Wearing gloves as instructed by Doctor Baldwin, Amanda carefully lifted each page of the 16th century volume. The Doctor sitting behind the desk in his study leaned over, concerned his precious find would be damaged, but she tried to ignore him. Unfortunately the tome was written in Latin so she would be unable to read it; annoyingly she would have to rely on Doctor Baldwin’s knowledge. But there were pictures, diagrammatic woodcuttings and more, that had a disturbing effect.
As Paul, sitting next to her and staring at the book, made fake grimaces of disgust, she studied each picture carefully. Some were merely hieroglyphics, outlandish and incomprehensible, but others were pictorial: an eye in the middle of folds of flesh, gazing with evil intent, malformed insects constructed of hundreds of miniature plant like worms, humanoid figures likewise composed of organic growths, either engaged in some form of atrocious act or eating each other and scenes of ritual human sacrifice mostly involving disembowelments, eyes ripped from faces, bodies in cruciform positions strung from trees or poles, encircled by wildly dancing worshipers. Phantasmagorical landscapes were the backdrop to many of these drawings, recognisable from her nightmares of two weeks ago.
“This picture would be great for our next album cover,” Paul said, pointing to a particular nasty scene.
“It makes my skin crawl,” Amanda said after turning the last page, deliberately ignoring Paul’s comment. “But what does it all mean?”
“What I have read has confirmed my suspicions. It’s both theoretical and practical. The theoretical part turns the Cabala on its head; a description of the sefirotic tree of life totally at odds with the ancient Jewish tradition. The practical part is a guide to the rituals essential for union, not with God as in traditional Cabalism but with supreme evil.”
“That explains a lot,” Paul said, making a wry face.
“You will let me know everything about the book, won’t you Doctor Baldwin,” Amanda said trying to catch his eye but failing. Having taken the book away from her, he was absorbed in a specific page.
“Sure,” he assented but he did not look up from the tome.
Normally she would have angrily demanded more from him, extracting every piece of information he held. But for some reason her usual confidence was gone as if her twin had taken it with her into the unknown region behind the mirror.
“So what do we do next,” Paul said breaking the silence.
“First I have to study the book and then I can formulate a plan of action. Working day and night it should take about a week.”
“Leave it up to you in other words,” Amanda managed to say.
“Yes.”
She was unable to reply to that blunt affirmative. Instead she stood up and looked at her watch.
“I better get going, my dad will be getting worried.
“Yes, of course.” Doctor Baldwin still had his head lowered over the old grimoire but now was scribbling ineligible notes in a pad of paper. “I will be in touch.”
The doctor remained absorbed in his work, They let themselves out.
It was about eight in the evening, a day after the grave robbing expedition, and it was already dark. Deciding to walk to the Manor via Abbey Street and then the residential road that merged with it, rather then the unlit towpath beside the Thames, Amanda talked quietly to Paul. As they went past the entrance to the New Cemetery both lingered, staring down the long aisle of the dead at the obscured corner, where they had exhumed Sir William’s body.
“I hope they never find out that we interfered with someone’s grave,” Amanda said.
“I doubt it; we filled it in pretty good.”
Cars passed them as they continued on and they crossed the road near a small roundabout, making their way through a housing estate, then another residential street lined with terraced houses; the residents behind their cosy walls oblivious of the peculiar malevolency lurking only minutes away.
Finally they reached the gates of Ashbury Manor, Amanda and Paul pausing awhile outside and gazing at each other.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea if you come in, Paul. My dad will start asking questions.”
“I agree,” he replied, nodding his head and giving her a resigned but sweet smile. “I’ll see you then but give me a call if Doctor Strange comes up with anything.”
Amanda laughed and watched his retreating back as he walked the way they had come, starting the two mile trek to the train station.
It took two excruciatingly long weeks before Doctor Baldwin contacted Amanda.
In those two weeks, after the police enquiry drew a blank, her dad made up his mind he was going to sell the house and return to America. But friends of Moonbeam and Lucius began to get concerned. They approached the police independently and the investigation picked up again. A thorough search of the Manor and its grounds was undertaken, but they found no evidence of wrong doing.
It began to dawn on her that her father suspected her of involvement in a kidnapping or even the murder of Moonbeam. He hardly spoke and kept to himself, becoming even more withdrawn. Only when he drove her to and from school did they talk, mostly about her sessions with the counsellor, but the conversations were mostly carried out in monosyllables. None of his band mates visited and he hardly went out, spending most of the time brooding in the library or aimlessly playing the guitar in the studio annex. His demeanour became more bedraggled and unkempt, an expression of vacancy always on his unshaven faces as if he was taking hard drugs, and ominously he refused to get dressed-instead he wandered around the house in his dressing gown.
Most of the time she felt on the verge of crying in her father‘s presence, but she held back, ending up silently weeping when she was in the privacy of her room. She had never felt so lonely in her life.
She tried calling Paul but she kept getting a woman at the other end of the phone, probably his mother, who told her that he had gone out and then got angry when she tried to enquire further. Paul never rang her.
She considered phoning Doctor Baldwin or visiting him, but thinking about it she realised he was so engrossed in study he would not want to talk to her. Anyway the Doctor was too intimidating and Amanda’s depression deepened when she reflected that this obsessed old man was (except for Paul) her only real acquaintance. The two girls she had met on her first day at school had remained distant. They regarded her famous father with too much star struck deference for a strong friendship to develop.
As for the house there were no further eruptions of the supernatural but a tense hush reigned as if the Manor awaited an event that would change everything. Amanda did not know if it was her state of mind but the holes or voids of shadow in corners and at the end of corridors were getting deeper and darker. Her fear increased at the same rate that the tension rose, reaching a pitch that was almost unbearable. What made it worse was the morose spectre of her father moving purposelessly from room to room, oblivious to the rising pressure. Very soon now she knew that her self-control would snap and she would verbally attack her father, if only to get a reaction from him.
Although they were a different species from the insect released in the graveyard, the outlandish bugs in the garden scared her and she kept her window shut tightly at night; curling into a ball underneath the bed covers when she heard them rattling against the glass. She could easily imagine herself in the tropics as she sweated beneath the sheets; the sounds of bountiful life existing in the transformed garden keeping up its weird barrage of sound.
Returning to her room after a particularly depressing dinner, where her father had stared sullenly into space picking at his food, she heard through the door the faint ring tones of her mobile. Clasping the small silver object to her ear, her heart beating rapidly, she listened to the posh English voice at the other end, exited and exuberant.
Doctor Baldwin babbled almost incomprehensible about a dark side of Cabalist doctrine with Ashbury Manor at its centre. George Browne’s grimoire was a revelation, terrifying in its implications. It touched on subjects that brought him out in a cold sweat. He believed they were up against a power or force even the most courageous would shrink from, a monstrous agency that threatened existence itself.
Amanda had to admit the Doctor did not seem petrified in the slightest; rather he was over enthusiastic as if he was a scientist who had discovered a new hypothesis to explain the universe. She told him brusquely that in a couple of weeks’ time she would have left the Manor and England altogether.
“Then we are going to have to act quickly…We are going to enter Ashbury Manor” he said, a note of agitation in his voice.
“But…I already live here.” Amanda was perplexed, if it was not for the frightening experiences she had gone through she would have thought the doctor was deranged.
“I mean enter the real Ashbury Manor, not the mere façade you live in. The manor existing beyond the mirrors, an architectural masterpiece defining the topology of evil itself; a gateway to the Ten Universes, emanating from the embodiment of the counter godhead, the eternal eye.”
She restrained her urge to cut the connection and instead took a deep breath, trying to get to grips with her confusion.
“You don’t make any sense, Doctor Baldwin.”
“I thought you were desperate to know what was contained in the book. Well I have studied it and I want to go further, through the looking glass and beyond. Look, we are going to have to meet up and discuss this in some detail. If you come around to my house on Saturday I will reveal everything.”
Amanda acknowledged his suggestion with a resigned grunt, but secretly felt relieved things were moving forward.
“And bring your boyfriend; we’re going to need him.”
The worn, centuries old but surprisingly resilient pages of George Browne’s book lay open upon Doctor Baldwin’s coffee table at an inexplicable diagram depicting circles connected by straight lines. Inside the lines were words written in an unknown alphabet and inside the circles were sinister but beautiful drawings of landscapes Amanda recognised from her nightmares: deserts of crystal and jungles of exotic vegetation. Beneath these elaborate drawings were the faint outlines of what looked like the mapping of a complex labyrinth and at the base of the main diagram was an eye staring in terror and crowning the whole structure was another eye emanating malice and hatred.
They pulled the armchairs, on which they sat, close to the table in Doctor Baldwin’s sitting room. The doctor wearing plastic gloves leaned forward on the sofa, his body rigid, concerned the two teenagers would attempt to touch his precious book. His thin gaunt features were lit by the sunlight coming from the window overlooking the garden that had not been worked in for years, reflecting off his huge spectacles. A strong stench of stale sweat arose from the doctor’s skeletal body, forcing Amanda to lean backward in a futile attempt to escape the smell. But in the end she gave up, letting her horrified fascination with the old grimoire take her over instead.
“You know I could be a very rich man if I sold this book,” Doctor Baldwin was saying. “It’s probably the rarest book in the world, rarer then any other occultist manual, but not as old as the Necronomicon or The Book of Eibon. But that’s beside the point, the real riches lie within its pages.”
Amanda was aware of the ticking away of time. Only today her father announced they were leaving within three weeks and they would be gone sooner if it was not for some final preparations. He had sold the depressing pile at a very good price, incredible rapidly, to a wealthy religious group from Somerset for use as a headquarters; a representative would be visiting on Saturday afternoon to have a look around.
“This is all very interesting Doctor Baldwin, but my dad has sold the house and if we are to rescue Moonbeam and prove my innocence…”
“This goes beyond anything you could possible imagine. George Browne’s twisted genius designed and built an edifice that does not merely exist in our world but also is a springboard to other worlds, other times. His architectural masterpiece represents a map of the Ten Universes, offspring of a Prime Universe, a universe of evil, the Eternal Eye or Arboreal Orb as George Browne called it-the satanic mirror image of the divine godhead in Cabbalistic theory. Disturbingly our world which is the Base Universe is an emanation of the primary malevolency and not separate from it. The construction of Ashbury Manor was an attempt to reach the Eternal Eye, to become at one with it.”
Sighing forlornly, Amanda put her head in her hands.
Detecting her frustration, the doctor changed tack slightly. “But I have discovered in my reading a method of entering the real Ashbury Manor. We can track down this Camilla woman, Moonbeam and your doppelganger. The way of doing so involves an enactment of a ritual to open up the mirrors. There is a problem though.”
Paul who had sat silently through the proceedings with a look of mild disgust on his face spoke up for the first time.
“What sort of problem?”
“At your initiation, Amanda, you were asked to sacrifice a cat to prove you were suitable membership material for the Order of the Arboreal Orb; in other words you could act without moral scruples,” the doctor said, ignoring Paul and staring directly at Amanda in an unnerving fashion.
“But this amoral act was also the method of gaining entry to the vast hidden halls, rooms and corridors of the Manor. As it turned out your ‘evil twin’ broke away before you decided which path to follow. Whatever the mysterious cause of this split, the fact remains that the only way of entering is to enact some kind of evil or amorality.”
“First we desecrated the resting place of the dead and now you want us to mutilate animals,” Paul said, laughing nervously.
“I’ll do it, just leave it to me,” said Doctor Baldwin expressionlessly. “If we wish to confront this awesome threat and save Moonbeam, it has to be done.”
“This is sick,” Amanda said beneath her breath. She felt forces beyond her control were sweeping her away; powers she could not even make sense of, let alone confront. She relied too much on Doctor Baldwin; a man so wrapped up in his own obsessions he could dig up a corpse and now wanted to inflict suffering on an animal. But at that moment she had an idea which she clutched at desperately.
“There is another problem. We are going to have to perform the ritual without my dad knowing. This is impossible as he never departs from the house. Doing it at night is risky because he doesn’t sleep very well and wanders around the house.”
“But I thought you said your dad was meeting his band mates in London next Sunday,” Paul said.
There was a stony silence. Amanda wanted to kill him, extremely slowly.
“Yes we can enact the procedure then, it shouldn’t take too long,” Doctor Baldwin said, oblivious to the tension between the two youngsters. “A week gives me more time to prepare. I still have to do more reading to fully understand the ritual and the sort of terrain we will be moving in. This is exiting; we are entering regions very few mortals have explored. If I arrive at noon would this be convenient for you”
A resigned apathy had taken hold of her. She was unable to take any form of action removing her from Doctor Baldwin’s insane, dangerous and immoral quest. The thought of hurting an animal, causing suffering, made her shake with repugnance, but her will to say no or even protest had been sapped. With a nod she accepted.
“That’s settled then,” Doctor Baldwin said, getting up and carefully taking the book from the table and walking towards the hall. “I’ll see you Sunday week at noon.”
Later on the towpath beside the Thames, dodging the occasional speeding bicycle and getting out of the way of the Canada geese milling around, Paul made an attempt to break the barrier Amanda had retreated behind.
“I’m sorry if I put my foot in it but I thought that you were keen on rescuing Moonbeam.”
“I was, but I feel out of my depth. I hate the thought of killing animals and Doctor Baldwin just seems to take it in his stride. He’s such a weirdo!”
A light rain was splashing into the grey river from the thick cloud cover but it was not cold. They walked on in silence, feeling the rain intensify around them and they increased their pace, Paul hunched up in his leather jacket in a futile effort to keep the rain away. Amanda did not care. She was preoccupied, allowing the water from the sky to fall on her exposed head and sweat shirt without protest.
“Would you like to come out with me tonight.”
“I better not. If my dad finds out I’m seeing you it might ruin our plans for next Sunday. I’m sure he thinks we’re behind the disappearance of his girlfriend, even her murder.”
“No way! He can’t possible think that.”
“My dad is acting very strangely, he hardly talks to me.”
They had come to the turning leading to Ashbury Manor and Amanda hesitated. She wanted Paul to stay and she would have loved to have spent the evening out with him, if only to get away from the house, but she was frightened, frightened of her father. The rain was falling so heavily puddles were forming on the muddy ground and her clothes were soaked, weighty with wetness. Looking across at Paul she saw he was in a similar state. Normally she would have had an excellent excuse to invite him in.
“Staying in at night in that creepy hole doesn’t do you any good,” he said, desperately looking around for some shelter.
“I know but what else can I do,” she replied, a slight quiver in her voice. “We better separate, we’re getting very wet.” She turned her back on him and with head down walked away.
Running back to the Manor, she underwent a feeling of separation, exaggerated by the thought she had been extremely rude to Paul. She cursed herself and felt tears welling up inside as she reached the entrance of the house, vaguely noticing a black Mercedes parked outside with a dark figure of a uniformed chauffeur in the driver’s seat.
Letting her self in to the house she wiped her mud caked plimsolls on the door mat but then decided to take them off. Her hair clinging to her wet face like seaweed and her jeans heavy with the extra weight of rain water, she squelched towards the stairs, but before she reached them she heard the voices of her father and an unknown speaker coming from the kitchen. Listening intently, immobile as a statue, she caught a few words but the ones standing out as if written in blazing neon sent a shock like electricity through her body: The Order of the Arboreal Orb.
With a flash of appalling revelation she realised her father was selling the Manor to the cult. She remained still, undecided; should she confront her dad or flee to her bedroom. Suddenly she was jolted from her dilemma by a knock on the front door making her flinch. Reaching out she opened the door and stared at the chauffeur, who stood on the step, getting soaked in the downpour.
Amanda felt her insides turn to jelly as she recognised the man, the same man who had kept Doctor Baldwin’s house under surveillance and released the insect in the cemetery. He gave a humourless grin, water dripping from his cap and moved confidently into the hallway as she backed slowly towards the ornate stairway. Finally she ran defeated up the stairs, unable to face the implications of what her father was about to do.
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