The Hollow Ones(13)
This schism in the disciplines of science and magic resulted in his diminished influence within court circles and affected the patronage he had come to rely upon—that had, to state a fact, funded his Mortlake manor and subsidized the acquisitions both scholarly and esoteric that made his mind-castle the envy of all of Britain. Purposefully, and perhaps a bit desperately, Dee had of late turned more fully toward an exploration of the supernatural.
His aim was to repair the schism of science and magic, to bridge this divide through the practice of alchemy and divination. He sought an audience with experts in this realm: He sought communion with none other than angels.
This unorthodox pursuit had introduced Dee to an underground league of occultists and spirit mediums. After consulting various mystics who claimed to be in contact with higher realms, he partnered with Edward Talbot, whose real name was Edward Kelley but was using the pseudonym after a conviction for forgery a few years before. Both of Talbot’s ears had been removed by a magistrate as punishment for that crime, which was why Talbot wore a monk’s skullcap even indoors. Dee, however, overlooked all of Talbot’s past indiscretions, so enamored was he with the quality of Talbot’s spiritual consultation and the breadth of his knowledge of the uncanny arts, specifically his talent as a scryer.
“We must begin,” said Dee. “This is the most auspicious time, Edward…”
Talbot stood now in the center of the great library, his psychic attention focused darkly upon an orbuculum resting in the smooth, cupped palm of a bronze casting of a human hand. The crystal ball was flawless, a perfectly smooth sphere lit from below by three votive candles, giving it the appearance of illumination from within. John Dee wore his customary white gown, his silken white beard falling beneath his mustache in a perfect V, looking like a wizard immersed in a spellcasting. Talbot was deep in a trance, incanting in a language revealed to him and John Dee exclusively by Enochian angels.
There was a third participant in this ritual séance—although whether he was an active participant or merely a witness is known only by those in attendance.
Not much is known about Hugo Blackwood. He seldom spoke, but appeared to be constantly by Dee’s side, privately and in public functions. People called him Dee’s Shadow but were careful to only do it when he was not nearby.
He was originally presumed to have first encountered John Dee during Dee’s 1555 prosecution for treason—Dee had been accused of reading by “casting” (that is to say, tampering with) then Queen Mary’s horoscope—in the Star Chamber where Blackwood was apprenticing as a legal clerk. This theory has fallen out of favor over the past twenty years as contradictory biographical information, however slim, has surfaced, which would place Blackwood’s age at the time of the invocation somewhere in his thirties. It now appears that Hugo Blackwood was originally employed as Dee’s legal representative, though documents from the time are scarce. One theory, as yet not disproved, is that Blackwood represented John Dee in matters relating to his property and acquisitions.
What is known is that, like many before and after him, Hugo Blackwood was drawn into the famous philosopher’s orbit. The reason for his presence at this invocation is unclear. It is not known if he, like Dee and Talbot, had fasted in preparation for the ceremony, though it is presumed that he partook of a goblet of fermented grain beverage, a draught of wormwood, derived from Artemisia vulgaris cultivated in Dee’s own garden. Perhaps Hugo Blackwood was an interested observer, or, less likely but still possible, perhaps he simply happened to be at Dee’s residence on other business on the night in question.
Or perhaps, as had happened many times before, John Dee sensed something in Hugo Blackwood’s character that interested him, that Dee judged made him conducive to his pursuit of evidence of an exalted, alternate realm, that prompted him to include the barrister in this ceremony.
Barely any mention of the extraordinary survives in Dee’s notebooks, so either nothing occurred that evening that Dee believed warranted special notation, or perhaps he was unaware. Dee lived many more years in search of the ineffable, ambitiously attempting to fuse mathematics, divination, astronomy, and spiritualism into a single discipline, and never succeeding.
But on this night, something did happen. In the act of experimenting with spheromancy in order to summon an archangel to divulge its divine knowledge, a line was crossed. A natural law was broken. A dark boundary was trespassed.
Two men emerged from it unchanged.
One did not.
2019. Newark, New Jersey.
The mass murder scene investigation went all night.
Odessa was a while explaining to the first responders exactly what had happened, offering a preliminary ID on Cary Peters as the assailant of the two dead children and their mother, identifying Walt Leppo as a fellow law enforcement member. The girl was inconsolable. Odessa couldn’t even get her to say her first name. EMTs took her away.
Odessa met the first pair of responding FBI agents in the girl’s bedroom and took them through the story. She had dealt with eyewitnesses herself and spoke as clearly and succinctly as she could. But when she got to the end, she couldn’t make them understand that it was she, not Peters, who had shot Leppo. At first, they thought she misspoke; then that she had been traumatized and didn’t know what she was saying; then they told her a supervisory agent was on the way.
Odessa told it again to the supervisory agent. Again, her account was met with disbelief. This time she heard herself describing the part in the hallway, when she found Peters and Leppo struggling, but Peters was unarmed and Leppo held the knife. And then after she shot Peters, Leppo walked with the knife into the girl’s room without a word. She understood that what she was saying did not make a lot of sense. She said that Walt must have lost his mind. But the supervisory agent was looking at Odessa as though she had lost hers.