The Raven Society

There was a secret meeting tomorrow night and she absolutely had to be there. The invitation had been left on her dining room table the night before, a small calling card with a Raven printed on the front and an address on the back with small words written ‘Be there at 7 p.m.’

She had been waiting for this moment. Secretly hungering for the day that she would be accepted into the world that she had always felt to be on the fringe of. She was a small-time writer, a blogger who wrote on the lives of others, examining their lives to find justification for hers. She had a small following, but nothing that would get her listed in the Oprah Book Club or talking to Ellen in front of hundreds of adoring fans.

Caroline had been writing since she was a young girl. Half stories and undeveloped characters filled her mind and hundreds of notebooks that she kept hidden in her apartment. Her bookshelves were filled with all the greats, Austen, Twain, Orwell, Dickens, and Hemingway. There were books written by authors whose lives amazed her. Books that she bought out of a sense of loyalty because she read one of 15 and liked it. There were books stacked against the wall, on the kitchen table, neatly lining her desk and waiting for the day that Caroline would finally pick them up and open the cover to read.

Then there was the handful that she loved like family. The covers were worn, the pages were tearing, stains of coffee and midnight snacks filled the pages. They were her greatest friends and worst enemies. These were the books that saw her through her greatest triumphs and wonderous disasters of life. They were the books that inspired her to pick up her pen and write.

Caroline looked at the card again and gently set it back on the table. She needed coffee if she was going to think this through. Her excitement was overwhelming, tingling her fingers and toes. She walked to the kitchen, remembering the salad-in-a-bag that she had bought for dinner and instead made a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich to go with her coffee. She just stared at the sandwich – unable to take a bit as she held onto her favorite chipped coffee mug.

Caroline looked around at her small apartment, filled with knick-knacks and haphazard pieces of art. Pictures and posters of periods of long ago filled her walls. The furniture was mismatched and eccentric, some pieces bought for comfort and others to inspire the imagination. Her desk was placed in the corner next to a large window and was filled with post-it notes of ideas and timelines, half-filled notebooks were scattered in the drawers. A calendar sat on her desktop as a reminder of what she should be doing with her life, and not necessarily what she wanted to do.

It was a meeting of the greatest literacy minds of the decade and she had been invited.

Days later, staring out the window of her apartment, Caroline still had not decided. She had at first not put a lot of stock into the idea of a secret society. Those are the things that movies were made of, not reality. However, the idea did make her do her research and she was surprised to learn about groups such as Bohemian Grove whose motto ‘Weaving Spiders come not Here’, from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night Dream. Societies with names like Skull and Bones and the famous Illuminati and Freemasons featured in Dan Brown’s famous worlds of religion and science. The world was shrouded in the mystery of secret societies it seemed, without them truly being secret.

As her mind ran a million miles an hour, the storm outside grew with her anxiety over her invitation. The wind was so fierce that the trees in her backyard bent sideways as if they appeared to be kneeling in prayer. She fought back the darkness with a candle and her laptop and settled comfortably on her couch with a throw that her grandmother had made her when she first moved to Boston to become a writer.

She had meant to write about the storm, to adapt its nature into a story. Instead, she found herself thinking about the Raven Society meeting. Less than 24 hours until she had to be there. She toyed with the growing list of favorite books and characters. She didn’t want to take on the identity of a real writer or real personality, she wanted to take the freedom of possibility. She wanted a character that was a reader, a writer, and a dreamer.

She fell asleep that night and against the backdrop of a fall storm, wrapped in the comfort of her grandmother’s throw, and dreamt of stepping through the threshold into a world of imagination.

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Caroline’s alarm went off at 4 am as it had for the last 6 years, work week, weekend, or holiday- it did not matter. She felt as though that magical time between 4:00 am and 6:30 am belonged to her alone. She could do whatever she wanted without judgment or interruption. She could use the time to clean the apartment, plug in her music, and dance away while sweeping and doing the dishes. If she instead used that time to write, her best inspiration would inspire her to create new worlds that only worked in those brief moments before reality woke up.

She had mentally chosen her outfit the night prior, settling on what she believed to be a fitting look to a newly published writer. A pair of new jeans, a black t-shirt, a gray cardigan, and black low-heeled boots. She attempted to curl her hair, which turned into a disaster as her electrical plugs were worn and outdated, and could not handle the pressure of a modern appliance. She opted instead for her ‘go-to’ pile of a messy hair bun, hoping to portray an appearance of chic bohemian women. By 5:45, she was on her second pot of coffee and was pacing her small, cluttered living room.

Her notecards of pros and cons laid on the television stand, placed in such a way that with each of her rounds she could look and consider. She still hadn’t decided.

“Do you think that they will be dressed in long black robes and Phantom of the Opera masks as we see on Netflix?” she asked Beacon. “Or will it be a table of members all staring from their platform, taking notes on my presence and answer?”

Beacon looked up from his early morning naps, watching her as she paced for the 20th time around the couch.

“Maybe, it will be a dark castle, like Skull and Bones, or a magically protected castle-like in Harry Potter. And when I walk in, the candles floating in the air will automatically alight and a sorting hat will be placed on my head as I decide who I want to be.” Caroline took a deep sip of her coffee, warming to the idea of magic wands and instant dinners lining long wooden tables that held 13 different types of coffees and desserts.

“Wish me luck.” She said the Beacon and her home and walked down to the street to start her new journey.

____________________________________________________

Caroline stood outside of 177 Elm Street looking onto the 3-story colonial-era white clapboard house. For being a secret society, it looked rather normal. She looked closely at all the windows, why would a secret society have windows? Holding the card out once again, she confirmed the address. Yes, 177 Elm Street. She was at the right place. For a second, Caroline watched the world come alive with its second wind and thought to herself that she could walk away and go to the coffee shop to write. She could go home, make some coffee and watch her favorite Netflix show before taking a shower and going to bed. She could stay content in the world that she knew so well. She looked down at her watch, 6:58 pm. The comfort of the known, or the excitement of the unreal. The Magic of an Ordinary Day vs. Alice in Wonderland.

Caroline walked up the pathway to the door and knocked.

She waited nervously, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans. Nothing. She knocked again a bit louder. Waited and still nothing. She stepped back, eyeing the black number 177 to the right of the door. Yes, she was at the right house. She knocked again, quite firmly. Again, not a sound. Disappointment washed over her as she made her way down the porch steps and out to the sidewalk. She turned back again frowned at the card in her hand ‘177 Elm Street’. She certainly was here on the right day and at the right time.

She glanced up and down the sidewalk, walking towards her was an older woman pulling a flower cart behind her. As the woman passed her, she said “You will never get there from here, my dear.”

“Excuse me?” Caroline called out, as the woman made her way down the street. My goodness, she was moving fast. Caroline rushed to catch up. “Excuse me, could you help me find 177 Elm Street? I seem to be …” she paused “confused”.

The women stopped, smiled up at Caroline. “You are not confused, dear, you simply cannot get there from here. The only way to get there is to go back.”

“I am sorry” Caroline stammered “I don’t understand”.

The old women lay her hand on Caroline’s arm and patted it. “It’s all on the card, Caroline. You just need to look back.”

And with that, the old woman continued her way down the sidewalk. In the blink of an eye, she disappeared around the corner.

She looked back down to the card in her hand, its edges bent from being clenched in her hand. You need to look back; the woman had said. Caroline turned the card over. There on the back of the card, she read- 177 Elm Street, The Back. She stood there for a moment staring at the card, how had she missed this? Glancing at her watch, she hurried up the steps of the porch and made her way around to ‘The Back’ of 177 Elm Street.

A smaller back porch overlooked a garden of flowers, herbs, and a small creek with a green Japanese bridge gave the feeling of being at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny, France. She turned around and looked at the heavy oak door with a sign that read The Back, 177 Elm Street. A tall thin man in a dark suit smiled at her as she approached.

“Welcome, Caroline, come in.” He opened the door wider and beckoned her inside.

Caroline did her best not to gape and greeted the man in the dark suit. “Hello”, she put out her hand, “my name is Caroline, thank you for the invitation, I…”

“Let me take your things.” He reached out to take her coat, purse, and umbrella. “Someone will be along to take you to the library.” And with that, he was gone leaving Caroline alone in the lounge.

The entire room was painted a soft butter yellow. On the walls were large dark picture frames, craved with swirls and flowers, surrounding what looked on first the appearance to be pages from a book. She walked over to the furthest one, drawn to its home in the shadows of a large staircase, and saw that it was indeed a page from a book, with a small golden plaque with an itched name of the main character. Dream-Land by Edgar Allen Poe with the name of Eidolon.

‘Stranger and stranger’ she quoted Alice in Wonderful to herself. ‘Who would want to be known as a shadow?’ Caroline whispered as she read the dark and haunting poem.

“Not many are drawn to this particular picture.” Caroline jumped a little and whirled around to see a man leaning against the rails to the staircase. He was a striking man with ebony hair, deep-set dark eyes that almost appeared to be violet in color, a strong chin, and a muscular body. He looked as if he was a true renaissance man dressed in well-cut jeans, a dark sweater, and a tweed jacket. “Welcome to the Raven Society. You must be Caroline?”

Caroline walked over to where he was standing and offered her hand, “I think that I may be late. I was on time, but I didn’t notice that I needed to go to the back door. I must have read the card a hundred times, and I never saw….” She stammered as she looked down at her hands.

“It does that sometimes.” He replied looking at the back door with faint amusement. “I am known as Eidolon. It is a pleasure to meet you. Won’t you join us in the library for drinks?”

“A drink sounds wonderful.” Caroline was aware that she was blushing and sweating. She had never been good at first impressions when first impressions counted. One of the many ironies of life. Being placed in a position to have to meet and talk to many people, but without the internal knowledge of how to do it.

The library was beautiful. Dark mahogany wooden bookshelves two stories high lined the walls, windows just as large filled the room, the fireplace stretch from the floor to the ceiling large enough to have 3 people sit inside of it. The couches and chairs were lined with plush red velvet fabric, inviting enough to sit in to read but not enough to fall asleep. Large tables and writing desks stood along the edges as if beaconing someone to sit down and write the next great novel. The room smelled of coffee, paper, ink, and applewood smoke.

Caroline stood in the doorway trying to take it all in. Eidolon turned halfway through the room realizing he had lost his guest. The light from the fireplace danced across Caroline’s face of pure happiness. Without being aware, she had been transformed into a mythical muse with the light from the large window shining a single ray directly on her spot. The other members turned to look also, each one of them seeing the same sight and could not look away.

“Well, I guess we don’t need to do the interview anymore. We just got our answer.” A man standing next to the bar stated to a beautiful middle-aged woman who was making herself a drink.

“Don’t be draft Watson, of course, we do the interview. It’s tradition.” She took a drink and set the glass down eyeing the contents. “One of my best if I must say.”

“Isabella, I have never seen you with a drink that you didn’t appreciate.” Her companion laughed as she walked toward Caroline.

Caroline was still standing in the doorframe spelled bound when Isabella appeared at her side. “It is magnificent, isn’t it? Makes you want to write, drink, and enjoy the pleasure of sin doesn’t it.” Isabella laughed at Caroline’s shock and confusion. “I would introduce myself, but it is against the rules until after the official introductions. I wouldn’t worry about anything. This part is more of a formality than anything, I have it on good authority that you were accepted before you even got your card.” She linked her arms with Caroline and started walking her further into the room towards the couches by the window. “Not like me, I had to plea, beg, and borrow to get invited, and even then, I was a nervous wreck on my introduction day.” Isabella smiled broadly as she sat down and patted the seat next to her “I think that we will be great friends. I feel it in my soul, like a blooming of friendship budding in my toes. You will be my Anne of Green Gables and I will be Diana. Except, a bit more worldly Diana.”

Caroline could not help but smile at this strange character sitting down. She was a whirlwind of words. The bracelets on her arm danced lightly with all her movements, spell bounding Caroline as if she was sitting next to a pixie. The most gorgeous pixie she had ever seen. Long, full blond hair that never stopped moving as if it was a river of gold flowing downward. She wore a light, flowing dress of mint green that was offset by her layers of long necklaces and multi-colored scarf. The perfect pixie face that boasted dancing green eyes and the perfect red lips. No make-up. ‘Damn it’ Caroline thought ‘she is a perfect beauty if she doesn’t need to wear make-up.’

A man in a gorgeous three-piece suit walked up to them holding two drinks. “I thought that you could both use a drink,” Watson said as he handed them to the two new friends. “One to calm your nerves,” he said looking a Caroline as she took the drink “two to tighten the loose tongue” as he smiled at the pixie.

‘Is everyone here a mythical being or a demi-God?’ Caroline thought as she peered at the new stranger over her drink. He was in very essence- a Greek God. His blond hair played over his eyes, the light stubble of growth on his face just heightened the perfect formation of his chin and lips. His eyes were the most amazing golden brown that seems to dance like a fire. And the way that he looked down at Isabella, you could tell that there was friendship and an undercurrent of sexual desire. The new companion pushed his way down to sit in between them and casually placed his long arms along the back of the couch and stretched his legs out.

“I wonder how long today will take? I peeked into the kitchen and can tell you that the smells that were flowing out will take us all to a new level of heavenly delight.” He looked at Caroline with concern “You do know who you are going to choose, don’t you? Please tell me that you have someone in mind. The last time we invited someone to the introductions, it took 3 hours.” Watson looked at Isabella laughing. “Do you remember that? What is her name? Wait, don’t tell me. Against the rules.” He said to Caroline with a smirk.

“Welcome, I am your host, The Raven. Tonight, we will embark on a journey of stories. Each of you, though you have packed no luggage, have come fully prepared to commence upon this voyage. Your only required baggage is the character you have come with. Henceforth, we will know each other only by our character name. We will introduce and refer to each other only with those names. Indeed, until we complete our introduction, no further information will be revealed. “

Caroline was spelled bound as a man and a woman suddenly appeared behind him; chairs were placed on a small platform for them to sit in. They looked very much like royalty sitting above their subjects in their cloaks and emotionless faces.

“That’s the welcoming committee!” Watson whispered.

“Knock them dead, love!” Isabella said as she reached over and squeezed Caroline’s hand.

Caroline’s eyes swept across the room; her mouth suddenly dry. She hadn’t settled on a character, not really. Now, here she was and they were demanding a decision. Anne Boleyn didn’t feel this much pressure sitting in front of her Judge and Jury.

“I am known as Eidolon and these are my partners- Winston and Emma.” The two cloaked members nodded in recognition. “They are bearers of the keys. These keys are the symbols of opening and closing chapters in our lives. It can mean the difference between freedom and an entirety locked in a symbolic death. To hold a key is to hold an indefinite number of possibilities. Those of you who pass the first test will be given a key, unique in its creation as you are to the story that is being told in these rooms.”

Caroline was lost in his words, an overwhelming sense of need for a key. If ever there was someone who needed and wanted a way to unlock destiny- it was her.

“Come forward visitors and tell us your stories.” A chair was brought to sit in front of the three-member welcoming committee.

Caroline forced herself into the awaiting chair and faced the execution squad with a small smile and sweaty hands folded in her lap. She refused to look at the master of ceremonies and instead focused her attention on the one who was called Emma. Caroline wondered if she knew that she looked like Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter.

“Visitor. Tell us your story.” Caroline’s eyes unwillingly traveled to the center stage. It was at that moment that she forgot all her previous choices. ‘Crap’ she thought. This was the moment she had days to prepare and she wasn’t ready. It didn’t surprise her, she always seemed to choke when it was time to be important. The last 30 plus years seem to fly through her subconscious, retelling every story of her failure. The lack of friends, the eating lunch alone in the lunchroom, the nights of school dances that she never got invited to, the day she realized that people in college were just as mean as in high school, lunch in the office break room when she was spoken too because people felt bad for her, the day that she quit her job and nobody noticed that she left. This was supposed to be the one area where she fit in. These were supposed to be her people. She was supposed to finally belong to something. A wave of anger filled her. She wasn’t nervous anymore; she was angry that she had to prove that she was worthy. Damn-it!

“You can call me Kostova. I am the dear and unfortunate successor of a labyrinth of my father’s and mother’s secrets and mysterious fate that is connected to an inconceivable evil hidden in the very depths of history. I am the keeper of letters that link the dark powers of humanity to a creature believed to be only a myth. My journey proves that tales that are told in the secret of the night are reality if you are only strong enough to follow the plotline.” Caroline took a shaky breath. “My name is Kostova and I am on a quest. Generations of historians before me have attempted to break the code to the mystery, but I alone can prove the myth-ism of reality.”

She had no idea where that speech came from. That is not what she practiced standing in front of her bathroom mirror. ‘If they kick me out soon, I will have time to run by the coffee shop and the ice cream parlor next door.’ She thought as she played with the hem of her jacket. ‘Tomorrow I will go for a run and write an incredibly sappy book about a young woman who blew her final chance for recognition and died alone in an apartment where she couldn’t even plug in a curling iron without the whole neighborhood losing power. You know, a feel-good story of what not to be.’

“Welcome, Kostova. We look forward to your journey.”

Caroline looked up sharply, eyes narrowing on the man sitting in front of her. Did she just hear that? Was this beautiful man playing with her emotions? It wouldn’t be the first time.

“You can take your place among your fellow travelers.” Caroline walked back to her new future with a smile on her face and a knowledge that she had found her place.