I felt Matt’s hand grip my arm hard as he pulled me from the room, tugging the door shut behind us. I’d stopped screaming as we left the dark of the bedroom, but now I was fighting for air like a drowning woman. Nothing made sense. I didn’t know what I’d just seen, what Jeremy had done, but everything around me seemed to be swimming as I fought the urge to black out. The only steady things in the world were my fear and my anger, and I held onto both to keep my head just above the surface.
“Oh God, Oh God, what…Oh fuck…” Matt’s eyes were stretched wide and streaming with tears as his gaze darted between the closed door, my face, and Jeremy. Our older brother sat some distance away in one of the living room chairs, watching us calmly with his small smile. That smile made my rage flare brighter, and before I knew it, I had yanked free of Matt and headed towards Jeremy.
“What did you do? What the fuck did you do to her? Cut her up? Made her crazy? What was all that fucking black shit coming out of her? I’m calling the fucking cops and then I’m calling a motherfucking ambu…”
“No, you won’t.” Jeremy’s voice was cold and hard, having lost any trace of the warmth or good humor he’d put on before. “You’re going to listen, and if you’re as bright as I think you are, you’re going to understand enough to know that what I’m saying is the truth. What you do from there, and how I respond, will then play out as it’s meant to.” He gave me a thin smile. “Please. Sit. You know I can make you, but it’s much easier if we just work with each other on this.”
I thought about arguing, but I wasn’t sure what the point was. He could make me do it, even if I didn’t know how. And there was always some chance that by listening to him, I could either find out some crucial information or figure out some way of convincing him to stop whatever this was before things got even worse. Weighing my options, I gave him a slight nod but didn’t move yet.
“I’ll stay and talk to you, but let the others go. If Mom needs to stay for you to…to fix whatever you did, fine, but let Matt and Trudy go at least.”
Jeremy chuckled nastily. “You don’t really want that, sis. And any inevitabilities of this whole process aside, it serves my interests for you to fully understand what’s going on before things go any further. So again, sit.” He gestured to the sofa across from him.
I looked at Matt, who had somehow gone from looking terrified back to his shriveled and dazed look from before. I cut my gaze to Jeremy. “What are you doing to him? It’s not just fucking hypnosis.”
His smile widened slightly, but he just continued to silently gesture to the sofa. I wanted to punch him in the face, yell, get a knife and hold it to his throat until he fixed all this and left. But I had to be patient and play this smart. See what I could learn and wait for an opening to do…what? I wasn’t sure yet, but I had to hope something would come to me as he talked.
So I sat down. And he began.
Kat, you said earlier that you know how the world works. That, as you put it, there’s “a lot of weird shit out there.” And you’re right, of course. The problem is I don’t think you know how right you are.
When I was a kid, our parents weren’t the same as when you and Matt came along. They were fighting a lot, for one thing. They were both preoccupied by work, Dad was drinking a good bit and while I never knew for sure, I always got the impression that Mom had some thing with a guy from work. When she got pregnant with Matt…it wasn’t an easy pregnancy. I remember her going to the doctor a lot, and she was bedridden for a few weeks before he was born. That seemed to change things for them. They got closer to each other and were a lot more hands-on with the two of you.
But I was already like fifteen by that point. They weren’t ever shitty to me, I don’t mean that, but they were fairly…absent most of my childhood. I’d learned to take care of myself and make my own fun. I read a lot and spent time with the few friends I made in school. By high school that had dwindled to a couple social rejects that were just trying to graduate without getting their asses kicked. None of us were very successful in that regard.
I’m not telling you this to whine or make excuses. Overall my childhood was fine, really. But it wasn’t until college that I found a place where I was actually comfortable and happy. There were all kinds of people there, and it wasn’t long before I started making real friendships based out of shared interests and compatibility rather than social desperation. And the books. I suddenly had access to so much stuff I didn’t know where to start. At first, I read stuff based on reading lists and assignments from class. Then I went to some of my professors and got suggestions for further reading on topics that interested me: History, religion, philosophy, physics. I felt like a man who had been wandering the desert and now couldn’t get enough to drink.
The more I studied, the more I sensed my palate growing more refined. I was beginning to see the framework of something…something huge and essential. A buddy of mine always called it “the world behind the world”, and I guess that’s as good a name as any. Whatever you call it, I was starting to see that there were some essential truths to be found about how everything actually works, and that through those truths, some measure of real growth—or even power—could be obtained. So I veered into more narrow and obscure fields of study. I began seeking out books and other sources that weren’t on any recommended lists but that were part of a pattern of study and shared thought that stretched back to the beginning of human history if not further. In the broader use of the word, this was when I truly began my journey into the occult.
As my extracurricular work changed, so did my circle of friends. By the time I was done with school, I’d developed a small group of people that were all working together. At first, we were only pooling resources and information, having group discussions and hanging out occasionally. Over time, several of us began experimenting with various rituals and substances. At first, we always talked about it in terms of being “experiments”, with the ritualized portions of what we were doing be called “focusing exercises”. In our ignorance and hypocritical arrogance, it was more palatable for us to define everything according to some sort of scientific method. We weren’t trying to invoke some supernatural force, we were simply conducting experiments as part of research into unexplained phenomena. And we weren’t lighting candles or saying ancient litanies as part of a ritual spell, but simply utilizing established focusing exercises as a form of cognitive preparation not unlike meditation or hypnotherapy.
The problem was…that was all bullshit. We were kidding ourselves and each other because we didn’t want to admit to what we were really doing, not at first. It wasn’t until we were deeper in, until we were actually doing low level stuff and getting results that we started calling it what it was.
Magic.
Despite your claims of being savvy in the ways of the world, the idea of real magic would have sounded insane or silly to you a few days ago. Now, after what you’ve seen and been through, I imagine you’re more receptive, if still doubtful. I was once like you. I resisted it at first. Not because I didn’t want to believe—who doesn’t want to believe in magic? Especially when you’ve essentially devoted your life to it without calling it such?
But it’s still a hard pill to swallow at first. The world spends so much time teaching us that reality is only one thing, and that one thing is very mundane, with its complexity being more due to our lack of perception and intelligence than anything else. Even many ideas of chaos are really just systems of order that we lack the ability to understand.
Why is that, do you think?
It’s the same reason as most of our problems. Arrogance. As a species, we lack the ability to truly imagine systems that are outside of our understanding. Alien structures, illogical rulesets, chaos that has no underlying system at all and prime movers that have no purpose that could ever be known. No, instead we define the unknown and the complex as something we don’t understand due to our own limitations. We aren’t smart enough. Evolved enough. Our technologies and our philosophies aren’t refined enough. And with all of those, there’s always the perpetually silent and inevitably arrogant ghost word hanging at the end of the sentence.
Yet.
We aren’t smart enough yet. We aren’t evolved enough yet. Our technologies and ideas aren’t refined enough yet.
Because, it’s always the unspoken assumption that someday we might be. Because, it is also assumed, everything can eventually be understood within frameworks that we as humans can create and contemplate. Because, there is one simple hard truth that we can never fully accept.
We are slightly clever monkeys with delusions of grandeur.
Our own group ran up against those limitations and prejudices. The magic…by this point we had accepted it was magic but enough of it actually worked that we were happy to abandon any rational pretense to the contrary…was exciting, but grueling. When you sifted through all the lies and the garbage…the flawed rituals and the made-up spells, the intentionally misleading texts and those driven by agenda or madness rather than a clear recordation of some essential truth…you were left with a handful of diamonds, that was true. But like most diamonds, they were flawed.
Most magic known in this world is based upon systems. They are ways for beings to understand and utilize elements of magic for themselves, but they are still systems limited by those that design it. A watered down version of the real thing, if you will.
Much like I’d first sensed the dim outlines of the world behind the world, as our magical prowess and understanding grew, I began to recognize the magic behind the magic. I wasn’t the first to see the path to this higher understanding and power, of course. But as obscure and hard-fought as the knowledge we’d obtained had been, this was infinitely more so. There were no books or notes on this. No established religions or societies or rituals. There were just suggestions and faint patterns if you knew what to look for. Glimpses of something far greater that would always lay just out of reach.
The others…they were going down various paths of study. A couple turned to various forms of infernal magic. You would call it a species of mystical Satanism, though that term isn’t very apt. To my understanding, Lucifer has been dead for centuries and Hell is in turmoil. Others focused on more natural magics, be through forms of more established religions or more obscure strains dealing with entities and forces that…well, are volatile and highly dangerous in the best of conditions.
But none of that interested me for long. I wanted the truth behind the truth. The power behind the power. The thing that I’d heard called The Maelstrom or The Inner Dark. And if I couldn’t find it on my own, I’d find someone that could show me the way. I began conducting rituals by myself. Making contact with various…well, various things. It took time, and it was highly dangerous, but I was careful and had become very good at protecting myself from most threats that came along. I was beginning to become isolated from the group…they knew I was hiding something, working on a project in secret. But it didn’t matter. If I could find a way in, I wouldn’t need them any more anyway. So I kept going. Kept searching. And then one night, as I dreamt, it happened. I found my guide.
Even then I’d not shed all my own failings and flawed expectations. I’d always thought that, if I found a being of true power, it would appear to me like a kind of god or some monstrous being from a Lovecraft story. At the very least, I expected a wizened old man or woman with a staff and long robe.
Instead, it was just a guy that looked to be around my age. He wore a brown suit that seemed too big for him and was friendly enough when I first met him. He held out his hand with a smile and told me his name was Burke. Told me he knew what I’d been searching for, and that he could help me find it. I’d been tricked before, and I knew enough to understand that everything has a price. But I also knew enough to feel the power radiating off of him—the pure, roaring energy of the thing I’d been searching for. Whatever his agenda, he was the real deal. And whatever the price, I was willing to pay it.
So I followed him up the steps of the black house he had come from.
And when the invitation came, I went inside.
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Credits
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