After popping the tape out of the machine, I laid everything we’d gathered out on the floor of my room:
- the VHS tape
- Book of the Hermetic Order of Owl
- the printed emails between Melinda and I
- the web page printouts of the early research
- the page from the encyclopedia
- Margo Linet’s book, Catastrophes Caused by Witchcraft
- Melinda’s book, Six Secret Societies: The Untold Story of the Groups Nobody Wants You to Know About
- both newspaper articles
- the map of vortices
- the essay written by Athanasius
I pull out a stack of index cards I usually use for presentations at work, and label each with the name of everyone involved so far with a little note:
- Melinda Bakersfield: Once a professor and author, now a bookshop owner. She says she’s searching for the truth, using a scientific approach to a magical and theological problem. She, for some reason, was as helpful to us on our search for the origin of this book as she was harmful. Between the VHS tape and the recent chat we had, I’m not entirely sure what her goal is. She seems to know more than she’s letting on, but she also seems to be pushing us away.
- Alexis Farns: Alexis called me the day before we left basically begging to help us, then disappeared when we tried to get in touch with her at the museum. She must have been involved in uncovering the original vault, but hasn’t been forthcoming with details. When we arrived in town she gave us the tape. She may have motives beyond our understanding.
- the woman at the university who gave me Melinda’s email: I forgot about this person until I started making this list, but she did say something about how Melinda had changed her life. My best guess is she was at the seance but not listed in the police report. May not matter, but might as well include everyone.
- Gus: My old friend, and the person who found the Book of the Hermetic Order of Owl in the first place. Melinda accused him of being an Athanasius follower, but I find it hard to believe.
- Me: I just like to make maps of places and think about lost civilizations, and here I am, trying to hunt down the origin of a secret, supposedly magical book of maps.
- Richard Yearns: The reporter who covered the finding of the original vault (which we still haven’t found). Also covered Melinda’s seance, and seems generally to know at least some details about everyone in town.
- David Sexsmith: The bowling alley owner who owned the land the vault was found on, who is now a high class realtor in Sedona.
- Athanasius(?): There is Athanasius Kircher, a Jesuit scholar, and then Athanasius, a follower of Kircher who wrote the essay about magic Gus found. According to Melinda, followers of Athanasius, who may or may not have been the Order of Owl, all called themselves Athanasius, until recently, when the name was too out of style to go unnoticed.
- Aleister Crowley(?): Crowley was some sort of sex-obsessed cult-leader type who tricked people into orgies by promising everlasting power. He seemed related to but not involved with Athanasius or the Order of Owl.
- Margo Linet: author of the Catastrophe’s Caused by Witchcraft. I can’t get a hold of her and the more I’ve read of this book the less I can imagine she has anything to do with this. I don’t want to use the word crackpot, but her theories are certainly offbeat.
- Daniel Handly: involved in the seance.
- Paul Shona: involved in the seance.
- Reba Orthal: involved in the seance.
Gus and I got up on the bed to look down at all our clues. Each piece pulls us toward a different conclusion. Each bit of information provided by the characters involved leads us along completely different paths. None of it makes any sense. Flustered, Gus mutters that he’s going to sleep on it, and wanders out of the room.
I continue to stand on the bed, looking down at everything. I feel like a character in one of the point-and-click adventure games I played as a kid. Like, all these seemingly random clues can mean something, but until I find the comb and combine it with the fishbowl, I’ll never be able to move forward.
Melinda alone has offered up multiple versions of history and reality. In our initial emails, she claimed to know little about the specifics, but then went on to provide the clues that led us to Sedona. Then we get here and she unloads a theory about multiple generations of Athanasius-followers who take his name, accuses Gus of being involved in a decades-long hoax, and then suggests we stop looking into all this. After which her partner, Alexis Farns handed us a VHS tape with a younger Melinda describing her extremely specific relationship with the vortex, Athanasius, and Owl.
There’s a version of this where everything Melinda said about Gus can be applied to her, where she’s a modern day Athanasius.
There’s another version where she’s simply throwing us off the trail to study the vortices and Owl for her own means.
There’s yet another way this can play out where Gus is indeed part of a hoax and has hooked me in, perhaps to help him create more maps to continue the hoax even further.
Plus, we still haven’t found the vault, one of the main reasons we started this quest to begin with, and the only physical piece of evidence outside of this room we know about. Alexis should be able to fill us in on this, if I can get to her.
I pick up each item and hold it for a few seconds, trying to put myself in the shoes of one of those characters from an adventure game. What combination of items can lead me forward? Who do I need to talk with to unlock the next cutscene? I think back to the original starting point of this story, the book of maps. I picture the moment Gus showed me the book, sliding my present self back into the shoes of my past self. I stay in the moment of my initial reaction to the book. To the maps. Back to my own maps. What caused us to move forward, exactly? The mystery alone? Is my life so empty that I follow the confusing and likely pointless plot lines of a eccentric New Ager, a book shop owner, and a crackpot Jesuit scholar from the past?
When nothing comes to me I decide to take the same approach as Gus as sleep it off.
