Grimoire

Through the pouring rain, I watched as a man exited a taxi and enter the diner in which I was sitting. I looked up from my newspaper in the early morning hours for the man's uncomfortable disposition caught my eye. He was well dressed, of average height and build, but there was something about him that made me uneasy. His average stature was cloaked in a long duster and a dark red shirt with black slacks, all drenched from the rain. He carried with him only a small notebook that seemed to be bound in crude leather. As I felt myself beginning to stare, our eyes met and I quickly diverted my gaze back to my newspaper.

I flagged the waitress to refill my coffee and she politely obliged. I thanked her and she responded with a tired grin. How was it that I now found myself in this hole-in-the-wall at 4 a.m.? I had been struggling with sleep ever since I got sick but now I seem to rarely sleep at all. Just as I began to ponder the existential dilemma I found myself in, a loud crash came from across the diner. The mystery man had dropped his coffee and began to sob uncontrollably. I noticed that the waitress had reluctantly gone to check on the man and understanding the perils of working through the night with no sleep, I went over to her and the man to offer some assistance. As I picked up the broken pieces of the ceramic mug, the waitress fetched the man a fresh cup of joe.

The man, choking back tears, stammered, "Hi, I'm A.. Anthony." I gave him a concerned grin and reciprocated, "Gerald." He asked if I could sit and while his mannerisms were a bit of a concern to me, I hesitantly agreed. This man was struggling and I had nowhere else to be. So we began making small talk. He asked me about my family, I told him that my parents had died when I was young and I had basically been on my own since I was a teenager. He asked me where I was from and I told him that I grew up in a small town in the midwest. We spoke of the rain and how it didn't seem to be letting up at all. Just as I began to feel somewhat comfortable talking to this man, his unnerving demeanor returned.

"Are you a religious man, Gerald?" he asked.

"No, sir I am not," I replied.

His expression changed from nervousness to determination. He began to tell me that he had been on many an excursion seeking ancient writings and religious texts. As he spoke of his expeditions, his speech began to intensify. He spoke of ruins on every corner of the planet and how the inscriptions came to haunt him. Alas, I began to understand the notebook that he clung so tightly to. He spoke of incantations, invocations, spirits that the ancients had supposedly used to acquire great riches and wealth. While I hold no religious convictions, I must admit that these types of things always piqued my interests. So I played along.

"So you're saying that you have a recipe for getting rich?" I asked.

He looked at me with a blank stare of both terror and aprehension.

"In this notebook, I hold the keys to everything. However, nothing in this world is free and the men and civilizations that have left this information behind ultimately lost everything that they had gained. When the physical realm interlaces with the realm of the spiritual, it has a negative effect. You see, there is a balance that must be maintained. These incantations and invocations may be used to summon spirits and demons who are more than willing to do your bidding, but they do so knowing that it upsets that balance in our physical dimension."

I began to wonder that my initial skepticism of this man had been correct. The more he explained the more I thought he was really out of touch with our reality. Just as the sun began to lighten the shade of gray in the still raining sky, he abruptly stopped talking. His demeanor, which had been unstable, at best, shifted to sheer and utter despair. He uttered quickly that he must be going. I bade him adieu as he sprang for the door and as he lunged into the back of his cab, I noticed his severely worn notebook remained on the table. I grabbed it and ran after him, but it was too late. Nothing left to do now but pay the check and go back to my apartment.

As I mentioned before, I hadn't slept soundly in quite a while. However, upon returning to my apartment, I couldn't even make it to my bedroom and elected to lie down on the couch. I slept for what seemed like days, but when I awoke, I did not feel refreshed or rested as one would expect. Furthermore, my encounter with Anthony at the diner was heavy on my mind. I picked up the notebook and began to examine its exterior. There was no script to speak of but interesting inscriptions of a primitive and simple nature. I opened the book and quickly realized that none of it was in the English that Anthony and I had carried on so fluidly at the diner. As I looked through the archaic diagrams, I began to feel quite uneasy and quite inexplicably so. Other than what Anthony had told me, most of which I confess seemed unlikely if not impossible, I could not understand a thing inscribed in this book. I began to feel quite ill, so I retired to my bedroom to try to sleep it off.

Visions, horrible in nature, crept into my slumbering eyes as I lay in my bed. What were these figures I was seeing? What was this torment? I'd had nightmares in my time but this was different. These images appeared to me as though I had not been asleep at all. I arose from my bed and went to the sink to look into the mirror. My eyes seemed to be swollen as though I had been sobbing in my sleep. I splashed cold water on my face in hopes that I could shake off this feeling of extreme exhaustion. As I walked back toward my bedroom a silhouette caught my gaze. I reluctantly walked into the living room to see that there was nothing there. Confused, I turned back toward my bedroom.

"How's your head, Gerald?" echoed a voice from the hallway.

As I turned back to see who had spoked those words, I noticed that my pillow was then covered in blood. I began to panic and ran back to the mirror. Seemingly unscathed, I rushed to the side table to grab the small mirror so that I could further examine myself for injuries. I must admit, I felt no physical pain, which made it all the more surprising when I found a small sigil inscribed into the back of my neck. As I turned back toward the hallway, Anthony stood, smiling, in the doorway. He asked if I had enjoyed the book to which I responded that I hadn't understood any of it.

"It's a better read the second time around," he said.

I reached for the book as it lay on the side table in my room and as I turned around, Anthony was gone. What the hell is happening to me? Why am I having such hallucinations? These were fleeting questions of my sanity that I quickly dismissed once I realized that there was still blood all over my pillow. This was my reality now.

As I held the notebook in my hand, I began to shutter and shake as I thought of the possible scenarios in which I currently found myself in. There was also the dilemma that I hadn't been able to comprehend any of its contents before. Reluctantly, I once again cracked the cover. Inexplicably, the diagrams and inscriptions appeared to me as though they were written in my native tongue. These passages entailed rites to attain wealth, fame, riches, treasures untold. Within these scriptures also appeared tales of great sacrifice and emphases on how fleeting these material gains can be unless balance between the realms is maintained. It spoke of restoring the balance between king and peasant, beast and master, through magick and violence. I closed my eyes and Anthony appeared to me in his true majesty, a being so elegant and magnificent that I could not describe him in terms known to man. He whispered in a thunderous voice "I am Lucifer, the morning star."

Now I know what I must do.