC but was able to leave their employ without suffering any repercussions. Her boyfriend, Jeff, was supposed to have died at the hands of IIC agents but I never did see his body.
Lisa supplied me with reams of computer data the IIC supposedly gave to her to help them find out why their Array was no longer working like it used to. However, the data was incomprehensible to me and the conclusions Lisa eventually drew from it sounded more like opinions than facts.
Lisa refused to come with the rest of us to London to watch Teri run in the Olympics. It didn’t frighten her to be left alone in Truman, Missouri, despite the atrocities she knew the IIC had already committed. It was like she was sure no one would touch her.
Against my instructions, Lisa insisted on traveling with Seymour when he went to pick up Shanti after Shanti left Switzerland with a copy of Yaksha’s book. Lo and behold, not long after that, the copy changed back into the original.
Several times our gang had picnics in my backyard in Truman. While swimming in my pool, Teri snuck up behind her boyfriend and tickled Matt, causing him to accidentally slip on the deck and cut his scalp. I remember that it was Lisa, and Lisa alone, who helped bandage his wound. I suspect she saved his stained gauze, for the Cradle couldn’t lock onto Matt without a sample of his blood.
It was odd Matt had been so careless with his blood that day.
Finally, Lisa was at my funeral, and Brutran told me flat out that she had a spy in Denver who confirmed that I was dead. Who told her if it wasn’t Lisa?
She has to be the mole. There’s no one else.
“Lisa Fetch,” I reply. “But I don’t have a sample of her blood. I have only a strand of her hair that I found on my clothing. Will that suffice?”
I had searched for the hair after Umara had given me her warning. I’m not happy about dealing with Lisa in this manner but it’s not like I have a lot of options.
“Is she a normal human being?” Lark asks.
“Yes.”
“The hair contains the DNA of the one who is to be sacrificed,” Lark says. “Since she is not Telar, it should be satisfactory. Hand it to Jolie, please.”
I give it to the little girl, who does a very strange thing.
She puts the hair in her mouth.
She doesn’t swallow it. Just holds it inside.
“Now let us close our eyes and hold hands,” Lark says.
I don’t mind the closing our eyes part. But touching Jolie and Lark at the same time creeps me out. They both have cold skin. Jolie’s hand is so small it almost disappears inside my palm, whereas Lark has unusually long fingers.
Lark continues to repeat a portion of his original invocation. In no special order but with a religious intensity. He sounds like he’s talking to someone physically present, and he clearly believes every word he says.
“Enter us now and forever so that we may do thy will.” Lark waits a minute before adding, “We invoke the power that destroys. For we are one with thy power.”
These lines must be key. He says each two dozen times and with each repetition his voice grows quieter. Soon I feel as if I’m hearing him only in my mind.
The pressure at the back of my skull mounts. Paradoxically, it has the effect of pulling me slightly out of my body as the pain increases. I suspect my suffering would be unbearable if I wasn’t being forcibly removed from it.
Lark suddenly changes his tune. This line I hear with my ears.
“We invoke the power to destroy against Lisa Fetch.”
Lark waits a minute then repeats the line. Softer.
Again and again. I begin to feel dizzy.
My eyes are closed and still the room spins.
The skull pressure, the internal pulling, Lark’s chanting—it all combines to make me feel as if I’m being sucked up into a tornado. There appears to be astral dust in the room, some kind of suffocating filth that my spirit chokes on.
But just as fast as it came, the tornado passes. I feel a yank at the back of my head. I don’t open my eyes. I don’t have to open them to see. To know where I am.
I’m in Lisa Fetch’s condo in Truman. She is grading a handful of math exams. Lisa is a genius when it comes to her favorite subject. She teaches all kinds of courses. Algebra and geometry for undergraduates. Advanced calculus for engineering and science majors. She loves numbers as much as she does people. She’s really not a bad person. I was surprised that she betrayed us.
The odd thing is, I reach her mind before the tidal wave does and find her thinking of Shanti and Matt. She often used to accompany Shanti to the hospital when the girl was having plastic surgery on her face. And of course Lisa always had a thing for Matt. Her thoughts of them both are loving. That worries me.
Then it strikes. We do. The Lens, the Cradle.
The sky is blue outside, the sun bright, but it is as if a black hole suddenly enters her world. Darkness descends and her vision dims as her individual will is swept away. The numbers on her test papers twist into grotesque symbols and the red ink in her teacher’s pen begins to leak onto her desk like blood from a torn vein. Despair as heavy as a falling moon crushes her and she sees no escape except to kill herself.
Instantly, I regret my decision to sacrifice her.
Her mind . . . I can’t find any guilt there.
/> I plead for her to stop and think what she’s doing but a hundred other voices disagree and she raises her pen in her right hand and stabs the veins in her left wrist. Real blood flows over her papers and spills onto her desk.
Let the fun begin. So cheer the children.
The rest, for Lisa, a master of math, is horror raised by a factor of ten. Her wrist is punctured in a dozen spots but that is too common a way to kill oneself, and besides, she might still be found by friends and saved. The Cradle can’t have that. It has two goals: to maximize her suffering and to ensure her death. Pain feeds the powers that feed the Cradle, and death, why, death is its own reward.
The Cradle scans Lisa’s mind for what terrifies her the most. It seems she has a fear of heights, but her condo is on the bottom floor of a two-story building. Lisa, wearing only a robe she put on after showering, is forced to go outside. This order she resists—vanity can be strong even in the face of death. But her mortal will is like a bamboo stick trying to fend off a bolt of lightning. Resistance is ridiculous.
I hear them, all the kids’ minds, as if they’re one unit.
Yet I’m not one with them, not completely.
I still know who I am, and I know I want them to stop.
Lisa strides across the busy campus until she comes to the chapel. A dozen students stop to stare, but only a few notice she’s bleeding. I see a young woman off to her side lift her cell and call for help. But no one’s bold enough to stop Lisa directly. They watch, they wait, they don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Yet the apathy of the students is not totally to blame. Lisa is in the grip of a force so awful, it repels all those around her. The students feel the evil and fear it. I can sense their thoughts. A few of the more sensitive ones are even able to glimpse the black cloud that surrounds her.
Lisa opens the door of the chapel and goes inside. A desperate part of me prays the cross on the altar will repel the children that control her steps. But that hope is quickly crushed. The cross is a sacred symbol to those who have faith, and right now Lisa doesn’t even have a hope.
There’s a stairway behind the altar that leads to a floor above the main hall. Lisa follows its winding steps slowly upward. Her loss of blood has begun to sap her strength. It’s possible she’ll lose consciousness before the Cradle can finish with her.
But again my hope is flattened when Lisa finds still another flight of steps that climb to the bell tower. Her leaking blood drips on the steps and causes her to slip and fall. But it’s as if invisible arms reach down and drag her to her feet to face her doom.
A door opens and the glare of the sun momentarily blinds Lisa. She’s back outside but high up now, at the very pinnacle of the chapel. The sight of the campus’s central courtyard, far below, makes her dizzy and brings to the surface her old fear of heights. But none of this is of any help. She knows who she is. She knows something horrible is happening to her. But she can’t stop it.
Lisa climbs over the edge of the cubicle that shelters the church bell. She stands on the rim of a spire so steep its incline is almost straight up, or down. Now there’s nothing between her and the ground except a hundred feet of thin air.
Lisa takes a step forward. There’s room for only one step. Yet in that last instant her will finally bursts to the surface and for a few seconds I think she’s going to escape.
Unfortunately, the children are too strong. Lisa’s outstretched leg wobbles. Try as she might, she can’t bring it back in, she can’t replant her feet, nor can she regain her balance. The wobble reaches her hips and sets off a tremor that flows down her other leg. She sways back and forth before finally pitching forward. She falls.
The Cradle releases its hold and watches. They take delight in Lisa’s screams. They love the sickening moment of impact. The instant of agony. The slow fall into darkness. If they are even capable of love. It feels more like gluttony to me.
Suddenly, I’m back in the circular room with Lark, Jolie, and the other members of the Lens. I see it through a thick fog and realize my eyes are still shut. The pressure at the back of my head is awful. A small part of my mind remains with Lisa as her blood leaks from her crushed skull. But the bulk of my awareness watches as the crystal vase at the center of the room begins to fill with blood. I’m not sure if the blood is physical or if it’s just an illusion. But it looks real.
Then I see them, the creatures Cindy warned me about, the beings I told her were all in her subconscious. There are two dozen of them, one for each child. They stand behind each of the seated kids, their hands resting on their shoulders. Umara has told me about them as well. She called them Familiars and equated them to a witch’s black cat, the true source of the witch’s power.
Umara said that a great deal of mystery surrounded the Familiars. They were the batteries that gave the kids their power, and in another sense they were the entities that possessed them. When I asked Umara who was really in charge, she said, “In the end, the Familiar always claims the soul of its mortal partner.”
At first glance they look like oversized kachina dolls, something a Hopi Indian might make for a ceremony. But whereas kachinas represent friendly spirits or natural forces—like rain, wind, fire—there’s something distinctly unnatural about these beings. In place of a crown of feathers, they have rows of impaled blades. They wear hides, although they are far from the carefully prepared skins of buffalo or deer. They look more like the raw scalps of human beings and other intelligent creatures from alien worlds. I get the clear impression these beings are not bound to our earth.
With a shock I’ve seldom known in my five thousand years, I become aware of two hands resting on my shoulders. Apparently, with my sacrifice of Lisa, I’ve become an official member of the Cradle, and a Familiar has been assigned to me.
As I try twisting around to see what it looks like, its hand comes off my right shoulder and touches my head at my temple. The feel of it on my hair, and on my bare skin, is revolting and I want to vomit. It’s as if a slimy mucus coating on its fingers has rubbed off onto me. However, it has an insubstantial quality; I’m not even sure if it’s there.
But the hand stops me from turning around.
The creature isn’t going to let me see it. Not yet.
My eyes are still shut. However, my vision is forced back toward the center of the circle. My mind is no longer with Lisa. But just as her blood seemed to fill the vase, now I sense the Familiars emptying it. Even though they remain standing behind their respective wards, the level of the blood in the crystal vase slowly drops until it’s totally drained. I hear a licking sound. Like they don’t want to waste a single drop.
The pressure on the back of my skull eases up.
I feel my body sag forward. Someone squeezes my hand; it’s Jolie. Someone else pats me on the back; that’s Lark. I hear the noises of the real room and when I do open my eyes, the lights are back on and the kids are standing and stretching. I look up and Lark offers me his hand.
“How do you feel?” he asks as he pulls me to my feet.
“Weird.” I let go of his hand and touch the back of my skull. “Like someone just operated on my brain.”
“The first time can be rough but it gets easier.”
“I threw up the first time,” Jolie says, holding on to Mr. Topper.
“When we sit together like this, our minds link,” Lark says. “We become one.”
Their remarks confirm they meet regularly.
“Does that mean you were able to read my mind?” I’m curious because I wasn’t able to pick up their specific thoughts, although I could sense their overall mood. For example, their feeling of satisfaction when Lisa struck the ground. Lark shakes his head.
“I felt your emotions more than your thoughts,” he says. “I know you were shocked when you realized your friend was innocent.”
I frown. “I wouldn’t say she was innocent.”
“Then you didn’t see into her mind. She never betrayed you.” Lark grins. “You did
n’t have to offer such an innocent victim. Yet you have pleased the powers, and been accepted into the Cradle. A great being has been assigned to you.”
I feel sick at heart with what I have done to Lisa. I struggle to hide my pain.
“Are you talking about that thing that was standing behind me?” I ask.
“That Familiar is your master now. If I were you, I’d speak of him with more respect. He’s very special.”
“How do you know? Did you see him?”
Lark’s eyes shine. But he doesn’t answer my question.
EIGHTEEN
Brutran wants to speak to me after my firsthand experience with the Cradle but I feel the need to be alone. There’s a room on the fourth floor that was ordinarily used as an overnight suite for IIC executives that were working late and didn’t have time to go home. I have appropriated it as my own private quarters. After speaking to Lark, I hurry upstairs and lock the door.
Already I feel I’m in deeper than I planned. Mentally linking with the Cradle reminds me of the time the Telar tortured me with a device called the Pulse. The purpose of the Telar’s invention was simple—to induce agony. But in practice it caused so much pain it made me lose even my sense of “I.” Sharing a psychic connection with the kids has a similar effect on me. With both, I feel I’m no longer myself.
Yet I fear the long-term effects of the Cradle will be worse than the Pulse. Alone in my room, I don’t feel alone. It’s as if I have two shadows instead of one, and this second shadow doesn’t conform to my movements. It follows me, it gives the impression it will never leave me, but it does what it wants. I worry that in time I will do what it wants.
I feel watched.
Eyes staring at the back of my skull.
Invisible hands on my shoulders.
Most of all I feel fear.