The Seer Blinks

The phone kept ringing, but Lilith had stopped answering. Ever since she and Cheryl had read the cards together, she’d been researching. The jagged puzzle pieces that had been scraping the corners of her brain all year, teasing her, had fallen into place, and the picture they made was horrifying.

There was an aetheric catastrophe coming, an otherworldly eruption; a great rumbling, spiritual juggernaut that would flatten the world as she knew it, rip its heart out and eat it for breakfast. The earthquake that would set it off — which was, even at this moment, warming up and vibrating, ready to crack open the faults and spread its destruction — was Zem, right here in Vegas.

Now, her days were filled with scouring the Internet and local libraries. There was more to learn in the arcane world, as it turned out, than even she had ever imagined. After the first few weeks, she thought she could have earned a Phd. in Supernatural Studies. After a few more, she thought she could have established a whole university.

She’d learned that, whereas Wicca had carved a nice, well-organized placed for itself on the web, druidism was nearly absent. Egyptian magic existed only in rumors. Spell databases were often mistaken for recipe files by search engines. She once spent an hour researching a two-page list of individual ingredients she’d never heard of, before she re-read the introduction and discovered she had a chocolate-kiwi mousse recipe in front of her, not a spell for calling a familiar.

The real motherlode turned out to be medieval European magic. Between the seven million midwives desperate to save their lore before they got burned at the stake, Hildegard of Bingen and all her mystical, monastic sisters, and the multi-million dollar industry of housewife witchcraft that had sprung up in the U.S. and abroad since the Sixties, there was more raw data than she could ever use or even read thoroughly. It was all free and, in fact, pressed eagerly upon her by practitioners from Maine to Baja, every one of them thrilled at the prospect of someone finding their little collection of spells and traditions useful at last.

She spent a day and a half investigating the Books of Revelation and Daniel, in case Zem turned out to be the Christian Anti-Christ. But there were no Horsemen in evidence, and the world was not experiencing more than its normal quotient of earthquakes or wars. The only dreams and visions seemed to be hers. So she checked the Bible off her list of sources.

A short treatise on supposed millennial prophecies by Nostradamus caught her attention for another morning. One verse spoke of “ancient power rising up to wreak havoc”. But when she tracked down the original text, it turned out to have farming, not world conquest, on its mind. As far as Lilith could tell, the old French monk had been seeing part of the Potato Famine, or possibly something to do with pesticides. Perhaps Nostradamus endorsed organic gardening, but as for Zem and Vegas, he was useless.

She’d begun dreaming almost immediately after that last reading. Her vision of Gwendolyn’s death in the harem, and of Tim’s and Bobby’s fates turned out to be only the preview, the teaser, the coming attractions trailer for the big visionary release to follow. It premiered on the backs of her eyelids, night after night, a truly independent film festival that refused to give her any rest.

She saw strange building projects. The construction itself wasn’t untoward — hotels in Vegas were always building something. But this city-wide project was like nothing that had come before.

She saw hordes of new visitors, all looking hopeless. Parents carried hollow-eyed children from hotel to hotel. The lame and infirm struggled. The rich and famous came to hear oracles, and received secrets that allowed them to manipulate the world’s economy. She saw whole nations disappearing off the map, their gross national products mere pin money for unscrupulous investors with a useful tip from one week in the future.

She saw doctors jumping out of buildings, hospitals shut. Drugs or treatments for any complaint more lasting than a headache disappeared from pharmacies the world over. Why bother with a doctor who might or might not have a cure when there was real healing in Nevada? Why bother researching anything when all the answers lay in Las Vegas? That the answers, or the healing, or any help whatsoever would be kept purposely inconstant didn’t matter. Healing was so much better than the long-term half-hope modern medicine could provide, any odds were worth it.

Whatever one’s needs were, they were free to be had in Southern Nevada. Someone would hit the jackpot. Why not throw everything away, and take your shot in Las Vegas? What good were life and love and hope when compared with one chance in a million, if that chance were for a sure thing?

The world gained certainty, in the visions that Lilith lived through. It had no need for further progress.

Lilith tossed and turned, and didn't sleep well.

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