A SIGIL DRAWN ACROSS TIME
THIS IS A SHORT STORY
“What is that book?”
I looked up from the page and saw the top of Chelsea’s head peeking over the back of the bus seat, eyebrows raised, eyes wide.
“It’s about magic. These are sigils.” I held up my book and showed Chelsea the page I was studying.
“Are you retarded? That’s Garfield.”
“Perhaps to the untrained eye. Magic is all around you. Here you are sat on a bus, hurtling through space and time, pulling a stranger out of his studies, and you suggest his mental faculties are not up to snuff? Are you familiar with the psychological conception of projection?”
“Dude you’re reading Garfield.”
“I am studying magic. I am reading sigils. Take a closer look.”
“I’m not seeing it. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“There is magic all around you. Some people are closer to The Source than others and they retain their capability to see through the veil. Most others have been trained to shy away from The Source. Artists and mystics straddle the veil and are sometimes granted the ability to communicate the truth of our existence through art. There are messages hidden in plain sight by artists, clear as the day in their art to those who can see, a microcosm of the hidden magic in the world around and within you. Jim Davis was one such mystic and his work is nearly blinding with the light of truth. Look closer.” Chelsea got up and sat down next to me and I held my book close to her face, her eyeline directly orthogonal to the sigil which haunted my studies on this particular morning commute.
“Do you see?”
“Garfield looks pleased I guess.”
I snatched my book away from Chelsea, not sure what I was expecting. Zarathustra lived alone on a mountain; the life of the artist was one of solitude. But there was something in Chelsea’s face, something familiar. My instincts had gotten me this far and it would be foolish to question them now. To question myself now. Yes, there was something about Chelsea. A muse perhaps? She was no Calliope but even an ancient mystic could not deny the grace of Helen of Troy’s face. A siren? I had no mast and no crew to strap me upon it to avoid her call from an angry, turbulent sea—the bus seat in front of me. An oracle? Seen earlier in a dream, the night after too many shots of the Devil’s drink, a presentiment of her visage peering behind her bus seat and across my linear perception of time? There was something familiar about her.
“I’ve seen you riding the bus before. What’s your name?”
My name? I couldn’t tell her my true name, of course, but it had been ages since I recalled my Christian name. I entered my mind palace, flanked on either side by pillars of gleaming white crystal stretching to the firmament, and made a beeline toward the desk where I kept these facts of my limited self, my fleshy prison. I rummaged through the top left drawer and found the paper where years ago I had hastily scribbled my name, lest I forget the syllables I needed to utter upon such pedestrian requests. My autism diagnosis emerged from beneath the paper with my name scrawled upon it, a trivial matter. My mental excursion took mere milliseconds in the world of material, of course, I had no intention of keeping my muse waiting.
“I’m Gavin.” I did not ask Chelsea her name.
“Where are you going?”
Who was this woman? What was the meaning of this interrogation? If she had seen me before as she claimed, then was she not well aware of my passion for my studies? Was my face not always buried within a tome?
“Work.”
“What do you do?”
This woman was possessed. Yes, there was no doubt about it. A demon clung to Chelsea’s ear whispering not sweet nothings or promulgations of divine fortune, but commands that she ceaselessly query a benevolent fellow traveler, lost in the arcane wisdom of seasons past. She needed me. At least, she needed something to pry away the djinni which rode upon her immaterial person as an equestrian graces the back of a behooved beast. Was I to be a mere spectator in this spiritual rodeo show? No, Chelsea, my muse, my anima in bodily form, must be protected and I was the only man capable of protecting her.
“Do you have a job?”
She had a fiery spirit, this Chelsea, it was no wonder that she was a target for mischievous sprites. But in nearly the same moment where my annoyance at her investigation ballooned into my awareness through a network of synaptic cortical firings, I forgave her demonic inquiries, for the generosity of my spirit was boundless, much unlike my patience for the questions of young floozies.
“I work on computers.”
“Okay, that makes sense. What else is in that book? It looks weird.”
I could show her, but would she see? Would she ever see? Already, she scoffed at the prophecies of Jim Davis, perhaps she was unworthy to glimpse even another page. But my spirit soared—was not a spectre haunting this poor soul? Who better to show this woman, my muse, the truth whose scintillant brilliance tears asunder the very fabric of dark spirits? I would save her.
I flipped to another page of my ancient monograph seemingly at random, while knowing that there was no seeming and nothing was random. Chelsea and I looked down at the book on my lap.
“Deleuze and Guattari are more retarded than Garfield.”
My eyes widened. Were these words Chelsea’s own, or was her voice the unalloyed megaphone of something sinister?
“This book looks like pages you printed out and threw together. I can see the duct tape.”
I slammed the book shut.
“Sorry, guy, I thought you said you were reading about magic. I saw Garfield and junk philosophy by French faggots.”
I took a deep breath.
“I was reading about sigils and the practice of manipulating the material world through spiritual means. Though even that description is lacking and bordering on imprecise, meaningless gibberish. Words always fail. Some pray, others meditate, and some glimpse immaterial webs of celestial gossamer through divination. These boundless things, shapes of infinite perimeter, sometimes leave holographic impressions in the electro-neural homeostatic tributary systems of slumbering fire-bearers, the stellar constellations serving as prisms refracting and focusing divine light. A magical incantation might not be a word at all.”
Chelsea perked up at my final sentence.
“So you’re reading about magic and you do weird Satan shit. And you think Garfield is magic.”
Perhaps Chelsea was not a muse but a pupil? Perchance, had I misheard the clarion call of fate? I must admit, the shape of her face appeared chiseled from Order itself; what man could gaze upon such a countenance and not yearn for eternal union with such a creature? I recalled fragments of premonitions from my youth—my muse should be bedizened in fingerless gloves but Chelsea’s hands were unclad. No, Chelsea was not my muse, of this I was now certain. But she was eager and in need of exorcism, and after casting asunder the shackles of stygian spiritual possession, it was unlikely she could continue on in her days without peering further beneath the veil. I would have to lead her on the proper path.
“Do you cast spells? Show me how.”
How quaint! Moments ago the pages of my compendium were bits of scrap barely held together by frayed duct tape, but the hint of spells, her word, a manifestation of her own making, betrayed her desire for further instruction, for spending more time with me.
“I must warn you that there is no Hogwarts, there is no Ministry of Magic. This is not child’s play, your Harry Potter tattoo will garner you no spiritual allies.”
“Yeah, yeah and you’re taking Garfield very seriously.”
I closed my eyes for but a moment and continued.
“Do you know what a sigil is?”
“Like a pentagram?”
“A blasé complement to superior means of metaphysical engineering, but often a stepping stone for further initiation. They are sometimes part of a larger sigil, a word within a sentence, within a book. Sigils are shapes which can direct the energies and intentions of spirits and beings beyond the physical realm that most experience in their daily lives.”
Chelsea squinted her eyes, pushed her face closer to me. The demon knew I was onto him.
“And you think that’s what Garfield is.”
“Gnosis, my dear Chelsea. I know. This is not a matter of thinking or debate.”
Chelsea leaned back in her seat and relaxed.
“You know I’ve read a little about this stuff online. Like computer microprocessors having sigils inscribed onto them to capture demons. Every computer being a little magic box. Honestly doesn’t seem unreasonable these days. Who’s Chelsea?”
I grinned.
“A computer engineering course might cure one of such fantasies, but most cannot see, most prefer not to know. There are things far older than computers, much more commonplace, shapes littering the psyche, sigils in their own right.”
Chelsea sat expectantly.
“Words, my dear Chelsea. Shapes, which, when so arranged, can focus energies beyond comprehension, can build or destroy nations, can drive a man to madness.”
Chelsea turned away from me and looked out the window for several seconds.
“Ok, I think I’ve heard enough.”
“Wait.”
I placed my hand on Chelsea’s thigh. She recoiled and began standing up.
“There is another kind of sigil. Shapes drawn across time through actions. Like the words within a book, a man’s entire life might be a sentence or a chapter, another man’s life might be the space between two letters. The shapes span generations, a man is not a man, he is his past and his future, his ancestors and his descendants. A man can add entire chapters to his book, warp sacred light through his actions. Some shapes take thousands of years to draw, syllables echo across eons. Where have I seen you before?”
Chelsea sighed.
“Dude we’ve ridden this same bus together for a year. My name isn’t Chelsea. What are you even talking about?”
I reached under my seat into my backpack and pulled out my knife.