NECROMANTRA

BY TRISTRAM BURDEN
       
   
Garna had the sense to walk away.
    Oak roots erupted onto the tarmac, obstructing her footsteps. Her thick brown hair blew wild in the wind, and the breaking rhythm set by her feet urged me into trance. Confidence fell away from her. She'd changed. I yearned for a final glimpse of her blue eyes, her thin, white face. Even the leaves didn't touch her; they floated, spreading on the path noiseless. A loose dog avoided her, stretching a worried head as she passed. Then she was gone around a corner, hidden by oak, and a door slammed shut.
    She had the teacup. It sat between a Massai Warrior and Dante's death mask on an otherwise barren mantelpiece. During a mushroom frenzy we both saw the alphabet suspended in a dreamscape, etched on etheric-blue monoliths. We wrote it down on what we had, mud, shit, blood, fingers and the teacup with which we shared our psychedelic broth. Its form glowed, meaning at that time impenetrable. Mud on a teacup and all else concealed.
    The event was almost forgotten. Mercury had left us and Saturn began its obstruction. But the glyphs lingered in deep-mind, and occasionally leapt to the surface, paralysing us then leaping back down to be revisited if consciousness was ever prepared.
Garna reported similar phenomena. Spontaneous recollection over money-withdrawal, coffee-making, tooth-brushing -  spurning a cue, causing some spillage, toothpaste on breasts. We agreed to meet, perhaps prevent the invasions, encounter the source and figure the scope of the operation.
    Twenty three sigils. We gazed at that cup in awe, seated comfortably in Garna's living room, facing east over coffee and spliff. We felt urgency, were mystified as to how we squeezed this number on the tiny container. The delicate lines, perfect circles and alien intricacy. We didn't know their order, or whether it was important, and the arrangement of the monoliths in memory gave us no clue.
    “What do we do?” Garna set her coffee down and leaned forward, eyes fixed on those vast, tangled sigils. She lifted the teacup and turned it with grace in her lithoid young hands.
    “Explore...” Dante's death mask stared down at me from the fireplace. I looked at those closed eyes, convinced I saw them move,  whispering something. “We just have to go a little further.”
    “...Than?” Her eyes never lifted from the cup.
    “Before.”
    Absorbed in personal contemplation, we turned and looked at each other, knowing what the other was thinking. And so we agreed an approach. Find the origin of the alphabet, then see what it says; the first steps of an odyssey through untapped channels.
    We dedicated ourselves to the operation, deeming all other activity peripheral.
    No other language, remotely similar, presented itself to us over the weeks of our exploration. Without knowledge of pronunciation, our sterile attempts at rendering it phonetically were abandoned. It bore no resemblance to even the wackiest UFO cults that had sprung up on this Earth, and all ancient grimoires kept this grammar secret. The people we showed it to, scant few language experts and arcane lorists, screwed faces up at it and insisted we were perpetrating a hoax, confessing how we came by the language a final nail in the coffin of the conversation.
    Alone in this endeavour, we settled working on the glyphs in the order we captured them. So we indulged in logistics, taking for granted that when the finger was put to the cup, we had copied them correct in some implicit order.
    Garna first displayed glints of avarice afew weeks in. We sat on her sofa. I lay back, legs crossed, she sat forward. I dragged slow on spliff, brow furrowed at her, feeling invisible like some voyeur. She then sat back, knees hugged to her chest, bare-feet firmly pointing towards the cup on the coffee-table before her. She rocked slightly, and in the silence her eyes drifted to it, like a funeral party magnetised by television, some plea connoting irresponsibility for the silence. Garna and I, we had no awkwardness with dead air, we were comfortable with our own thoughts.
    The alien sensation that I should be saying something crept from my belly and into my throat.
    The first indicator of growing dominion of the twenty-three.
    Sleeping that night, Garna's leg draped over mine in perfect trust, her face fixed itself behind my eyes, and slowly was shrouded by darkness.
   
I tried to seek out the current possessing Garna, that took her away from me. We sat on her bed, taking turns at self-analysis, stripping motives until we discovered common ground. And we had it: to imbibe these mysteries, unveil any oracular tendencies and utilise their status as potential portals.
    Then Garna uttered a foreign desire. As soon as she spoke it, we paused and looked at each other. My pen, pressed to the page, drifted into scribble as we sat astonished by the words. However aware of the alphabet's power, its effortless talent for shifting mind into dreaming, her words confirmed the seeds planted, and we became conscious of the urgency required.   
    I wrote down what Garna had said, sealing it with a circle and two asterisks. I looked at the page.
    ...TO CAUTERISE THE INNER CHAMBER...
    After deciding that Mercury should be with us while we performed the working, nailing rationality to the base of our journey, I banished and we coaxed out our daemons.
    Garna and I slept together that night, converting nervous energy into frenzied coitus; aware only of pleasure and flesh, as large pages numbering twenty-four, all inscribed with flashing colours, surrounded us, entered us, flapped in the wind.
    We were on the threshold of the vein, ready to enter the heart, the veiled ventricle of these markings.
    I awoke fresh. She was beaming. We bathed, cleansing each other in turn and distracting ourselves from the indulgence to come. Once relaxed we performed pranayama and divination. As we gazed at the High Priestess we mused on the value of the outcome. Did the acquisition of learning justify this escapade? We continued, prepared, and drove our minds into waking-dreaming.
    One at a time, burning musk. I stared at the selected glyph, focused, absorbing it into consciousness. The room faded and I spiralled out.
   
Through blazing tunnels, passing archetypes. A sphere of light grew into glistening green seas; three suns in pyramid formation spread their rays and on a cliff-top, sea still and silent below me, vast glass towers reflected white shadows on blue-grey grass and a figure beckoned me towards it.
    Androgynous, hairless and waiting for form, this being squinted its small black eyes, searching for recognition or a sign of passage. We examined each other at a distance, making no movements. It changed colour frequently; purple to pink to yellow to azure. I could understand the questions that it formed, there were no barriers restricting thought-travel. Just impressions, no language. I communicated my purpose and my motive. As I did so his chest flashed the glyph, a pulsating orange embedded in his skin. The creature raised its left leg into a hook, stomping it back down onto the grass with force, with message. It became liquid and changed into a perfect self-replica, the glyph glowing orange still, now on its forehead. It touched the glyph and turned, began walking. I followed.
    We were walking towards the glass towers, cylindrical, symbols etched in octagon formations. Closer, closer, through thin, pale and moving plants crowned with plate-sized multicoloured flowers. Closer until I recognised the towers arrangement and the blue monoliths flashed in memory. I was where I should be. The figure, my mirror image, halted in front of the one. Leg outstretched into a hook, he stomped it hard on the grass, and changed back into the formless, colourful anomaly. It extended its left arm, brought its right over its chest, both hands pointing towards the first glass edifice. The creature stayed in the position for a time, and I heard an unpronounceable name, realising it was theirs and the multitude of identities this form housed. They united into one astral image, all faces seen at once, all arms and all legs - they walked backwards, palms held over the right eye. The plants swallowed them, and I turned..
    My journey formed an orbit around the colossal glass-towers. I was mesmerised by their angles, their inner resonance. The doors were open. Some light, indefinable eminence, burned from the centre of their arrangement. The glyph glowed and flashed in the construction of the landscape. I advanced towards the closest, feet sinking in the cool grass, the suns on my left. The tower was open and I stepped into a temple of reflection. Orbicular inner chamber, a table dead-centre. I approached it.
    A bird, black and large, engulfing light with a bald and grey head, rested in the tables centre. Its eyes were purple, wrinkled skin folded under them - a black pupil shined penetrative and conscious. Our eyes were locked and I came closer. The table was hexagonal and etched with a grid, yellow on opaque red. The bird occupied a silver disc in the centre. The head, now before me, was anthropoid.
    The light in the building enveloped me, and I became a nerve centre for ineffable energy. The winged-creature opened its small mouth, emitting a low, rumbling omnipotent and long groan vibrating unremitting through the landscape. Low, deafening and warm. The bird's eyes were closed, mouth wide open. The glass in the tower began to reverberate harmonies. It was a word. And the word was remembered...
    Urban spillage echoed in the room. Portals shifted into closure. I wriggled my hands and toes and fidgeted in the aftermath, eyes slowly opening onto familiar territory. Garna's welcome face appeared and smiled; she thrust the journal into my hands. I stared at the blank paper and its potential, then recorded. Enthusiasm forced her to take her position. I watched her, my mind  revisiting the place. And holding the journal firm, the word was written.
    Lying on Garna's bed, sweating, the intense moist heat of the room forced us into comfortable nudity. Though our eyes were heavy, our enthusiasm burned fiercer. We read each other's accounts with captivation and analysis.
    Garna's journey had more meaning, more information. She memorised the form of the alphabet, their precise arrangement. She had sat for an hour, seized with urgency, constructing a shape. Confronted with the order, spiralling hierarchic, we deemed the chaos in our selection. She, at least, had selected the Alpha. In comparison to her own, my journey seemed crippled, lacking anything but the word received.
    The teacup, that first vessel, drifted into obsolescence and gathered dust on the shelf. The next epoch beckoned, fertile and seductive. We were peering into an open vein now, linear and initiatory - the inner chamber lay in waiting.
    When I closed my eyes at night, the glyphs formed massive grids moving in horizontal and vertical lines, vast matrices encouraging an instant meditative state. I would drift into sleep as they sped on their highways not slowing with distraction.
    The workings continued, loaded with a new calm. There was intense thirst for results. Garna and I travelled, past familiar trappings and enervation, efforts crowned with raw energy. I became suspicious about the dosage, the absorption rate. A removal from regular routines set in, and I came to fear for our safety. Garna's in particular.
    She had a different approach, some back-door key. The glyphs showered her and penetrated her with message. By the third working I was left to collate and document her visions, the material  extensive. But we flowered in these roles, me as scribe and she as psychic tourist, and so the work turned into a lucid, progressive oracular machine.
An irregular and impressive activity was witnessed by Garna. It was the fourth operation and Garna's journey had been significantly different, the plane seeming to close itself to our observance, becoming in some way grudging. A solid line of communication ran, but far removed from expectations and the fulfilments of our purpose. Garna found strange and familiar faces. But the inner chamber stayed strictly out of our immediate reach.

She landed beside a forest populated by trees with a yellow bark, small grey cauliflowers running vertical in four lines on each. As she turned, she noticed a woman walking towards her - a woman wearing white floating robes, with dark, thick curly hair, subtly bovine with penetrating azure eyes...she stood still and placid awaiting the woman's arrival. She communicated that the distance between them and the duration of its lessening defied reason. Behind the woman she could see a gathering of shapes; they began moving and the woman was in front of Garna, embracing her - Garna returned the embrace. When they separated the name of the woman drifted into Garna's consciousness - her mind, she then communicated, felt extended, reaching beyond the boundaries of grey-matter and bone and open to scrutiny. Her comfort, she said, the warmth of the plain, verged on arousal. Feeling reborn, Garna sounded the woman's name on what felt like new lips, with a new tongue.
    "...Upasika..." She paused, momentarily wordless. It occurred to her that the woman knew her name, that there had been an unnoticed exchange. Upasika smiled, her manner slow but firm. She took Garna's hand, and they moved in the direction the people verged. Garna conveyed to me that she felt in some way exclusive. She listened to her companion feeling extraordinarily safe and warm.
    "I travel in these lands also,. They appear to be newly opened, perhaps even newly formed. It is always pleasing to find a fellow traveller. New territory always defies expectations." She spoke with an accent, the origin of which Garna couldn't elucidate. It seemed a combination of various tongues. Garna squeezed Upasika's hand lightly, affectionately - an alien but comfortable impulse.
    They walked towards a gathering. Men and woman sat suspended around a massive, floating disc. Grass that was now russet spread in vast plains about them. She looked behind her to deem location: the three suns, but the cliff edge had gone. They seemed to have come a very long way. They both approached the disc. Before Garna could identify the shapes, Upasika addressed her, lightly touching Garna's arm. She became stern and serious.   
"We are all here to discuss this place. We fear, despite its intense beauty and natural right to existence, that a reaction will be provoked. It seems to some of us, myself not yet included, that its formation has diminished Equilibrium. It stands alone with no opposite and in an admittedly concerning way, with little to other territories. There are no familiar signposts. As you are standing here before me, I'm sure you understand the abnormality of such an emergence."
    Garna went blank for a second. She then turned her eyes to Upasika and nodded. Upasika proceeded, leaving Garna to follow in her own time. She watched her float, cross her legs and sit in a space around the table. It seemed there was no room for Garna, then she saw Upasika float slightly to her left, allowing a space into which Garna's thin frame could settle. Upasika beckoned. Garna looked at the other figures. Men and woman in light or no garments, some human some clearly not. Recognition struck her sometimes as her eyes past over the gathering. She recalled in particular a man with blue, perforated skin and a baldhead, naked, passing a confused gaze over her. He then raised his hand, smiling warmly.
    She floated over to the space beside Upasika, around this suspended silver disc, and crossed her legs. She turned her head to the right and saw a man with monks robes, a bald crown and a classic ring of hair above his nape. He nodded his head slow in greeting, and she to him,
feeling as if she knew this man.
    Garna looked around the table, in no way intimidated by the mass and the strangers, nodding approval.
    After explaining our situation with lucidity, every one of the gathered listening with much interest, a long-bearded man with sad
but beautiful eyes leant forward slightly.
    "By way of interest, what have you understood concerning the words, their meaning? Can you communicate them to us?"
    "No. We are collecting all of them first, we don't think they'll make sense by themselves." 
This man seemed familiar to her also. He nodded, gratified by the answer. A brief conversation fluttered between a very thin Asian and a yellow-skinned woman wearing a blue cap. They spoke in an unfamiliar language, and Garna said she felt confusion at her presence emanating from the rest of the party. Upasika touched her arm. "I feel that perhaps you might not be prepared for some of these sights. There is much that can never be learned in your present incarnation..." Garna understood and agreed. She straightened. "I came here for a fourth word." With boldness it was said, not to the people but to the plain. It seemed to respond. In the centre of the disc a white globe appeared, growing, growing, burning brighter than her eyes tolerated. A high pitch, and then the whole octave below it, the suspended disc answered with a tirade of impossible and beautiful harmonics, wrapped around the goal of the journey. Garna felt herself vibrating to her core. The people all became faint immediately. She said then that she felt she had been expelled, rejected by the plain. The people faded around her, she was unwilling; she recalled the very concerned faces of Upasika and Philippus, and their hands reaching out to her. Scrapes, like metal on stone, sounded and echoed around her. A whirlpool of colours rushed and enveloped her. The cacophony ceased. Blackness.
    When she returned, the room shocking her, a brief convulsion ensued. I rushed to her, calmed her, handed her the journal, breathing hard and feeling solidly removed, experience insufficient. Banishing rituals. Repeated, repeated and repeated...exhausted, we both lay, Garna in my arms, elated, astonished and terrified of the journeys ending. We agreed that I should go next time.
   
I didn't sleep; Garna lay with her head on my chest, fragile.
    The second indicator. 24; 6 and 3. The glyphs on the pages still surrounded us in her bedroom. I carefully laid Garna's head on the pillow. She moaned. I walked to the first, removing it, working around the whole room until the walls were blank again. They lay in a pile, cornered.
    I slept. Garna's face re-emerged from the shadows. The
speeding highways, their traffic of infinite grids, slowed their pace.
    An awareness ground itself, slow and heavy, as the architecture and the significance of the data, the mass-exertion, lay on all sides. We stayed on Garna's bed, looking over the distance we had come, realising the distances untravelled. We contemplated history, and began to sense the impersonal nature of our operations. Our imaginations had not conjured the series. They were preconceived and known, belonging to an alternative and presently astral culture. We had been selected to experience the realms and to know the channels. Why then, was there a feeling of rejection? What had we done? We contemplated, briefly, the possibility of seeking aid - but in all of the many existing places to find help, how could we be assured of the authenticity? We decided to keep our tongues still and our papers invisible. Those who should know, will know, we realised. And now the Chariot, inverted, lay at the centre of the reading, the Hermit above, and The Hanged Man below; The High Priestess emerged as the conscious desire, Strength as the unconscious. Four words, now phonetically written, danced on the page, resonance almost overpowering. Twenty words left. Garna expressed her unwillingness to continue, and I said I understood, placing my hands on her face and bringing her forehead to my lips. I had to complete the operation. She agreed to stay and document. Mars was with us. I memorised the words, speaking them inwardly and containing their immense power. Vibrations sent yellow and red tinctures to our sphere. I prepared. Garna and I gave each other a final, solitary glance, strong messages floating between our retinae.
    The portal to the fifth glyph was opened. I entered, white blinding light burning solid in my centres.
   
    Oneiric shifting of colours, identities and familiar constructs precipitated the motions. New forces exposed themselves, but the archetypes remained, at least. The difference in the junction was immediately perceptible; I was pushed over an abyss and through watery vortexes until the plain revealed itself - in darkness, mainly. All three suns were eclipsed, red fire burning around the black globes that obstructed the light. Ice and snow drowned the plains and the colours; I emerged on the cliff top, standing on snow that burned my feet with freezing. I looked to the sea and gazed at an endless expanse of ice-sheets; they had risen far up the side of the cliff. I looked for the glass towers in their usual placement. After searching, on the horizon, far out and cast in pure obsidian they stood, clouds barely visible floating around them. In the centre of the ice a fire suddenly exploded, forcing me back, its flames green and blue, flickering in phoenix shapes and revealing a crowd standing in an arc. I knew they were staring at me - unmoving, a truculence ebbing from their stance. One man stood on the ice, separated from them, behind them, forming a dot that the mass of bodies curved around. They seemed to be waiting. I walked to the cliff-edge and jumped down onto the ice, walking forward against a strong current of portent that acted like an obstructive wind. I came closer to the figures; closer, closer. Their bodies were hidden in shifting metal, thick and wavering - their heads were hairless, faces not male, female or even a median. Their eyes were coloured different hues of purple; pupils black and minuscule, ultra-conscious; penetrative. Identical to the bird in the tower, which, having been remembered, now sat on the shoulder of the figure furthest behind. I could see now that that orbited figure bore a great sword with two hands, whose blade thickened and forked obtusely at its point. I walked forward. Their hands beckoned me. Noiselessness but for the roar of the towering flames throwing wavering shadows onto the stark white ice. They all stood before me, curving away; solid stances, fluxing great metal jackets. I stopped in front of them. They stared hard, directly into me. Aeons seemed to pass as we stood there. Gradually, I watched amphibian mouths pull downwards in grimaces, flapping, delayed messages increasing in volume, pouring from them, a chaos of noise from all sides, thousands of different voices floating, volume fluctuating, ringing through the dreamscape; no gaps, no pauses in the onslaught the discords, the intolerable noise-scape:
    "...watching these fools occlude the light THERE IS ELSEWHERE BURNING into CLOSURE CLOSURE CLOSURE DESIRETUAC SI REBMACH (si rebmach SI REBMACH) RENNI EHT eht eht eht renni eht..." Never ending, the words continued screaming, whispering, layers and layers; "Dscreeble vronkrar moophtroon al-sak-sim trosophor, ELNACH LROMALL grrsynsynsyno, laktosiphor tosiphor tosiphoir tosiphor..."
    Endless always growing in volume. I began to flinch, felt poisoned by the sonic onslaught. I watched the crowd part, aching from the vibrations, and the solo man, his eyes sown shut with thick silver thread, gracefully brought the sword above his head, he bent his right knee, kept the left stretched backwards, the sword was horizontal pointing behind, and he brought it forward and down hard in a swift swipe, slashing the airspace and slicing cosmic fabric so that a massive long fissure floated above the ice, blue fluid and globulous bubbles oozing out of it, floating chaotically in wisps, direction-less and sparkling.
The layers of voices continuing to resound beating my senses into retreat. The bright light at my centres struggled to burn and I ripped myself out from the chaos with a strenuous push of will, feeling choked, unable to breath there was so much dark otherness pounding, pulsating as the noise continued.
I opened my eyes, expecting the ice, but finding myself in Garna's bedroom, she recoiled into a corner, the massive fissure, blue fabric oozing and floating, the noises, the mass-cacophony filling the room, extending beyond perceptive boundaries. I opened my mouth into a silent scream, uttered the names of gods old and new to dispel it, mind flaming with blue fire. I closed my eyes and streched in crucifix form, charging, amplifying light. The voices pierced the airspace, vibrating all cosmic fabric, louder still and louder.
"...DESIRETUACSI REBMACH RENNI EHT RENNI EHT renni EHT EHT EHT renni DESIRETUACSI DESIRETUASCI..." I spoke names, the words over, over and over; "...THESE FOOLS THESE FOOLS..." laughter intertwined the flexing sonic muscle of this titan, this immense force...I repeated, and repeated, visualising a translucent blue globe around the fissure, pentagrams on all corners. One huge boom echoed among the waves, and the noises lessened. My light burned brighter, ineffable power pulsing to my aid as the forces dissipated and I opened my eyes onto the bedroom, blue fissure contained in the sphere I had created for it; Garna lay shaking, cornered. Shaking myself I walked towards her, head ringing with one high-pitched squeal, blood running down my ears...I collapsed beside her, our eyes spent slits...we lay in an embrace - safety grasped. I closed my eyes, breathing deep; thinking lessened. The glyphs sped faster, faster, and faster behind my eyes...I felt Garna's chest rising and falling, rising and falling. The rhythm set, sleep proceeded it...
   
    Garna had the sense to walk away. We swapped apartments, agreeing on some future reunion. Once she had left, I found filling her space no obstacle. I had the teacup. Dante's death-mask continued whispering and shifting from the corner of the room, I sat lotused on the sofa and ignored him, vibrating words. Days spent absorbing and desensitising the glyphs until they were passive and I was immaculately conversant with all of their lines, the maps they traced in my consciousness.
    I couldn't be sure whether she was the sender, but shortly after her departure, I received in a white envelope, unmarked but for my name, a newspaper clipping about an uncharted planet which had suddenly appeared just beyond our moon. The consensus seemed to be that it was approaching  this Earth, disrupting the orbit of everything it came close to.
    I turned on the television, hoping to get a glimpse of reports about this phenomenon. And sure enough, blasting into every channel, interrupting all regular programmes were clear images of a galactic body, twice the size of this Earth, suddenly spinning on its own axis, disrupting the calm of space between the moon and mercury. As I watched it, the lights in the apartment began to flicker, and the television, and all of its incessant soundbites, began to crackle, hum and fizz into white noise.
    The fissure called. I had kept my eye on it, daily, and it seemed increasingly to breath, the pulsing blue fabric within wavering and beckoning. And just as outside the street-lamps flickered and died, as people ran out of their houses, shrieking at the sky, I stood, needing to move towards it. And in the dark of the room, behind the moon as the lights flickered on, off, on, off,.through the wide open window,curtaiun flapping in a sudden gust of changeable wind, a dark round shadow of a planet loomed three-quarters, reflecting the sun back onto the Earth in a deep, green, glow.
    No more delay, I decided, as light from this intruder spilt into the room. Two weeks past since the last encounter. I stepped into the bedroom, the third indicator observed and strolled past. No rituals. No preparation. Everything was set.
    I went to the bedroom, and stood in front of the translucent globe housing the portal, the barriers I had erected beginning to crackle and fizz, phase in and out like the channels of the television, and the exploding street lamps outside, the sudden cacophony of emergency vehicles and a raw panicked traffic.
     I stretched my hand out and pushed the tips of my fingers through it, pausing for a second, inches before the fissure; I breathed slow and firm. Rigid, my hand moved forwards, the blue fabric enveloping it. A faint groan discharged from within the pulsing mass, a groan loaded with sexual release. As the blue barrier about it finally splintered into a flash of light, gone, I plunged my arm in.  I felt nothing but a warm crackle of otherness seep up my elbow and deep into my teeth.
    I pushed myself in, up to my shoulder. Further...further...further...until I was through....