The Valkyries

"Put the cord around your neck," she said to Paulo. "And hold the medallion with both hands joined, in prayer."

Paulo did as he was told. He was fearful of a darkness so complete, and he was remembering things he would rather not think about.

He felt Valhalla approaching him from behind. Her hands touched his head.

The darkness seemed almost solid. Nothing, not a scintilla of light, entered there.

Valhalla began to pray in a strange language. At first, he tried to identify the words she was saying. Then, as her fingers moved across his head, Paulo felt the medallion growing hot. He concentrated on the heat in his hands.

The darkness was changing. Various scenes from his life began to pass before him. Light and shadow, light and shadow, and--suddenly, he was once again in darkness.

"I don't want to remember that..." he pleaded with the Valkyrie.

"Remember! Whatever it is, try to remember every minute of it."

The darkness brought terror to him, the terror he had experienced fourteen years earlier.

When he woke up, he found a note on the coffee table: "I love you. I'll be right back." At the bottom, she had written the date: "25 May 1974."

Funny. To put the date on a love note.

He had awakened a bit dizzy, still startled by the dream. In it, the director of the recording studio was offering him a job. He didn't need a job: The director actually functioned more like his employee--his and his partner's. Their records were at the top of the charts, selling thousands of copies, and letters were arriving from all corners of Brazil, from people wanting to know what the Alternative Society was.

All you have to do is listen to the words of the song, he thought to himself. It wasn't really a song--it was a mantra from a magic ritual, with the words of the Beast of the Apocalypse being read in the background in a low voice. Whoever sang the song would be invoking the forces of darkness. And everyone was singing it.

He and his partner had done the whole thing. The royalties they earned were being used to buy a lot near Rio de Janeiro. There they would recreate what, almost one hundred years earlier, the Beast had tried to establish in Cefalu, Sicily. But the Beast was expelled by the Italian authorities. The Beast had erred on many points--he had not gathered a sufficient number of disciples, and he did not know how to earn money. The Beast told everyone that his number was 666, and that he had come to create a world where the strong would be served by the weak, and the only law was that everyone do as they desired. But the Beast didn't know how to spread the ideas--few people had taken the Beast's words seriously.

He and his partner, Raul Seixas, well, they were completely different! Raul sang, and the entire country listened. They were young, and they were earning money. Yes, it was true that Brazil was in the hands of a military dictatorship, but the government was concerned about guerrillas. They couldn't waste their time with a rock singer. Just the opposite: The authorities felt that rock music kept the country's youth away from communism.

He drank his coffee standing at the window. He was going to take a walk, and meet later with his partner. It didn't bother him at all that nobody knew who he was, while his friend was famous. What mattered was that they were earning money, and this would allow them to put their ideas into practice. People from the world of music, and the world of magic--ah, they knew! His anonymity with regard to the general public was even rather funny--more than once, he had had the pleasure of hearing someone comment on his work--without knowing that the author was listening nearby.

He donned his sneakers. As he was tying the laces, he felt dizzy.

He raised his head. The apartment seemed darker than it should have been. The sun was shining outside, and he had just left the window. Something was burning--an electrical appliance, maybe, because the stove was disconnected. He looked throughout the apartment. Nothing.

The air was heavy. He decided to go out right away--without tying his sneakers, he started to leave, but realized that he really wasn't feeling well.

Could be something I ate, he said to himself. But when he ate something that was off, his entire body usually gave him a signal, and he knew that. He wasn't nauseated, didn't feel like vomiting. Just a kind of dizziness that didn't seem to want to pass.

Dark. The darkness grew; it seemed like a gray cloud around him. He felt the dizziness again. Yes, it had to be something he had eaten--Or maybe an acid flashback, he thought. But he hadn't tried LSD in five years. The delayed effects had disappeared after the first six months, and never returned.

He was frightened, he had to get out.

He opened the door--the dizziness was coming and going, and he might get worse out in the street. Better to stay home and wait. The note was there on the table--she would be home shortly--he could wait. They could go together to the pharmacy or to a doctor, although he hated doctors. It couldn't be anything serious. No one has a heart attack at age twenty-six.

No one.

He sat down on the couch. He needed some distraction. He shouldn't think about her, or the time would pass even more slowly. He tried to read the paper, but the dizziness, the lightheadedness, came and went, stronger each time. Something was pulling him into a black hole that appeared to have formed in the middle of the room. He began to hear noises--laughing, voices, things breaking. That had never happened--never! Whenever he had taken anything, he knew he was drugged, knew it was a hallucination and would pass with time. But this--this was terribly real!

No, no, it couldn't be real. The reality was the rugs, the curtains, the bookshelves, the coffee table with the leftovers of bread on it. He made an effort to concentrate on the scene surrounding him, but the feeling of a black hole in front of him, the voices, the laughter, all continued.

None of this was happening. Definitely! He had practiced magic for six years. Performed all the rituals. He knew it was nothing more than suggestion. A psychological effect that was playing on his imagination. Nothing more.

His panic was increasing, and the dizziness was more pronounced--pulling to the outside of his body, toward a dark world, toward that laughter, those voices, those noises--real!

I cannot let myself be afraid. Fear will make it come back. He tried to control himself, went to the sink and bathed his face. He felt a bit better, the feeling seemed to have passed. He put his sneakers on and tried to forget about it. He toyed with the idea of telling his partner he had entered into a trance, had been in contact with demons.

But he had only to think about that, and the dizziness returned--more strongly.