| Subject: As Above, So Below |
Author:
TRJ
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Date Posted: 09:02:06 02/04/01 Sun
Author Host/IP: host-216-76-200-172.bhm.bellsouth.net/216.76.200.172
The note in the violin case, tucked beneath a slip of deep red velvet read: "Lasciate ogni speranza voi ch'entrate." It was written in fine calligraphy, the ink thick and black, sticky to the touch.
"What is this?" he asked no one, putting the yellowed message in his pocket.
A block away from the symphony hall, the cryptic note was forgotten. He popped in the cassette he had received in the mail earlier that day from a now defunct AM radio talk show which delved into the unexplained. He hadn't ordered it, but he listened as the truth about secret societies and their initiations were revealed.
"Indoctrination into thee groups can range from the symbolic to the real, from the macabre to the horrific," the guest spoke, his voice sharp over the static of the scrambled waves.
The host chimed in, "Who are the people who go through these initiatory rites? How are they selected?"
"In most cases, the person goes to the group, asking for acceptance," the guest replied, "but with other sects, such as with the new matriarchal sects, they select their initiates, sometimes without the prospect even knowing they have been chosen."
They cut to commercials. He pushed the eject button, rolled down the window and tossed it outside. He would give Ella the cash for whatever she had paid for the broadcast. If she had ordered it. The old paranoia crept up and perched on his shoulder. It had been a long time since he had felt as he did, wary, almost afraid, expecting at any minute for something to reach out and grab him and pull him deep into the bowels of the city.
He thought of Helene, her hurting brown eyes, her melancholy kissed mouth. She had been a dark and brooding spirit, never telling everything she knew. And she knew volumes of secrets, the answer to every riddle. After so much time gone, he still could feel her presence on occasions and he still believed she was the only woman, the only person, who had ever truly known him.
Why was he thinking of her? It had been nearly ten years since she had vanished. The last anyone told him about her was that she was studying somewhere in India. She didn't leave anything behind, no letter, nor did she try to correspond after her hasty departure. She had abandoned him.
Pressing the scan button, he searched through the stations for something to detour his thoughts away from the agony of remembering her.
"Tonight we have with us Dr. Helene de St. Claire, author of 'Blessed Whore: A History of Matriarchies and their Resurgence.' Welcome Dr. St. Claire. What is the importance of the blessed whore figure in today's society?"
There was a slight pause before she gave her answer. He pulled off the street and parked his car, his throat tight, his body shaking. Helene de St. Claire, the woman who had disappeared ghostly was about to appear again just as she had left.
"Thank you, Katherine," Helene said sweetly. "It's nice to be back home."
The rest of her reply was muffled, then it faded out completely. All the events of the past week came together, small things that had happened now loomed over him as huge synchronicities, all the phone calls where no one was on the other end, the sudden aroma of roses filling both his car and his bedroom. A collection of Back chorales he thought to have lost around the time Helene had left came back to him in the hands of a friend they had shared who he hadn't seen in ages. And tonight, the orchestra had performed 'Don Juan,' the last concert she attended and the last time he saw her.
Like a man hypnotized, he started the car and drove home. Numbness overtook him, nothing allowed in his shocked blank mind. Mechanically, he drove, making the right turns, obeying the laws without seeing or hearing or feeling. He stopped in his drive and stepped out of the car, leaving the engine running.
Every light in the house was on, the windows bleeding out light onto the shadowed lawn. The front door was unlocked and ajar, the stereo pounding out Miles Davis riffs. Inside the living room closed in on him, one wall now painted a garish bright red.
"Ella, what the hell did you do in here?" he asked, his tone weak, drained.
A trumpet screamed. The guts of his piano hung swaying from the ceiling fan, spinning dizzy around and around. There was a smell in the room that he couldn't name, roses mingled with something else, something thick and metallic. Everything rippled beneath his gaze, shimmering unreal, a hellish oasis mirage.
"Ella!" he screamed, panic seizing him with iron hands.
Laughter. The sound came from the bedroom and with his feet weighted down by invisible bonds, he slowly was carried in that direction.
"Ella!" he repeated, this time in a hoarse whisper.
He could see her, handing upside down, a rope tied around her ankle. She was naked, slit from her navel to her gaping throat, her eyes wide open, what looked like pages from a book crammed into her open mouth.
"Read it," Helene demanded, curled on her side, nude, her body slick with Ella's blood.
His head throbbed as he crumpled to the floor.
"Fine, don't read it," she smirked. "I'll read it to you."
With her perpetual gracefulness, she crawled, body so sleek, so feline towards Ella's swinging corpse.
"This is the translation to the Latin phrase you found before you left this evening, in your violin case," she said, removing the suffocating wad of paper from Ella's mouth. "This is from Dante's 'Inferno,' my favorite book before I left. I'm surprised you didn't remember. 'Abandon all hope, he who enters here.' You have passed through the first entrance. This is the first rite. Welcome into the fold."
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