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Backgrounds Wyndham I first met Sue and Karen on my way to my psych’s. I was hanging around the underground railway station listening to the voice of the recorded announcing system (I was sort of in love with her. I’d even gotten to associating the smell of damp concrete with her. Standing around in empty concrete car-parks always made me feel wistful). Anyway, these beautiful twins got onto the same train as me and we sort of deliberately didn’t stare at each other all the way there. I wondered if they were seeing Doctor Riviera because they had problems being identical twins but I was too scared to talk to them. They were really beautiful. They weren’t too scared to talk to me though. I guess that’s a good thing. I don’t know. I found out later that they were of the Ascend- oh, sorry. I’ll try to keep this linear. So they got talking to me and I was too shocked at being talked to by complete strangers, particularly beautiful female complete strangers, to wonder why they were doing it. They told me they worked at the door of a nightclub called Ninth Circle so I went along to visit them the next week. I wasn’t trying to chat them up or anything. I wouldn’t know where to start. I was trying to figure out how this ‘having friends’ thing worked. That evening I found out that their real names were Scylla and Charybdis. I guessed their parents were worse than mine in that way. I met a lot of their friends. It was a pretty small nightclub, done up in a kind of spooky pretend dungeon style with lots of fake spider-webs. I liked the music they played. The coffee was great and the people there were interesting to talk to. I really liked their jewellery so when I got home I tried making some rings like theirs. I stayed up all night. It took me about ten goes to get it right though. I carved the designs out of wax and cast them in plaster and poured in molten pewter and the last few were a bit heavy because I was trying to use it all up. When I’d finished I had thirteen of them. I thought about getting my ears pierced so I could wear all of them at once but it would hurt. They looked pretty cool when I put one on each finger. Some of the spiky bits looked dangerous, so I rounded the points off and when I polished them they looked great. I went back to Ninth Circle the next week. The people I’d met last time were really impressed with the rings. I thought they were going to start asking if they could buy them but instead they started showing me the things they’d made (and after a few weeks I realised that they were suggesting that we could trade stuff). They were really cool about it. There was a girl who looked smaller than everybody else but she was actually in charge of them. There was a group of about a dozen of them in that nightclub. She told me her name was Marace and she showed me a book of Hans Rudi Giger (and yes, it’s pronounced ‘Geeger’)’s artwork. I’d seen some of the pictures before but there were a lot of really weird ones I hadn’t seen. And she had a lot of other weird books with her. Strange cult subculture video catalogues. American punk ‘zines. Japanese comics. She let me borrow some of those. One of them was really, uh, you know. It had naked people in it. I was leaving the nightclub and saying goodbye to Sue and Karen and another girl showed up who looked exactly like them. They had to be identical triplets or something. Marace said “How many of you are there?” and the new girl said “How many do you need?” which I thought was really weird. These people are strange, but in a nice kind of way. I think I could get to really like these people. I hope I can keep them from finding out how crazy I am. It’d be nice to think that it wouldn’t matter. I’m definitely going back next week. The Reverend Doctor Jesse Titus Shadwell, Ph.D. Did I ever tell you about the time I almost reached Samadhi (that’s ecstasy through meditation, you ignoramuses) while having an erection because of an opium dream of a female dragon’s dance at the Ninth Circle nightclub? No? Ah! I’d been sitting on top of the bass speakers at the end of the stone corridor (the echoes were very interesting) - this was back before Ninth Circle opened and they were experimenting with different speaker arrangements and I was sort of hanging around and offering free advice. And I’d been smoking opium all evening (one of the great things about Ninth Circle is that they don’t bother you unless you’re bothering the other patrons). It was only a test evening as far as nightclubs go but enough people turned up to make it into an actual event. I’d been spouting imaginary Black Zen gibberish all evening (from a Zen splinter group I invented, also that evening. Zen monks who dress in black and recite stuff that could be turned into Goth lyrics simply by saying them slowly). Once or twice I came up with things I thought even I’d want to remember, so I wrote them down. They didn’t make much sense in retrospect: All the world’s a stage we’re going through and There’s going to be a lot of “etc.” in the future. For a while I was talking to some guy called Wyndham about particle physics. He must have been on some kind of drug because later on we found he knew less about particle physics than I did. It was about five in the morning before things started winding down and they stopped playing very loud music through the speakers I was sitting on (and I had to think about a female friend of mine who’d once confessed to getting off on the vibrations from a tugboat’s engine and wonder if she’d ever sat where I was sitting). About this time the dragon appeared. At first it was the end of a Japanese cartoon that was being shown on the overhead video system. The projector had been turned onto its side for some reason and was pointing at the wall above me instead of at the projection screen. The dragon I was hallucinating, however, stayed there when they turned the projector off. I couldn’t see any obvious anatomical evidence for it but I somehow knew the dragon was female. And she was dancing for me. I was counting her scales and cataloguing each one as she danced sinuous figures-eight in the air. I was starting to imagine perhaps striking up a conversation (ask Wyndham some time about the problems of getting reptilian mouths to make human speech in a convincing fashion) when I realised that I had a rather uncomfortable erection (ask Clarissa some time about the PVC fetish pants she made for me and which I was wearing). I was so blitzed that I didn’t know what to do with it. I remember the doorbitch Twins escorting me to a taxi and taking me to their place. The rest of it is a pure white blur. I can remember that quite clearly. I was frightened at first - I couldn’t see things but I could touch them - but I realised that I was in good hands. Someone came to me while I was in that white void and told me a lot of unusual things. The ones that stick in my mind were a caution that I could expect to live for a very long time and that one day I would have to move south, but I’d be doing it with friends. Nothing spectacularly illuminating there. I’m going to have to try some of those Ergoline Alkaloids, I think. I’m going to get out of my mind if it kills me. Eloissa I knew from the first, on that star-crossed first night that our paths were entwined. What dark future in sight? To the barman, she signed, `Phenol-phthal-einum': I grinned, hid my mirth, watched her sign it again; felt my longing give birth. Bar-dude scowled in confusion. I put out my hand, got two vodka-and-lemons, we sat back. Watched the band. Later in the arena of dancers and closures - Physo-stigmatis semina striking ungodly poses - she moved into spotlight. Appeared much like the others of indeterminate sex and of varying gender. Shouted `Hama melidis cortex - ' (I didn’t want to offend her) `ex folia.' But those wrecks who sing up to the lights got in my way. She was lost to my sight. I like to think that every person is born a new, perfect block of marble and that life’s accidents knock bits off until you die a fully realised and detailed statue. If life gives you too many accidents then you crack up. And statues that have been similarly cracked like to hang out together. And that some blocks of marble can deal with accidents better than others. I really feel that I could be desperately in love with someone; I just can’t find the right person. I’m still looking though. And you know how sometimes you can feel something on your arm or your leg and you think it’s an insect and you look down and it’s just the hairs twitching? It’s not just the hairs. It’s the ghosts of spiders who want to be reincarnated as people and they’re trying to learn as much as they can about being a person before they do it. So they hang around a lot. Sometimes you can’t tell the ghost spiders from the real ones. Sometimes you try to feed them and they don’t take it because they’re ghost spiders. That’s why I asked Wyndham to make those pretend spiders that Marc sold (you know at first I didn’t like physical pain. But it really does grow on you. And it’s a quick and easy way of growing closer. As long as it’s consensual). I thought that if the ghost spiders saw how much more fun it was being a spider than being a human they might just ascend and stop crawling over people’s legs while they’re invisible. Or they might go back to pretending to be fairies like they did in the middle ages. But I don’t actually believe any of that. It’s what I tell my psych so she won’t lose interest in me. Not that I need her. I already have a loving family. Of course, I had to ditch my parents and my brothers and sisters first. Lewis / Ashan I was taught at school that you become an adult when you realise that one day you will die. I don’t remember the time I passed this particular milestone, but I have been thinking about it a great deal recently as I come to face the inevitable conclusion: I am going to die very soon. Perhaps the time that remains to me could be more profitably spent in fond reminiscences of times past. There aren’t a lot of them. They don’t take long to examine. In a failing attempt to even out my humours - I still hope to find the balance I once had - I try to counter every painful memory with a happy one, but after a while I find myself using the same few happy memories over and over. The march of painful events stretches on and on, each one a fresh knife in my back. Perhaps then (in the name of perversity) I should be confronting the most painful of these knives: the time I lost the sponsorship of the People on the Hill. Can you imagine what it was like? To have been brought up as a strict Gardnerian Wiccan in the shade of a pale kind of Catholicism and to have met the gods that we were taught about? What a shocking thing that is? To know that gods were real and to feel ashamed about having doubted our parents? And to learn that the gods have plans and that we factor in them? Perhaps there is some other explanation for them, the People on the Hill. Escaped Government genetic experiments. Aliens with an incredibly advanced technology. An escaped George Lucas Special Effects team. Masters of hypnosis. Any of the above. I know that I saw things that defied any rational explanation. They weren’t illusions, either. If they were, then they were profitable illusions. Many of us grew strong carrying those boxes of gold bars down from the hill. I still have one of those here somewhere. I must remember to have it sent it to Miss McCormick before I die. I still think of her fondly, despite her usurping my power. The memory is still bitter. One explanation for the People on the Hill that I didn’t list before: that they are gods. It was like one of Aleister Crowley’s grandiose dreams of winning wealth through acts of magick will. They contacted us through correspondence with our coven’s magazine and after some meetings where they demonstrated their good faith they gave us access to large sums of money. For some reason, in the form of gold bars. Many boxes full of them. We were to form an organisation based on our faith, contact others of our particular interests and expand our number to within a thousand people. We were charged with the responsibility of forming a society within mainstream society. It was suggested once or twice that we were creating a sanctuary. For who, or what purpose, was never explained. Who would ask awkward questions when all that money was just floating by? We took their money and followed their suggestions. I was at the head of the group. I was the High priest. I told my subordinates of the visions I’d been granted, mystical Jungian nonsense mixed with Warner Brothers cartoon plots. They bought it all. No-one questioned my elliptical prescience. And I was absolute master of this. I must confess, they did warn us that we were becoming complacent. Three times. Each time I deliberately misunderstood their suggestions and let the group degenerate into the sadomasochistic cabaret that it ended up being. By this time, you see, I had seen what kind of a monster I was becoming. My greatest fear wasn’t that I would inevitably become this monster; it was that I might be that monster forever. The People on the Hill told us that we would live far longer than other people. And one evening I received an idea as to what that meant when one of the People told me of her personal experiences, living in Turkey. In Çatal Huyuk. Eight thousand years ago. After that I knew they were gods. After that I didn’t need any of it. I was content to let myself drift into drug-addled degeneracy and die happily. How many others could claim they had been given that kind of knowledge? I let the group dissolve. I didn’t know that Penelope was taking steps to ensure its survival. She knew I was going to die, bless her, and rather than trying to talk me out of my downward spiral she tried to assume my burden. I hate her for being stronger than I was. And I admire her self-knowledge, knowing when to go for help. I have to admit that the new group is much more flamboyant than any of us old Wiccans had been. They lack self-discipline, but in that respect they are no different from their game-console-educated television-numbed fast-fed sugar-crazed contemporaries. They will learn. I can see them learning. They think I am trying to penetrate their security, infiltrate their group. I merely wish to assure myself that they are prospering. Testing them. Putting them into situations where they can see useful directions in which to proceed. Already the structure of their group is more tightly-knit than ours was, yet open enough to allow new recruits in. I can see several weak points in their defences but cannot devise a means of exposing them without causing loss of life. Perhaps they will read this and work it out for themselves. Marace, Penelope: don’t trust the private detective. He is smarter than you know. You should follow Burroughs’ advice on dealing with the percentage of troublemakers in this case. I am about to drink an entire litre carafe of laudanum. I intend to follow this with several hundred micrograms of original Sandoz LSD and perhaps some Guatemalan Blue Heroin. I might save that for later. I can’t escape the feeling that I should take everything I have all at once. What would I do if one of the People on the Hill found me doing this? No sensible person ever actively tries to anger the gods. Look at what happened to Caligula after he defied Neptune. I retire in the good wish that the members of the new group - Marace’s group, or perhaps Maracites - that these fine people do prosper and escape any evil will directed at them by low people (at least they know how to shield themselves psychically). I retire knowing that they are strong. Anderson Thomas Lee (Lewis), for the spirit named Ashan.

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