Vampire a Go-Go

1599
TWENTY

“Stop wiggling, little worm, or I’ll conk you one on the noggin.” British. Strong Yorkshire accent.

Edward Kelley stopped wiggling, let them carry him into the pitch black. Three minutes later, they set him gently on the rough cavern floor, the hand still over his mouth.

“How about a light, Edgar?” Another voice in English but a light Czech accent.

“Righto.”

A spark and a flash. The man kneeling over him held a candle. A narrow passage, looked like a natural cavern. The man above him had an enormous brown beard, wore a dark green cloak with the hood up, black clothing beneath. Ruddy, full cheeks. A big man, broad through the chest.

The man behind him said, “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth. Let’s keep it quiet, eh?”

Kelley nodded.

The man with the Czech accent took his hand away, and Kelley turned to look at him. Bald. Gray beard. Big, alert eyes.

“We’ve been watching you, Edward Kelley.”

Kelley smiled weakly. “How flattering.”

“Let me show you something.” The Yorkshireman-Edgar-handed the candle to the Czech. He rolled up his sleeve, showed a tattoo on his upper arm to Kelley. “Do you recognize that?”

Kelley squinted at the tattoo, immediately recognizing the square and compass formed into the shape of a quadrilateral. “Freemasons.”

“Look closer.”

Kelley leaned in to examine the tattoo in the dim candlelight. In the dead center of the quadrilateral was the sign of the pentagram. Kelley resisted the urge to genuflect.

“The square represents matter, the solid known tangible things of our world,” Edgar said as he rolled his sleeve down again. “The compass stands for the spirit or mind.”

“And the pentagram stands for evil,” Kelley said.

A tolerant smile. “You know better than that. Alchemists are often accused of dark things, are they not?”

True enough. He’d seen some of the older, more superstitious serving women in the castle shy away whenever he or Dr. Dee passed. People feared the unknown. Peasants especially disliked change or anything strange. Kelley had known an old woman back in Ireland who hadn’t come out of her cottage for a week because she’d seen a raven with a bit of string in its beak on a dead tree branch. She’d insisted the string had looked like a hangman’s noose.

“The pentagram represents something in between mind and matter,” Edgar explained. “Truths that are difficult to hold and know but nevertheless govern our universe. Powers that control a balance so precarious that the slightest cosmic sneeze could plunge us all into oblivion.”

“I’d like to go home now, please,” Kelley said.

“There are things afoot in Prague Castle that would chill you to the marrow if you knew their full extent,” Edgar said. “We need your help.”

“Me?”

“You.”

“You want Dr. Dee. He’s your man. To be honest, I’m not a very good alchemist. I can barely brew up a good laxative.”

“Even now forces work to drive Dee away. He will flee Prague this very night. I have foreseen it.”

“He didn’t mention anything about leaving to me.”

“This is perhaps not the best place for this discussion,” the Czech said.

“Come.” Edgar took Kelley’s hand, pulled him to his feet. “This is a lot of strange news to drop on a man’s head all at once. I know where we can talk, and there’s a bottle of good brandy there.” He slapped Kelley on the back. “Perhaps a drink would help fortify you, friend.”

“Yes, please.”

I can’t possibly explain how time works for a ghost. Or, at the very least, how it works for this ghost. Sometimes I feel like I exist outside of time. Or perhaps I exist in all times at once. Or maybe I don’t exist at all, and therefore time is meaningless. I’m not flowing in it, or maybe it doesn’t flow around me. Are we each on a little raft, flowing in the river of time, or do we stand on the bank and watch it wind its way under our noses?

I’ve had nothing but time to think about it.

Intellectually, I know that the walk with Edgar through the tunnels beneath Prague Castle took perhaps twenty minutes, but in that deeper way we sense things, some peculiar machination of memory that mixes up duration and importance, the tunnels seemed like one lifetime. As I came out of the cave in the woods behind the castle, emerging into the daylight, I felt myself entering another lifetime.

I remembered the short hike to the little shepherd’s shack not at all.

The brandy perhaps had something to do with this.