A Freshly Killed Body

Chapter one  

  It has always taken me a long time to warm up to strangers but here I was sitting shoeless on the floor with a dozen of them.  I usually turn my back and run when anyone mentions self-improvement workshops.  That's all hype.  I'm thirty-three years old and I don't look to improve much anymore.  I don't see a lot of improvement going on in too many other people around me either.  In fact, things seem to be going in the opposite direction.
I was two hundred fifty miles away from home.  Sitting in an octagon shaped room of windows on a hundred acre retreat center near Hudson, New York.  Listening to a hawk faced woman named Peg Woodward expound on a system of personality types called the Enneagram.  I had to admit that the setting approximated heaven.  A strong scent of honeysuckle blew through the windows.
I knew my attitude was wrong because I caught myself smirking inwardly when the other group members started spilling out their stories.  I have always felt  tugged apart by two conflicting forces.  Sometimes I want to be included, to be part of the show.  But more often I want to be the outsider looking in, analytical and critical.  The latter tendency took the upper hand when the woman named Cindy spoke.
  She was a short, heavy set woman with cropped silver hair.  Her dress was so flowery that she looked like something that needed planting.  "Hi, my name's Cindy and I came here because I want to learn more about the nine enneagram personality types. I'm always looking to grow.  Last year I had to make a painful decision...to leave my husband after twenty-one years of marriage.  Because unlike me, he wasn't growing.   I even think he was shrinking a little bit."
 Then tears. All that talk of growing just reinforced my garden metaphor.  She should have mixed a few plant tabs in her husband's food.
Peg Woodward was beaming.  "That's wonderful, Cindy, that you were able to share so much. Mmmm."
She sounded like she was being fed ice cream, I thought. 
 I watched Peg's beam fall on a thin young woman sitting next to me.   Flaming red toenails accentuated the whiteness of her bare feet.  I took her to be a victim.  I guess that was my eleven years as a child abuse investigator coming out.  I'd guessed her age as twenty. If I had heard her squeaky voice first, I would have revised my estimate several years downward.
"My name's Dawn...."
Peg, her head craned forward, gave a series of encouraging nods.  She looked like a big bird, ready to snap up the slightest crumb.  But Dawn had stage fright. Or maybe she had no story.  Contrary to popular opinion, not everybody  does.
  Dawn squirmed.  Her silence piqued more interest than Cindy's confessions. "I'm sorry."  Her faltering voice trailed off.  "I can't think of anything to say."
"Mmmm. Well, maybe later.  Next to you?"
Of course I had been rehearsing what I was going to "share." My self-preoccupation was such that I had tuned out all but the most skeletal facts about the others.  Somewhere it had registered on my consciousness that there were a disproportionate number of nurses, social workers and assorted mental health counselors in the circle.  A couple of people even had the audacity to identify  themselves as spiritual healers.  I wished them luck.
  It would sound unliberated to explain that I had gone to Pilgrim Farm in order to tag along on a vacation with my boyfriend.  Besides. I have no boyfriend.  My mother, forever hopeful, used to call Greg Heatherington my boyfriend.  But Greg had grabbed his parachute when all my trouble on the job began.  Ian is a good friend who happens to be a man.  He is in no way a boyfriend.  Since he's well into his thirties,  most people would flinch at calling him a boy.  I have known Ian Henry since childhood.  He's one of those cousins who isn't really a cousin, but a cousin's cousin.  My mother never wanted a lot of hassle from relatives, but the family is small enough so that even the more peripheral members can't entirely be ignored. On the surface, Ian and I did not hold much in common.  He eats, drinks and sleeps computers. At the least, he is usually at his computer when he performs these three functions. Anything out of a cathode ray tube bores me, television as well as computers. Musically, Ian is an opera buff.  I like golden oldies. Yet, Ian and I  have a common bond.  Our family considers us the eccentric ones, chiefly because we are both single and satisfied to remain so.
"Take a workshop," Ian had taunted.  "Take a chance."
"A chance on what?  You selling raffle tickets?"
"A chance on self expansion, Tommy. I've signed up for the Ceremonial and Ritual group."
My name is Jill Thomas but when Ian gets fed up he always calls me Tommy.
"I don't stand on ceremony, Ian.  I didn't even go to my college graduation."
"I think they're offering Enneagram.  A system of personality types. That should dovetail neatly into your social work."
"Except that I just quit my job as a social worker, remember? And I doubt that I'll ever be hired as one again."
 He had changed the pitch of his persuasion.  "It's a beautiful setting. Used to be an old monastery.  Now it's some kind of retreat center.  It's run by the Pilgrims."
"Retreat from reality, it sounds like.  What do you mean, Pilgrims?"
"They were very active in this country and England the early part of the century.  I think they got over to Germany  too.  As an older group, they've been able to build up some wealthy benefactors through the years.  They own quite a few pieces of property."
  "What are they, some kind of a crackpot religion?"  I asked.
 "They're not exactly a religion.  They do promulgate ideas of peace and brotherly love.  Don't pull that face, Jill, they're a very benign group."
"Benign?  You make them sound like a tumor diagnosis."
"Everyone knows the Pilgrims are respectable."
"Everyone knows?  That's a logical fallacy.  The argument from authority."
He had gotten miffed and retorted that he was not arguing at all, he had just  thought that I might profit from a week in a beautiful setting.  Wasn't the end of July sure to be scorching and humid in Baltimore?
  In the end, I gave in.   I can't count how many times since then that I've had occasion to remember his words about enjoying a week in a beautiful setting.  Ian did not lie about the beautiful setting.
 What I didn't know was that after that week, my life would never again be the same.
  Peg Woodward was eager, expectant.  I think it was her beatific smile that made me go ballistic.  As soon as I opened my mouth, I felt the dissociation.  It was like I was listening to myself listen to myself.  God knows I wasn't lipping anything I had rehearsed. 
 "I'm Jill Thomas. I don't have anything to dump out about myself. The nine Enneagram personality types seem to be just another example of system building.  I would guess that there as many personalities as there are people living in the world.  It seems silly  to classify them."
The room grew as silent as sudden death.  I could tell I had caused a lot of stomach churning.  The group waited for Peg Woodward to assert her control.  The leader stared at me like I'd pinched her.
 When Peg finally spoke, her voice caused the room temperature to drop by twenty degrees.  "I had really hoped," she said, "that everyone in this group would 
have had at least a rudimentary knowledge of the Enneagram.  The fact that you stated that there are nine types tells me that your knowledge is meager.  Each of those nine can manifest at nine different levels, from the most healthy to the totally dysfunctional.  In addition, each of the nine core types has a wing,  and there are all degrees of wing.  Is there anyone else in the room who is totally without knowledge of the Enneagram?"
I glanced around without moving my head. If I'd had a wing, I would have flown out of there.   I noticed that no hands were raised.  Unsmiling for once, Peg said  "Let's move on to the next person."
The "next person" sounded like a decent type.  He called himself Joe something or other, it was a long Italian name.  He said that he worked as a nurse in an E. R.  and that he was probably a  "type four," getting too bogged down by his own inner states.  He wanted to get out of himself more and improve his empathy with others.
  I thought that I could take a hint and adopt the same goal.
Now people were bustling around for  notebooks, balancing themselves on their bare or stockened feet that had  fallen asleep after a couple hours of sitting.  Our pile of sandals, thongs and cross trainers had been deposited at the door.  I wondered what would happen if I tried to switch my down at the heels running shoes for a better pair.   But stealing isn't one of my vices.
"Your assignment," Peg was saying,  "is to go outside and take a nature walk.  Let yourselves drift along in a contemplative state. Pay particular attention to your senses.   Blend in with the environment.  Go touch a tree and feel that tree as a part of yourself.  Bend down and touch the earth.  When you find a spot that feels right to you, sit down and start journaling.  Write whatever comes into your mind.  Use the right side of your brain."
 The last thing I intended to do was to raise my hand and announce that I was left-handed.  I know that many left-handed people, along with their right-handed friends, still have language and logic in the left halves of their brain. I hadn't a notion which of my hemispheres was dominant.  Days like this, I was lucky to know I had a brain at all.
 "You are to try to consider certain questions. Can you think of five words you would use to describe your personality?  What do you do to generate psychic energy?  How do you try to control your environment?  Mmmm.  You'll probably want to jot that down.  You can start out now.  You'll want to come back here in about an hour."
I had my doubts about the last.
  The young woman named Dawn, who hadn't been able to think of anything to tell,  gave my arm a light touch.  "I liked your comments.  I think you were just saying that we shouldn't label people."
"And oh yes,"  Peg Woodward called out,  "remember that there are a couple of other workshops meeting on the grounds.  One of them is a silent meditation group.  If you pass anyone from that group,  you might just nod.  Don't try to get them to talk."
That group sounded worth the workshop fee! 
We drifted toward the door.  Most reclaimed their shoes but a few people opted for the feel of bare skin touching mother earth.  I started down the wooded path that I thought led toward the monastery.  I had an idea to take a quick gander and see if I could spy Ian.
"Excuse me.  I need to speak with you a minute."  The voice was terse.  I was taller than average, about five-eight, but facing Peg Woodward I saw that she stood nearly a head taller than myself.  
"I'm unclear about your reason for signing up for the workshop." No one could ever accuse me of failing to recognize hostility.
  I maintained the tone. "I didn't know that I needed a reason.  I thought I only needed my credit card."
"It's very important for the workshop to be a caring, loving and safe environment.  People need to be able to trust that. If someone withholds, there's an energy block and things can't flow around it."
  I wasn't sure I would be able to abide a week of this woman.  I was, however, aware of my predicament.  I was a long way from a bus.  Ian had driven. I'd paid my fee. I  needed a vacation.
"I got it."  My voice was civil.  "I'll give it another shot.  Excuse me.  I'd better get on with my assignment."
I would have rather explored the terrain than my personality type.  The stone monastery, the original building, stood in a clearing, surrounded by tall shade trees.  Along the side leading through the woods toward the octagon room, someone had planted an old fashioned flower garden, with rose bushes, huge orange marigolds, blue and purple ageratums, and rainbows of zinnias.  A stream trickled under  a narrow wooden footbridge.  I stepped onto the bridge like a cat but the wood still creaked. Peering into the water, I could count the water lilies. 
  Just beyond the bridge, I spied what looked like a gazebo with walls.  The little wooden hut seemed crudely built and roughly circular.  Its diameter was about the length of a tall man.  The door had one small  window at eye level, like the entrance to a sauna.
I was only a few feet from this door when it suddenly flung open. A raven haired, cinnamon complexioned man emerged. He wore a pale flowing shirt, matching slacks, sandals. I felt like I had encountered the young Krishnamurti.  The man glided toward the footbridge.  I could have sworn that his feet didn't touch the ground.   I thought I'd better not speak.  He might be one of the silent meditators.
The man gave me what almost amounted to a formal bow.  "Our meditation room," he said in a modulated voice.  "It is available at any time, unless of course it is already in use."
"Of course," I said.  "Meditation-for-One.  You wouldn't want people to come piling in."  I have a bad habit of saying almost anything when I'm not sure what I want to say.  "Are you in one of the workshops?"
"No workshop.   I am working here this summer.  I help in the kitchen and the garden.  But I must still take time for my devotional practices.   Please take a look."
He held the door open. I saw that the exterior belied what lay within.  The interior was pyramid shaped.  The room smelled of cedar wood and jasmine incense. A pair of gold silken cushions rested against a wall.  A small oriental patterned rug covered the floor.  The miniature cubical shaped altar held a silver chalice and a polished brass  disc. I noted a lighted candle and what I thought was a crystal. I didn't actually step inside because that would probably have entailed taking off my shoes again.  
"What kind of altar is that? New Age generic?"
"There are many forms of God and many ways to worship," he said enigmatically.  "My name is Rao.  Do you find Pilgrim Farm a place of great beauty? You must see the view from on top the overhang.  Have you been up there yet?"
I shook my head. Rao had an unusual speech cadence, nearly equal weight given to every syllable.  
"This little stream flows into much larger one a hundred yards or so from the octagon room.  That is where your workshop is meeting,  I think?"
I wondered how he knew.  
"You can stand on top of the bluff which overlooks the river valley.  There is a spectacular view of the countryside.  That is a view you do not want to miss."
"I'd better head over that way now.  I'm supposed to be communing with trees and figuring out whether or not I'm a feeling type, a thinking type or instinctive type."
"Quite so."  I watched Rao glide through the flower garden like he was on a monorail.
I poked around in the clearing near the monastery, all the while reminding myself that I hadn't the faintest idea where Ian's workshop was meeting.  I guess I felt freaked enough by my clash with Peg Woodward to need to tell the only other person I knew on the farm. After ten minutes or so, I gave it up and retraced my steps through the woods.  I glanced around for a tree to hug but couldn't find one that I fancied.
 Coming up from the opposite direction, I heard someone singing an aria from "Rigoletto."  I spied the familiar roly poly shape of Ian. In his pressed jeans and designer tee shirt, he looked more like the computer programmer dressed down for Friday Casual Day than he did a participant of a ritual magic workshop.
  "I thought you'd be in your Merlin the Magician robe by now,"  I called.
"Hey!  What are you doing out?  Did you draw probation before verdict?"
This light hearted banter is our usual method of greeting although the "probation" crack wasn't as funny now as it would have been a few months ago.
 "I actually need someone who can perform a couple of magic tricks!  Look at this assignment that I've been given!   Ah my, I'm in teacher's doghouse already!"  Laughing, I conveyed the substance of my outburst to Peg Woodward. "How's your workshop?"
"It has promise.  The teacher seems to be a very enlightened old gentleman.  He calls himself Anubis."
"Anubis!  Get real!"   I thought of the woman named Cindy who'd left her husband. The mysterious Indian in the meditation room. Me looking around to cozy up to a tree.  And now this Anubis-- and Ian's deadly serious brow.  The unreality of the whole thing started me laughing uncontrollably.
"Anubis, Egyptian jackal faced god." Ian ignored my giggle fit. "Anubis was said to be the guardian against the forces of the lower astral.  He supposedly guards the spirit while the body is out.  He's a go-between this world and the next."
"A sort of liaison worker?  He must be kept busy.  This teacher Anubis, does he have another name?"
"Abel Meyer,"  Ian said. "But you have to be in his inner circle to call him that."
That was when his body suddenly stiffened.  His face froze, his mouth half opened.
"What is it?"  I asked.  But  he held up his hand to  signal silence.
  "I thought I heard someone cry out!"
My mood made the quick shift from silly to vigilant.  I could hear the sound of rapids from the river valley that Rao had talked about.
 And then from somewhere above, the cries.  "No! No! Please! No!"  
We listened for an eternal second.
"It sounds like someone's being attacked,"  I whispered.
Then a loud, receding scream.  By that time, we were both running in the direction of the voice. The wooded area receded behind us as we reached a small bridge. One hundred feet under the bridge, turbulent waters splashed against eroded rocks.   Looking across from the opposite side of the overhang, we could see the form of a woman lying on her face in the water. and rocks.  

Chapter two

"Send help!  We need help!"  I found myself charging up the path, not knowing whom I could summons nor what help would be required. It was then that I collided head on with a broad shouldered man who came bounding from the opposite direction.
"Sorry, are you all right?"  
Lying sprawled on my back, I don't know how I focused my attention to notice my assailant at all.  I couldn't help but be struck by his wavy blond hair, good teeth, even features and evenhanded demeanor. I jumped up without taking inventory of my bruises. This was no time for wound licking.
  To Ian, this blond adonis barked a series of orders.   "Run up to the monastery.  Tell them that Alexander said to send some men. Call the emergency number. We'll need an ambulance.  I'm going to try to slide down and reach her."
The speaker gave the commands like a man who takes being in authority for granted.  I wasn't thinking too clearly but I registered that the man had very light blue eyes. I turned around and watched him lower himself down at a place where the bank was least steep. There was no need to round up anybody because suddenly as many as a dozen of the campers had appeared.  Perhaps they had been aroused by the same screams. At any rate, the narrow wooded path was looking more and more like a crowded city street corner. Several people, shimmying on their fannies, followed the leader down the bank. Within seconds the retreat center had made a turnabout from tree-worshiping tranquillity to full red alert.  I felt stunned and disoriented by the transition.  
Rao came trotting up from the garden.  He had left his alpha brain waves behind.  He resembled a frightened deer caught in the middle of the headlights. "Run to the nearest phone and tell them to send an ambulance," I heard Ian say..  "Someone's been badly hurt."
Ian slipped an arm around me.  "Are you all right?  That was quite a takedown."
"I'm fine."  I was sickened. "Who was that fellow?"  Not that I cared.  I was talking out of my head.
"He's in my workshop.  He seems to have a role in running the thing.  Name's Alexander Love.  Should I try to get down there?"
The man called Alexander waded in the water.  If he could walk on it, he didn't.  He was the first to reach the stilled figure. I could see his  tall body bending over the girl.
He had dragged her to the river bank.  With the body half in and half out of the water, he was giving CPR.  "It doesn't look good," he called to the others.  "Are there any healers here?  I need them--ah, she needs them!  Stat!"
Even in my numbed condition, I took note of the "stat," the lingo of the medical doctor.  I had logged in hundreds of hours sitting in emergency rooms with battered children but had never heard a stat command go over the intercom for healers.
As it happened, the woods was rife with them. Campers were scampering along the path, blossoming out from branches of trees. Twelve or more had now encircled the fallen shape, extending their hands palms down within inches of the body without actually touching it.  
"They're working on the subtle body,"  Ian explained.  "The theory is that the subtle or etheric body extends out a few inches from the physical body."
Did he believe that?  "Has anyone thought of bandages, splints?"
I could strain to hear a distant ambulance, which always starts with that ominous faint warble and ends up with an insatiable hyena-like howling.  Almost the whole population of the retreat center had assembled by now.  "How do you suppose she fell?"  I asked a man with a gray Santa Claus beard.
He folded his hands as though praying but gave no answer.  I had forgotten.  The silent retreat!  But wasn't this carrying things a bit far?
  A fortyish man, dark hair combed straight back and intense brown eyes, chose to answer the question. His voice was strangely terse.  He had a way of making each sentence sound like he had finished talking.  "She fell from the other side of the river bank Drop's the steepest there. Probably climbed up for the view.  Wandered too close to the edge. A cliff overhang is not terra firma.   Too much vibration and the earth will crust off."
  I digested this geology lesson and accepted a professorial look. The speaker wore a gummed paper label which read "hello my name is Victor."  He winced as he watched my eyes fall on it.  He ripped off the name tag with an abrupt yank.  
  I grew up on the asphalt streets of Baltimore, in the neighborhood of Charles Village, spawned by Calvert Street, St. Paul Street and all the major thoroughfares for downtown commuters breaking their necks to get back and forth from the suburbs.  I had less education about the behavior of bluffs and overhangs.  "I heard her cry out,"   I said.  "She didn't fall right away.  It was like she was grabbing on to something, trying to save herself."
The rescue sirens were nearer now.  There were two distinct, horrible warblings, two tortured voices, each trying to outshout the other.  Below, in the river, the healers stood knee deep in the water.  Their bodies blocked any view I might have had of the victim.
I spied my Enneagram teacher, Peg Woodward.  She was not one of those who had ventured into the stream.
 "We're trying to get the group to return to the workshop now.  It's the best way.  We can have a group healing."
I had no desire to return to the workshop, but it seemed unkind to stand here and gawk.  An ambulance and two fire engines were zigzagging across the Pilgrim property.  These vehicles of rescue--and sometimes of death--had deserted the driveway and were bumping their way across the stretch of field. The landscape underwent still another transformation: red and white lights were flashing in our eyes.  In a susceptible person these could have triggered a seizure.  In my own case, they were inducing a sick headache. The blinking lights, the shouts,  the blaring of radio equipment all sounded the death knell to the serenity of Pilgrim Farm.  I doubted that it would ever be serene again.
 I listened to pressured conversations about constructing pulleys,lowering ropes. 
The grim looking man named Victor turned to Ian.  "Anubis has sent word that he is waiting to reconvene the group." He spoke with a quaint formality. "Alexander should remain here because of his medical expertise."
 Anubis was waiting?  I wondered if he had ever stood at a bus stop in Baltimore. 
"Are you sure you're all right?"  asked solicitous Ian.  "If so, I'll go back to my class."
"You go," I said and turned to walk in the direction of the octagon room.
The rescuers were now debating the safest method of hoisting a stretcher a hundred feet  into the air.
"Ineptitude," Victor muttered."Why can't they hurry!"  I could understand why he was wearing his  grim face now, but I suspected that he always looked like that.
We turned to face a woman with styled silver-gray hair and narrowed blue eyes. Her dripping skirt signaled that she had been one of the healers in the water.  She looked at least sixty but her age gave no hint of weakness either physical or mental.  "There's sadly no reason  for them to hurry, Victor,"  she pronounced.  "Dawn is dead."

Chapter three

People stood in pairs or small groups, hugging each other, crying, or simply staring into space.  They seemed frozen into position, as in a bizarre tableaux.
  Because I had nowhere to retreat to except my cell-like room, I eventually wandered back into Peg Woodward's workshop.  I didn't bother to remove my shoes this time. I just retrieved my cushion and plopped down in my place on the floor.  The circle had a gap in the space to my left where Dawn had sat. No one had wanted to slide over to fill in that spot.  My classmates had their eyes closed.  Some had their fingers folded as in prayer.  Others had their hands raised above their heads like basketball players attempting a free shot.  
"Send the healing violet light out to our sister Dawn.  May this light serve to propel her as her soul makes its transition....and when you are ready, bring your consciousness back into this room."  Peg Woodward ended the guided meditation with a couple of exaggerated deep swishing breaths.
"I know that it is hard to sit here with so much that's happened and all of the commotion outside.  We can expect some disruption for the rest of the afternoon.  Men are working on removing Dawn's body from the river bed. Sadly, she must have wandered too close to the edge of the cliff and gone over.  Perhaps she was concentrating on her assignment and did not notice where...." Peg let the thought die cold.
Had she felt her own culpability, I wondered.  A fancy lawyer building up a suit case could argue that the group leader had sent us out of our safe classroom to stumble around the hazardous terrain.  There was even the suggestion that we walk in a contemplative state. An altered state!  Why hadn't the instructor specifically warned us not to walk off a cliff?  Or so the questioning might go.
 "Since Dawn's accident resulted in a fatal injury, you can expect to encounter some people from the police at Pilgrim Farm," Peg continued.  "They may ask to speak with some of you.  Should this happen, you will of course want to cooperate with them.  And now we really must get back to our Enneagram studies.  There is no more that we can do to help...what has happened outside.  Dawn, like the rest of us, came here to increase her self knowledge through this type of study, and I am certain that she would want us to go ahead with our purpose.
"To review, then:  Personality types five, six and seven are known as the thinking types.  Fives are so comfortable with thinking that sometimes they become unhealthy and isolate themselves from the actual world.  The six might be a very loyal friend  and employee.  At a less healthy level, though, he could become too beholden to authority.  Healthy sevens are very enthusiastic, very accomplished individuals. But sometimes they get bored and restless and want to experience too many things at once...."
 My brain was starting to close up on the Enneagram like a lid being slammed down on a coffin. My disdain toward Peg Woodward poured out of me like scalding water from a faucet.  I knew it was irrational but I couldn't shut it off.
 Another writing assignment was given.  I pulled together my pocketbook and notebook and, avoiding eye contact, silently stood up to leave. I had my hand on the door when Peg's voice intercepted me.  
"Jill, are you leaving?"
What the hell does it look like! 
We had both stepped outside the door. Apparently Peg shared my sense that the conversation was not for the ears of the class.
 "I'm sorry.  I can't concentrate on these studies, given the fact that there's a body lying out there in the riverbed."
Peg slipped into the role of a confidant.  "Does death bother you so much?"
Of course not, let's have one every day!
"Counseling is being set up for everyone at Pilgrim Farm who wishes to make use of it.  I myself will be one of the counselors.  I strongly urge you...."
"I don't need counseling, Ms. Woodward.  I worked as a child abuse investigator for eleven years.  I can handle an occasional body. There's just something about you that I'm struggling with.  I don't feel that I can work with you.  It's probably some incompatibility of personality type.   I think I should transfer to another workshop."
The flash of relief on her face made me dare to press for a favor. "I didn't travel all the way from Baltimore to do silent meditation.  I could have stayed home and done that right in my apartment. Except for all the police cars screaming by, and now we've got them here too. Perhaps you'll be good enough to speak with Anubis and see if he can find a place for me in his group."  I couldn't remember what Ian had said Anubis' rightful name was.
I felt that I was being newly appraised.  I also knew that Peg didn't want to help me.  "Anubis?  Do you have  experience with ritual magic?"
I admitted that I did not.
After a silent standoff, she said,  "I'll try to speak with him if I see him."
I knew an "okay-doke" when I heard it.  I was sure that she wouldn't utter a word.
Before Peg could turn back to her classroom, a woman with a waddling but brisk walk was breathing down our necks.  A surly, stocky woman who looked to be pushing fifty.  Short straight gray hair.  A fawn and umber skirt.  A blouse and blazer that, with a better fit, might have been called a power suit. Wire glasses and wandering hazel eyes.  Black laced athletic shoes.  
"This the place she came from?"
Peg wrung her hands.  "Uh--can you tell me what you mean?"
"You bet I can, lady. I need to get you both to step back into the building.  Who's in charge here?"
"Well, well, I'm the teacher,"  Peg faltered.  "I can't say that anyone is in charge."
"Thank you!  You're the teacher, then you're in charge."  The comments were directed to the assembled group.  "Inez Sharp.  Homicide."
There were a chorus of gasps, oh-mi-gods.
"Surely you don't think...." someone uttered.
Inez Sharp whirled on the offender.  The hapless speaker had been Cindy, the incredible growing woman.  "I don't need any help, thank you, in telling me what I should think!  Now, you-all,  no one's going to leave this room until I can get to the bottom of what's going on here.  Teacher, what can you tell me about how your pupil ended up with her skull bashed open  at the bottom of a river bed?"
I wrote off the bout as a nolo contendre and wondered if Peg Woodward had ever in her life dealt with anyone like this blunt, bullying homicide detective.
"They were sent out to do a journaling exercise."  Peg clutched her hands to her chest as though she were warding off a bullet.
"Beg your pardon, M'am?"
  "That means to write...."
" Why was it necessary to go out to the cliff in order to write?"
"No!  It wasn't."  Peg's voice went up an octave and added a singsong lilt.  "It was not necessary to go to the cliff.  People were to go wherever they thought they could get in touch with their feelings.  They were to find a place to contemplate."
"These people were your charges and you let them go wandering all over the place?"   Inez Sharp could not have been more indignant if we were all second graders.  "What's this guff about contemplating?  Contemplating what?"
Peg murmured a couple of sentences about the Enneagram.  Inez Sharp shot Peg a look that suggested the instructor needed an emergency psychiatric evaluation.  "And someone's dead because of this!"
We had to wait in the octagon room while Inez Sharp talked to each of us individually.  A small kitchen area at the rear of of the room lent semi- privacy to the interviews, although the hectoring voice of  the detective rose over the partition.
From what I could glean, Sharp was primed to buy into a verdict of accidental death.  Who wants to catch a murder case with no likely eyewitnesses and over five dozen suspects?  Oh, I knew all about disposing of cases in intake.  That's one less case for an already unwieldy load.
 But by the time my turn came to be jabbed by Inez' needle, I was starting to have a few doubts.
I told Ms. Sharp that I was an auditory witness to the incident.  I had heard the girl call out.
"Was she calling for help?"
"I didn't hear 'help.'  I heard 'no' and 'please.' It sounded like she was begging."
Although I wasn't looking to cause Ian any grief, I had no choice but to single him out as the person who heard the screams too.  Inez Sharp scratched his name in her notebook, punishing her blue Bic pen.
"Back up a minute, girly.  Just what are you trying to stir up here?" I met the glare of the hazel eyes without flinching.  "You suggesting that this was anything more than an accident?"
"I'm not suggesting anything.  But wouldn't she have yelled 'help' instead of 'please'?"
"What makes you think that?  How many cliffs have you fallen off of?"
I was feeling surly.  "In this lifetime or in all my past lives?"
Sharp let that pass.  "Dawn's response was perfectly appropriate for the situation. Someone ever hold a gun to your head?  Most of the poor devils yell something like 'please.'   Not 'help.'  Unfortunately, this poor girl probably had a few seconds to figure out what was going to happen.  Maybe the ledge she was standing on took awhile to break off.  She was out on the edge and she knew that if she so much as breathed, the whole thing would go.  She knew she was a goner."
"So you're saying that you think this was an accident."  Why, then, was the detective putting everyone through the paces?  She was probably just going through the motions of doing her job.  I've been there too.
  I had another thought.  "What about a suicide?"
My mother had always told me that I pushed too many buttons, and I saw as soon as I'd spoken that I'd pushed Inez' last.  "Look, girly, it's not my job to investigate suicides!  My job is to investigate homicides or to make determinations thereof.  And I always do my job!  I might not do it the way you want me to do it, I might not do it the way my boss wants me to do it.  But I get my job done the way I know that it has to be done."
I knew that I'd waded out too far but I took that extra step.  "Do you have a card so that I can contact you if I think of anything later?"
The detective reached into her breast pocket and slammed one down on the small kitchen table.   "I'm sitting in front of you so that you can do your thinking now!  Will you please get the hell out of my office!"
It wasn't her office but I didn't correct her.  The silent eyes of my soon to be erstwhile classmates studied me as I retreated to my spot on the floor and waited.

Chapter four

  Rao was gliding around the dining room setting out the buffet for our evening meal.  The ambulance had pulled out empty.  It won't take bodies.  A coroner, police photographers, Detective Sharp, a half-dozen uniforms, a rescue wagon, and every type of vehicle but the recycling truck had all come and gone.  Now their sole trace was the yellow police tape strung  across the cliff.  The scenic site had suddenly gotten a lot more scenic.
It goes without saying that the meal was vegetarian. The fare was standard issue for new-thought conferences: vegetable lasagna, brown rice and plenty of salad with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers.  Rao claimed that the veggies were "organically" grown in the garden.  I had an anxiety attack when I saw that the coffee beaker had an orange handle.  If I had to go cold turkey from caffeine for the week, I might be forced to dip into the bottle of No-Doz which I had tossed in my suitcase in anticipation of the workshop putting me to sleep.  However, Rao guided me to the "caffeinated" coffee.  I have never acknowledged any other kind.
This mealtime was my first collective glimpse of all of the students of all three workshops, not counting those who didn't have the stomach to chow down.  It would be an understatement to describe the conversation as muted.
 The silent meditators assembled at a table by themselves. They seemed to have invented a  for the nonce sign language to allow salt, pepper and  water pitchers to complete their cycle around the table.
 I searched the room for any man old enough to be Anubis, but found no candidates.  I slid into a chair across the table from Ian, realizing that I had plopped down right in the midst of Anubis' group.  Since I had already crashed out of Peg Woodward's class,  I felt out of place joining the table where the Enneagram  people sat.  
I recognized the good looking blond man named Alexander Love.  I watched him scoop food onto a plate and disappear. 
"He'll be taking that plate up to Anubis,"  Ian told me.  "I don't think the old man feels well enough to come to the table."
I was sorry to hear it. I had wanted to talk with the group leader about switching to the ritual group.  On the other hand,  I wanted to see whether Peg Woodward would make good her promise to intercede.  I saw Peg from across the room.  Her tall body looked folded inward, like it had undergone some kind of implosion.
People had evidently agreed to believe that it was in bad taste to talk about the death.  Yet I could tell that inwardly, most were hunkering for every grisly detail. 
A small, thin-faced graying man whose head tottered on a fragile neck walked to the front of the salad bar.  He asked for our attention in a voice that told me that he didn't expect to get it.   His ancient woolen brown suit, worn in mid July and probably worn in a half-dozen  spots as well, was  a garment that even a moth would shun.  
"My-my fellow diners, fellows, Pilgrims, uh, uh, I'm very sorry to interrupt your meal.  I'm Simon Minor, people call me Sigh, I'm, I'm on the board of the Pilgrims, the second vice president.  Er, it is a very sad thing that has happened here today. I'd like to ask for a moment of silence for, for the young lady, Dawn, who in the dawn of her life, ah, unfortunately met with a terrible accident which proved to be fatal."
He got what he asked for.
"Amen. Uh, as I said, this is a very sad thing.  This is the first, uh, fatality that has occurred in the thirty years that this retreat and study center has been in operation.  The only exception was that we did have, I think it was in our second year, one elderly lady who went to bed after supper and, ah, well she passed away in her sleep."
The food would have been enough to do it, I thought, wishing that Minor would yield the floor to someone more major.
"Be that as it may.  I did get a chance to have a few words with Miss, uh, Detective Sharp, and she has assured me that the police view the loss of Dawn as an accidental--um, an accident of nature, and in no way an incident that was deliberately perpetrated.  So please feel free to concentrate on your studies for the duration of your stay with us, without worry, worry that some fiend--murderer--well, knowing that this was an accident.  On behalf of the Pilgrims, I apologize that this incident has certainly cast a shroud, uh, cloud, over the proceedings and if anyone feels that they are unable to continue as a result of this incident, the Pilgrims stand willing to refund the cost of this week, or if you prefer, uh, we can give you a credit in case you wish to undertake another pilgrimage in the future.  Thank you very much."
I can't say that I saw Sigh Minor walk from the room.  If I really believed in magic I would have to say that he dematerialized.  The man just melted into the woodwork. 
 Alexander Love had rejoined the table.  His blue eyes focused in on me like a zoom lens.  He had one of those annoyingly hushed voices.  It commanded your undivided attention because you had to strain your ears to hear it.  Alexander must have been sure enough of his audience to be able to pull it off. "I bumped into you today.  Literally.  I hope I didn't jar you badly.  Can we complete our introduction?"
I shook hands and told him my name. Took note of a magnificent aquamarine ring which matched  the color of his eyes.
"Jill and I rode up to Pilgrim Farm together," Ian put in, as if my merely giving my own name wouldn't hold water on its own.
"Quite so.  I'm Doctor Alexander Love. Please call me Alexander.  'Doctor Love' sounds too much like a name for a television evangelist."  He added "Don't you think so?" in a whispered mock-conspiracy.  
He paused. I believe that he actually expected me to answer.
  "What kind of doctor are you, Alexander?"
"My practice is homeopathic, of course.  Like many people you will meet here, I have only a limited amount of faith in allopathic medicine.  Not that there are not those few cases when it might or might not be appropriate."
I was tied up with the nots, and concluded by the context that "allopathic" medicine was the name of the kind of medicine you would expect at your friendly neighborhood emergency room. 
"What is your work, Jill?"  His eyes hadn't blinked yet. "Isn't it a terrible habit we Americans have of immediately trying to peg a person by inquiring about his work?"
If he know that much, I wondered why he asked.  I was spared from answering that I had been a social worker and child abuse investigator for eleven years until two days before last Christmas--Solstice to Alexander, probably. On that day, a troubled teenage girl, hoping to get sprung from the foster home where I had placed her because of familial sex abuse, told a juvenile court judge that she had been similarly abused by her social worker.  I was arrested at the courthouse, thrown into a jail cell, released on my own recognizance and suspended pending a child abuse investigation of the child abuse investigator.  The teenager admitted to having lied but my abuse case could not be dismissed until the agency director signed off on the report.  This, for some reason, she was reluctant to do.  Months passed.  The agency director resigned, or was kicked upstairs to accept a sinecure at an obscure state office.  My report was considered much too delicate a matter for an "acting" director to pick up.  I remained on suspension with pay.  Finally I got tired of fighting.  I quit.  Therefore I had no work.   I had no intention of telling Alexander anything about this. A line from an old Bob Dylan song ran through my mind, something like "Don't ask me nothin' about nothin' -- I just might tell you the trooo-ooth."
"Alexander, I've been trying to catch up with you ever since we got here!"  The voice was just short of scolding.  The speaker, a middle-aged woman with a home job hair perm, faded jeans and a black tee shirt with silver trim, wedged her chair next to Alexander's like a human slice of pie.  She  started jabbering away about something, giving me all the notice of an empty  chair.  I didn't like it but at least it got me off the hook about my livelihood.
The group interaction, though, did puzzle me.  Half of the people at this table seemed to have  history with each other predating their morning arrival at Pilgrim Farm. I caught Ian at the coffee pot and asked him about it.
"Anubis is the founder of a mystery school.  He has his own  group. Based in New York, I think. They call themselves The Eyes of Horus. Well, something like that. Don't look stricken, Tommy.  They're not devil worshipers! They do have a strong interest in  the Egyptian and other pantheons. Isis, Osiris.  You know."
I knew woefully little.  
"Anubis works with a number of students and earns money by giving these workshops.  The workshops are open to the public but you can always count on the inner core for attendance."
"Who here is  'core?'"  I wanted to know.
"Alexander, for one. Doctor Love, that is.  Holly Summerfield, the woman who just butted in.  She can be bad news, they tell me.  Sees herself as some kind of a witch.  A hedge witch, that's what she calls herself."
"I won't even ask."
"I'm told there's no love lost between her and Muriel Baxter. Muriel's the classy older woman sitting across the table from Alexander.  She's supposed to be filthy rich."   
I recognized her as the woman who had emerged from the water with the dripping skirt to announce the death of Dawn. My grandmother had always told me to look at a person's shoes to figure out their social class.  Muriel's feet weren't available to me but I could see that her handbag was a Coach.
  "She'd be an asset to an organization, I'd say.   Maybe that's why Holly can't stand her."
"Oh, I suspect there's some jealousy there.  Let's see.  There's Victor Stone.  He's the dark haired serious looking guy, very devoted to Anubis, but a little obsessive over rules and regs. We saw him down by the accident scene.  Henry Peacock.  He's the comic relief. Like a fool in a Shakespeare play.  That's about it, unless you count Dawn.  Dawn was part of Anubis' group.  She just happened to sign up for the Enneagram workshop this time.  And what a tragedy she did!"
I concurred and wondered if Ian had omitted his own name from "core."  "How did you learn so much when you only rode through the gate this morning?"
"Dr. Alexander Lovely-Looking gave me an orientation. I think he was feeling me out to see if I had membership potential."
A group within a group within a group!  "You told me about the Pilgrims to get my name on the dotted line.  You didn't tell me about all this mystery school stuff."
"I told you the center was run by the Pilgrims.  They own the land."  I had put him on the defense.  I felt mildly irked.
"It seems to me they're absentee landlords."
"Oh, they're around.  You just saw that guy Minor."
"They show up for something big.  Like a murder."  I didn't mean to say it.  I wasn't even sure I believed it. The word "murder" had been spoken louder than I'd intended.  The woman named Muriel Baxter shot me a stiff stare although at that point I doubted  she knew my name.
The dining room slowly emptied out.  Three or four "volunteers" were on cleanup duty.  Everyone had signed up to take a couple of turns.
  "I'm going out for a walk," I said to Ian,  meaning that he was invited.
"Just don't stumble off any cliffs, Jill Thomas."

Chapter five

  I love to walk at  dusk.  The chirping of the birds intensifies as they prepare to nest for the night.  The air cools down.  A breeze stirs, changing the shapes of the trees.  The flowers have a stronger scent. And I feel more alive than at any other time of the day.   Few people would advise aimless ambling around Baltimore at darkfall.  Sometimes I just carry my cup of coffee out to my back roof that doubles as a porch.
I circled around the grounds as long as there was light to see.  I was treated to the rising of a balloon-ball orange full moon.  I'm a great moon watcher.  I knew when I saw "The Glass Menagerie" that Amanda's "little silver slipper of a moon" rising over Garfinkel's Delicatessen  could not have been the crescent.  The waxing crescent sets in the evening, it doesn't rise.  The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins has it right in his poem "Moonrise" when he describes his early morning sighting of the moon, "...dwindled and thinned the the fringe of a fingernail held to a candle."  Hopkins must have been a moon watcher too.
My watch chirped nine when I ambled toward the door of the erstwhile monastery that housed the parlor, dining room, library, some of the classrooms and the ice cube sized bedrooms.  For the first time, I noticed that the sprawling width of the building had a small wing on each size, the length of a pair of bedrooms if you alloted one of the double windows for each room.
A figure floated across my path in the moonlight.  I recognized the supplicating gait of Rao.  The man possessed at least one aspect of the Christian deity:  omnipresence.
"I have been to the meditation room.  I have prayed very hard for the woman who has had the accident,"  he said.  His voice rose on the word "accident."
Rao was in that meditation room so much that I wondered how anyone else ever got a chance to get in. My reply was only slightly more effusive than "Oh, that's nice."
"You know, some people here, they have been saying that this is not an accident, that this is some kind of a murder.  They should not say.  I believe it can be nothing but an accident."
I could have asked for the source of his belief but I didn't think there was one.  I felt like my generator had already flamed out and switched to its emergency backup.  Better to conserve my energy.
People had scattered, I wondered where. I went inside.
 A small group sat sipping tea in the library.  The room was straight out of Victorian England. The wallpaper was a light blue print. High glass-doored mahogany bookcases hugged the walls, interspersed by a pair of overstuffed chintz sofas.  A large round table took up half the floor space of the room.  Four or five worn brown leather chairs were pulled up to the table. Over the table hung a chandelier.  Ancient floor lamps stood near the sofas. Simon Minor, the bona fide Pilgrim,  invited me to pour myself a cup of herbal tea.  I peered at the glass encased books, trying to get the bead on the library's theme.  
"This is one of the most extensive occult libraries in the state," Minor said.  He was obviously more confident discussing occult libraries than girls falling off cliffs:  his stammer had disappeared.
For the first time, I noticed Peg Woodward.  I would not have entered the room had I spied her first.  Nor would I have taken the library to be a nesting ground for Victor Stone and Alexander Love. I had presumed that this pair would be nesting near Anubis, wherever that might be.
Minor stared out a screened window into the moonlit darkness. "There are a lot of elementals out there," he remarked to no one in particular. "Especially the salamanders.  You can see the tiny flickering of lights."  
I joined him at the window. The air was filled with fireflies as well as the tiny red spots that form in the visual field when someone stares too intensely into the darkness.
"They're attracted to places like this,"  he continued.  "Holy places. Places where people assemble to participate in the work of the Light."
I wasn't about to ask anyone to explain to me what an elemental was.  "What is your theory of elementals?"  I asked Simon Minor.
His answer sent my blood running cold.  "They are creatures in search of ensoulment."
Peg Woodward looked up.  "I wonder if there will be any manifestations tonight.  This is my thirteenth time at Pilgrim Farm and I've always experienced a manifestation."
I reasoned that the word was being used with a different sense than the way I'd employed it.  
"One night I woke up and seven silver clad creatures were dancing around my bed."
"Tell me what you were drinking before you went to bed," Alexander Love said, mock-confiding, the voice you use when you whisper a wondrous secret to a child.  If I tried to speak like that, people would just keep on talking and drown me out.
Victor Stone clasped and unclasped his hands three times.  He combed his fingers through his dark hair. He reminded me of a neurotic cat, one of those cats that will go on licking itself for a half hour if you dare to ruffle its fur by stroking it. "What did you do?" he asked  Peg.
"I simply sang, 'Silver creatures of the night, Silver creatures of the Light, Dare you come into my bed, Dare you dance upon my head.'  And they vanished."
I had learned what a manifestation was.
Muriel Baxter moved across the room as though she were walking through a reception line.  I suspected that she always moved that way.  She sure didn't fit the image for Pilgrim Farm. Possibly excepting Holly Summerfield, I hadn't seen anyone who looked grungy, but Muriel could have stepped from a total body care salon.  She was sixty-plus with the figure of a seventeen year old model.  If the same beautician had done my hair, it would have looked like a crow's nest before I had reached my car.  Every wave in Muriel's soft, silver gray hair was where it was supposed to be.
A grandfather clock in the hall near the library door played out the Westminster chimes and bonged ten times.
"I'm going up to bed," I announced.  I think I mumbled something about insomnia. That was a new plague for me.  It dated back to the incident on the job.  I would be lucky to sleep three hours. But  I could think of nothing in the world more inviting than the narrow mattress which awaited me on the top floor of the building.
The ceiling light was impossible. Its one hundred watt bulb transformed the cell-bedroom into an interrogation room.  The small shaded reading lamp on the bare bedside table was the safer bet.  The wafer thin mattress rested on a coil spring which squeaked with every move.  One straight backed chair and a crude wardrobe completed the furnishings.
My room lay near one end of a long corridor, just a couple of doors from the "U" wing .  It was the existence of this "U" wing which led me to turn off even the desk lamp  lest someone see me pulling off my clothes. Curtains were  one amenity that the Pilgrims thought we could do without.
 With the lights out, I who had sought my own privacy became a voyeur.  From my window, I could look directly into a third floor wing room.  I spied a figure of an old man draped in a black robe. He held a knife in his right hand.  I know that ritualists call this knife an atheme, but to me it is just a knife.  The man's left hand held aloft a long stick of incense.  He began walking around the room in a circle although I don't know how. His room must have been bigger than mine. He was making drawings in the air with the knife. I didn't need any of it.  I changed my mind about reading  my mystery.  To me a mystery means Ruth Rendell or Martha Grimes, not what was happening on the third floor wing.  I left the light off and flounced around on the mattress.  I might not get comfortable but I did hope to get asleep.
I had just drifted off when I fell into a dream that someone was knocking on my door.  I sat up.  I didn't think my dream had gone lucid.
"Miss Thomas?  Are you still awake?"
It was a woman's voice.  A genteel voice.  No one opens doors for strangers anymore but I supposed that this was different. I clicked on the lamp and pushed open the door to face Muriel Baxter.
"Oh, you were asleep!"  Muriel's face blushed  red as blood.  "I'm not accustomed to making social calls after the hostess' bedtime."  Still, she entered without asking and quickly closed the door behind her. I jumped back into my bed.
"Please excuse--well, I see I'm intruding.  But I've no choice.  You're Jill Thomas?  No one has properly introduced us.  I've been asking around to learn which one you were.  You're the one I need to speak with.  They told me that you were the only one to stand up to that horrible creature of a homicide detective.  That was no accident, Miss Thomas.  That was murder."
I truly hoped this was a dream.  "You can call me Jill."
"Muriel.  No accident.  You didn't think so, either."
She pronounced it "I-ther."  Her intonation was assertive despite her cringing at  her recent  breach of  Miss Manners.
"I heard you say so at dinner.  You said 'murder.'"
I untangled myself from the bed covers and swung my feet onto the floor, the better to put myself on even footing with my caller..  It is awkward to hold your own in a conversation while lying in bed.  My heart went out to hospital patients who have to discuss life and death issues with their doctors from the disadvantage of a prone state.  "I guess I  have to plead agnosticism.  I don't know whether this was an accident or not.  One can not know.  Or at least I can't.  I don't know the facts."
"I can give you a few facts," Muriel said.  "For starters, I know Dawn."
"Oh?"
"Dawn and I both live in Philadelphia.  I've known her for a little less than two years.  We share an interest in the higher mysteries.  I'm the one who proposed that she be admitted as a probationer in Abel Meyer's group."
Abel Meyer.  The name had much less mystique than "Anubis."
"Unfortunately, my assessment of her ability to pursue this kind of study proved to be a poor one."  Muriel's speech was crisp and severe. "I failed to recognize that she was a very immature girl.  She was always having a family problem or a boyfriend problem.  Or an occupational one.  She also had a number of phobias, one of which was a dreadful fear of heights."
"She told you so?"  My investigative interest was stirred.  Eleven years is a long time,  you get inculcated into thinking a certain way.
"It was very obvious.  We traveled together to New York once for an equinox celebration.  Dawn insisted on a hotel room that was no higher than the second floor.  It was then that she told me about her fear.  She had other phobias, too.  She couldn't take a restaurant seat where she felt boxed in. We got caught up in the crush of a sale in Macy's and she ran out into Thirty-Fourth Street screaming. She was a very peculiar bird!  But my point is that in no way would Dawn have ventured near the edge of a cliff.  She was either pushed, or else someone hypnotized her!"
I don't want to say categorically that I can not be hypnotized but I never have been.  I remember Ian trying to hypnotize me once.  I hadn't been able to stop giggling.
"Are there any hypnotists around here?"
"Any of them in Anubis' group--of which Dawn was a part--would be capable.  Anubis teaches hypnosis."
"But Dawn was in the Enneagram Studies," I said, wanting to know where Muriel would go with that.
"For this week, yes.  But she is one of Anubis' private students.  I don't know what she was doing in Enneagram Studies but that was like Dawn.  She was probably just trying to show her perversity by registering for the other class.  Or maybe she had a genuine interest in personality theory. Lord knows, she didn't have much of one."
"Would Abel Meyer--Anubis--have seen this as a rejection?  Gotten angry at Dawn's passing up his class?" 
Muriel herself got angry.  "Abel Meyer is an enlightened soul!  He has moved beyond ego.  The Dawns of this world have no ability to affect him!"
"Muriel," I asked,  "why are you telling me all this?  Why did you come specifically to me?"
 "Because at least you're open to the possibility that this was not an accident. In the event any other accidents happen around here, we'll know it wasn't the first."
I wondered if she expected another accident.  "Did you tell Detective Sharp what you just told me?"
"Detective Sharp is not the kind of person that invites confidences about the work that we do here.  And it isn't as though I have knowledge of who might have been instrumental in Dawn's going over the cliff. "
We studied each other in silence.
"I do believe that the answer lies in Abel Meyer's group."  Muriel said.
"Would anyone there want Dawn out of the way? And why? Surely not just because she wasn't one of the shinning stars in the group?"
Muriel thrust her chin a little higher and met my eyes.  "Dawn might not have been the person they wanted out of the way."
I waited for an explanation.
"Somebody had plied her with poison. I'm talking about a poison secret, Miss Thomas.  Knowing that she was not an adequate vessel to contain it.  Knowing that she  would spill it over and that it would cause a lot of mischief in the group."
All this was getting to be a bit much.  I had always thought of myself as a  straightforward person.  And right then I was a very tired person.
"I  won't take any more of your time, Jill.  You'll need a good night's sleep for these long days.  I've said as much as I can say."
Then she asked to use my bathroom.  That tiny closet of a facility was  shared by an as yet unmet occupant of  the adjoining room.  It contained  a sink, commode and a somewhat rusted shower stall.  
"Hellish diuretics,"  Muriel mumbled, answering my unvoiced question of why she did not wait a half minute and use her own facility.
Finally she left.  I used the bathroom one more time myself, even giving my teeth a cursory final brushing.  I could not brush the bad taste out of my mouth.
I was eager for my second go at dreamland.  I tried to guide my consciousness toward having a dream that would result in clarity.  My other wish was to wake up in Baltimore to discover that this whole day had been a dream.
I propped myself up in the darkness and glanced out the narrow window one last time.
The third floor light was out.
Outside, a dark hooded figure, cradling a votive light in both hands, walked like a sleepwalker toward the meditation room.

Chapter six

  I usually wake up in the morning when a switch clicks in my brain.  No matter how many times I turn over and drift back into sleep for one last dream, I know that when it's right to get up, the switch will activate. My limbs will start flailing around in search of oxygen.  After that, there's no getting back to sleep.
My switch never did reset when I became unemployed.  Let's face it, there's no need for the switch to click at six a.m. anymore.  But it still does.
This morning the switch must have had a short.  I whimsically wondered whether Muriel, in her nocturnal visit, had released a magic sleeping potion.  I woke from a dreamless night to the bright sunlight, to footsteps and murmurings in the hallway.  So much for my hope of catching Ian for a few minutes before breakfast.  
 A list of optional pre-breakfast activities had been posted outside the dining room There was a sunrise meditation group, a Tai Chi group, a silent-walking group.  I wasn't interested in any of these. Before breakfast also meant before coffee.  I wouldn't be functional. Ian  was bound to have taken off for one of these groups. He was an even earlier riser than I was. He often spoke of being awake until two or three in the morning.  I assumed that the surfed through the night on his computer. But the only time he missed a sunrise was a rainy day.
By the time I hit the dining room, breakfast was in full swing. Ian was ensconced between Alexander Love and a glum looking Victor Stone.  Holly Summerfield, the hedge witch, sat across from Victor
I grabbed the last pancake, spooned some fruit salad into a small bowl and dropped my dishes at an empty place.
"She never was my idea of too bright," Holly was saying.  "But I did give her credit for having better sense than to fall off a cliff."
"She was the pure-hearted, innocent fool of the tarot deck,"  Alexander said in his arresting voice that both chided and silenced Holly.  "The fellow with the little white dog who represents intuitive trust of the universe.  The card shows him on the verge of stepping off the cliff and plunging into the abyss, with full faith that the universe will protect him.  Excuse me.  I need to take breakfast up to Anubis."
Ian explained that the "old man" liked to spend his morning in quiet contemplation.  He avoided all the breakfast chatter and clatter.
"Clatter" reminded me that this was my turn on cleanup crew.  It was the worst possible day.  I knew I had to catch Anubis about transferring before the class actually began.  I found a tray and began snatching dishes from the table the second that the last bites had been taken.
 I slackened my pace when I approached Peg Woodward and her unused fork. The sharp hawk-like features had drooped.  I found new meaning in the term crestfallen.  Peg raised her head and gave me a vacuous glance.
I felt self-conscious enough to blubber, "Were you able to see Abel..." and then recovered to say, "Did you speak with Anubis about my transferring to the ritual group?"
"Mmmmm"
I took this to mean yes.  Since she'd scarcely eaten,  she couldn't be licking her chops.
I dumped a tray of dirty dishes into Rao's kitchen sink.  He didn't seem fully conscious.  He was mumbling something under his breath which sounded like "Shanti Shanti Shanti." A newspaper on a chair was carefully folded at a selected article. I started to read.
            PILGRIM FARM FALL PROVES FATAL
    A 20-year-old woman plummeted off a cliff to her death at Pilgrim
 Farm yesterday,amidst rumors that she may have been walking the grounds in a trance.  An unidentified police source, while ruling out foul play, suggested that Pilgrim Farm might more apt be called "Funny Farm."  "So far as supervision of the residents, there is much to be desired.  I don't know why the classroom teacher would send young people out of the classroom to roam the grounds without providing a thorough orientation.  This death could have been prevented."
 Identification was withheld pending notice of next of kin but this paper has learned that the deceased is Dawn Vanderbosch of Philadelphia, the daughter of prominent attorney Benjamin Vanderbosch.
  Pilgrim Farm had just changed its name to Lawsuit City.  "What do you think?" I waved the paper at Rao.
His flashing onyx eyes expressed his anger.  "The papers should not write such things.  This is not fair to the Pilgrims."
I had always supposed that the loyal, faithful employee syndrome still existed although you didn't find much of it at the line social worker level where I came from.  It was more of an "us against the bumbling bureaucratic sawmill."  Still, I thought that Rao was carrying the act a little too far.  Or maybe he was a Pilgrim.  Maybe any lawsuit could stretch out its tentacles and reach him.
"Are you one?" I asked, wondering if this was the kind of question that dare not be answered.
"I and also my father and his father before him."  
He made it sound almost biblical. Or congenital.  Stacks of dirty plates sat asking to be washed.  I went through the motions with the first stack and then told Rao hasta.
  I twisted the building inside out in my mind. I knew that the figure I had seen in the third floor window last night was Anubis. I was able to locate his room by matching my bedroom window sighting with the rooms on the wing.
  Eleven years of knocking on strange doors had extinguished any shyness.  I knocked three times.  Three is a magical number.   The door opened about ten degrees. A narrow swatch of Alexander Love filled up the crack.
"Is Anubis in?  Mr. Meyer?"
"Dr. Meyer is resting,"  Alexander answered, sotto voco.  "Dr. Meyer is preparing for his class in a half-hour."
This was a different kind of preparation. And probably a different kind of doctor.
  "I  need to catch him before the class, to clear up my registration."  
The word "registration"  worked magic.  So Alexander Love had bureaucratic tendencies too.  He bade me wait a second.  Through the ajar door I could see an old gentleman with a blood pressure cuff around his arm.
"Come in, my child. I've been waiting for you!  Come in and talk to me."   The voice was sonorous and seductive.   Although Anubis spoke impeccable, English.  I doubted that he was American born.  The word "waiting" had no sound of "wading," it was more like "wait-ting."  
He rose to take my hand. His height was imposing.  His leathery face betrayed his age as seventy-something.  His hair, more silvery blond than gray, was close clipped. The eyes, surprisingly, were a light hazel. Anubis wore a trim mustache, scarcely wider than a toothbrush.
He gestured toward the blood pressure cuff, still maintaining intense eye contact.  "Alexander likes to watch over my health.  I myself am not concerned.  I have no fear of being dead.  What is your name, please?"
I told him.
"And you, Jill, do you entertain such fears?"
I admitted I hadn't given it a lot of thought until yesterday.  I glanced around the room.  It was twice as large as my own.  There was floor space for a dresser.  Its top had been converted into an  altar.  Incense had recently been burned.  Not the small cones nor the fragile, fragrant jasmine or sandalwood  sticks, but the powdered variety which has to be sprinkled over a simmering circle of charcoal.
A bundle of about fifty sticks had been tossed around on the altar-dresser.  A college course in Eastern Religions helped me to recognize these as yarrow stalks, used for the casting of the I Ching.
"Did the oracle have a good message for you today, Dr. Meyer?" I asked, knowing all the while that I was just showing off my knowledge.
"The oracle told me that a student would come to me and express interest in my teaching."
I admitted that I did hope to transfer into his workshop if this was acceptable to him.  I don't know that I believed the oracle had spoken but I was coming to doubt that Peg Woodward had.
"You must tell me, Jill, what you seek to attain through my teaching."  Still those eyes didn't waver.  I was beginning to feel like a grail knight being sent out for the first test. Or the frog who had to give the exact password in order to become a prince and win the princess. Ian had told me that it is much the same with computers.
I had sense enough to know that I'd better not wear the same stripes I'd bared to  Peg Woodward yesterday.  "I want to attain self knowledge," I heard myself saying.
"And why, Jill, do you want to attain self knowledge?"  He spoke kindly, sadly.
"To help others, I guess."
Anubis nodded his head slowly and seriously. Long seconds of silence passed, silence that not even I dared to violate.
  "I find you acceptable."
 If I were lucky, I would have time to run to the dining room for one final cup of java before class began.  
Chapter seven
  The former lifetime of the ritual group's classroom could not be disguised.  It was once the monastery's chapel.  True, the large room had been denuded of statues, altars, confession booths or anything to suggest its former religious persuasion. But white marble steps led up to the space where the chancel had once stood, and stained glass windows remained intact.  These windows gave the whole room a peculiar lighting that should have evoked images of a celestial realm.
  In actuality, the effect was a ghostly glow. The rich panes depicted artfully tooled images of Christian saints. Far from bearing beneficent facial expressions, the majority had been bestowed a stricken look as though they stood on the threshold of their martyrdom.
 The domed front of the large space had once been the chapel's sanctuary. The roof of the nave was arched. The walls were painted a deep peach. The chapel stood at the distant end from the dining room, as though eating and praying, nurturance for body and for soul, had to be kept as far apart as possible.  
At least there were chairs, not cushions scattered on the floor.  The wooden chairs were not quite arranged in the democratic circle that had prevailed in Peg Woodward's room.  Part of the circle was wide open.  And in that wide open space, sitting in  a large upholstered chair in front of the sanctuary, sat Abel "Anubis"  Meyer.
I entered the room with Ian but purposely chose a seat as far away from him as possible.  I did not want to leech myself to him.
The class began filtering in. Anubis totally ignored us.  He looked like he was observing the mandatory moment of silence. His eyes were closed.  With both index fingers he was massaging the middle of his forehead, in the area that some people call the third eye and I call the frontal sinuses.  Alexander Love arranged his chair just to the right of Anubis--not quite on par with the leader but somewhat more elevated than any of the others. 
 Muriel Baxter strode into the room.  Despite her visit to my bedroom last night, she looked through me as though our paths had never crossed in this world.  Her dress would have better suited a power breakfast than Pilgrim Farm.
  Victor Stone, whose facial expression never got anywhere near a smile, nodded at me and frowned.. He eased himself into an empty seat near Alexander.  I saw that he had a nervous habit of plucking out  eyebrow hairs with his fingers. He was the only man in the room wearing a business suit.
Holly Summerfield, wearing a long willowy skirt in earth tones, stood in front of my chair.  "You're in my seat."
"I didn't know there were assigned seats," I said.
"I sat there yesterday."  
"Oh, you sat here once.  Then, no question, this is your seat. We don't want to play musical chairs."  I stood up, hoping my sarcasm showed. 
Ian sat humming a few bars from the overture of some somber German opera.  I didn't know which one but I was certain that Ian could have reproduced the whole libretto if he'd wanted to. He shot me a "mind your manners"  look.
Anubis was staring at me again with those hazel eyes which resembled the eyes of my neighbor's sleek gray weimaraner.  The dog was said to be a biter.  I hoped Meyer was not.
  "Jill."  He pronounced  my name like he was studying it for sound and vibration.  "Jill Thomas. What sign of the zodiac are you, Jill?"
"Pisces,"  I told him.
"A water sign.  Then you would want to seat yourself along the west wall, with the Cancers and Scorpios.  Fire signs, Aries, Leo, Sag,  along the south wall.  Air in the east:  Gemini, Libra, Aquarius. And the earth signs sit in the north.  That's Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn."
"Excuse me, Anubis." a bearded fellow in a bright yellow tee shirt called out.  "I was born on the cusp, right between Virgo and Libra.  Where do you want me?"
"Where do you want to sit, Mr. Peacock?  Does your soul tell you that you are more earth or more air?"
Everyone tittered.
"We don't have equal numbers in any event, so arrange yourselves as best you can.  The important thing is that you understand the energies of the elements."
I wondered whether I had been too hasty in dismissing the silent meditation group as my second choice. 
 Before I could develop this thought, a pale blond woman. of about twenty-five practically fell into the room, sobbing. It was an entrance worthy of any mid-afternoon TV soap.    The crier made no effort to sit, but instead took center stage.
"I'm sorry."  She buried her hands in her face for a few seconds, then addressed the group with the exaggerated gestures and voice range of a character in a play. "I had a very upsetting experience during the watch last night."
Abel "Anubis" Meyer stood up and led her to a chair next to his own.  His voice was soothing and hypnotic.  It was all right to cry, he told her.  She should take her time.  "Tell us all what happened on the watch, Diana,  when you are ready."
"I saw the head of a deer, all covered in blood!"  
"You saw this in your mind's eye?" Anubis prodded.
The woman named Diana shook her head.  "No.  It floated in front of the little window.  It seemed suspended there.  Then I felt like it was hanging in space in front of me, in the meditation room itself!  I shut my eyes and when Henry came to relieve me, it was gone."
"She did look shook up when I came in," Henry Peacock confirmed.
"What hour did you have for the watch?"  Holly Summerfield asked.
"Two a.m. to three."
I was beginning to grow apprehensive about this watch.  I wondered what everyone was supposed to be watching.  
It was as though I had spoken out loud. Anubis looked directly at me and answered.  "There are negative forces out there, Jill, practitioners of the dark arts, empowered by the destructive god forms that they evoke in their rituals.  These forces always stand ready to attack the forces of good.  Black magicians keep track of our movements.  They know that we are at Pilgrim Farm for our study course.  In our waking hours, they can not harm us, they can not penetrate our wills. But during the hours that all of us are asleep, there is vulnerability to a psychic attack.  We protect ourselves by keeping watch from eleven p.m. until six a.m. We take hourly shifts.  You've seen the small meditation room through the garden just beyond the stream?   That is where we keep the watch.  Which reminds me that there are a couple of hours left tonight that no one has signed up for.  We need volunteers.  I remind everyone that the watch is strictly voluntary."
 He redirected his attention to Diana.  "The Grecian goddess Artemis, whom we also know as Diana, is the goddess of the hunt.  The protectress of women.  She is often seen with her consort, the beautiful deer.  Could it be, Diana, that the goddess wanted to make a visit to her namesake?"
Diana considered this interpretation.  "It didn't seem like that."
Muriel Baxter raised her hand.  To say that her voice was educated didn't quite convey the quality I want to describe. She spoke in an aristocratic cadence that matched her bearing. "It might well be that the goddess Diana wished to show her sorrow over the death of the young woman. Dawn."  Having spoken in cool spring water syllables, she turned from Diana disgusted, like her nose had picked up a stench.
Anubis seemed suddenly stricken.  It was as though he were feeling the pain of Dawn's death throes.  "A tragic incident!" he gasped.
I noted that he didn't say "accident." 
The watch sign-up sheet started around the circle.  I held it longer than I needed to, trying to memorize the names of the people in the group.  I counted twelve names including my own. Anubis had exempted himself from the watch. I was willing to allow him that dispensation.  He was far from being a young man.  I was surprised not to find the name of Victor Stone on the list.  He seemed like such a true-believer type that I had expected him to take a quadruple shift.
  Ian had shamelessly scribbled his name next to "eleven p.m.," the first watch hour, even though that night owl seldom logged off his computer before three.  He had even brought a laptop to Pilgrim Farm.  Probably he wanted to get the watch over with and be settled in front of the computer screen by the after-midnight hours.  I'm told that that's when the chat rooms get going in full swing. 
 I scrawled my signature next to "four a.m."    I'd have to fiddle around with setting the alarm on my Casio.
Holly Summerfield's voice was throaty and just short of hostile.  "I don't think the goddess Diana graced anyone with a visit.  That sounds more like Gabriel, up to his dirty tricks!"
Uneasy looks traveled around the circle. Anubis himself paled.
A thin-voiced woman named Sandy wanted to know who Gabriel was.  I knew better than to ask.
  The group eventually settled down to the work it had traveled to Pilgrim Farm to do. Anubis said that he wanted to teach everyone a system of self-hypnosis, with his usual caveat that participation in any activity was voluntary.  "You must only do what you will. Let your will be your guide." 
 He went on to ask about the difference between wanting something and willing it.  "Jill, what do you think?"
I thought that I didn't like this being called on.  I said, "Your true will might be to lose five pounds.  But you might see a piece of cake and want it.  In eating the cake, you've gratified your want at the expense of your will power."
He pondered this answer.  "You have understood," he remarked in the peculiar use of the present-perfect tense which he sometimes employed.
I had no such understanding of the value of self-hypnosis. I was grateful when the question was put to the group.
"Self hypnosis, like any altered state, can lead us to realizations that we might not ordinarily be able to access," Victor Stone said in a voice  as somber as an intensive care doctor discussing a prognosis. Then, apropos nothing, he suddenly shouted loudly, "Isis! Osiris! Horus!"  
I was jarred by the outcry. If he had been anywhere near an airport gate, he likely would have been quietly escorted away.  But no one in the Eyes seemed to think that anything unusual had happened.
"Self hypnosis would be good to use while you're waiting for the dentist," Henry Peacock added, waiting for applause or laughter.
Diana, who must have realized that she had missed her exit cue, found the only empty chair in the room, the one  next to me.  I've participated in too many groups where, if there was only one empty chair in the room, it would always be the seat next to me. I welcomed Diana with a smile.  She seemed much more interested in ogling Alexander.
Anubis, speaking in his odd but accentless English, started the hypnotic induction and backward countdown from ten to one.  We were supposed to have our eyes affixed to a piece of jewelry.  As I wore none, I closed my eyes and settled for a mental diamond ring.  Almost immediately I felt a body fall across my lap.  I didn't want to cause a stir.   People were halfway to being hypnotized and it's supposed to be harmful to jar people out of that state.  Still,  I had a right to see who or what had invaded my space.  I opened my eyes.  Diana must have fallen over like a tenpin at the first "relax" that Anubis had uttered.  I tried gently to ease her to a sitting position in her own chair.  
Alexander Love was the resident rescuer.  He charged to my side like a pouncing cat.  Diana tottered in a swoon on her own chair, in danger of doing another lap landing or, as I'd hoped, slide off in the opposite direction.  With quiet efficiency, Alexander had carried her out of the chapel.  The hypnotic induction went undisturbed.
  While everyone else seemed to be under, I used my time to think about the bloody deer's head in the meditation room.  I wondered if the meditators who had followed Diana had seen it too.  There were more logical explanations than the visitation from the goddess of the hunt.  The wooded area and the water running through the property would be a magnet for deer.  How could such terrain not be, the way people "developed" the habitats of all the wild creatures, so that they were forced to live in peopled suburbs, traversing roads and dodging cars?  A place with as much acreage as Pilgrim Farm would be a regular wildlife preserve. The poor creature had probably gotten struck on the highway  and was running around in its death throes.  I made a note to search the area around the meditation room for bloodstains.  Perhaps if I followed the blood, I would find the carcass.  
  My reverie was interrupted by murmurs and stirs and scraping of chairs.  People began emerging from their trances.  Alexander was leading Diana back into the chapel.
Muriel mumbled something about certain people not being "suitable for this work."
 Anubis said the words that I was afraid I would never hear.  "Let's take our break."

Chapter eight

  I decided to zero in on Diana. Although I'm no good at small talk, I tried to hook on to her as we left the room.  I was over solicitous about her swoon. I radiated concern about her experience in the meditation room. 
Muriel Baxter passed us. She glanced at me blankly, but she glared at Diana with an expression which I could only read as undisguised hatred. The hallway suddenly felt frostier.  Even allowing that all of Diana's drama might not have been Muriel's thing,that look on her face had sure rocked my clock.
"How did you happen to take this workshop?" I asked Diana. I braced myself for another deification of Anubis but it didn't come.
"I'm an actress.  I thought that studying ritual might help me to get into my roles."   Diana gave a bored yawn.
I had no intention of asking for her resume. "Who is this Gabriel that Holly Summerfield was talking about?"
"Gabriel? I haven't a clue. Oh, excuse me, I need to catch up with Alexander...."
I knew that I couldn't compete with that.  I also knew that Diana didn't have the information I wanted.  She was not one of the core.

Ian came up and slipped an arm around me.  "So, whaddidya think?"
I admitted that I was well out of my league, with talk of dark arts, psychic attacks and seating by zodiac sign.  "Let's head down toward that meditation room.  I want to see if there's blood from that deer."
As we strolled through the garden I told him about Muriel's late night visit. "She said 'poison.'  Dawn knew something that was damaging to the group--or to some of the members of the group.  Muriel thinks that's why she was killed.  She also said Dawn wouldn't have ventured anywhere near the edge of a cliff because she was terrified of heights."
Ian rubbed his head. "Did Muriel say whether anyone else was  in possession of this poison secret?"
"She didn't say. Odd, she described Dawn as immature.  Said she had a lot of personal problems.  Dawn doesn't sound like the type of person who would be entrusted with a shattering secret."   I wondered to myself what type would.
"Unless," Ian said, pointing his finger the way he does when he thinks a two hundred watt light bulb has gone on.  "Unless--she was being set up.  Unless someone told her some dirt, knowing that she was exactly the type who would track it all over the place.  It's like walking through a house with dogshit on your shoe."
"Then why push her over the cliff?"  I asked.
 Obviously the person who told her the dirt had the exact opposite intention from the pusher. That person wanted her to run her mouth and the one who pushed her off the cliff wanted to shut her up."
"Two separate malefactors? With opposing intentions?"  I was ready to give up the whole problem.  Another aspect of the puzzle made me skeptical.
  "Don't get your back up, I don't know if you've eaten everything that Anubis has put on our plate or not.  But we're talking about a group whose belief system is out there on the fringe.  We're talking ritual magic!  So what kind of secret information could Dawn have been carrying that would make things any more disreputable?"
Ian took my point.  "I wish I knew.  These occult groups are notorious for warring factions.  As far back as l900, the poet William Butler Yeats stood in a doorway of a Golden Dawn lodge on Blythe Road in London, refusing entrance to Aleister Crowley.  The police were called and everything."
I was impressed by this grasp of history.  It hinted the answer to my question about the depth of Ian's involvement.
We poked around the immediate area of the tiny meditation room.  I peered into the one small window, duplicating the presumed action of the stricken deer.  I wasn't surprised to find Rao in the room.  For a summer employee, he sure hogged that facility.
"I doubt that you're going to find a trace of an existent deer," Ian said.  "What Diana probably saw was a thought form.  This Gabriel, whoever he is, had probably visualized the image so strongly that he was able to get it to materialize."
"Maybe Diana simply had a hallucination."  I offered my alternative explanation.  "People do, you know.  Under the right circumstances, it's easily done.  Many people who have spent time in hospital intensive care units report having them."
"Not everything has a scientific explanation," Ian persisted.
"I want you to help me find out the story on Gabriel."
"I'll see what I can do."  His voice, when he spoke, sounded grim.  "But I wouldn't recommend that you start asking a lot of questions about Dawn's death, just like you've landed another child abuse investigation.  Stay out of it, Tommy.  For all you know, the death was an accident.  And you don't know these people up here."
 I had learned through the years that his calling me by my nickname wasn't the best sign.  I was going to be humored, at best. I wasn't convinced Ian would act on my request. How well did he himself know the workshop participants?
For all I knew, Ian might be part of my problem.
  I had fifteen minutes before the next class section.  I couldn't think of a better way to use those minutes than to retreat to the nurturance of my little womb-room and its lumpy bed. I sprawled on my back and began to fantasize about all the generations of young seminarians who had lain down on top these same springs..I could visualize these men--more likely, boys-- lying in the still darkness, holding unpitying wrestling contests with their consciences over arcane sins. Sins perhaps not of action but merely of thought or intent.  Some, through the years, might have lost their religion in this room.  Some might have been driven to suicidal despair.  Most likely, thousands of hours of masturbation had occurred on the creaking bedspring.
I got up and peered down at the room on the wing.  The figures of Anubis and Muriel Baxter were outlined against the window pane.
I have always been disdainful of eavesdroppers. Living in modest apartments all my adult life, I have run into my share of them,  idle people  craning their noses out of chain locked doors. I once had a neighbor who used to listen through the wall with a stethoscope. None of these thoughts stopped me from bolting down the hall and down two flights of stairs, headed for Anubis' room. I was convinced that the conversation in that room would give me answers to some of my questions.
  I put my ear to the door but the voices didn't carry.  All the time, I was praying that no one from inside would yank that door open.   I would have literally dropped in.
I remembered that Anubis' room had the same small  inner door that mine did. He would have that identical semi-private bathroom favored by old fashioned dormatories and summer camps. I had once been sent to summer camp--I had stayed three days and acted up so badly that my mother had to come and take me out. The bathroom there had been shared by the camper who occupied the adjoining room.
 I tiptoed down the hall and tapped on the door next to Anubis' room.  When my knock went unanswered, I pushed the door open. The room looked untenanted. The dresser top was bare.  The bed was made. I stole into the bathroom and applauded myself on my correct guess.  This was the bathroom that Anubis shared.  I might as well have been in the room with him and Muriel Baxter.
Muriel's voice was emphatic.  "Of course the poor child couldn't keep her mouth shut.  It didn't matter to them what Dawn knew.  I was the one that the information was meant for. Because I'm the one who has the power to act."
"And will you?"
"How can I just go on?  I have to live with myself, Abel.  We could both be destroyed."
I noted that Muriel had the privilege of calling Anubis the name on his birth certificate.
"So many years ago, my dear Muriel.  And what about all the work we shall have completed together through the years? The magical work?  What about the Order itself!"
My emotions went from elation to dread in three seconds. Someone had entered the bedroom.  I had not taken the precaution of locking myself into the bathroom from both sides.  The footsteps were headed in a straight line to my hideaway.  Dr. Alexander Love pulled open the door and discovered me sitting on his toilet bowl.  He had caught me redhanded.
"What are you doing here?"  The soft monotone had grown severe.  "Spying?"
Even now, I get embarrassed in recounting this moment.  In my years as a child abuse worker, I had committed some brazen deeds. I begged, threatened and cajoled my way through many doors, my black notebook being my only shield. If the family tried to confine me to the first floor, I would ask to use the bathroom.  I could rationalize my subterfuge.  Not now.  I simply felt humiliated, like in the dreams where you find you've gone outside and are only wearing your slip.  
I looked up at the blue eyes and again noticed the matching stone in the ring. "Don't be afraid," Alexander said, his lulling tone returning.  "Just tell me what this is all about."
His intimate voice, his unflinching eyes invited confidence, so much so that I wanted to spill out the whole story. I managed to retrench.  "Oh, hello,  I'd come to see Anubis.   I'd thought this was his room."
"Do you make this a practice?  To enter people's rooms and use their lavatory?"
"No, I don't."  I dropped my voice an octave, matching his own lowered tone. "I'd thought it would be okay to wait for Anubis here.  I thought it was an unassigned room.   Then I had a slight--biological emergency.  I'm sorry. "
"I'll take you to Anubis."  This wasn't the result I wanted but I theorized that it was too late to matter.  Alexander would certainly tell Anubis about locating me in the can.
"I think I can find my own way now.  Or maybe I could ask you.  I'm very interested in the group, Eyes of Horus.  Is there any literature I can read?"
His suspicions seemed to abate although I still didn't know whether he saw me as innocent.  He pulled out an expensive gold-colored pen and began jotting book titles on a sheet of paper.  "There's Budge's 'The Book of the Dead.'  Mead's 'Thrice Greatest Hermes.'"
Still working to lower my pulse rate, I said,  "I want those titles, but what I was hoping to get was something on the group itself."
He acknowledged his error and reached into a dresser drawer for a thin magazine.  It looked like a homemade effort:  a cheap printer and staples.  "We manage to get out a magazine every three months or so.  The current issue is overdue, what with this and that. This is last year's but it should give you a pretty good idea of what we're about."  He glanced at his watch.  We're running late for class."
I thanked him and took the magazine. I scurried ahead of him, knowing that we wouldn't be later than Anubis himself.  I could see the beauty parlor coifed head of Muriel Baxter clacking down the hall with her arms swinging from her shoulders.

Chapter nine

  The group didn't want to settle down. A fiftyish man who hadn't spoken yet was circulating the article about Dawn.  People scanned the newspaper  with a sense of conspiracy.  It took me awhile to understand that they didn't want the chief "Eye of Horus," Anubis, to view it.  One could have been grateful that there was no mention of  Eyes of Horus in the paper. Detective Inez Sharp would eat glass if she caught on to that angle.
  Holly Summerfield seemed mirthful as she slipped the article to Victor Stone.  "Another rich bitch?  'Couldn't tell by me!"  Victor frowned.  He was off on that hair grooming cat behavior again.   I heard the word "lawsuit" whispered.
The biggest change I could detect was that of the demeanor of Abel Meyer. Anubis looked ill and distracted. He showed little readiness to moderate the discussion or take up the reigns and generate a magical activity. The silence was making me embarrassed for him.
 Finally Anubis cleared his throat and asked us to recount our experiences with the hypnosis exercise. The newspaper clipping ceased its circulation once it fell into Alexander's hands.  He shook his head disapprovingly and poked the article into a book.  
Muriel Baxter strode in fifteen minutes late, mumbling a metalic "Sorry" that didn't sound sorry. I was sitting across the circle from her.  Her mouth was taut. Her brow was wrinkled.  Her eyes nested in crows' feet.  I revised my estimate of her age  ten years upward.  Could she be seventy?
"Alexander," Anubis said, "would you start the preparation for the ritual?"
I learned that there was to be a big Egyptian ritual on the last night, the culmination of our work.  Everyone would take the part of an Egyptian deity.  The Eyes of Horus would distribute the masks with the gods' heads and those of us who had brought robes would wear them.  Meanwhile, we must be thinking about which god or goddess we wanted to be, and familiarize ourselves with our role.  Part of a future class would be spent in rehearsal.  Alexander disseminated thick copies of the printed ritual.
I heard Holly mutter "I'm taking Nephthys." I was slow on the uptake. She could have been referring to a blood pressure medication for all I knew.  Then I realized that she was trying to get dibs on a part. I was liking her less with each utterance.  I checked my watch, trying not to look like I was looking.  We still had a half-hour or so before lunch.  I felt like a boxer dodging punches until I could get to my corner for patching up. I'm excellent at remembering what to include when I travel, but it had not occurred to me to pack a library on Egyptian mythology.  
 Anubis interrupted himself by looking at his own watch.  "We are going to work with the Mirror of Hathor."  He glanced at the watch again and looked to be struggling with a decision.  "On second thought, I do not think we will have the time to do so before lunch.  I will allow you the extra half hour.  You can start reading and thinking about the ritual.  I'll see you afterward.  If you have your own mirrors, please bring them."
  I commandeered Ian.  "Alexander Love caught me in his bathroom!"
Ian gave me such a startled look that I couldn't restrain myself from laughing.  I sobered up as I related the snatches of conversation I had heard between Muriel Baxter and Abel Meyer.
  "We were right, Ian. Dawn's secret is some shit that's going to rain down on Anubis. And now Muriel knows and he knows that she knows.  She  confronted him. And she seemed very upset."
Ian grunted by way of acknowledgment.
"Mightn't Muriel be in danger?"  I wondered
"If one buys into the murder theory, she might be."
"She came to my room last night to tell me that Dawn's accident was a murder. She seemed to be looking for some support.  Yet, today I couldn't even get her to make eye contact."
He didn't reply so I added, "I think that Muriel needs to get into her car and drive away from Pilgrim Farm."
"She doesn't have a car.  At least she didn't bring her Porsche.  She rode in from New York with the big man himself, him and Alexander.  She must have caught the Metroliner from Philadelphia  to Manhattan."
Of course it would be the Metroliner, not an ordinary coach.
"Funny that she didn't ride with Dawn, since they both live in Philadelphia."
The thought that Dawn might have a car somewhere in the parking area occurred to me for the first time. That thought was followed by a second.  If Dawn did have a car outside, I had to search it. Would the police have removed it by now, looking for clues? I could check. For that matter, why not check out Dawn's room at Pilgrim Farm as well?
Having dumped on Ian once more, I now wanted to give him the slip. I needed to read that Eyes of Horus magazine, for starters.
   "Where can I get a crash course on the gods and goddesses of ancient Egypt?" 
Ian was able to pull the rabbit out of the hat. "Practical Egyptian Magic" by Murry Hope. "I have a copy with me. Very concise.  I'll bring it to the table at lunch."

I had trouble holding together all the events that had happened in the twenty-four hours that I had been at Pilgrim Farm.  My foolish grandstanding with Peg Woodward had receded to the distant past.
What were the facts?  Dawn had gone for a walk and  had fallen or was pushed off a cliff.  A prickly homicide detective, Inez Sharp, had  made a hasty determination of accidental death..  Muriel Baxter had visited my bedroom.  I had met the improbable Abel "Anubis" Meyer. I had heard Muriel remonstrating with Anubis about some secret.  I had learned about the mystery man, Gabriel.  I had gotten caught in the bathroom with my pants up.
I walked into the small administrative office across the hall from the library. Its furniture was a mixture of early attic and antique.  The ever present Rao looked like a part of the furnishings himself.  He sat behind an outdated computer, entering data. I was thankful that Ian was not here, otherwise we would never get off the topic of hard drives and RAM.  The grandfather clock outside the door bonged out the Westminster chimes.
"What jobs don't you do, Rao? You're the gardener, you're the cook.  Now you're the secretary."  I wondered if he scrubbed the bathrooms too.
The Indian smiled beatifically, but the smile stopped somewhere short of his eyes.  
"I want to check the room numbers of a couple of people.  I need to talk to them."
I was ready to thank God and the whole Egyptian pantheon that he didn't ask who.  There was a printout.  With synchronized movements, he located it and handed it to me.  Nothing like all the jerking around and drawer banging I'd always had to do in the days I had a work station.
I located Muriel Baxter's room number and then looked for Dawn's.  
"What does 'C..L.' mean, Rao?" All I could think of was 'chopped liver.'
 I was not far off base.
"It means 'cosmic liver.'"
 I could accommodate a cosmic mind or even a cosmic heart but to include the liver was carrying things too far.  
"'Cosmic livers' have not requested a room.  They are preferring to camp on the grounds.  They can pitch their tents anywhere past the octagon room.  It is for the nature lovers.  Livers."
"Gotcha."
"The accommodation is also cheaper," Rao added.  "I must now help in the dining room."  He did not seem stressed by time.
I tried to move like him and glide out of the office, thinking that he would approve. 
  Once out of sight, I ran to area where we'd had to leave our cars.  This clearing in the woods was located the equivalent of a couple of city blocks from the main monastery building.  Even so, the parking area was separated by a wall of trees.  No one wanted to look out the windows of the retreat site and have to look at the biggest pollution machine in the history of humanity.
I had no trouble linking the ancient green Toyota with Dawn Vanderbosch.  Hers was the only car packed with camping equipment.  Dawn had never gotten the chance to pitch her tent.
I pulled at the car doors which of course were locked. I needed a rent-a kid. Being familiar with the stolen car rate in Baltimore, I would guess that any boy older than eight could be inside that Toyota before you'd had time to toot a horn.  I didn't want to crack the ignition, I only wanted to get inside.  I had to run all the way back to my room.  I returned with a clothes hanger and set to work.  All the while I wondered why the police had ignored the car.  Maybe they would return for it later--and find my fingerprints all over the place.
 Eventually the hanger worked.  I climbed into the car. I prayed that no one would come by to see me.  The unpacked camping gear of itself was enough to attract attention.
I fiddled with the glove compartment until it flung open. It was crammed with papers, repair bills, and a small black address book.  I pocketed the address book.  I would return it to its proper place later, but first I thought it warranted a look.  
Just as I was ready to split with the goods, a car cut into the lot.  There was no time to look and see whether  friend or foe.  In  fact I doubted that I could count anyone in the former category. I threw myself on the floor in a torturous crouched position.  Unfortunately, the Toyota had an empty space right next to it.  Naturally this was the space the other car pulled into. I waited in vain for the slamming of the car door.  The occupant or occupants were in no hurry to get out. With my luck it would be a couple using the lot as a lovers' lane.  They could be messing around all afternoon. My foot throbbed under the weight of my body and my knee was twisted sideways.  I wondered whether I would ever walk again.  
I heard two voices that I knew.  Holly Summerfield and Victor Stone.  
"Things might get very interesting on the watch tonight,"  I heard Victor say.
"You're one to talk about the watch!  You never take one," Holly snorted.
"You had to say that?  I've told you the reason. And I expect you to keep that reason confidential."
"It's still looks funny, since you're the self appointed sergeant-at-arms for the Eyes of Horus."
Stone sounded worried.  "Should I address the group about my situation?"
"No, no, sorry I brought it up. I hope that hysterical little snit Diana isn't on again tonight"
"She doesn't have sufficient psychic defenses," Stone was saying.  "Her will is weak.  Anything can penetrate."
Then I heard him call out "Isis! Osiris! Horus!"
"I don't think Diana's on.  I'm down for one a.m., Henry Peacock at two, that Baxter woman at three and that new hussy at four a.m.  Jill something or other."
"If Gabriel gets playing his games, it'll be when Peacock's out there or the new girl.  He's not going to try that stuff with you or Muriel."
How would Gabriel know the schedule, I wondered.  Telepathy?
Holly finally remembered that lunch was being served. I thanked God for providing  a hedge witch with  stomach juices. I heard the pair of them disappear down the path.
  Slowly, painfully pulled myself up on the seat of the car. I slipped the small address book in the pocket of my jeans. My muscles were quivering with cramping and with fear.
I sank down under a shade tree a safe enough distance from the parking lot and pulled out the Eyes of Horus magazine.  The articles were what one would expect from such a rag.   The banner article was authored by Anubis.  I wanted to read what the old man had to say, but later.  Other articles featured the significance of the Autumnal Equinox, pyramid power, and the symbolism of the Ankh. I surveyed the list of contributors.  At least half of the magazine was written by Gabriel Spencer.
The inside of the front cover read, "We acknowledge special thanks to Muriel Baxter, editor, without whose generous contribution this organ could not be produced."
Nowhere could I find the name of Alexander Love.
  I made it to the dining room just as Rao was beginning to pull the serving bowls.  I tossed whatever leftovers I could salvage onto my plate .  Ian, Alexander and Henry Peacock were deep in discussion.  It was obvious even to me that Henry was having a hard time keeping up.  I saw that  Ian had saved an empty seat for me next to his own. I felt touched beyond the proportion of the action.
 Ian had also brought the promised book. "Meet me at the coffee pot," I whispered.
I held up the back issue of the magazine.  "Gabriel was a big Kahuna in this group less than a year ago," I said. "Now it looks like Gabriel is out and Alexander has shot out from nowhere.  I need you to get the story, Ian.  You can get Alexander to tell you.  He'll trust you much quicker than he'll trust me."
Ian took the magazine.
"He'll trust you more if we're not seen together so much," I added. "I'll keep my distance."

A walk in the garden was called for.  I needed to chill out before the afternoon session.  There was no better place to do it than under the trunk of a stout tree, surrounded by scents of roses,  marigolds and honeysuckle vines.  I had brought a small notepad with me.  I began copying all the contacts from Dawn's address book that seemed useful.
My craved-for solitude was not to last.  Within two minutes I heard the sound of a creaking hinge.  Muriel Baxter had pushed open the garden gate.
  Muriel lowered herself on a small stone bench as delicately as an egg shell.  Digging into her pocketbook, she pulled out a cellular phone.  I had my belly full of snooping by now but since I was already frozen in my hiding place behind the thick tree, I pricked up my ears like a guard dog.
"Muriel.here."   Her hushed tone told me that she had assigned the call a high degree of privacy. Her whisper tested the range of my hearing.
  "Dawn's dead...they're saying she fell off a cliff.  You and I know very well...."
Since I wanted to know who she was calling, I was hoping that Muriel was one of those people who punctuates dialogue with direct address.  It would be even better if she were a repeater.
"Did Dawn tell me anything about Abel?  You shouldn't need to ask.  You knew she would...no, I don't think so...I confronted Abel so he knows I know... don't you dare to show your face here.  Not a good idea at all...I don't know what to do about it.  A detective came and she was the crudest thing you'd want to meet.  A really grotesque creature...I have an hour of 'watch' tonight, maybe the answer will come to me then...all right, then."
Muriel stuck the phone into her purse and I stepped out from behind the tree.
"You came to my bedroom last night but you haven't met my eyes ever since,"  I said. "Where do we go next?  Where do we go with Dawn?"
Muriel took the pose of a prim headmistress but I could tell that she was dying to know how much I had heard of the call.   "I was informing a mutual friend of the loss of Dawn."
"And you think that she was pushed off that cliff.  What are you and I going to do about that?"
You'd think I had been asking what to do about the global warming crisis.  "Well, I haven't the slightest idea what to do about it."
"If Dawn was killed for something she knows,  then what makes you feel so safe?  If you know too, aren't you in some danger?"
"Why do you presume I feel safe?   Perhaps I don't."
"Can you tell me what this secret is?  The secret you think Dawn died for?"
"I don't think that would be a good idea...." 
 We were no longer alone in the garden.  Alexander Love had just walked through the garden gate. There was no getting away from anybody here, the quietest corner would suddenly transform into Grand Central Station.  Alexander stopped to bury his face in a rose.  I had the rueful remembrance that I had assented to this trip only because I wanted to get away somewhere for some "r and r."
"Time to get back to class, ladies," he said, giving us an unsolicited reward of a broad, benevolent, blue eye-twinkling smile.  
What was he, anyway, some kind of herd dog?
I could have killed when I spied the figure of Rao gliding out of the meditation room.

Chapter ten

  "Please close your eyes, relax completely.  Breathe deeply, and as you inhale, think of the freshness and the scent of the ground after a light rain.  Feel yourself as synonymous with the earth...with regeneration...."
I had no intention of letting myself relax too much but I did pay quiet homage to Anubis' own regenerative powers.  The old man was a charged battery. He circled the room like a dog herding sheep.  Half of the group sat trancelike in their seats.  The rest chose the floor. I could barely sit at all.  I didn't know how I would get through the afternoon.  Yet I didn't dare let Anubis see that I was anything less than one thousand percent engrossed in the activity.  I heard his voice waft close to me and  felt that I could detect a mild electrical field.  I worried whether the group leader really did have magical power--in which case his antenna would be able to tease out my distracted mind.
"The goddess Hathor," he was saying,   "is the daughter of Ra.  What you must never forget about Hathor is that there are two aspects of her powers.  Foremost, she is the loving and ever nourishing cow, never begrudging the gift of her milk.  But she has a second guise, that of the lioness-headed warrior goddess!"  His voice gained strength as he stood in the sanctuary of the old chapel.
 "The Mirror of Hathor is a very vital magical tool.  It is tremendous protection against enemies...."
All I could think of was that I could sure use one of those mirrors. I hoped that Muriel Baxter had her own.
Anubis laid an ornate bronze disk shaped object on a small table.  "You will, each of you, as I call your names, walk quietly to the table and gaze into the Mirror of Hathor.  You will, however, remain in your meditative states.  Once you have experienced the mirror, set it down carefully, thank the goddess, and return to your places to meditate upon your vision."
He began calling the names.  He made each name sound like a mournful caress. I sat with my fingers covering my eyes, but I did plenty of peeping.
One by one, Ian, Victor Stone, Holly Summerfield and Henry Peacock sleepwalked toward the bronzed mirror.  Henry gazed into it like Narcissus adoring his reflection in the water.  Each tiptoed back to his seat like communicants returning from the altar rail. 
"My daughter.  Muriel.  Please approach."
She could have been a graduate walking across the stage. Magna cum laude.  Muriel steadied the mirror in her hands as though it foretold her destiny. She stared into the mirror for some seconds before she turned away.  She looked somber but accepting.  I wondered what secret the mirror had revealed.  I hoped it was not murder.
"Jill.  My child."
I expected everyone's eyes to be boring into me but people were too busy with their own visions.  I found my face in the polished bronze.  The only message I divined was that my bangs needed trimming.
"And Diana -- Diana, named for the goddess of the forest."
Diana, the stricken deer, tiptoed toward the mirror.  She picked it up like it was a partially detonated bomb.
I braced myself for another attention ploy.
Still I was unprepared for the chilling, repeated screams.  The bronze mirror smashed into the floor tiles with a clatter.
  Victor Stone jumped up to recover the mirror.  "Isis! Osiris! Horus!"  You could never tell when Victor was going to invoke his trinity.  
Anubis reacted as though Diana's response was routine, even expected.
"My dearest Diana."  He spoke like a man wondering what was on the six o'clock news.  "Can you tell us what the goddess Hathor has revealed?"
Diana clasped her hands over her face.
  "My face!  My face had melted away!"
Anubis gestured to his lieutenant, Dr. Love.  Once more, Alexander, concerned and attentive,  guided Diana past the convulsive stained glass saints and out of the chapel.
   Two or three others straggled up to the mirror.  But the spell was broken.
Holly Summerfield had her hand in front of her mouth, whispering to Victor.  I heard her say  "Fruitcake.  She should be put out!"
Victor frowned.  He raised his hand tentatively.  "I hope I'm not speaking out of turn, but is Diana  suitable for this kind of work?  She could ruin the ritual." 
I wondered how Anubis would field that one.  He remained silent for a full minute,  perhaps fallen into one of his trances. 
 Finally he replied,  "The goddess is trying to get through.  The goddess has chosen Diana as her messenger."
In the distance, I heard the bonging of the grandfather clock.  
  We finished the session by rehearsing for the ritual.  A poor quality tape of the "Triumphal March from 'Aida'" blared from a battered tape player. We practiced entering the chapel in procession.
  I lacked seniority to pull down a role as one of the Egyptian deities.  Instead I was consigned a part as Sentinel in the West..  I didn't complain.
Walking out of the room, I pinned myself to Alexander Love.  "I got a chance to read over the magazine and I have a couple of questions.  Do you have time for a five-minute stroll through the garden?"
He looked at Anubis for his chief's nodding permission. 
But Diana came prancing, slipping her hand through Alexander's arm.  "Ooh, I'm so sorry.  It seems like you're always helping me out of the room."
To his credit, he made it clear that our conversation took priority. I returned Diana's venomous glance with a cockeyed grin. Alexander led me through a door at the side of the building.
  "I'm certain you do have questions."  His voice was as soft as a purring kitten.  
But kittens can pounce.
Of course the only question I had was about Gabriel but I couldn't lead off with that.  Instead I listened for nearly half an hour while Alexander told me more than I'd ever wanted to know about the nature of mystery schools, Egyptian gods and goddesses, the importance of meditation, the meaning of the ankh, the Sacred Tarot, the Holy Qabalah,  and the cup,  rod, sword and  pentacle.  I could tell that he cherished his instructional role.  Perhaps he was being primed to become the chief  "Eye" if Abel Meyer ever had to be pensioned off.
I nodded my feigned interest as he talked. Finally I sucked in a deep breath and tried to sound  nonchalant.  "I notice that this man named Gabriel Spencer was a heavy contributor to the magazine.  So--why isn't he here?"
He fielded the question as smoothly as a shortstop scooping up a routine ground ball. "Gabriel betrayed Anubis."
"Betrayed?"  That was a strong word.  Judas-talk.
"It was personal. Between the two of them.  But it had ramifications for the group. Anubis was unable to continue working with Gabriel."  He spoke as matter of factly as if he were discussing what he expected Rao to throw onto the table for the evening meal.  
"Had Gabriel been with the group very long?"
"Actually, yes.  From its inception."
"Eighteen years?"  I thanked my brain for allowing me to remember that much of what I'd read.
Alexander nodded.  "It was a blow for the old man when they broke up.  There was some concern about a schism in the ranks."
The phrase "broke up" made it sound like a lovers' relationship.  I wondered whether it was.
  "I know that esoteric groups do tend toward these schisms."  Then I shamelessly parroted, "William Butler Yeats stood in the doorway of the Golden Dawn Lodge in London in l900, barring entrance to Aleister Crowley."  I asked whether Gabriel was a man of Anubis' age.  
"Gabriel is in his late thirties, I think. Age is never an issue with the Order.  It's not how many chronological years you have been on the earth in your current incarnation.  It's whether or not you're an 'old soul.'"
"Of course. Couldn't agree more."  So Gabriel would have been about twenty when he met an Anubis who was nearly old enough to get Medicare.
 I  wanted to know much more but I didn't want Alexander to see me as a wag. If I stopped now, the door might stay open for future conversations.
Only trouble was, I wasn't sure if I could keep hanging on my own hinges. I excused myself and again retreated to my room.
  Since the bed was at window level, I felt safer sitting on the floor.  I stuck a pillow behind my back and leaned against the wall.  I had no rubber gloves, didn't think I would have needed them.  Not wanting to rub my fingerprints all over dead Dawn's address book, I turned the pages with the eraser end of a pencil.  
Dawn had entries for Abel Meyer and  Gabriel Spencer. Anubis lived in the upper West Side of Manhattan, on Seventy-second  Street.  I have never known the Big Apple that well, but I guessed his neighborhood to be a comfortable  middle class pocket.  Gabriel showed an address on East Seventh Street in the East Village.  Muriel Baxter sported a ritzy Rittenhouse Square address in Philadelphia.  I found no address for Alexander,  none for Holly Summerfield nor Victor Stone.
 So many of the names in the book were men that it made me wonder about Dawn's profession.  A few entries were full names and addresses, carefully printed. Most were hastily scrawled first names followed by phone digits.
 Some of the listings probably told more than Dawn had ever wanted to share:  Salvation Army Women's Residence. Market Street Shelter for Women. Had Dawn done a stint as a street person? The rich lawyer father must have been a proponent of tough love.  
Under "N" Dawn had written a phone number and the words "Narcotics Anonymous."  
This book belonged in the hands of Detective Inez Sharp, but how to get it to her?  For starters, I could put the book back in the car where I'd gotten it.  I copied all the information I wanted, slipped a few tissues around the small black book and headed down toward the parking lot.  I would just drop the address book on the front seat.
My only problem was that the car was gone.
No end!   An old station wagon with the letters "The Pilgrims" painted on its sides and all the correct cause bumper stickers in the world glued to its bumpers, pulled up.   I read stickers about Mother Earth, about braking for animals, which I do myself; about cigarette smoking and death heads, about adopting a tree.  Rao jumped out of the station wagon, carrying three paper bags.  Our supper, I assumed.
I relieved him of one of the bags.  It felt like twenty pounds of brown rice.
"What happened to Dawn's car?" I asked.  "The dead girl's car.  It was here earlier today."
"Somebody has come for it.  I think it is the police."
The black address book bulged from the pocket of my blue cotton pants. It might as well have been the unabridged dictionary. I wanted to be rid of the book.  My first thought was to drop it right there in the parking lot.  My second thought was to find a post office and mail it to Detective Inez Sharp.  But for the time being, I had no choice but to climb back up to my room and stick it under the mattress of my bed.
  People began hovering around the dining room a good fifteen minutes before the evening meal.  Holly Summerfield and Victor Stone stood whispering just outside the door.  Diana and Alexander were conversing earnestly under the grandfather clock.  A few of the silent meditators stared at the dining room door yearningly, as though the gates of heaven were about to swing open.  The Enneagram people chatted animatedly about people being a "two" or a "five" or an "eight with a nine wing."  Their leader, Peg Woodward, walked past without speaking.  I don't think she even saw me.  Her mind was probably on Dawn Vanderbosch' lawyer father.
I had once done some volunteer work at a nursing home, where most of the residents saw the meals as highlights of the empty and endless days.  The hours of the meals never changed.  Lunch hit the table at eleven and supper at four-thirty.  It wasn't unusual for people to start rolling their wheelchairs into the dining room an hour beforehand.  I recognized a variant of this institutional behavior at Pilgrim Farm.
Alexander Love again piled up a tray and carried it to Abel Meyer's room. If not for Alexander, poor Anubis would have starved to death!  Not wanting to look like I was hanging onto Ian's shirt tails, I plopped down next to Henry Peacock.  He was well named.  His wardrobe tended toward the garish and multicolored.  He also had a tendency to strut.
"Have you done a night watch yet?" he asked.  Before I could answer, he began to pontificate. It was important to go on watch wearing a hooded magical robe, he insisted.  
"Absolutely," added an earnest faced young woman, by way of punctuation.  Her name was Sandra.  Apparently, she did not utter independent sentences.  She merely interjected agreements.  She would never have disagreed with anyone in a hundred lifetimes.
"The only robe I've brought is my bathrobe.  I don't particularly want to roam around the grounds in that," I said.
Holly Summerfield looked disgusted, as though I'd traveled to Pilgrim Farm without regular clothes at all.  "You're new at this?" she asked.
"I was a last minute switch from the Enneagram workshop."
"You won't be able to borrow anyone else's robe."  Henry sounded as stern as my local librarian the last time I'd lost a book.  "Robes are too personal.  Your energy vibration clings to your robe."
Alexander Love had reappeared.  He slid into the conversation as though he had never left the table.  "The teaching makes it clear," he said, flashing his aquamarine ring as he passed the margarine, "that you do not need the outer accouterments for magical work.  You don't need a particular form of dress.  You don't need candles, incense, chanting,  chalices, cauldrons.   You don't need any of it. You can do all of the work in your head by just building up the images. Of course, there are people who require all the trappings.  They lack imagination."
Henry looked humbled.  He tried the defense mechanism of projection, turning his attention to Victor Stone.
"Victor!  I didn't see your name on the list to do a watch."
Victor Stone's expression turned to granite. I thought of the conversation between him and Holly while I had lain crunched on the floor of Dawn's Toyota.  
"I'm unable to take a night watch," Victor said tautly. "I'm taking medication.  The medication is very sedating.  Once I take it, I can't arouse myself in the night."  His voice got  huffy.  "I'm only explaining this lest anyone should think I'm shirking my duties,  Henry.  Because it's not your business."
"I hope you can arouse yourself if you gotta pee," Holly said.
I wanted to ask about the medication but I'm not completely without a sense of decorum.  
Alexander didn't have the same scruples. "Blood pressure?  Heart?  Forgive my intrusion, but this is my profession.  Perhaps you need to be looking at homeopathy."
Henry Peacock, his feathers ruffled, pushed his chair back and carried his tray to the disposal window.  
Diana took his vacated seat.  "Oh, I thought I'd never find you," she said to Alexander, putting her hand to her ear as though she had been hunting for a misplaced earring.  "I was  in back of you in the food line and then you  disappeared."
I noticed that people had a way of disappearing and reappearing around Pilgrim Farm. 
"Is Anubis coming to the table?" Ian asked.
"I carried his supper to his room.  He needs to conserve his energy," Alexander said.
I searched around for my own energy reserve but all I came up with was an empty tank.  Someone had turned on my tap and let me drain.   I needed to get to my room before I collapsed, but I didn't want to make a production about leaving.
Once Ian had told me that people can make themselves invisible, so that they can pass down a city sidewalk without being seen.  I argued that this was impossible unless the whole street was occupied by the unsighted.  Yet there are times when people don't see you.  I guess it all depends on how you walk and how you dress and whether you're careful not to project an attitude.  It also helps if you look like you know where you're going and you don't show or even feel emotion.  I tried emptying myself of emotional content as I slipped slowly out of the dining room.  I avoided eye contact.  Whether or not anyone noticed my exit, I can't truly say. But I know that I felt relieved to fall across my narrow bed.  
  I was too tired to sleep and anyhow it was still daylight, no later than seven p.m. I lay there barely conscious but my body would not take that extra step of dispatching my brain into sleep.  I wondered if dying ever felt like this, an inability to maintain consciousness.  Eventually I drifted off into a state where I fell captive not to true dreams but to a series of unpleasant images, quasi-wakefulness, and then the drifting again.  I mulled over the hypothesis that the night watch would protect the group against what they called a psychic attack.  Was someone trying to attack me now, to break into my consciousness and post disturbing images there?  
I have always hated being in an unlighted room and having shadows creep up. Even worse is taking a nap while there's still daylight, only to wake up in a pitch dark room. Before this year I had never been much of a nap taker.  But in those months when I sat home waiting in vain for the Social Services director to clear my reputation and call me back to work, I was introduced to the kind of fatigue that can only come from depression and relentless insomnia..  I napped in those days.
 I finally dragged my weary body from the hot, sticky bed.  I had to go to the bathroom.  I staggered through the door with the same weariness that one feels when nature calls at 3 a.m. You have to arouse yourself enough to get up but your body bucks you every step of the way.
  I remembered the coffee which brewed all day long in the dining room.  Perhaps a few drops would still be there.  I made my way downstairs.  Outside, it was not quite dark. I walked into the deserted dining room.  The Mr. Coffees were spotless and empty.
For a place that housed close to sixty people, the building was eerily silent.  Maybe this was meditation hour and I'd missed it.  I thought I might check out Ian. Then I heard the voices.  
Muriel Baxter stood just outside the back kitchen door, near the garbage bin. She was engaged in a heated exchange with a tall,fair haired man in an old blue pickup truck.
I heard her say, "I warned you not to drive up here!"  Although upset, she still exuded her cool control.  I couldn't hear everything the man was saying. It was something about "no harm" or "make sure you're not harmed."
"What if you're seen?  What if Anubis...."
The man in the pickup seemed to be setting out a case for Muriel to leave with him.  Her refusal was adamant.  
"And no more tricks.  There's enough going on here as it is, with Dawn and everything...."
"What can I say to make you get in the truck and leave?" the man was asking in a low voice.
The discussion went on for another five minutes.  Finally the blue  truck groaned and grumbled as it was slammed first into reverse, then into first gear.  It backfired once or twice as it disappeared around the back of the building.  As it receded, I was able to read the bumper sticker "Magicians have crystal balls."

Chapter eleven

 Around ten o'clock I wandered out into the thick night air to catch a glimpse of the silver-golden glow of the full moon.  No matter how many times I see the full moon, I always feel a primal sense of awe, like I had never seen a full moon before.  The full moon is most striking when it is orange and bloated and low in the sky upon rising.  Tonight, though, it was later and the moon was already halfway to its zenith.
 I heard a rustle in the bushes.  Two little kitten-cats jumped out and chased each other across the clearing.  One had orange markings.  The other was a stripped brown tabby which reminded me of the tabbies that had lived in a nearby alley during my childhood.  You don't see so many of the tabbies anymore.  People seem to favor the solid black or white colors, or else the  multicolored and almost always female calicoes and tortoises.  The sight of the kittens dancing in the moonlight restored my energies.
I could hear a faint strain of the "Triumphal March from Aida."  Some of the group, those who had starring roles, must have been practicing the ritual.  Ian had told me that you don't want too much practice for magical rituals or else the practice wo