Eternal Return 5&6

Eternal Return

4

There was a new kid at college.  He’d made quite an impression on Billy already.  And it wasn’t a good one.
It was Thursday morning and Lydia had been showing Billy her science project, taking him through it step by step and explaining the theory and practise in simple terms so that he could understand it.  Billy was enthralled actually and although science wasn’t his subject of choice, having a beautiful and intelligent young lady explain complex physics to him in such a way as to fill him with awe rather than boredom made it one of the best mornings of his life so far.
Later the two of them sat and ate lunch together outside.  “And it doesn’t bother you at all,” she said to him, “that I’m a woman and I know all of this stuff that you don’t?”
“Not at all,” said Billy, turning to face her and gazing with pleasure at her quiet, understated beauty, “in fact I find it quite sexy.”
Then it happened.  Billy and Lydia started to kiss.  But this special moment was about to have a rude awakening.
“Oh, cool t-shirt!” said a voice out of the blue.  Billy broke off the kiss and looked up.  Standing over them, a small distance away was a clean-cut looking lad with longish blond hair in a kind of untidy quiff.  Billy’s immediate impression was that this wasn’t the sort of guy he’d usually hang out with, or the kind of guy who would usually speak well of a heavy metal t-shirt.
Billy looked down at what he was wearing, just in case his shirt had magically changed into a Justin Beiber top or something.  But no, there was the Slayer logo, the skulls and inverted crosses.  It was a ‘South of Heaven’ t-shirt, just as it had been when he put it on.
“Yeah,” said Billy, looking up again and feeling slightly confused, “it’s Slayer, so?”
“All those skulls and upside down crosses,” the new guy said, a mad gleam in his eye and a grin across his face, “the devil worship and stuff; it’s pretty radical, innit?  It really sticks it to stuck-up, Christian fuddy duddies like my parents, doesn’t it?”
Billy moved his hands away from Lydia, quite frustrated to have been interrupted from his first snog with her, and he turned round to face the guy.  Lydia just sat calmly next to him.  She didn’t seem embarrassed that they had just kissed but she wasn’t showing any obvious annoyance at being interrupted either.  But neither was Billy, come to think of it.  He just felt annoyed.
“Look, who are you anyway?” asked Billy, frowning with barely concealed frustration.  “You don’t look like someone who likes metal.”
“No, I’m not,” said the new guy, “I just really like your t-shirt.  The name’s Gregory.”
“Look, Gregory,” said Billy, emphasising the name with derision and mockery, “I’m kind of in the middle of something here, if you don’t mind.  And for your information I don’t just wear this t-shirt because it ‘looks cool’ or because it’s ‘devil worship’ or whatever.  I wear it because I like the band’s music, ok?”
“Ok, cool,” said Gregory, “but I thought we could hang out, you know?  I’m new around here and you seem pretty cool.”
“Well, Gregory,” said Billy, emphasising the name again, “I don’t hang out with fakes and posers.  Why don’t you make friends with that creepy, rich kid; wherever he is.  I think you’d get on better.”  Gregory got the message then and walked away.  “Can you believe that guy?” said Billy, turning back to Lydia.
“He did seem very desperate,” agreed Lydia.
“And so stupid,” said Billy, “admiring my t-shirt because ‘it’s so radical, man, like all that devil worship and stuff’.  What an idiot!  Metal’s the real deal, you can’t be fake, poser, bandwagon hopper about it.  Metal’s in your blood, it’s in your heart.  We don’t take kindly to fakers.”
“A man of principle,” said Lydia, looking into Billy’s eyes lovingly, “I like that.”
“Now,” said Billy, looking back at Lydia with fresh passion, “where were we?”  And they started to kiss again.

Gregory moved across the grounds outside the college and sat down on a bench.  He felt miserable.  His parents had recently divorced and he’d moved with his mother out to Wootton village.  In the process, he’d had to come to a new college, Bedford College.  His Dad still lived down near Dunstable.
All his life, Gregory had been picked on for being the Christian boy; the do-goodie, boring one; moral and upstanding.  And now his parents, who had always spoken of the sanctity of marriage, about making sacrifices to do what’s right instead of following selfish desires; now they had divorced.  Gregory felt like everything he had been told was nonsense.  It made a mockery of his parents’ belief.
Now he was all alone in a new town and a new college.  How was he supposed to make new friends when his world was falling apart around him?
He sat and waited on his own, until finally he spotted the young man who the metal guy had dubbed “the creepy, rich kid”.  He was speaking to a fat lad at first and his voice did sound surprisingly refined and upper class in accent.  Probably upper middle class really but it still stuck out from the others around here.
Now Gregory wasn’t posh, not really.  He considered his parents to have an ordinary wage.  But they weren’t poor either and given Gregory’s genteel manners and Church of England upbringing, he felt he would hit it off with this kid a lot easier than with a lot of the working class and lower middle oiks in the college.
When the chubby lad left, Gregory decided to introduce himself to the “creepy, rich kid”.  “The name’s Gregory,” he said, “what’s yours?”
“Paul,” said the posh kid, “what’re you studying?”
“Economics, law and history,” said Gregory.
“Cool,” said Paul, “we’ll be in history class together.”
Gregory sat down next to Paul.  The metal guy was right.  He did feel more comfortable with the rich kid.
“You won’t believe what I’ve just seen,” said Paul, “there’s a house where someone’s died.  Tom’s Dad took me.  And there’s all kinds of Occult paraphernalia; books on magic, candles, pentagrams, magic circles, a shrine with a real human skull on it.  I think Tom’s a bit shaken but I’m loving it.  I wanna go there again!”
“Where’s this?” asked Gregory, sharing Paul’s excitement.
“Oh, somewhere in Kempston,” said Paul.
“Sounds amazing…” said Gregory, “I’d love to go there myself.  I’d take that skull back to show my mum.  Ha!  Take that mum!”
Paul looked at Gregory curiously.  There was a weird glint in his eye.  “I’ll see if I can arrange it with them,” he said and then added, “you don’t like your mum?”
“Mum and Dad both,” said Gregory, “bloody Christians!  They just divorced.  That’s why I’ve moved here.  There’s pentagrams and that, you say?”
“All kinds of macabre shit,” said Paul, the swear word sounding even dirtier when precisely enunciated in Paul’s posh accent.
“Ha!” said Gregory, “I’d love to take some of that stuff home with me.  Take that, mum!  Take that, Christianity!  Bloody divorce!  Shows what a crock of shit that Christian talk was.”
“You sound very angry,” said Paul.  He seemed to be leering with prurient interest.
“Well, wouldn’t you be,” said Gregory, “if your parents brought you up to be good and proper, to believe in God and the family and marriage and then to split up without warning and tear your whole world asunder?”
Paul sat back, coldly and calmly.  “My parents disowned me,” he said, “I live on my own now, in a big house that my gran left me when she died.”
“They disowned you,” asked Gregory, suddenly shocked, “why?”
“You should come over for tea,” said Paul, “how about tonight?”

That evening Tom was back at the creepy house with his Dad.  “What’s happening,” asked Tom, “why are we back here?”
“I’ve called an expert for advice,” said Dad, “I didn’t want you to be alone when she got here.  So  I brought you along with me.”
Tom didn’t enquire further but that sounded fairly illogical to him.  More likely it was his Dad who didn’t want to be alone in the strange house.  Tom looked around again at the main room.  It was full of black candles, pentagrams and dodgy symbols on the walls.  Eventually there was a knock on the door.
Tom’s Dad opened the door and an old woman was standing outside.  She was thin and wrinkled but her body seemed strong and healthy.  The word ‘wiry’ came to Tom’s mind as a possible description of her.  Her nose was very pointy and her hair was long and straight.  Tom recognised her vaguely.  He was sure she’d been on TV when he’d been growing up.  She was some kind of local psychic TV celebrity.
As she entered the house, her small blue eyes, with their icy, piercing glare, began darting swiftly around the room, as she looked at the walls, the ceiling, everywhere.  She seemed a bit twitchy, as if she had a nervous tick.  “Strange that it should be this house,” she said as she walked on through.
“What do you mean?” asked Tom’s Dad but the lady didn’t answer.  Instead she looked at the living room and the kitchen, sometimes twitching her neck nervously, sometimes closing her eyes and holding her hands out as if sensing something.  Eventually she opened her eyes again and said, “is this it?  Is this the worst of it or is there more upstairs?”
“I think you’d better look at the whole house,” said Dad.
They followed her then as she checked out the bedrooms and bathroom.  In the room with the circle of ashes on the floor, she lifted up the box of books with particular interest.  Tom felt nervous then.  He already wanted to take those books home with him, to read what they said.  He didn’t want some mad old woman to take them away.
His Dad put a hand on Tom’s shoulder.  “Let’s leave her to her work, shall we?” he said.  “Let’s wait downstairs.”  As they left the room, the psychic lady sniffed the air above the books and put her finger to the pages and then tasted her finger while closing her eyes.

They waited downstairs.  In time the old lady came back down to meet them.  “Well,” asked Tom’s Dad, “what’s your expert opinion then?  What do you think we should do with all these things?”
She looked around the room shrewdly.  Her eyes were squinted with concentration, calculation or inner rage; Tom couldn’t quite tell which.  “Second hand items of magic can be dangerous,” she said, “this place and its belongings are steeped in the psychic residues of its previous occupant.  My advice is clear.  Burn it, destroy it all.  Only then can this house be clean!”

6

         Later that evening Tom was banging hard on Paul’s front door.  Paul answered the door, clearly very annoyed by the rude intrusion.  “What?” he demanded, “what is it?  I’m entertaining a guest here.”
Tom looked inside the house and noticed another young lad with an untidy, slightly curly quiff of blond hair.  “Who’s that?” he asked.
“The new kid, Gregory,” said Paul.
“I thought you found it hard making friends,” Tom commented, feeling quite stunned at the news that Paul had made a new friend.
“Oh, don’t get jealous,” said Paul, “a guy can have two friends, can’t he?”
“I suppose so,” said Tom, “anyway, the reason I came is that Dad’s going to burn all the stuff tomorrow; all that weird stuff, the creepy Occult stuff in the dead guy’s home.  Dad called a psychic round for advice and she said to destroy it all.  That’s what Dad’s gonna do.”
Paul’s face fell.  He looked every bit as aghast as Tom felt.  “Oh no,” he said, “that’s terrible.  I was just telling Gregory how awesome it all was and now your Dad’s gonna destroy it?  We have to rescue some of the things, we just to have to!”
“That’s just what I was going to suggest,” said Tom.  “I don’t give a toss about the pentagrams and all the sick stuff; but the books!  The books are too interesting to destroy.  I at least want to read them first.”
“Great,” said Paul, “so what do we do?  Can we sneak round there now?”
“Not really,” said Tom, “Dad’s got the key.  He’d be suspicious if we broke in.”
“Then what?” said Paul.
“We’ll tag along tomorrow,” said Tom, “just like last time.  We’ll help him to move the stuff and whatever he needs us to help with.  And we’ll rescue the books at the same time.”
“Great,” said Paul.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The next day Paul and Gregory turned up at Tom’s house.  “Ah, what did you bring him for?” Tom complained on seeing Gregory.
“I wanted him to see the stuff before it’s all destroyed,” said Paul.
“Won’t it raise suspicion?” asked Tom.
“No,” said Paul, “I’m sure your Dad will be grateful of another pair of hands.”
“Very well,” said Tom and he let them both inside.  As they walked to the living room however Gregory expressed a bombshell of an idea.
“I was thinking actually,” said the blond kid, “that there’s a major flaw in the plan.  How are we going to get a heavy box full of books out of that place without making your Dad suspicious?”
Tom stopped in his tracks and turned around.  “He’s right,” said Paul.  “We need some ruse, some reason to be carrying a box away.”
Tom thought about it for a while, quite speechless at first.  Eventually the cogs started whirring in his mind and he spoke again.  “Dad won’t notice they’re missing as such.  But he’ll notice us carrying a box we didn’t have before so we need somebody else,” said Tom, “somebody to turn up halfway through, someone that Dad will pay little mind to and who might plausibly be carrying a box around with something in it.”  He only needed to pause for a couple of seconds to think what they might be.  “I’ll call Billy,” he said.

Tom made the phone call.  Billy answered.  “Hi Billy,” he said, “where are you?”
“I’m at college,” he said, “but I’m just about to leave.  Lydia’s only got study periods so I thought I’d take her to my house and show her my music collection.”  Billy still collected music on CD.
“Even better,” said Tom.  “Hey Billy, can you do me a huge favour?  On your way to your house, can you head down to Hillgrounds and pick up a box of books for me?  Just take them back to yours and then entertain Lydia all day while the three of us help my Dad with his work and then I’ll pop over and pick them up in the evening.”
“The three of you,” Billy questioned, “who’re you with?  And what books?  Also, Hillgrounds isn’t on my way home anyway.  It’s quite a bit of distance out.”
“I’m just with some friends, helping my Dad out,” said Tom.  “Look, you’ll be doing me a favour.  I’ll make it worth your while, I promise.”
“You’ll pay  me?” said Billy, “cool! What’s the address?”  And Tom told Billy the address of the creepy house.

Billy turned up at the creepy house on his skateboard, with Lydia walking close behind.  On entering the building, Billy showed the same mixture of shock and awe that everyone else did.  Tom, Gregory and Paul were busy boxing things up and lugging them away with Dad and his old colleague Malcolm.
“This is amazing!” said Billy, “why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”
“Because you were too busy trying to get into Lydia’s pants,” said Tom.
“Thomas,” Lydia chastised him, “that’s no way to talk about a lady.”
“Relax,” said Tom, “I wasn’t casting aspertions on your ladylike graces and modesty, just calling to question Billy’s dubious intentions.”
“How dare you,” Billy said, playfully slapping his friend, “my intentions are truly honourable, I’ll have you know.  I intend to marry this girl.”  Then Tom, Billy and Lydia all laughed out loud at the way they were talking.
Paul and Gregory didn’t laugh though and it was to them that Billy turned his attentions next.  “What are those two freaks doing here?” he asked.
“They’re friends of mine,” Tom said pointedly, a small undercurrent of anger in his voice now.  “I’m surprised to hear you speak of ‘freaks’, Billy, considering your usual rant on the subject of the bullying ways of ‘trendies’.”
“He has a point, Billy,” said Lydia.
“Yeah, but they’re so…” Billy began, but he cut himself off, unable to finish the sentiment.  “What do you want me to do?” he asked instead.
“The books,” said Tom, “I’ll show you them.”  And he took Billy upstairs.

“Now,” he said, handing Billy the box of heavy hardback books, “cover them up with your coat or something and carry them away.  If questioned, they are your CDs and you came with them.  You are taking them to Lydia’s house to play to her.”
“I’m taking her to mine,” Billy objected, “and won’t your Dad notice that I didn’t have the box when I arrived?”
“I doubt Dad even noticed you arriving in the first place,” said Tom.  “He’s so busy today and I doubt he much cares whether you are going to Lydia’s house or your own either.”
“What are these books,” said Billy, peering down at them, “why are they so important?”
“They’re books of magic,” said Tom.  “Keep them safe.  I’ll come to collect them later.”
“Ok,” said Billy and he took off his jacket to cover them up before carrying the box with him downstairs.  Tom joined Billy downstairs and then Billy and Lydia left.  “Well, anyway,” said Billy loudly, “I just thought I’d pop by to see you.  I can’t stay though, I’ve got to take these CDs of mine round to Lydia’s house to play them to her!”
Tom’s Dad looked up from his work briefly but immediately looked down again, paying Billy and Lydia no mind at all.  The ruse had worked.  Billy and Lydia left with the books while Tom, Gregory and Paul continued to help out.

Billy couldn’t resist taking the books out and looking at them.  There were four books.  A book called ‘Invoking the gods’ was a deep red in colour.  Another book was a pleasing shade of leafy green and it was called ‘Healing and True Resurrection’.  A third one was golden in colour and the black lettering spelled the book’s name as ‘The Art of Foretelling’.  But it was the final, black coloured book with white lettering on it that stood out the most for Billy.  This book called itself ‘The Science of Eternal Return’.
They’d finished listening to music now so there was nothing else to do but look silently through the book.  Billy opened its pages and as he did so, Lydia and he stared in wonder as chapter titles full of grisly words like ‘death’, ‘decay’, ‘corpse’ and ‘spirit’.  These prominent words in the text coupled with the pictures and diagrams that illustrated the content, confirmed the growing suspicion in Billy’s mind that this book of ‘Eternal Return’ was actually a grimoire of necromancy.
Suddenly there was a knock at the door.  Billy nearly jumped out of his skin.  But when he went downstairs and opened the door, it was of course Tom, Paul and Gregory who were standing there.
“I didn’t know you were going to bring them,” said Billy with distaste.
“Oh, don’t start that again,” said Tom hurriedly.  “Have you got the books?”
“Yep,” said Billy, “four books, safe and sound.  And thank God my parents aren’t in; that black one is pretty nasty!”
Tom stopped suddenly.  He looked shocked.  “Four books,” he said, “not five?”
“No,” said Billy, “you only gave me four.”
“There were five in the box yesterday morning,” said Tom.
Billy felt puzzled but he could only answer with the truth.  “Well, there’s only four in there now,” he said.
“Oh, who cares,” said Paul, “so one book’s gone missing.  Four magic books is still better than none.  At least we’ve saved something from the fire.”
“Fire?” asked Billy.
“Dad’s going to burn everything that was in that house,” explained Tom.  “Some psychic woman gave him advice.  She used to be on the telly I think.”
“Well, never mind that,” said Paul with a mad expression of glee.  “Where are the books?”
Billy took them all upstairs to his bedroom.  CDs and clothing were scattered everywhere and the four books were out of the box and also on the floor.  Lydia was just setting the gold one on top of the red and green ones in a small pile.  The black one still sat open on the floor, from where Billy had been reading it.
“Paganism, healing and divination,” said Lydia triumphantly.  Clearly she had just flicked through the other three.
“Standard magic stuff in other words,” said Billy, “nothing to write home about.  But this black one,” he said, sitting down in front of the necromancy one again.  “This one is totally far out.  It teaches you how to raise the dead!”
“No way!” said Tom, swiping the book out of Billy’s hands and flicking through it.  Billy wished he knew of its contents in more detail.  He’d only seen some pictures and diagrams and read some of the chapter titles.
“Let me see,” said Paul and he took the book from Tom.  Instead of merely flipping through it, the creepy rich kid stopped and actually read a few passages.  “It actually explains in detail how to do it; how to prepare a special substance and recite a few phrases.  It tells you in detail how to raise a corpse!”
“Oh my God,” said Gregory.  He looked horrified and utterly thrilled at the same time.  “This is better than anything else.  We’ve got to give this a go, we absolutely must!”
“Urgh, no,” said Lydia, “sick!”
Billy found the thing a bit distasteful himself but he also would have to admit that he had excited butterflies in his stomach too.  Who in the whole human race wouldn’t want to dabble a little bit in the forbidden knowledge of how to pierce the veil between life and death and bring a dead body back to life?”
“We’ve got to try something,” he said darkly and with a deep, heavy sigh, “even if we only bring back a fly.  It either works or it doesn’t and wouldn’t a scientist want to find out about it if it does work?”  Billy and Lydia looked into each other’s eyes.  The look on Lydia’s face showed Billy that she thought he had a point.

Somewhere, a fire was burning and in those flames were books and pentagrams, candles and charms, potions and curses, the feathers and skulls of dark shrines and evil incantations.  Verity Thorpe didn’t need to see the fire to know that it was happening.  She could feel those evil things passing away into the darkness of oblivion.  It was a huge relief to her.  The first blow had been struck.  Her freedom would soon be at hand.
She sat in the darkness of her room, sitting on the floor with her knees scrunched up close to her, holding her legs in her hands like a frightened school girl.  There was a bottle of scotch whiskey next to her.  It was already opened and half finished.  She lifted the bottle up to her lips and took a long, deep swig from it.  She must have got through five good litres of the stuff in a week.
She clutched her legs and huddled in the dark again.  She barely went out these days.  The visit to the house had been a one off.  She had been somebody once, a local TV celebrity, a famous psychic; but her ex-husband had taken that from her.  Now she cowered in the dark with a bottle of whiskey as her only friend.  But the first blow had been struck.  Surely, the torture was about to end.
For a short whie, in the stillness and relief of the moment, Verity Thorpe really did believe that the hour of her salvation had come.  But then it started again.
A low moaning began to sound through the floorboards.  Then a hideous screaming accompanied it and white ghostly faces began to sweep past her at all angles.  Spectral hands grasped at her as they passed and deathly shrouds buffeted her as they brushed her skin.  A cold chill filled her old bones as the spirits flew at her from every direction imaginable.
And amongst it all was a diabolical, deep, booming laughter that she recognised as her ex-husband’s malevolent mirth.  It was worse; it was worse now because she could see the spirits and hear the laughter with her waking eyes and ears.  Panic attacks and traumatic memories would affect her during daylight hours but always the spirits and laughter had been limited to the hours of sleep before; coming to her mind only in the form of nightmares.  Now though, her ex-husband was haunting her during the day.  Perhaps burning his possessions had been a mistake.
The ghosts tormented her.  Ugly, cackling visages mocked her, their high pitched laughter telling tale of how she had lost everything and was a sad old woman, a recluse, an alcoholic, a mess.  Then images flashed in Verity’s mind of the foul abuse she had suffered at her ex-husband’s hands.  She remembered him beating her, scalding her, smearing her face with hot food.  And worse than that, she remembered the psychological torture; the fear of him, the humiliation, the reprimands and guilt, the insults and shame.  And all the while, the ghostly phantoms he sent to her, using his dark arts even in death; they tormented her and mocked her for her weakness and suffering and pain.
They even began to reveal themselves to her.  Ghastly visages told tale of how they had been murderers, rapists and child molesters in life.  They promised her foul, evil tortures of their own, mentioning acts of violence and revenge that made her stomach churn and her skin crawl.
Was this it then?  Was he to be stronger in death than he was in life?  Would the torture never end?  Would it instead reach new heights?
Verity crawled across the floor of her darkened room and she reached a place where a dim glimmer of light shone through a tear in the curtain.  There also was a beautiful, blue coloured book.  “Magic of the mind, and how to master it,” was what it said on the cover.  Plagued and haunted by spirits, sweat flowing like rivers down her back, her mind swimming and her nerves a quiver as her stomach felt about ready to vomit with anxiety and fear, Verity Thorpe opened the beautiful blue book and began to read the words.  She found an appropriate chapter and not only read the words but then closed her eyes and started to practise the principles laid out.
She protected and shielded her mind.  She had read the passage about that before but only needed to jog her memory and also bolster her determination with the imaginary crutch of a special book.  So the shielding was easy and immediately she felt strong and calm and confident.  The nausea, fear and anxiety ceased.  The laughter and mockery seemed distant now, as if heard only through a double glazed window.  Now for the second part, the bit she had only just read for the first time.  She reached out her mind into the vile personalities of those ghastly spectres.  With the aid of the dreadful facts that they had revealed to her, she was able to reach into their mind, their pasts, their own unique characters and then she came like an avenging angel, or devil; she couldn’t quite tell which.  And she took their fear and insecurities, their doubts and inner darkness, and she amplified them and thrust those vile inner worlds right back at them, to torture them with their own foulness.  Part of it was simple deflection or merely the channeling of her own righteous anger, so that she didn’t have to soil her own soul with their evil, but merely deflect it angrily back at them.
But one by one, she did it, she tormented and tortured them back and she drove them away and all she felt was a slight bit of anger in her otherwise calm, collected, peaceful and confident inner world.
Eventually she opened her eyes again.  The spirits were gone.  Her ex-husband’s laughter had died away.  She was free… for now.
He’d be back.  She knew it.  But for now she was safe.  She sighed happily and looked down at the pages of ‘Magic of the Mind’.  She loved that beautiful blue book.