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> Katalepsis > loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.6
loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.6
Katalepsis by Hungry
Content Warnings:
[collapse]
Aym — demonic dissembler, shadow silhouette, ineffable imp — sat in frozen promise across the imitation abyss of the magical workshop, deep in the dregs of storm-light, drenched in the drumming of the rain, and pressed close by the squeezing of an unseen revulsion, as if the house itself was eager to expel this foreign object lodged in our collective flesh.
She had made an implicit offer, if only I would consent to talk alone, about myself.
"Forget me," I said, staring into that formless darkness. "I'm not interesting."
"I beg to differ," Aym purred in a voice like knives dipped in boiling acid. A voice that made my spine shudder. A voice that made Evelyn go stiff, sitting next to me in the dark with my tentacle still wrapped securely around her shoulder and arm and hand. I squeezed that hand; I'm still here, Evee, you're not by yourself in front of this demon.
I cleared my throat. "But you just mentioned the Eye. I know you did that on purpose, to bait me. I'm not completely naive, not totally inexperienced at this kind of thing. I have bargained with far worse things than you, Aym." Then, because her hook was firmly through the flesh of my cheek: "What do you know about the Eye?"
"Heather!" Evee hissed through clenched teeth. "She doesn't know shit!"
Writhing like seaweed in a dead current, oozing darkness like silty mud, Aym smiled.
Almost invisible, a suggestion of widening shadow. Girlish, teasing, full of taboo knowledge and things she shouldn't know. I blinked twice and suddenly understood, abyssal instinct feeding me hidden layers of reality. Aym wasn't really smiling; that was only my brain doing its best to process the nonsense data my human senses were picking up. Aym was like a radio broadcast more noise than signal. Part of me wondered what I might see if I dipped my senses down into the abyssal range — but I'd not done that in months. The last time I'd attempted that trick I'd been left insensate for several minutes afterwards. I couldn't risk that in front of Aym, not when I had to protect Evelyn.
I felt a pull toward her, an urge to get closer, to get a better look at what lay beneath the shadow. But I was anchored to Evee.
"I know a secret," Aym cooed.
"About the Eye?" The words slipped from between my lips before I could stop myself blundering into her game.
"Mmmmmmhmmmmmm," she purred, an oversized house cat full of flaky iron rust and carcinogenic gravel. Dark tendrils rose from the shadows on the sofa, their tips kissing in the still, cold air above her head, like she was touching her fingertips together.
"You're going to tell me that secret."
I did my best not to phrase it as a question. I even considered slipping my squid-skull mask on before I spoke. But here in the dark, Aym and I were already equals. I needed no true face.
Aym's smile became a grin, toothy and deep, like a leatherback sea turtle with spikes running down the oesophagus to stop prey escaping the final swallow. "Evee-pie leaves," she said. "Then we can talk about you, or the Eye, or about Raine making you scream an orgasm into your pillow, or whatever else you want. I'm easy."
"And then you'll honour the deal?" I asked. "You'll give Felicity the rest of the spell?"
"Sure." A shrug rolled in the shadows. Too many elbows. "Why not?"
"Heather, for fuck's sake," Evelyn hissed up at me from the darkness closer at hand, her face a pale white oval in the grey gloom, lit only by the residual bioluminescence from my tentacles — which she couldn't even see. "This is bait! This is a trap! How can you not see that?! I cannot believe you are entertaining this bullshit!"
"I … I have to try," I said, listening to that tug in my chest. I ached to get closer to Aym.
Evelyn sighed with explosive frustration. She fumbled with her walking stick for a second, got a proper grip on the bone-wand in her lap, then lifted it to point in the direction of the shadowy mass on the sofa.
Instantly, poor Marmite scrambled backward, out of the firing line. His pneuma-somatic mind may not have understood the subtle nuances of tension and negotiation, but he understood well enough the business end of a weapon. The spider-servitor on the table backed up a few paces too, in a more controlled and practised manner, giving its mistress room to wield terrible violence.
I whipped out a tentacle. Instinct rode me.
A hiss tore up my throat and stopped only because I bit my lips hard enough to draw blood. Sharp pain and the taste of hot iron brought my mind around like I'd been slapped.
" … Heather?" Evelyn hissed in shock, frozen in my grip.
The moment she had raised her bone-wand toward Aym, I had lashed out with a spare tentacle and caught the wand in coils of smooth, pale muscle, wrapped it around and around to immobilize the wand and Evee's hand, and then pointed it down at the ground. Despite the useful metaphor, the wand was not a gun; pointing it away from Aym wouldn't make a lick of difference to Evelyn's ability to use the thing. But holding her hand tight in the tip of my tentacle stilled her fingers from the necessary movements.
Aym was not the target of my aborted hiss. Evee was.
Horrified and confused, I let go of her arm and hand as gently as I could. "I-I'm sorry, Evee! I didn't hurt you, did I? I'm sorry … I … I don't know what came over me."
Evelyn stared up at me in the gloom, brow furrowed hard, the soft puppy-blue of her eyes swallowed by the static grey. The bone-wand was like a floating skeletal apparition against the darker patch of her skirt and the floor beyond. "No," she said eventually, hard and cold. "I'm fine, thank you."
"I'm sorry," I murmured. "I don't know why I did that."
Aym cackled in the dark. She rocked on the sofa, a child having a giggle fit. Pseudopods slapped against each other, making no sound, black mist passing through black mist. "Some ally and friend she is! What did you think you were going to achieve anyway, butter-roll? Were you going to dispel me? John Dee himself couldn't have come close. Then again, you are so much more than your mother's daughter. If anybody has to put me in a box, I wouldn't mind so much if it was you!"
Evelyn snorted derision, gritted her teeth, and pulled her composure tight around her shoulders once more with nothing but a lift of her chin. Even half-blind in the dark, unintentionally undermined by my instincts, and taunted by a demon, Evee was glorious in her imperious posture.
"Heather has counselled me in mercy," she said. "You should thank her."
"Oooooh," Aym cooed, a horrible sound like a crocodile trying to be cutesy. "Good save."
"Believe what you want," Evelyn spat. "Heather, don't speak with Aym alone."
"I think Heathy-smoots can do whatever she wants," Aym warbled.
I waited for an extra word from Evee, watching her eyes, begging her to say it; she could collapse all my uncertainty with one little phrase. But it never came. And I didn't prompt her.
A sensible response stuck in my throat. My hands would have quivered if I'd unclenched my fists or unhooked my arm from around my squid-skull mask. My tentacles itched to reach across the room and peel back that darkness from around Aym. I had told a lie; I knew exactly why I had tried to restrain Evelyn, and why I'd almost hissed in her face when she'd threatened Aym.
Abyssal instinct recognised Aym as something not unlike myself. A kinship across the cold water.
I simply had to look her in the face.
"Evee," I said, watching Aym. "I've debated my own guilt for murder over coffee with the King in Yellow. I don't think Aym is going to present much challenge to my self-worth or self-doubt."
At the name of the Yellow King, Aym's smiled died. I felt it go out like a black hole swallowing itself, leaving behind a field of clean stars. A head twisted and kinked in the darkness, peering at me from one angle, then another, drooling black saliva onto the floor. I watched her in return, my eyes moving from point to point on sheer gut feeling.
You want to call my bluff, I thought, but you can't tell if I'm making that up.
A high-pitched whine eased in on the very edge of my hearing, like a massive television set left on mute in another room. Focused Aym, pressing down on her. Like the house itself was trying to force her out.
Evelyn yanked on the tentacle which I had wrapped around her arm, dragging me downward so she could hiss in my ear. "I am not leaving you alone in here with her. You'll have to throw me out of the door, Heather! Go on, pick me up and hurl me out there, I'm sure Praem will catch me!"
"I'm serious," I whispered back. "I don't think she can hurt me."
"Why not just rip the information out of her?" Evee demanded in a whisper. Across the room, Aym was still swaying from side to side like a piece of greasy seaweed snagged on a nail. "She's right there, she's already hurt Kim, and now she's trying to mess with our heads. You said you can do it, were you bluffing?"
I didn't answer. I just watched Aym.
Truth was, I probably could do what Evee suggested, but I simply didn't want to. A very important part of my soul did not want to hurt Aym, at least not in that way. I would restrain her from assaulting my friends if need be, but the idea of doing permanent damage, of vivisecting her with brain-math to pull out the wet and dripping morsels from her mind, that was now unthinkable.
What I wanted to do was reach across the room and peel back her camouflage. The urge was a physical thing, a twitching in my gut. Not quite hunger, and certainly nothing sexual. A new form of need. A burning need to know, to observe truth, unimpeded by appearance.
"Thaaaaaat," Aym purred at last, "wasn't true. Was it? Coffee with the king. A king. A yellow monarch. No, just a book."
Silently I dared her to push deeper. Technically I had lied: I had never sipped from the coffee the King had offered me. But Aym didn't know that.
Evelyn, however, snorted in grim amusement. "That's what I thought. Just a book."
"What," Aym deadpanned.
Evelyn's own exasperation at the mere existence of Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight, and indeed the entire Yellow Court, was about to give the game away and ruin my advantage. I jumped in with both feet, in panic, with the first thing that came to mind.
"If we say that we have no sin," I recited off the top of my head, straightening my back, certain I was going to get the words wrong, "we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us. Why then, belike, we must sin, and consequently die. Ay, we must die an everlasting death."
Aym and Evee both went silent for a heartbeat. Raindrops drummed on the roof and the windows. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbled.
"Well," Evelyn sighed, "I don't recognise that one."
Aym lit up like a Christmas Tree made of frozen asphalt. "Ahhhhhhhhhhh! She knows her roots!"
"I have read Doctor Faustus, yes," I said. "And Aym, really, you're no Mephistopheles."
"Confident you're free of sin?" she asked.
"Confident I'm not."
Aym cackled. She seemed to get the point. Evelyn was shaking her head, exasperated beyond words. Probably feeling left out.
I pressed the advantage, following that abyssal urge down in my gut. "Tell me what you are, Aym. What you really are. Then Evee will leave the room, and we'll talk about whatever you want."
Evelyn exploded. She actually slapped my tentacle, though not hard enough to hurt. "I bloody well will not! You'll have to crowbar me out of this chair, I—"
"Kuuurrh!"
Aym made a sound of such utter disgust, more lizard than human. Evelyn flinched and I whirled all my tentacles up in a protective cage around her.
The shadow on the sofa had gone still, all except for a ragged, rough, shallow breathing.
" … Aym?"
"You people," she purred, dark and wet and full of scorn. "You love your definitions so much. You love them more than the world. Your limits. Your carefully demarcated edges. Your words and numbers and things on pages. It's what mages and wizards and the like have been doing for thousands of years. Writing things down in dusty books. Cataloguing, describing, defining. Everything has to have a name, a type, a label. And when it exceeds those labels, you all go 'oh, this can't possibly be true, this can't be right, wah wah wahhhhhh'." Aym huffed, a petulant teenage girl turning down a gift that wasn't quite expensive enough. "And then you write new definitions, new limits, new types. All of them just as wrong as before."
Silence reigned for a moment, filled by the storm outdoors. The shadow on the sofa had turned dense and sulky. Evelyn's palm had gone sweaty and cold on my tentacle. I squeezed gently. She didn't squeeze back.
Eventually I asked, "Where are you going with this, Aym?"
"Huh. Your ancestors were smarter. They understood that a saint's finger bone could be in more than one place at the same time. Do you? No, of course you don't. The scientific method is only a method. Maybe you need a different method for something like me."
"Well," I said, "what are you, then?"
Aym reared up, all dark suggestion lost in the grey gloom. I had the distinct impression she was standing on the sofa cushions. "There you go again! With the same thing!"
"It's not the same thing at all," I said, doing my best to hold my ground and keep my voice steady before this screeching apparition. "I'm asking you for self-definition. I'm not going to test it, or debate it, or write it down. I want to know what you consider yourself to be."
The smile crept back at last, a slash in the dark. A forked tongue flickered out to taste the air. "I prefer not to say."
"She's just a demon," Evelyn grunted. "She likes to put on a show, that's all. Why does this even matter?"
"It doesn't," Aym purred. "Listen to her, Heather. My sweet little raspberry crumble gets it."
I couldn't answer either of them. Aym writhed in delighted irritation. Evelyn stared up at me from her chair, fuming in the grey gloom.
"Aym," I said after a moment, trying to relocate my footing. "You want a private conversation, about the Eye."
Evelyn spoke through gritted teeth. "I am not leaving this room."
"Then there's no deal," Aym cooed. "I'll just take my leave, shall I? Be off then, toodle-pip!"
I leaned down toward Evee, speaking for her ears only, though I suspected Aym would hear every word even if I only thought them. "Evee, please," I whispered. "I will be completely safe. There's nothing she can touch me with, not after everything lately. What's she going to do, taunt me about having power? About how I might fail? About what? She can't touch me."
Evelyn's face was a grey mask, lips thinned, eyes boring through my skull.
"If you want me to leave," she said through her teeth, "you will have to remove me yourself. And we both know you won't do that."
Aym let out a dark giggle. "It's for your own good, butterscotch biscuit. Some things about gods aren't meant for human ears."
Those words only acted as more bait. My skin itched, my feet wouldn't stay still; I had to know. I wet my lips, trying to bring these two together in some agreement, something that would let me square this circle. "What if Evee stays?"
"Then I," said Aym, "go."
And so she did.
The shadow on the sofa stopped moving, becoming one with the grey background of cushions and curtains. In a moment of optical illusion it was possible to convince oneself that Aym was still sitting there, inhabiting the angles of shadow on cloth, the disturbed fabric of the furniture, the imaginary ghost-shapes of shadows upon waking. But then I moved my head and realised there was nothing there.
The high-pitched whine had vanished as well. The pressure in the room seemed lighter. My gut and my tentacles both relaxed.
"Oh," I sighed. "There goes our chance."
"Bugger it all!" Evelyn spat, stamping her walking stick against the floor. She slapped at her mobile phone on the table, cancelling the twenty minute timer and jamming the phone back into her pocket. "Heather, she was trying to entrap you! You saw that, you heard every word of it!"
"Evee, please." I squeezed her arm gently with my tentacle. "I think that was the whole point. You were the one falling into her trap, not me."
Evelyn opened her mouth to snap at me again, but then she paused, scowling. "Explain."
"She knew full well you wouldn't leave me alone with her. So she engineered a situation where you had to override my wishes. She's laying the groundwork for tormenting you later, I suspect, by making you take responsibility for me failing to get what we need from her. Does that make sense? Maybe I'm just projecting, but I think that's what she's doing. And … well … I was trying not to give away that I suspected." I sighed heavily. "I probably should have just said it out loud. I'm sorry. I'm not actually very good at this, am I?"
Evelyn stared up at me, brow knitting harder and harder. The rain drummed on the roof and the windows, turning Number 12 Barnslow Drive into a resonant cave. The grey gloom seemed now to swaddle us in safety. I wanted to melt down onto the floor next to Evee and put my head in her lap.
"I don't agree," she said eventually. "But you may be right. Fair enough."
I let out a weak laugh. "You trust me but you don't trust my judgement."
"Don't be a fool, Heather. I trust you with my life." She said it so matter-of-fact that I couldn't possibly remain angry with her, but she looked away quickly, back into the comforting darkness of the magical workshop with the lights off. With Aym here the room had felt abyssal and strange, a piece of fairie-magic transported to the heart of Sharrowford. But now it was just our home, in the dark. "Besides, she's probably still here."
"Maybe she's a fairy," I murmured.
"What?" Evelyn squinted up at me.
"Nothing. Forget I said that. Just a silly thought." I blushed faintly in the dark. "If she really is still here, then she's probably overheard every word I've just said." I cast my eyes around the room too, looking for a tell-tale patch of darker shadow, a dripping blackness out of place, a slasher's smile in the night. "By speaking her plan out loud, I've already disarmed it. I hope."
Evelyn snorted and shook her head, but her heart wasn't in the gesture. "Better at this than you think, Heather. No wonder everybody believes in you. You're always so right and—"
"Bleeeergh," came a voice of razorblades and acid, imitating being sick, from the far end of the workshop table.
I whipped around, tentacles whirling in surprise, then shooting outward to protect Evee. Evelyn flinched hard, despite doing her best to hide her reaction, then turned in her seat so she wasn't showing her back toward Aym. The spider-servitor on the table scuttled around in a little circle, bringing its stinging spikes to bear, each glistening point quivering in readiness to strike. The other spider-servitor, clinging to the wall over the gate, looked ready to unfold like a toxin-tipped spring, only a few feet away from where Aym now sat.
A writhing shadow of grey and black, indistinct and hazy, perched on the very end of the table. A number of what might have been legs dangled over the side, melting into shadow as they swung back and forth, like a child whose feet didn't reach the floor. The shadow curved, curled, cracked and coiled, then lowered a hand from the suggestion of a mouth.
"Bleh," Aym repeated. "You two are disgusting. Old people in love are disgusting. Don't start making out in front of me, I'll be sick all over your floor."
I blessed the darkness, for it hid my rising blush. I opened my mouth on a reflexive denial. "W-what? Lo—"
"Old?" Evelyn spat. "I am twenty one years old, you rotten cow. You are infinitely older than me."
"You were born at forty," Aym purred. "Face it, strawberry tart."
"Aym!" I snapped on reflex. "All this negotiating and playing games with us and vanishing in a puff of shadow like you're a pixie, that's one thing. But do not insult Evelyn. It's extremely rude."
Aym laughed, a bubbly, wet, rotten sound, like her throat was stuffed with decaying cardboard.
The shadows seemed to be pressing around her, tight and grasping. That high-pitched whine had returned to the edge of my senses, focused on the figure of the demon sitting at the end of the table, but not originating from her. I felt myself involuntarily inch forward, as if I might grab her and pluck her from her seat. My tentacles itched, drifting outward like a muscular, living net in the darkness, their faint rainbow strobing soaked up by the gloom and returned as mere shades of black. I felt like a hand was on my back, urging me forward.
The house itself wanted her gone, and I wanted to catch her like a spider under a glass — not to hurt her, but just to look. Once I was done, we could throw her outdoors, back into her natural environment.
"You know," said Aym — and then went still, grey, an empty space of shadows.
Then her voice came from behind me again, from where she'd sat originally, back on the sofa, hissing with sudden irritation: "Tch! Do not make me repeat myself, it's so boorish. Shooing Evee out is for her own good. I won't talk to you otherwise, Heather. And stop trying to catch me! Don't assume that because it's dark I can't see you trying."
Evelyn and I both turned back to the sofa again. The spider-servitor whirled as well, looking quite harried by this absurd back-and-forth. Aym was back on the sofa, a shadow-shape of suggestion and suspicion. I had the distinct impression she was sitting up very straight-backed, almost formal. A forked tongue flicked at the air, licked things that were not lips, and then darted back behind far too many teeth.
Evelyn snapped, "Stay still or I'll have Praem tie you to a chair."
"Oooooh," Aym mocked. "Scary scary!"
But I was shaking my head in wonder, refusing to be misdirected by her words. "You're more like Sevens than a demon. You're a spirit-thing, but there is a physical body under there. I can sense it, I can feel it. How did you know I was going to grab you?"
Evelyn sighed. "Heather, for fucks' sake, it doesn't matter. This is over. She won't talk and I won't leave. We can do this some other way. Either you pluck it from her mind, or I … " I felt Evelyn swallow and stiffen, felt the cold sweat break out beneath her clothes. "Or I work with Felicity to solve the problem the old-fashioned way, research and experimentation. Fuck Aym. We'll do it ourselves."
I waited a heartbeat, but Evelyn did not add the words I expected. So I leaned down close, close enough for my breath to touch her ear.
"I don't know if Maisie has the time to spare. And I think I can take Aym. But if you … if you insist?"
I let the word sink in the gloom. Evelyn opened her mouth, closed it again, opened it a second time, then gritted her teeth and said nothing.
Slowly, reluctantly, Evelyn stood up from her chair. She used me for support and I gave it freely, taking half her weight as she stared daggers at Aym across the room. Shadow-fingers undulated in a mocking wave.
"Bu-bye for now, blackberry jam," Aym giggled.
"If you hurt Heather, I will hunt you down, kill you, and then re-summon you to posses a septic tank on a pig farm."
Aym grinned in the dark. I helped Evelyn over to the door. She whispered in my ear.
"You be fucking careful, Heather."
"I promise. I will."
When I opened the door to the kitchen the magical workshop was flooded with lighter grey, storm-born illumination chasing back the darkness. I couldn't resist a glance back over my shoulder, but the shadow was gone, Aym melted away into nothing in the clarity of sunlight, no matter how weak. Only lumpy sofa cushions remained.
Evelyn called for Praem. We weren't going to let her walk alone from here to the old sitting room. Even that was too much risk with Aym lurking about. Praem appeared a few moments later, clicking across the kitchen tiles, with Raine dogging her heels.
"Hey hey," said Raine, tense and ready, but trying to smile. "We done already? Quicker than I thought you'd be. Everybody in one piece?"
Evelyn snorted derision, letting Praem take her arm as I handed her off. "Far from it. Heather is going to talk to Aym, alone."
Raine's eyebrows shot upward. She found my eyes and asked, "You gonna be okay?"
Just like that. No assumption that I wasn't. No horrified warning. No fear. A genuine question, simply asking if I needed help. I wanted to melt into her arms and kiss her. Raine was perfect.
"I think so," I said.
Raine nodded, once. "Shout and I'll be there in a flash."
I smiled back. "I know you will. Love you, Raine."
"Love you too, Miss Morell."
Just before I started to close the door to the magical workshop, Marmite scuttled out around my legs, eager to be away from Aym. His spider-friends did not follow, but Praem greeted him with gentle hand on a passing tentacle. He made for the front room, moving fast.
Praem turned her head to me. Blank, milky eyes locked with mine, fixing me in place. "Say hello from me," she said.
"Of course," I replied, as if we were discussing a pleasant social visit to a friend, with tea and scones, rather than a negotiation with something dark and horrible, coiled in on itself like a giant snake, that I couldn't even identify.
I closed the door on my friends — on Raine's jaunty thumbs-up, Praem's blank and elegant stare, and Evelyn's pinched scowl — and plunged myself back into the sucking pit of static gloom. Footsteps clicked and shuffled and stomped away from the other side of the door, across the kitchen, and into the front room. A moment later I could hear nothing over the incessant drumming of the storm. I pressed a hand to the cool, smooth wood of the door, readying myself, then let go, casting off into the abyss.
Aym was waiting for me on the sofa.
She made no pretence of humanoid form now. A gelatinous mass of shadow squatted on the sofa, impossible to render into details even if I squinted. Octopus-bodied, frog-fleshed, seaweed and salt and sinuous motion, she seemed more abyssal than terrestrial now. More recognisable. More like me. My instincts sang with kinship.
Just us now, no human beings to worry about protecting. I felt less human myself. I even forgot to relate Praem's greeting.
"Aym," I murmured, stepping into the middle of the room, my tentacles floating after me. "Aym, what are you? No, no don't answer, I know you won't. But I already know. You're like me, aren't you? You've seen the abyss. That's what I call it, the deep dark place between the spheres. I can feel—"
"You're going to die."
Aym said it with a sound like ramming a serrated sword through a suit of rusty chain-mail. I think that meant she was angry.
"I'm sorry for undercutting the drama," I said, "but is that meant to be a threat?"
Aym sighed like a terminal tuberculosis patient in her final moments. "Why don't we level with each other, Heather? Now it's just you and I, can't we drop all the pretences?"
"We already have, haven't we? You are what you are, I am what I am. Here we are." I swallowed, heart racing with anticipation, legs itching to move.
Aym sat up straighter, or at least higher. "The Eye."
"Yes, the Eye, indeed, what do you know?" Then I laughed softly. "Does it even matter?"
"Less than you."
"So you were lying after all. You don't know any secrets about it."
"Neither do you, squid-brains. And you haven't been paying attention. You've been trying to apply the scientific method to the Eye. Like a moron. Building all these models with metaphors — a lost chick, a cuckoo, a protege. An angel!" She laughed at that one, a hissing sound. "That one might have something to it, I admit. But you're going too slowly. You're going to visit Wonderland — what a shitty, stupid name for a place like that — with a head full of theories and figures, and the Eye is going to kill you."
"I've accepted that danger. I know what we're going to be facing. It's still worth the risk."
"It's not a risk!" she hissed. Aym rose even higher, an octopus rearing up, ready to crack the shell of a crab with her beak. "This isn't hyperbole, or a prediction. It's a fact! You're going to die. All your friends are going to die. Your sister will wither away and fade into nothing."
"It's still worth a shot," I said. "Is this meant to make me sad, Aym? I've felt these things my whole life."
"What are you going to do, huh?" Aym leaned forward and suddenly she seemed like a giant, pressing down on me. A teacher, demanding a real answer, not just a bluff and a shrug. A parent demanding an explanation. Reality itself, material and undeniable, demanding an answer with steel upon flesh. "I mean what are you actually, physically, practically going to do? Shout at it? Reach up and stab it with the universe's largest broken bottle? Raine's idea, that one, by the way; at least she had something! None of that makes sense, and you know it. But you've spent months avoiding this, because it's the only method you've got!"
A lump grew in my throat. "That's not true."
"Then what is your plan?"
"I'm going to reach out to it with brain-math. I'm going to try to pull Maisie out. That's what I'm going to do."
"Tch!" Aym hissed. "So, fight it. A tug of war for a soul. That's your answer. Waste of thought."
"Why do you care?"
"Evee will die."
No shame, no hesitation, no secret blushing embarrassment. With her and I, alone in the dark, Aym did not balk from the truth.
"You care about Evelyn?" I asked.
Aym sank back into the sofa cushions, lolling, spreading out, glaring at me from shadows within shadows. "If you come back from your stupid quest and everybody except Evee dies, fine. Who gives a fuck? Magicians, demons, idiots. But if you make it back and she's the only one lost, I will eat you piece by piece. And I will keep you alive while I do it."
My tentacles flared outward in silent warning. Faint rainbow glow threatened to reveal Aym's truth, but the shadows refused to take form. "I don't think you could achieve that, Aym. I don't think you understand what I am."
"You don't understand what I am," purred a thing in the dark.
I nodded and sighed, then nodded again. "Fair enough. I don't understand why you care, either. If it helps, if it matters … I would protect Evee from anything, under any circumstances. To be honest, I don't even think she should be coming to Wonderland. Nobody but me should be going."
Aym coiled and writhed on the sofa for a moment, then said, "If I give Felicity this key, you're going to get Evee killed. As soon as I give you this spell, you'll go get that book, and then you're there. And all dead."
"I won't let Evee get hurt."
"You mages will go fight other mages, because you're like that. Like animals. Territorial and violent. And then you'll get your special little book and sweet Evee will finish her spell, and then you'll open a gateway to Wonderland, where you will all — fucking — die."
"I would sacrifice myself first."
As I said the words, I realised they were true.
"Would you?" Aym laughed. "I'm talking with Heather Morell right now. But down there in the dark, you don't have a name."
"You do know the abyss!" I said. "You've been there, you understand."
"And you understand nothing."
As I stared across the static grey gloom of the magical workshop, locking eyes with something that had only dark pits where sockets should have been, I accepted that this was not really a negotiation at all. Aym had indeed dropped the pretences she'd used in front of Evelyn.
Her entire reason for coming down here was this private conversation. This confrontation, with me. Perhaps she had planned it from the beginning, but more likely her goals had changed once she'd gotten here. Perhaps the attack on Kimberly had been part of that, to provoke me into reaction, to see if I would leap to the defence of somebody who wasn't even particularly close to me.
Aym was judging me. She wanted to know if I was leading Evee to her death. And she didn't like what she saw so far.
"You're right," I said. "When I dived into the abyss, I forgot my own name. But I didn't forget Evee's."
Aym said nothing, just floating in a gentle current of cold rain.
"Evee, Raine, Twil, Lozzie, Zheng," I said their names. "Tenny was only a spirit back then. I didn't know Sevens yet. But everyone I knew, I sealed their names inside a pressurised bubble of … well, it couldn't be flesh. But I kept them in my core. It's what drew me back, buoyed me back to the surface. I will always remember the names of my friends, my family, those I've chosen to be with. I don't care what I'm reduced to. Even the version of myself which returned from the abyss, it knows — I know — that Evelyn Saye is part of my pack. Sorry Aym, you're wrong."
Aym sighed, dry rubber down a cheese grater. "Lucky you."
"Luck has nothing to do with it."
I felt myself edging forwards, toward Aym, creeping across the wooden floorboards on the silent pads of my socks and the supporting curves of a pair of tentacles. Achingly slow, like a cephalopod drifting in dead water, easing myself closer and closer to my target. Tentacles uncoiled from my core, inch by slow inch. An unconscious predatory advance.
"She was fine," Aym drawled, her rusty-razor voice tinged with bitter melancholy. Teeth moved in several places on her blob-like body. "She was safe with Raine. She was safe, and alive, and away from her rotten cradle. She was safe, Heather. Maybe not loved, but close enough. You've ruined that."
"It's not enough to be safe," I murmured into the dark, watching the tendrils of Aym's black form coalesce and melt against the cushions of the sofa. "One has to live."
Aym hissed, sinking lower, as if she knew I was about to spring. Her attention was turning inward, away from me. I crept closer, sliding my sock-clad feet along the floor.
"I forgot somebody once," she said, voice reduced to a cold stub. "We went down together. He forgot my name, and I forgot his. I came back alone."
"Me too," I said.
I lifted one tentacle in silent, quivering anticipation, a perfect curve of serpentine muscle, poised to strike. Within leaping distance now, and then I would have her. My heart climbed into my mouth, the tentacles supporting my legs went tense. I wet my lips and—
"Ha!" Aym spat — from the other side of the room.
The shape left on the sofa in front of me was mere shadow, wrought by imagination. I whirled on the spot, tentacles whipping after me, to find Aym standing at the far end of the magical workshop, a dainty little figure of black and grey haze, framed by the outline of the gateway to Camelot, blank plaster and old paint.
The spider-servitor on self-appointed gate-guard duty did not approve of this trick, this travelling without moving. A pair of spike-tipped stingers lanced downward to spear through the top of Aym's head.
"No!" I snapped, flinching forward, about to hurl myself to knock Aym out of the way.
But the spider-servitor's chitin weapons passed through smoke and shadow and gouged chips of wood out of the floorboards. Recoiling in confusion, the poor servitor almost lost its grip on the wall, head whirring around for the new location of its original target.
"Hoooooo," went Aym, now tucked neatly into the far corner like a cobweb. "Spicy, spicy doggy!"
"It almost had you," I said, panting with mixed relief and shock. Had she moved again fast enough to avoid the attack, or had the spider's weapons passed through her body and found it no more substantial than a cloud of oil? "Aym, what are you? How do you move like that?"
"Hell hath no limits," Aym purred, clicking her syllables with a wet tongue, "nor is cicumscrib'd in one self place."
I finished the quote for her: "But where we are is hell, and where hell is, there must we ever be." I shook my head. "More Faustus. You do enjoy your literary metaphors."
A grin spread in the dark. "So do you. Now you're getting it."
"Getting what?"
Aym waited in that corner, still and silent, too thin to be a person, too hazy to be real. Bait.
I stepped away from the sofa, trying to pay attention to how my weight was balanced. There was no way I could round the corner of the table without her seeing what I was doing. I could leap, I supposed, springing with the power of my tentacles — but this was becoming embarrassing. Instinct thrummed hot and huge in the back of my head, urging me to catch her and peer through the shadows up close, so I could identify her.
I pushed it down. I forced a deep breath into my lungs. I drew my tentacles back in. I could not catch her over there, not without making a fool of myself.
It wasn't as if I would be able to catch her when she was hiding from all this light, either.
I sighed and crossed over to the door which led out to the kitchen. Why had I left it open earlier, when Evee had gone? It was ajar just enough for a person to pass through, flooding the magical workshop with the lighter grey storm-washed sunlight from the kitchen windows. Aym was reduced to little more than a memory in the corner.
I shut the door and placed my hand against it for a moment, once more sealed in the abyssal darkness, alone together with Aym.
Then I frowned.
"Wait," I murmured out loud. "Wait, I did close—"
"Feeling ill, squid-brains?" Aym cooed.
Slowly I turned and looked at the corner again, at Aym gathered there like oil-soaked rags floating in a marine trench.
Had she done something to me just now? Everything felt dislocated, like I'd just jumped back a minute. Or forward? Time didn't add up. But abyssal instinct was silent, unbothered, completely focused on the desire to pluck Aym from her protective shadows.
No, that made no sense. I was just confused.
I had seen nothing.
"Aym," I said, trying not to sound like my heart was going at high speed. "I never got to thank you for your help against the Eye. You went into the cult's safe-house for us. You got hurt, for us. I gathered from Felicity that you were injured somehow. I saw you, in fact, if only for a moment. Thank you."
I took a step forward, openly.
Aym snorted and tossed something that might have been a head, or might have been a pair of crocodile jaws, wrought in shadow. "If I had known, maybe I wouldn't have gone in. Your big friend really sees everything. I don't like that, not at all."
"The Eye?" I nodded — and took another step, making for the corner of the table, making for Aym. "I suppose you wouldn't."
"You're the same."
"You mean I'm becoming like the Eye?" A shiver went up my spine; I already knew that. Out in the dream-landscape where Lozzie and I had freed badger, I'd stared back at the Eye with what little observation I could muster. A raindrop against the ocean, but both were water.
I took another step.
"And just as trammelled," Aym said.
I froze. " … pardon me?"
"You heard me, squid-bones."
I turned that over in my mind. Aym was being cryptic. This was like Sevens, but without any affection or showmanship behind the display. Aym was just being difficult for the sheer fun of it. I stepped past the chair which Evee had been sitting in earlier, reached the table, and placed my squid-skull mask gently on the wood.
"What do you suggest, then?" I said.
"Eh?" The shadow-shape in the corner twisted something long and dripping at me.
I slid another step closer, along the length of the table.
"Against the Eye. You're worried that I'm going to get Evee killed because I don't know what I'm doing. So what do you suggest?"
A moment of silence and shadow.
Then Aym screeched. "I don't fucking know! I don't know! I'm not its adopted daughter! Think like a giant eyeball in the sky, Heather! Stop trying to figure it out, or it's going to kill all of you by looking back!"
I pushed into the face of Aym's ire, walking right toward her.
The shadows folded away to nothing.
I caught myself on the edge of the table, tentacles hooking, grasping, bunching as my feet kicked for purchase and I turned on the spot, spinning and scrambling in the other direction, shooting back toward the sofa before the shadows had a moment to wrap themselves around Aym's materialising form.
But materialise she did, right there on the sofa, already snapping with irritation.
"Stop thinking like one of them, Heather! Think like one of us!" And then, "Eeeeeep!" as I landed on top of her.
I plunged two tentacles deep into the shadows where Aym was hiding, gripping whatever I could. My flesh tightened around cold slime and ridged scales, around bulging sacs of fluid and dripping orifices. I gritted my teeth and forced myself not to flinch. Rainbow bioluminescence glinted off chitin and scale, slime and salt. Aym kicked and hissed and writhed and bit the air and flailed against the cushions, but all was insubstantial, nothingness on grey gloom.
And when my grip was secure, when Aym was held not with terrestrial flesh but by the pneuma-somatic truth of my body, I reached back behind me with a third tentacle, and hit the lights.
Dull electric illumination guttered back to life, as if smothered by the gloom and drowned out by the storm. Shadows rolled up and scurried behind the furniture. I blinked against the sudden light, a deep-ocean creature dredged to the surface. The shape in front of me snapped into focus, grey haze blown away like mist in the morning sun.
I recoiled, gaping, mortified at what I was holding. I had one tentacle wrapped around a throat, another looped around a belly, both very human.
She was just a girl.
Aym was tiny. Dainty and delicate. A sprite dipped in coal dust.
Dressed from toes to chin in black, she wore thick black socks, shapeless woollen black leggings, a black dress of overlapping layers and intricate lace that reached down past her knees and right to her wrists and up past her throat, cupping her chin with a soft curl. She had long black hair, clean but messy, framing a face of pinched sharpness, all angles and planes. Her eyes were human, with pupils and irises and whites with little veins, but tilted at a fey and inhuman angle. Eyes just a touch too wide. Nose a fraction too sharp. Ears a notch too high. Neck a few inches too long. Something imitating a human being but revelling in the small differences, impossible to ignore. She was maybe thirteen years old, but I didn't believe what I saw.
I still felt terrible. I felt so bad I hiccuped.
"I'm … I-I'm sorry," I blurted out, loosening my grip on her throat. "I didn't know … I thought you were … like … you convinced me that you weren't remotely human!"
Aym swallowed as her throat was given space. She looked up at me with heavy-lidded eyes, then smiled with a mouth full of blunt, normal human teeth. Smugging for all she was worth.
"Couldn't resist, could you?" she purred — her voice was still a nightmare, a jarring scratch of knives down a blackboard. "It's in your nature. You want to look, to see, to know."
I sighed sharply, blushing hard, then hiccuped again. "I'm sorry for grabbing you. I … I'm sorry for invading your personal space. I thought you were … I don't know. Like me."
"But you did it anyway," she said. "And then you blame me for being the wrong thing. The thing you didn't expect. Too mundane. Too boring. Oh no! Oh dear!" She raised her hands and cupped her face, a mocking pantomime of innocence. "I'll have to play it up so you don't strangle me to death!"
Shorn of her shadows, Aym had the most annoying expressions I'd ever seen. She managed to remain smug while also oozing with fake simpering. Her voice pitched higher, whining, then dissolved into a wet and rotting giggle.
I made to withdraw my tentacles, ashamed of myself, confused by the lack of something I recognised. Abyssal instinct had gone quiet as soon as the lights had come up. The 'real' Aym was just a girl. Demon or not, Outsider or not, this was her true form, and it was just what I saw. I was certain of that.
"Nooooo!" she whined, suddenly grabbing the tentacle I had looped around her belly. "I said I'll play it up for you. I can be whatever you want, after all."
"Aym, stop." I huffed and pulled on my tentacle, but she dug her fingertips in, grinning wider. "I'm sorry I invaded your personal space. I was wrong. I thought you were like me, like—"
"But you found the wrong thing when you looked too closely?"
"Yes! I'm sorry! Let me—"
Aym reared up in my grip — and up, and up, and up.
Black hair thickening and whipping into dark and ropey tentacles. Face dissolving into a mass of teeth, a circular maw, with eyes the size of tennis balls. Her dress became ridged scales and the rasp of shark-skin. Shadows pulsed out from her like membranes in sluggish current. Feelers and roots grasped the sofa and more of them grasped my tentacles. She drooled black, sticky, hissing venom right before my face.
"Are you sure about that?" Aym giggled. "I'm only small, after all!"
Abyssal instinct lit up in triumph; she was like me.
And then she was a girl again, sitting on the sofa, grinning at me like a mad little pixie who had lured me into a ring of mushrooms.
I stood there for a long moment, panting and shaking, covered in sudden flash-sweat.
" … was that … " I cleared my throat and tried again. "Was that the real you? You must be from the abyss, you weren't even surprised by my tentacles when you first saw them. You must be."
Aym tilted her head sideways and gave me a look like I was being exceptionally slow. "Stop asking."
I shook my head and pulled my tentacles away. This time, Aym let me go.
"You just couldn't resist a look," she said. "But did it help? Do you understand more, now?"
" … no, I suppose it didn't, b-but—"
Aym smiled, showing neat little white teeth. "And I'm only very small. The Eye is so much bigger."
I took another step back and realised I was smiling like a moron, trying to get my head around what I was looking at. Aym had been to the abyss, she was like me; I was dying to ask her so many questions, but my mind finally pulled together and started to process her actual words.
Logically, I could deduce what Aym was. She had begun as mortal, or perhaps Outsider, and then swum the abyss, like me. Had she been a mage, like Ooran Juh, or something else? I almost asked out loud — but that would just set her off again. I might be able to define what she was, technically, but that told me nothing about her.
On reflex, abyssal instinct stirred my senses, preparing to see with new eyes.
"Ah!" Aym shot up straight on the sofa, suddenly angry, little face pinched and blazing. "No!"
"N-no?" I blinked, shocked out of the process of dipping into abyssal senses.
"No! You do that, and I'm gone, I'm out, no bluffing. Turning the lights on, that's all part of the game. But looking like your big Eye does? No way. Stop."
I took a deep breath, quite deflated by that. "You mean … wait, Aym, then how am I supposed to understand the Eye, if not by looking at it?" I sighed and shook my head. "This is getting too lost in metaphor."
"I told you," Aym purred. "I don't know. But looking is what the Eye does."
I opened my mouth to sigh again, then froze, and said slowly, "And looking isn't understanding."
Aym smiled, a nasty little pixie all in black. "Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of Heaven."
"Huh!" I laughed without humour. "Another quote, wonderful. Irritating me with my own techniques. How am I meant to approach an ever-moving sphere of Heaven, then, if I can't make it stand still?"
Aym shrugged. "That's your problem."
"Raine was right about you," I muttered.
Aym lit up. "Rainey? Really? What did she have to say about me? Something violent, I hope!"
"That you're a little shit." I cleared my throat. "Pardon my language. Lots of people have tried to give me advice on how to handle the Eye. Magic, brain-math, lesbian threesomes." I huffed at that one. "Blind faith, dreams, 'you'll know what to do when you get there.' You're just the latest in a long chain. And you're not helping, either."
"You need to stop thinking like a mage."
"I'm trying!" I huffed, feeling peevish, and stalked away from Aym. The fun was over, abyssal instinct gone sullen, the game ruined by the harsh lesson. Aym was right, I just didn't know what to do in response. "I don't know what I'm going to do about the Eye, all right? Is that what you want to hear? That I know I'm doomed? That I don't know what to do once I get there? I don't even know where to start! You're right, I'm going to look up at it with brain-math and probably die right there on the spot. Thanks, Aym."
Aym the coal-sprite grinned. "You're welcome."
"Evee was right," I said. "I shouldn't have been alone with you." I felt myself buckling inside. Was this Aym's plot all along, to ruin my resolve, to protect Evelyn by stopping me from going to Wonderland? Because it was working. "Maybe we shouldn't go," I said past a growing lump in my throat. "Is anybody's life worth Maisie's return? I need to believe it can be done … "
"Uuuurrrrghhh," Aym grumbled. She rolled her eyes so hard that a real human would have detached both retinas. "You liked me better when you couldn't see me, right?"
" … right?"
"You could deal with me then! You don't need to understand something to deal with it. You just need a shared medium." She pulled one corner of her lips up in a sneer, as if this was obvious. "Shadows. Or words. Or maths, in your case, but don't try that, you'll get shouted down. It's better at maths than you."
I frowned at her, not quite following. "A shared medium with the Eye? What?"
"I don't fucking know!" Aym screeched. She threw her arm up, all lace and gauze. "Don't ask me!"
I blew out a long, deep breath, and said nothing for a moment. We stared at each other, two things alike in kind but completely different in every way that actually mattered. Aym sneered at me, tiny and delicate and wrapped in shapeless black. I felt stupid and lost.
"So, communicate with the Eye?" I said eventually. "In some … shared medium, whatever that means."
"That's up to you." Aym bounced slightly on the sofa cushions, tilting her tiny chin up, rolling her eyes. "All I can see right now is you people driving toward the edge of a cliff. And I'm not going to pay for your petrol. I can easily stop Flissy from working together with Evee, you know. Hell's bells, Heather, I could go find this Edward fuck-face and cut a deal with him." She spat a little 'pfff' of disgust. "Though I'd rather not. Probably make me puke."
I shook my head and wandered over to the table, touching my squid-skull mask. Cool bone-metal soothed my heart. "You go to the abyss, come back, and spend your days keeping Felicity on the straight and narrow. What's the story behind that one?"
"None of your business, nosy nelly," Aym sneered in a voice like cats destroying a rusty toy mouse.
I felt myself sagging inside. "Are you going to give us the magic we need then, or not?"
Aym paused, tilting her little face one way, then the other, black hair hanging down in a messy wave. "I don't like you, Heather. But I like this angel thing you're doing," she mused in a lighter voice. "Stick with that and maybe we can make a deal."
"A deal. Ah." I walked over to Evee's chair and wondered if I should tuck it back under the table. "I could just take the magic from you. The knowledge. Do it myself."
Aym showed me her teeth again, a big toothy smile. "Are you sure about that? You don't even know what I am."
"You're like me."
"Wrong! Ehh-uuuuhh!" She made a noise like an old fashioned computer error, grating and metallic.
I nodded in exhausted surrender. "Praem says hello, by the way."
"Tch." Aym flicked one bony, delicate hand. "She really ought to get your roof fixed. I was up there waiting. Great big holes in the tiles! Tarpaulin doesn't last, you know?"
"You really care about that?"
"Evee could catch cold," she said, then grinned a mocking little grin.
"Fair enough." I moved to sit down on the chair, this negotiation wasn't over yet — and then bumped into something soft and unexpected.
My brain short-circuited, like in a dream.
I had bumped into something which wasn't there. Something invisible. I had bumped into nothing. I blinked several times. I had bumped into nothing.
I had bumped into nothing.
Nothing was there.
Maybe don't sit down in the chair? But nothing was there.
I stood there blinking several times, stuck in a small loop, until an explosive sigh split the air.
And suddenly there was Evelyn, my soft and well-wrapped Evee, sitting in the chair where she'd been sitting all along. A piece of familiar white quartz fell from her hand and into her lap, where it dimpled the fabric of her skirt. She looked slightly bashful, blushing, unable to look me in the eyes.
I gaped at her. " … Evee?"
Aym had a hand over her mouth, eyes wide with amused shock.
"Evee," I said. "That's … the … the … the stone you used when we first met, to hide in plain sight. What's it's called?"
"The fade stone," Evelyn replied with a grunt.
"You lied to me. You came back in! That's why the door was open! Evee!"
Evelyn looked up at me with blazing eyes. "You didn't seriously think I would really leave you alone with her? Heather, I am not letting you hurt yourself."
"You could have insisted!" I squeaked.
Aym, horrible little goblin thing that she was, burst out in peals of sharp laughter, rocking back on the sofa and clutching her stomach. "I haven't seen that trick in years! Evee, you little bitch!"
Evelyn looked at Aym like she was a zombie made of dog turds. "And I haven't seen your face in years. What are you still doing here, you little monster?"
"Well—" Aym began, wiggling her eyebrows.
She never finished the rest of the sentence, because the door of the magical workshop flew open with a bang. Praem filled the doorway, staring at Evee.
"Ah," Evelyn cleared her throat. "Praem. Yes. Well. I'm fine. I'm safe. Sorry."
"Yes," said Praem, sounding none too pleased.
"Wait, I said. "Praem, she didn't even tell you she was doing this? She didn't tell me!"
"Yes," said Praem.
"Evee," I admonished.
"Yes!" Aym joined in. "Naughty Evee! You—"
Praem silenced Aym with a single look. The coal-sprite demon-thing flinched like she'd had a bucket of water dumped over her head, cringing back on the sofa.
Evelyn was blushing with embarrassed fury. I didn't know what to say, lost for words. Praem looked like she was about to fetch a rolling pin and beat Aym into mince. Aym came back down from her flinch, inch by slow inch, eyes locked with Praem. Behind Praem, in the kitchen, Raine appeared, peering over her shoulder at me. She shot me a questioning thumbs up. I shrugged, grimacing.
"Yes or no?" Praem said.
Aym pointed at herself with a faux-innocent me? gesture.
"You," said Praem.
Aym hesitated, then smiled, a nasty little thing dipped in black mud and cobwebs. "Alright then," she said. "Go get Flissy. Let's do some magic, ghoulies and girlies."
Do not try to define Aym, for she resists labels, she refuses to tell what she is. Heather could just open her eyes and look right at the truth, but Aym asked her not to and Heather is sometimes too polite for her own good. Also Heather, wow, getting rather predatory there. That was unexpected. Wants to make contact with a fellow abyssal creature? That probably answers the Aym question. But what about Evee? Heather couldn't see that one coming at all.
No Patreon link this week! Why? Because I want to shout out somebody else for once! There are so many delightful and fun stories out there which all deserve attention. You might like one!
Cosmosis (by the very talented Pel-Mel) is one of the most wonderfully creative and bizarre concepts I've come across in web serials: alien abductee science fiction de-facto isekai. Give it a look! Especially if you like in media res openings. It jumps right in, both feet first.
And go vote for somebody else on TopWebFiction for once! Go vote for another favourite! You can always vote for Katalepsis next week, if you like.
In the meantime, leave a like, a thumbs up, a comment on a chapter, it's all great, and it helps me so so much to know there's people out there reading and enjoying the story; that's the whole reason I do this in the first place, to bring a fun story to those who read it. And thank you for reading!
Next week, cute dangerous mages doing cute horrifying mage things.
Meanwhile, my other project has now begun! (For those of you who prefer to read here on Scribblehub, don't worry, it'll be up right after I post this.)
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GigaDotti· Nov 11, 2022
Hungry· Author · Nov 12, 2022
LMAO, I love that emote.
Katalepsis


text:
A treaty is an express agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely sovereign states and international organizations. A treaty may also be known as an (international) agreement, protocol, covenant, convention or exchange of letters, among other terms. Regardless of terminology, all of these forms of agreements are, under international law, equally considered treaties and the rules are the same.
Treaties can be loosely compared to contracts: both are means of willing parties assuming obligations among themselves, and a party to either that fails to live up to their obligations can be held liable under international law.
Read more about Treaty: Modern Usage, Modern Form, Bilateral and Multilateral Treaties, Execution and Implementation, Invalid Treaties, Role of The United Nations, Treaties and Indigenous Peoples
Famous quotes containing the word treaty:
"He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards."
—G.C. (Georg Christoph)
"It is accordance with our determination to refrain from aggression and build up a sentiment and practice among nations more favorable to peace ... that we have incurred the consent of fourteen important nations to the negotiation of a treaty condemning recourse to war, renouncing it as an instrument of national policy."
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
"The hand that signed the treaty bred a fever,
And famine grew, and locusts came;
Great is the hand that holds dominion over
Man by a scribbled name."
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
Terms related to treaty:
Treaty IRA
Irish Free State Offensive
Irish Republic
Irish Republican Army
Irish Republican Army (1922–1969)
Munster Republic
Republican Held
Seaborne Landings

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Hungary extends coronavirus curbs, night curfew until Feb. 1 – PM
By Joori Roh and Daewoung Kim
Police officers patrol during a night-time curfew imposed by the Hungarian government as the spread of the coronavirus disease ( COVID-19) continues, in Budapest
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – Hungary will extend existing restrictions, including a nighttime curfew, until Feb. 1 to curb the spread of novel coronavirus infections, Prime Minister Viktor Orban told state radio on Friday.
Orban also said digital learning in secondary schools would continue. Primary schools opened this week.
Since Nov. 11, all secondary schools have been closed as have hotels and restaurants except for takeaway meals, a 1900 GMT curfew has been in place, and all gatherings have been banned as a second wave of the pandemic hit the country.
Orban said Hungary had received 80,000 doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine but that was not enough.
"Existing restrictions will be extended until Feb. 1," Orban said, adding that more than 42,000 healthcare workers had received the vaccine.
Nationalist Orban, who faces the biggest challenge of his decade-long rule with the pandemic and the economic recession it has caused, said an economic rebound this year would depend on how fast Hungary could vaccinate its people.
He said if the government only relied on vaccines made in Western countries, it would take several more months.
He criticised the European Union's procurement of vaccines, and praised Britain, which went its own way.
"The British, instead of letting Brussels do it, negotiated themselves and are in a much better state now," Orban said.
He said "vaccine misery" also showed that EU member states should be dealing with many more issues on a national basis, rather than letting Brussels act on their behalf.
Hungary has participated in Russia's testing efforts and was an early recipient of small batches of its Sputnik V vaccine and is also in talks with China and Israel about vaccines.
As of Thursday, Hungary had reported 334,836 novel coronavirus cases and 10,325 deaths. More than 5,000 people are in hospital, down from earlier peaks but the healthcare system is still under strain.
(Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Tom Hogue, Robert Birsel)
EU leaders summit in Brussels


text:
by Hymenaeus Alpha 777
J. Edward Cornelius' I-Ching Sticks
From the O.T.O. Newsletter, Berkeley, California Vol. II, #7&8 [Double Issue] Winter-Spring, May 1979, pgs. 3-6.
Bill Heidrick has asked me to tell you what it was like to be under the Magickal Instruction of Aleister Crowley personally. Unfortunately this is impossible, much as I would personally like to accommodate him… and you. After all, if one cannot discuss the Secret of the IXth Degree (with its well-known "secret ingredient") except under Seal, how much less can one get into the doctrine of the Golden Pyramid of Atlantis? (What has been published by A. C. himself can be discussed — if you want some idea, take a look at the Crown of The Fool in the Thoth Tarot deck and remember the ancient adage: "The Universe is held in the Mind of God." Add the ideas of computer programming, the tanmantras and what people really mean when they say they are "maintaining.") What are the real words signified by A.'. A.'.? How does one charge a set of Abramelin squares written in Enochian? And Why? And why you shouldn't! The mystery of the Virgin Man — reflect on your biblical "Woman clothed with the Sun" and reread your Kabbalah Denudata, the "Twelve Stars for her Crown" being the twelve cranial nerves of the cerebellum in the activated Psychic Body. Why should the ancient curse be, "May Choronzon burn the back of your neck!" — I'll give you a clue: the Visudha Chakra, or Da'ath in the activated Psychic Body. Or the nature of the Boat of the Sun.
It is impossible to discuss these things, except under Seal, of course, because of:
1. The Fourth Rule of the Sphinx — Silence!
2. The Magickal Penalty for the Violation of an Oath.
3. The danger… not to me, to you!
I would not care to have the karma of a Lou Culling who published certain (inaccurate) books on sex Magick. That is like handing a lighted stick of dynamite to a child for a fire cracker, or throwing acid tabs to teenagers like sugar cubes to piss-ants. The only thing I can think of worse from a Thelemic point of view is telepathic hypnosis. You will notice that Crowley was never so irresponsible.
It has occurred to me that I am one of the few people left alive who knew Aleister Crowley at the last three places he lived: 93 Jermyn Street; The Bell Inn, Aston Clinton, Bucks, north of London; and Netherwood, the Ridge, Hastings.
So let's meet Aleister Crowley.
As I said in a previous rap (Vol. I, #4 of the O.T.O. Newsletter), 93 Jermyn Street is just off Picadilly Circus in London. As best memory serves, it is the bottom flat of a several story apartment house facing North.
This is what the interior looked like:
A is the door leading in off the street. B was a large window that lighted the place very well during the day, but at night had a black "black-out" shade on it so that no light could be seen by the German bombers we could hear patrolling overhead. C was the chess table. D and F were two comfortable chairs facing the table. I always sat in D and Crowley always sat in F. G was the round turn-table full of books down at my right — where I picked up the I Ching book with the Crowley paintings for covers. H was the two-tiered open bookcase on the North wall over under the window. The letter H itself is about where I found the volume of Abramelin squares. It was on the top shelf. I signifies four framed line drawings in typical Crowley style that I can only describe as being "mildly erotic." They were certainly not obscene. Unfortunately the only one I can remember with any clarity was the one on the left. It featured a young lady looking down with great delight at what looked like an overgrown bush, with Crowley in oriental garb looking over her right shoulder, and the caption read something to the effect about how wonderful it was to know this young woman because "she has the world's largest cunt!" Unfortunately these drawings did not survive to be shipped to Germer after Crowley's death. I can only presume that they were ripped off.
I met Lady Frieda here, and also Dr. Louis Wilkinson. It is my impression that he was a medical doctor, but as a British author he wrote under the name of Louis Marlowe. I can't tell you what the kitchen and bedroom looked like, as I was never in either of them, but the bedroom looked pleasant and sunny enough from the living room. It is the place where a German bomb blew in the back windows one night, and, as Crowley said, if he had been home at the time he would have been killed.
Crowley had an idea that he could divine a person's character rather quickly by the way he played chess. A right side opening (usually King's Pawn) meant a fast, slashing, rather reckless attack. A left side opening (usually Queen's Pawn, unless one is going in for Hyper-Modern theory where anything is possible) meant a slow, leisurely, intellectual game — and person. I tend to the right side, myself. Apparently Crowley liked that. Anyway, after about the third meeting, he said, "You are obviously IXth Degree material," and handed me the papers. It was here he told me about "my chess game," as he put it — a story he loved to tell. It was a "blind-fold" game (one in which the player does not see the board). Anyway, he went to bed with the lady of his choice at the time, while his chess opponent sat at the board within easy talking distance, but where Crowley couldn't see it. The idea was to see if Crowley could achieve climax and call "Mate!" at the same time. As he said with great delight, "I did it!"
It was also here that I asked him for help with my Motto (see previous O.T.O. Newsletter), and that the incident of the British school-boys happened. I am so used to reading freak-out accounts about how Crowley was supposedly such a bad-ass, that I was a little taken aback recently to read an article in which someone was trying to make him out a kindly old gentleman. Well, he certainly could be kind enough, if it struck him that way, but so far as I could tell he remained irascible to the end. Anyway, it is a habit in England for school-boys to go around in small groups at Xmas time and sing carols at your front door, and, as has been said, "they will not go away until they are paid!" Well, they did that time. Go away, that is, without being paid. We were sitting there at 93 Jermyn Street playing chess and rapping one wintry afternoon just before Xmas of '43 e.v. when we heard this raucous noise at the door. Crowley said, "I wonder what that is," in some annoyance, and went and opened the door. Here were four English school-boys bawling away. Crowley flew into a temper, slammed the door, and came storming back into the room raging, "TO THE LIONS WITH THEM! TO THE LIONS WITH THEM!" Of course if they had been singing "Oh little house of Boleskine," as someone was at a recent Crowleymas party, he might have felt differently.
Of course, it was here at Jermyn Street that Crowley gave me his (typically Crowley) view of the people of the Mediterranean. "All those people can think of is fucking!" is the way he put it — his own succinct way.
It was also here that we took off one day for lunch at some posh London restaurant. I had gotten into town in the morning, amazingly enough, or maybe I had spent the night (being a red blooded American boy) with one of the whores from Picadilly Circus (wars are fought on the unexpended virility of young men… personally, I never found any shortage of young women to help them get rid of their problem), and he decided to celebrate by treating me to a fine lunch. It was in a hotel, the Savoy, as I recall, but don't hold me to it; I remember that the doorman wore his British Army combat ribbons on his doorman's uniform. With the barrage balloons flying and all that, wartime London could be a rather exciting place. Sometime I must tell you about the Red Berets of Ord Wingate's Burma Drop, and the British Officer Club circuit. But anyway… I got the idea that winning the Victoria Cross was a high recommendation for retiring as a doorman for a posh London hotel, but then it was wartime England. Crowley was wearing a knickered tweed suit he had specially ordered and tailored and was so proud of… he loved to show you how efficient it was… all those little pockets and things. It came complete with gravy stains, which can still be seen in photos as late as '45 e.v. from Hastings. Very important in shortage plagued war-time England, but it was very unusual looking. Anyway, as we were walking into the lobby, I was walking on the right, a rather beefy looking Englishman coming out of the Restaurant took one look at him and burst into laughter. I flushed and half turned to my left with something in mind about doing something about it ("You can't laugh at my prophet that way!"), but then I noticed that Crowley was laughing and talking and paying it no never-mind, and I suddenly flashed that it would make a rather silly headline the next day — "BERSERK AMERICAN OFFICER ASSAULTS PEACEFUL BRITISH CITIZEN AT POSH HOTEL!" — so I simmered down and we walked on into the dining room.
The reason this incident sticks in my mind is because of something that happened on the way. We had taken one of those big red double-decker buses and were sitting on the bottom level on the left about half-way. We were sitting there talking, when suddenly Crowley glanced up to the left, said "Pardon me a moment," closed his eyes, made some mystic passes with the fingers of his right hand, and mumbled something unintelligible. Unintelligible to me, anyway. It wasn't until later that I figured out that he had been doing the noon Liber Resh. The thing that is so striking is that he was so quiet about it. To hear some people talk you would think that he would have rushed up to the top deck and shouted it "from the housetops" to all of Greater London. There may have been times where he did, but he didn't do it that day.
From the O.T.O. Newsletter, Berkeley, California Vol. III, No.9, Summer, August 1979, pgs. 3-7.
As I mentioned in my last rap, 93 Jermyn Street is just off Picadilly Circus in London. A "circus" is a "r'und-a-boot" (round-about), i.e. a circle where traffic flows in and out. Picadilly Circus has traditionally had a statue of Eros (Cupid) on the island in the center (taken down during the war, of course). They couldn't take down Nelson's Monument in Trafalgar Square, so they sandbagged it. Anyway, and for whatever reason, it was the habit at that time ('43 – '44 e.v.) for all of the young ladies of London who wanted to fuck for fun and profit to come down and blanket the walls while the various clientele (mostly American soldiers) considered the prospects. The comments one heard while passing could be rather startling. I remember being jolted out of my satori one evening by some broad yelling, "Get your hand off my cunt!" during a particular point when they were negotiating as to who was to sleep with whom and where and how much for the night. We had a saying in the American army, "If you put a roof over Picadilly Circus, you would have the biggest whorehouse in the world." Whether Crowley ever made use of the local availability I have no idea, but it did set a certain tone.
Speaking of sex, the question has arisen as to whether Crowley ever made any homosexual advances to me. The answer is no. (For a confirmatory opinion, see The Eye in the Triangle by Dr. Israel Regardie, p. 16.) The Aleister Crowley I knew had the greatest respect for the right of an individual to manifest their Will without interference. The only time the subject ever came up was by accident and a joke. One day he was telling me about how he had been at a party the previous evening. From his description I got the idea that the people who attended were mostly of the artist / bohemian persuasion, but elderly, because, as he said, despite their age they were all jumping about "as spry as crickets." Whereupon I made some inane comment to the effect that I would have liked to have been there. His reply was rather devastating. He said, and I quote, "Oh, you would just have gotten yourself buggered." Considering my physical strength at the time that does seem unlikely, but anyway….
It was also here at 93 Jermyn Street that a German bomb landed in his back yard, blowing glass from the window all over his bed, and as he said to me at the time, "If I had been home, I would have been killed." This shook his nerve a bit. He, along with Lady Frieda and many another Britisher, were determined that the German bombing would not drive them out of London — the old British "bulldog" spirit. As to whether any of this on Crowley's part had to do with any remorse over his pro-German activities in the U.S. during War One, I cannot say. So far as I am concerned, he was just being the typical Britisher he had always been. Crowley was in the tradition of the radical conservative. On the one hand there is nothing more radical than Thelema. On the other hand he was a monarchist. He could never forgive Edward VIII for having abdicated his throne to marry a commoner. After all, the office of the Royal Consort had been approved in European royalty for centuries.
Speaking as an old combat trooper, I can report with great authenticity that being next to a bomb going off will do something to you. What it does mostly is make your nerves a lot more frangible. So if sometimes my hand shakes a little and maybe I drink more than is good for me, believe me I have reasons. When the Chinese hit the Kumwha Ridges with a human wave that went on for a solid week in October of '52 e.v., and I was ammo supply on the Central Front, Korea… but that is another Grady story…
Back to Crowley. As a result of the German bombing he decide he needed "more quiet." Can't say I blame him. I thought it was dumb enough to stay in London to begin with, but I didn't tell him that.
So he looked around and decide to move to the Bell Inn at Ashton Clinton, Bucks County (I think that means "Buckingham"). There is a whole history of England written in the county names. "The painted counties." Yes, I saw it once when I was running east on a highway over in the West country — those perfect patches of agriculture, each in its own color… (Essex means "the East Saxons," Wessex means "the West Saxons," Sussex means "the South Saxons," Northumberland means the pits. That is Robin Hood country.) …about 30 miles north of London. Of course, London goes on forever.
The Bell Inn is an authentic country inn. It still has the courtyard where the stagecoaches stopped to load and unload. I was still up in East Anglia at Bury St. Edmunds at the time. Now England is built very much like Italy or Korea when it comes to roads. "All roads lead to…" London, Rome or Seoul, as the case may be. To cut across country is a problem. Add to that the fact that the British had taken down all road signs in case of a German invasion, which was not at all unlikely. But I had a very beautiful, red Morocco bound quarto sized map book, so I never really had any problems negotiating the terrain. (From a recent film, "The Eagle Has Landed," it is quite obvious that the Germans had just as good road maps, so why did the British take down the road signs? Well, you are at war — you have to do something — even if only to keep up your morale.) I fogged my way across country… wondering at the convoys of British trucks that did not have front wheel drive… sure enough, they bogged down in the mud of Italy while those American GMC deuce and a halfs went plowing sturdily through… bugged the hell out of the British newspaper correspondents at the time… and those colorful "Royal Corps of Signals" on their messengers motorcycles with their funny helmets and fantastic yellow gloves with the long gauntlets to cover their wrists.
I did not really have all that much trouble in finding Ashton Clinton, not at all like that time in Korea when I wanted to drive from Chouchon over to the Western Front without bothering to drive all the way into Seoul. Found myself on a washed-out road on a mountain pass, up to the fan belt in a flooding stream without a bridge — and when a squad of Koreans burst out of the cane in full camouflaged combat regalia, I damned near shit my pants while grabbing for my carbine in the back of the jeep. Turned out they were just ROK troops on maneuvers, but for a horrible second I didn't know that. Well, anyway, back to Crowley, like I said.
Naturally I was in uniform. Not only was there a war on, but I had taken the morning off from my duties as Company Commander to grab the Company jeep and go over and see Crowley. I walked in to the desk (on the right; the dining room is on the left as you walk in) and asked the clerk how I could find Mr. Crowley. He said, "Oh, right up those stairs (on the right), down the corridor to the left, and its room number so and so (which I have forgotten)." So I go pounding up the stairs "with me combat boots on," found the door (on the right), and pounded on it. I heard some unintelligible sound, so I pounded again. This time I heard a voice saying very distinctly, "Who is it?" Since I was talking to a piece of wood, the door, and there seemed to be some problem of communication, I said very loudly, "LIEUTENANT McMURTRY." The door opened and there was Crowley. He took one look at me and said, "Oh, there you are, dear chap. Come right on in." Then he paused, looked puzzled for a second, and said, "That's strange. When I was taking the I Ching this morning it said that I would be meeting a military man." I walked in, and he said, "Pardon me a minute." He was in progress of taking an oracle from the I Ching. It was the one time I saw him using his I Ching sticks (which I was able to recover from the library after the court order decreeing that his library belonged to the O.T.O. under my conservatorship).
The blank side is the male (Yang, energy) side. The divided side (looks like red nail polish to me) is the female (Yin, receptive) side. By my ruler they are less than an 8th of an inch in thickness, but slightly more than a 16th thick. They either were mahogany or teak or stained dark to look so. Each stick has a Yang side and a Yin side. The way Crowley used them was to shuffle them (with his eyes closed then take them one at a time and, holing each one upright with his right forefinger (eyes still closed), get a signal and lay it down either right or left. First stick down is the bottom line. You can also get moving lines this way. If one of the sticks wants to move when you lay it down, just shove it right or left as indicated. Personally I like this method of taking the Oracle. It gives you a chance for your Angel to communicate directly through your fingertip. Of course, one must always be wary of lying and malicious spirits.
I forget exactly what we talked about, but I do remember that it was a happy reunion and a heart warming experience. Crowley could be a wonderful person when he wanted to be. As for the irascible side of his nature, I personally do not think he could have brought down The Book of The Law unless he had been authentically THE GREAT WILD BEAST OF THE AEON.
I met him once more, Xmas of 1944 e.v., but more of that next time… and Hastings.
Editorial Note: Sadly, one summer while partying on a beach in San Francisco, Grady accidently lost Aleister Crowley's original I-Ching sticks. Years earlier, while visiting my house in Connecticut, I had the opportunity not only to hold these sticks but to fashion my own set almost identical in size from the originals. Above is a photo of mine.
From the O.T.O. Newsletter, Berkeley, California Vol. III, No.10 & 11 [Double Issue] Winter 1979-Spring 1980, pgs. 3-6.
As I said in my last rap, I would see Crowley one more time at Bell Inn at Ashton Clinton. At the time it seemed all very accidental. Looking back, it seems all very karmic. But anyway…
What happened was that, having survived the invasion of Normandy and the Battle of Northern France, we were up in Belgium preparing for the assault on the Rhine. This was where the incident of the eighty 500 pounders occurred. One day I read in the Stars and Stripes, our Army newspaper, that they were offering a course in Explosive Ordnance in England to any Ammunition Supply Officer who didin't know his ass from his elbow. Since I had gone to Quartermaster O.C.S. (Officer Candidate School) and had never even seen Aberdeen Proving Ground, two things hit me at once: (1) It would be interesting to find out something about what I was doing, and (2) Crowley was in England. It was a long chance, but there was always just that possibility. So I find myself piling into a British plane up in Brussels Airport so antique that it had two pilots, but only room for four passengers. We started taking off down the runway under the usual cloud cover, as I thought at the time… it is always raining in Northern France and Belgium… stupid me, how was I to know that this was the fog blanket into which Glenn Miller would disappear flying east to France at the same time… and under which von Runstedt would launch the Ardennes Offensive (the Battle of the Bulge to you history buffs)… things like that I would find out later. At the time what I noticed was that neither pilot was looking down the runway in front of us, as pilots normally do on a take-off, but that the one on the left was looking to the left, and the one on the right was looking to the right. This did seem unusual, so I did the same. That was when I grabbed my seat and hung on for dear life. This twin-engined crate was so ancient that the tachometers were on the engine nacelles, and what the two pilots were trying to do was to keep the two engines turning at the same speed so we wouldn't ground -loop and wind up a fiery pile of junk. But we finally lifted off, cleared the cloud cover, and started pocketing along toward England at about 60 miles an hour, maybe 6000 feet off the ground, under a brilliant sun and looking down on a pure unbroken carpet of white that went on… and on… and me twisting my head round to see if some stray line of ME-109s would come rolling in for a little target practice like that day in Normandy… but then I had been on the ground and could duck… a little hard to duck at 6000 feet… and on… At 60 miles an hour it takes a while to fly from Brussels to London.
Finally there was the blue of the English Channel… and the White Cliffs… and we landed at Croydon and by truck and bus and trolley and train up to Leicester (which we pronounce lei-CES-ter and the British pronounce LES-ter).
First they introduced us to the ka-VET (which seemed to be the British way of pronouncing the French word for cavity). A kavet was where a bomb had exploded underground, but had not broken the surface, leaving a thin layer of soil that would not support you if you stepped on it. Which meant that you would be dead by the time you scrambled out due to the toxic gases left by the explosion. Kavets were definitely to be avoided. Check. Then we met Herman, good old Herman. Herman was about the size and shape of a great white shark, had a funny ring welded to his nose to retard his depth of penetration on impact, was painted a sort of off-navy gray-blue, and weighed 1000 pounds. Herman was what the British called a "block-buster." Also Herman was a man of mystery. Yes, Herman had many mysteries. The mystery was in the fuse. Herman could think. Now we Americans are very straightforward kind of people. A little mindless, maybe, but certainly straightforward, and our technology reflects. Our bombs were fused mechanically fore and aft. As she went in, if the firing pin in the nose fuse didn't function, it didn't matter because this neat little metal rod in the tail fuse would come slamming forward and she would blow anyway. But suppose she lands on her side, says Uncle Heinie? So they devised a whole new technology of electrically fused bombs. By flipping a complicated set of toggles the German pilot could give Herman any number of options. He could explode on impact. He could be set to go off as a time-bomb hours later (very important in wartorn London. A UXB [UneXploded Bomb] found near a subway or power station could shut down a goodly part of London.) Or he could just lie there and think about it indefinitely while these curious little electrical charges went percolating through these rheostats and other circuit devices, waiting for the vibration of the jackhammers from the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad (there is an awful lot of concrete in London) to break that final circuit and set him off. Obviously the British had a problem. They had to get him out of there, but how? Solution #1: defuse him on the spot. The fuse was at about the center of the bomb on one side, and secured by these funny looking little locking rings. Unlock the rings, lift out the fuse, and away with old Herman. Unfortunately Uncle Fritzi had thought of that too, and had all these happy little anti-withdrawal devices so that as you lifted the fuse out he would blow anyway. Scratch Solution #1. Also the guy who was working on the fuse with the telephone around his neck, "I am now moving ring #2 to the left…" and then this god-awful explosion. Finally the British had lost so many EOD experts that they resorted to the only real practical solution, and that was to hoist Herman out with a crane, put him onto a sandbagged truck (for all the good that would do), and take him out with sirens screaming to some god-forsaken place and blow him on the spot. Yes, Herman was definitely bad news.
So was Betty. "Bouncing Betty," they called her. The Germans had this empty casing about the size of Herman (painted yellow) that would crack open about half-way down and spew the countryside with grenades retarded in their descent by these cute little beanies… a sort of four-bladed parachute. Once Betty had bounced, she would lie there with this timing device about the size and shape of a quarter, and ridged on the edge like a regular coin, waiting for any vibration to make that little gear move that one more notch and then all of a sudden there you are looking like a funny kind of shish-kabob. This was all very interesting, and fun in its own kind of way, but terribly academic, until the world exploded. I came down to breakfast one morning to find the Stars & Stripes on my table, headlines all over the place, and a may full of spear-heads supposedly depicting German armored divisions all pointing directly at where I left my Ordnance Supply and Maintenance Company at Brugelette, about 30 miles south of Brussels. What to do? Well, school's over, back to London, back to the Continent, back to the War. Only to have the desk sergeant tell me, "Lieutenant, we can't even drop paratroopers into Bastogne. How in the hell are we going to fly you back to the Continent?" So, my hunch paid off. But first things first. Grab one of those funny spare London taxis with the open front-end that can turn on a dime and score a bottle of black-market Scotch for an exorbitant price. Then scrounge up a couple of cigars from some place and off to Bell Inn at Aston Clinton. That may have been where I met Kenneth Grant, because I definitely remember meeting him at the Bell Inn. We rapped about many things, but the only thing he said that really stuck in my mind was his last sentence, which was, "You really must come back for Xmas. It is going to be the traditional English Xmas dinner complete with flaming plum pudding!" After all, the Bell Inn is a traditional English country Inn. And so back to London and check in with Air Transport and, "No, Lieutenant, all flights are cancelled for today, but be sure to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning."
It was about this time I met those Canadian girls and got introduced to the British Officer Club Circuit (which is quite different from the regular street pub) and a few days of living it up goes by… and then it is Xmas, and time to visit Crowley up at Aston Clinton. But hold! Enter the villain. The British Railway drivers (we call the guys who man the throttles on railroad engines "engineers") had had it up to the ears, and decided to pull a one day strike. They were not being unpatriotic, but you must understand that they had been fighting the war since Hitler had invaded Poland and the British were a tired people. So the railway employees just told the government flat, "For one bloody night, Gov, in all the years of this bloody war, we are going to have Xmas dinner with our families at home." Personally I approved, but it damn sure left me up a bloody creek, because how was I to get back to London by 8 o'clock the next morning? On the other hand, who could miss having Xmas dinner with Aleister Crowley? So I said, "To hell with it, I'm going." After all, I had been risking my life on a daily basis ever since Normandy. Why should I worry about a reprimand? So by taxi up to Paddington Station, that great, gloomy, sooty cathedral to Victorian bad taste where you take the trains going north, and off at Aston Clinton station. Everything looked normal. Gates open, lights on. Looked cheerful enough. Even serving that awful slop they call "tea" in British railway stations in war-time England. That's why they filled the glass half full with watered milk, so you could gag down the stuff. At least it was hot and warmed your tummy on a cold night. Maybe everything would be all right. So off cheerfully to the Bell Inn and Crowley and we toasted the Yuletide with brandy and it was time to go down to dinner and all those suett things that only a Saxon stomach can take, and sure enough the flaming plum pudding. Then back upstairs for more talk and brandy and the cigars and a wonderful time and around midnight it is time to say goodbye and I walk back down to the station in the fog that had come up. It looked like a tomb — Lights out, gates locked, and not a person in sight. What in the hell am I going to do? Ah. Brilliant inspiration! What is the one place in town that is going to be open all night? The police station, of course. Not hard to find. It was the only house in town that had its lights on. So I walked in and explained my problem to the Desk Sergeant. He was sympathetic, but said, "Not a chance. With the heavy ground fog not even the lorries are running." (English country winters are subject to what we would call a Yule fog, and a lorry is what they call a truck.) Then he brightened and said, "But there's a bobby on a wheel (motor cycle) coming through in a few minutes going down to the next town toward London. Maybe you can hop a ride with him!" So I find myself on the back end of a motor bike blasting along through the fog freezing my end off down to the next station. And again to the next station. What happened after that is a blur. All I remember for sure is waking up standing in the open back end of a milk truck running into the outskirts of London in a cloudy dawn trying to find some place where I can catch a tram. I made it to the Air Transport Office at just exactly 8 o'clock only to be told, "Sorry, Lieutenant, all flights are cancelled for today. But be sure to be here at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning!" It is really remarkable what some people would go through just to have lunch with Aleister Crowley, but personally I wouldn't have missed it for anything.
Editorial Note [J.E.C.]: This issue, like the previous, ends with a 'To be continued,' but regretably this was the last issue of the O.T.O.Newsletter.


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Home > About > Story of St. Louis IX
Story of St. Louis IX, King of France
August 25 is the feast day of Saint Louis IX, King of France, patron saint of our parish and this city and county. Here is his life story...
At his coronation as King of France, Louis bound himself by oath to behave as God's anointed, as the father of his people and feudal lord of the King of Peace. Other kings had done the same, of course. Louis was different in that he actually interpreted his kingly duties in the light of faith. After the violence of two previous reigns, he brought peace and justice to France.
He was crowned king at 12, at his father's death. His mother, Blanche of Castile, ruled during his minority. When he was 19 and his bride 12, he married to Marguerite of Provence. It was a loving marriage, though was not without challenge. They had 10 children.
Louis "took the cross" for a Crusade when he was 30. His army took Damietta on the Nile but not long after, weakened by dysentery and without support, they were surrounded and captured. Louis obtained the release of the army by giving up the city of Damietta in addition to paying a ransom. He stayed in Syria four years.
He deserves credit for extending justice in civil administration. He drew up regulations for his officials which became the first of a series of reform laws. He replaced trial by battle with a form of examination of witnesses and encouraged the beginning of using written records in court.
Louis was always respectful of the papacy, but defended royal interests against the popes and refused to acknowledge Innocent IV's sentence against Emperor Frederick II.
He was devoted to his people, founding hospitals, visiting the sick and, like his patron Saint Francis, caring even for people with leprosy. (He is one of the patrons of the Secular Franciscan Order.) Louis united France—lords and townsfolk, peasants and priests and knights—by the force of his personality and holiness. For many years the nation was at peace.
Every day Louis had 13 special guests from among the poor to eat with him, and a large number of the poor were served meals near his palace. During Advent and Lent, all who presented themselves were given a meal, and Louis often served them in person. He kept lists of needy people, whom he regularly relieved in every province of his dominion.
Disturbed by new Muslim advances in Syria, he led another crusade in 1267, at the age of 41. His crusade was diverted to Tunis for his brother's sake. The army was decimated by disease within a month, and Louis himself died on foreign soil at the age of 44. He was canonized 27 years later.


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MOAN/GENETIC TRANSMISSION Dedicated to Russolo CD
The fourth installment of the GT Archive Series is the split release by MOAN and GENETIC TRANSMISSION. Tomasz Twardawa and Rafał Sądej wanted to dedicate their music to Luigi Russolo, a composer who greatly influenced the creation of what we now call the urban music.
The album consists of two long compositions, one by each project, respectively MOAN (Men at Work) and GENETIC TRANSMISSION (Przebudzenie Miasta).
Although artists perform in their own completely different way, their music on this album sounds very consistent. It is worth mentioning that the first composition was a sound installation during the exhibition "People at Work" which took place at the Museum of the City of Jawor in 2004.
Originally, the material was released on CDR in 2004. Today, Rafał Sądej remastered his new CD version in 2017.
The album was reissued in an ecopak and is limited to 200 copies only.
GENETIC TRANSMISSION 'Last' CD (IYHHH)
'Last' is the latest Genetic Transmission album. Distributed only as a handful of CDRs a few years ago, it is only now that it appears as a regular CD release as part of the IYHHH series. The idea behind the recording of this material was to the creation of sonic miniatures, short forms created from the acoustic preparations or electro-acoustic sources...
GENETIC TRANSMISSION 'Genetic Transmission' CD
It is hard to imagine the history of Polish industrial scene without noticing the activities of GENETIC TRANSMISSION - a project that might be considered legendary or having a cult status among quite a few, and the one that certainly has left a lot of its influence on the activity of many other artists in our country, and also inspired others to the...
GENETIC TRANSMISSION 'Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie' CD
The second in GT Series Archive is the album entitled "Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" (A beetle buzzes in the reed - a Polish tounge twister), originally published on a CDR on Tochnit Aleph in 2006. In a short time it was sold out and practically until today the material has not been available in any other form. "Chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie" is a recording of...
MOAN 'Isolate | Desolate | Mutate' 2CD
This release is a great opportunity to celebrate a few important matters. Well, this double-disc album has the number 200. This round number in the Zoharum catalog must have come to a special publication, which is without a doubt a 2 CD album 'Isolate | Desolate | Mutate' by MOAN appearing exactly twenty years after the first CD-R version of "Isolate" and...
GENETIC TRANSMISSION Strychnina CD
It has become a sort of tradition that every year during first days of autumn we release at least one part out of GT Archive Series. Keeping this tradition alive we present you seventh instalment of this series that is "Strychnina". "Strychnina" being one of the most important albums in vast Genetic Transmission discography, originally was released in...
GENETIC TRANSMISSION Strychnina LP
GENETIC TRANSMISSION Lullubies CD
GENETIC TRANSMISSION/MOAN 'Collaboration 1' CD
Zoharum continues the GT Archive Series where we reissue and save from oblivion the most interesting recordings from the sumptuous discography of GENETIC TRANSMISSION, most of which appeared exclusively on CDRs in strictly limited quantities.As the third one in this series is the recording which, as the title indicates, is the effect of a collaboration...
GENETIC TRANSMISSION Kapuke / Music For Vienna Aktionists CD
On the album you will find recordings from two releases: "Kapuke" and "Music for Vienna Aktionists". The first part, originally released under the names Twardawa / Jankowski on MCDR, is a recording of sessions based on a large part of the prepared piano sounds and vocals. In fact, three people took part in the recording; Barbara's female voice appears as...