The Portrait of Damian Black

by Tim Newton Anderson

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

The monitoring room at the London Institute of Parapsychology was always the same yet always changing. Every time Simon came in, the posters on the walls would celebrate different cult science fiction TV shows and movies, and the scientists would sport T-shirts supporting new bands he had never heard of, but the place would always be crammed with terminals and semi-built machines, with desks covered in half-empty cups of coffee and forgotten snacks.

This time posters for Stranger Things and The Witcher predominated on the walls, with T-shirts advertised support for Marshland Pete and Apollo Stands. The big screen on the far wall with the map of the world was lit up with a slightly different set of coloured dots for hotspots of magic and religious cults than last time, but, as ever, no-one turned to look at him as he entered the room.

Simon sashayed across the chaos, avoiding cables and random electrical apparatus, to get to the monitoring room’s boss, Thomas Drove. He was dressed conservatively in shirt, jacket and jeans in shades of blue, but his short blonde hair had slight bronze highlights. “What have you got for me?” Simon asked.

“Tom and the HEAD were right about the burglary sites,” Drove said. He pushed his glasses down from the top of his head to read the screen in front of him. “There were some spikes in the field over the last twenty years or so. Nothing big enough to create a major alert, and quickly subsiding but definitely there. There was one occurrence around 2000, and several minor ones since, with further peaks coinciding with the dates of the burglaries.”

“Possibly when magical items were initially placed there and then removed?” Simon asked. “I’m guessing one of them was found by a houseowner and sold to the gallery owner who was found dead in the church.”

“As good a guess as any,” Drove replied. “The items mustn’t have been doing much while they were there, though or we would have seen their impact on the householders. They must have recently been activated in some way.”

“Anything special about the sites?”

“There is indeed,” said Drove. He paused for a moment then continued. “They are places where Ley Lines cross. Not some of the bigger ones, but still sites of Gaea power.”

“And your conclusion is?” asked Simon.

Drove smiled: “I think they were left there to charge up. Like a battery on trickle charge. No surges big enough to register at any point but building up quite a lot of magical energy over the years.”

“Any idea what the objects are?”

“Not a clue,” said Drove. “The machines are good, but not that good. Perhaps you should ask that pet oracle of yours.”

There was a hint of jealousy in Drove’s voice. He was still annoyed that he hadn’t been given the HEAD to examine.

“Wouldn’t it cause a spike when they were all brought together?” Simon asked.

“Not until you invoke whatever it is you do to activate them,” Drove replied. “Like you wouldn’t be able to track a mobile phone if it was switched off.”

It looks like it’s back to paperwork and legwork, then, Simon thought. He hated sitting at a desk, which was one of the reasons he had escaped from an insurance office job to do fieldwork. If he had to read files, he would rather do it in comfort, which was why he and Tom were sitting on the street outside a cafe half an hour later.

“I’m guessing we are looking for this hidden studio,” said Tom. “Remember all of those other self-portraits that Andrew’s friend saw? Given the magical power in the one we found, that must be what Black had stashed away to charge up.”

“And given the amount of magic in the one we encountered, heaven knows what thirty or forty of them could do when daisy-chained together in some way,” Simon said. “Just one of them could throw pictures about. The full collection could flatten half of the City.”

“We had better find them, then,” said Tom. “If they are all used at once, we would be too late if we relied on the Monitoring Room. And I doubt there are enough physical-level magicians sitting around in the Institute to suppress that kind of working. Most of them are out in the field.”

“Has the HEAD come up with anything useful?”

“You know what it’s like,” said Tom. “Sometimes it will volunteer information, but most of the time you have to ask it the right question.”

“Can you fire it up on your phone,” Simon asked. “I’ve got an idea.”

The HEAD’s avatar had changed from Max Headroom and was now a copy of Holly from Red Dwarf. “Hi, guys, what can I do for you?”

“Are there any Roman sites of interest near Liverpool Street Station?” Simon asked.

“There are indeed,” said the HEAD. “The Crossrail excavations uncovered a burial site on what was marshy land outside the c fity walls. There were more than 300 skulls and other remains. It was initially thought it was the site of a massacre or mass decapitation, but they now think the Romans just buried the skulls rather than the whole body as part of a cult. The more prosaic theory is that the rest of the bones were just washed away by the river and the skulls were too big.”

“They could still be a Stone Tape, though. We know big concentrations of death build up a psychogeographic charge.” Tom said. “Are there buildings nearby which were there before the Crossrail dig, or which weren’t affected? Ones with enough space to house a studio?”

“An office block that was completed in 2002, and a former pub that’s now a row of shops with studio flats above,” the HEAD said. “Do you want the addresses?”

“Just the flats,” said Thomas. “The office block is too recent.”

“I’m not sure we should just charge in there,” said Simon. “Remember the potential magical power of those paintings.”

“You’re supposed to be the warrior king,” said Tom. “Remember how powerful the magical force will be if those paintings are activated? We have no idea how long we have before that starts.”

Simon nodded and quickly phoned the Institute for back up. It wasn’t that far to the studio, but it would depend how quickly they could pull adepts off the jobs they were currently on.

* * *

It was a ten-minute walk to the old pub. Half of the shop fronts on the ground floor were closed. The HEAD had found out the flats were rented under false names by cash, just like the gallery. Whatever plan Black had — if he was the one behind it — it had had taken a lot of preparation.

The back of the building where the flat entrances were accessed was through a secure car park. The guard told them residents had keys to the gate, but he had never seen anyone come in or out. When they got to the rear of the building, Simon and Tom saw all but one of the French doors on the first floor terrace were boarded up, and Simon guessed the flats had been knocked through into a large studio space.

“Be careful,” said Simon. “I’m guessing there will be booby traps like the gallery.”

“Or a very powerful magician waiting for us,” Tom said. He had his phone on with the HEAD avatar showing. “The HEAD didn’t just add his own app. He’s got a mini-version of the monitoring software on here, too.”

“Which I’m guessing he hasn’t shared with the Institute scientists,” said Simon. “You are going to have a serious word with your familiar when this is all over. Is it showing anything?”

“The higher we get up on this steel fire escape, the more potential power is evident,” Tom said.

They had just reached the metal terrace at the top when monitoring became redundant. Even Tom could feel the explosion of magical power the second before the French doors flung open with a blast that shattered all of their glass. It was followed by a powerful inrush of air that would have pulled them into the building if they hadn’t grabbed the railings.

When the sudden vacuum subsided, they moved forward, Simon in the lead,

As Simon had guessed, the interior was a single large space, with metal pillars replacing the interior walls. It was just as Andrew’s friend had described. Sacred objects from every imaginable belief system on tables, shelves, and pedestals around the room, and portraits of Black hung in a continuous chain around the walls. Black himself was seated cross-legged in the middle of a painted pentagram decorated with a miscellany of magical signs. The eclectic approach to symbols suggested the painter had borrowed from a wide range of traditions rather than having a specific magical tradition.

Black was dressed in a black polo neck and jeans with black DMs on his feet. The dark hair in the portraits was now shaved off, and he had grown a Van Dyke beard peppered with grey.

The most worrying thing was that he was hovering six inches off the floor with no visible means of support.

Simon could sense the Collective Unconscious was lit up with the aura of power that Black was generating, with tight beams of light between him and his self-portraits. He didn’t need the monitoring device in Tom’s phone to feel the feedback loop between the man and his pictures, building and building in power.

“Welcome Telford and Robinson,” Black said. The voice appeared inside of Simon’s head, without the painter adept moving his lips or opening his eyes. “It is always good to have an appreciative audience for one’s works. I’ve had to hide my genius away for so long. I’m afraid you won’t survive exposure to so much magnificence, but I’ll have the benefit of someone witnessing my triumph.”

“You’re a nutter,” said Tom. “What’s all this for? Can’t you put on an exhibition like anyone else?”

“This is an exhibition,” the voice in their heads said. “A sort of lifetime retrospective. A display of my skills that will make that lifetime last a very long time. Each of the portraits has some of my essence, and I’ve had to rest for twenty years to recover from their creation and careful placement. Now I can absorb that greatly magnified power back and make myself immortal. And very, very powerful. Each picture is the square of my original energy, and with forty portraits it raises my essence to the fortieth power. Enough magic to reshape the world the way I created my pictures.”

Simon was scared. There was no sign of Gurgunt manifesting, and he had no real other magical skill apart from a few simple tricks like clouding people’s minds. That wasn’t going to work on someone as powerful as Black. He looked out of the space where the French doors used to be, to see if the cavalry from the Institute was arriving. He had a moment of relief as he saw half a dozen figures advancing towards the fire escape across the car park. That relief vanished as a bolt of purple light beamed from Black’s forehead and struck each of the figures in turn, knocking them from their feet and propelling them backwards. Two managed to stand up and ran back towards the studio stairs, but bounced off an invisible barrier.

“No-one else can enter until I am ready,” Black’s voice said. “There is no real barrier or beam, of course, but my mind can tell your colleagues there is, despite their intensive training. It’s also a simple matter to prevent your magical warrior projection from manifesting.”

Simon could sense Tom moving around the room behind him. He hoped his friend’s high-functioning Asperger’s meant he was less susceptible to Black’s psychic attack because he was less able to access the Collective Unconscious. But if he tried a physical attack, Black’s power was strong enough to blast through any resistance Tom’s condition gave him, or destroy him at a deeper magical level.

Simon wished he had a real sword, or even better, a gun. All he could think to do was to use the training the Institute had given him to try and block Black’s attack. It was running around his head like some terrible ear worm song. But by controlling his breathing and channelling his own psychic energy he could combat it to some extent. Not enough to allow Gurgunt to manifest, but enough to provide some distraction for the painter.

He could see through the door that his colleagues from the Institute were using the same technique to work together and push against the intangible barrier Black had set up. They were slowly moving forward but would probably not be quick enough to stop him completing the ritual.

Then Simon felt a sudden relaxation in the mental pressure. When he looked at Black, he thought for a second the painter was melting. Tom was standing to one side of the mage with a tin in his hands, and he realised his friend had thrown a pot of black paint over Black. It had covered his head and was dripping down his shoulders and torso, pooling in his lap and on the floor around him.

Tom winked at him, dropped the paint tin and threw a couple of aerosols towards Simon which he had been carrying in his pockets.

“Spray the pictures,” he said. “Try and break the circuit.”

He could feel Black struggling to get back his self-control and restart the ritual. The painter had opened his eyes for the first time since they had entered the room and was glaring at them with fierce hatred.

Simon and Tom ran to the walls and started spraying over the paintings. Banksy wouldn’t have been impressed, but it seemed to work, as the energy that had been pulsing in the room started to dim. The more they covered, the lower the level ebbed, despite the energy Black was putting into restoring the process.

“Black, black,” he roared. “I am darkness. I am the eclipse and the night. I am the death and the resurrection. I will not be thwarted.”

Simon and Tom had covered two-thirds of the pictures with paint when the other Institute agents joined them in the room. Five stood around Black holding out their arms and pressing their psychic force against the painter. The others also picked up spray cans and helped Tom and Simon complete their work.

But Black had already absorbed a tremendous amount of energy. He stood upright as he floated six feet above the floor, hovering just a couple of feet from the ceiling. He spread out his arms to absorb what little energy was still flowing from the paintings that had yet to be sprayed. The Institute agents’ pentagram of power was still porous to the beams of light Simon could see coming in from the half a dozen untouched paintings. Simon recognised Offord Darcy and some of the other senior agents, but he doubted even their skill would be enough to stop Black in his charged state.

Then he saw a spray of fire head towards Black and light the paint that covered most of his body. Tom had lit one of the aerosols and the spirit-based paint caught fire in a blaze of light. Black’s eyes and mouth opened even wider in shock, with pain from the burning paint and blazing fumes sucking into his lungs.

“Get down!” shouted Darcy. “On the floor now.”

The Institute agents all obeyed, and Simon felt intense heat on his back as the blazing magician exploded with an instant dispersal of the energy he had absorbed. Simon quickly rolled over on the floor to put out his smouldering clothes and saw his colleagues doing the same. The portraits had also caught fire or spontaneously combusted and were glowing as their energy stores escaped. At first Simon could not see what had happened to Black until he noticed the walls, floor and ceiling were covered in globules of blood, bone and flesh everywhere except patches where the agents had lain.

“Wow,” said Tom as he picked himself up from the floor. “From self-portraits to Jackson Pollock in a single second. I hope the Institute has a good decontamination unit and laundry service.”

“Very funny, Robinson,” said Offord Darcy. “As soon as the clean-up team arrives, we need to go back to headquarters to strip off and get decontaminated. Those fragments of Black are still full of psychic power and could be very dangerous. Almost as dangerous as going into a powerful magician’s studio without waiting for back-up.”

* * *

It took six hours of showering, examinations, more showers — this time with disinfectant — and more examinations before the medical staff were happy to let Simon and Tom get dressed in some replacement clothes and go to the canteen.

“I need a new phone,” said Tom. “When Black blew up, it fried mine. It even sent a pulse of energy back to the HEAD. It’s almost glowing at the moment.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the blasted thing didn’t plan part of this so it could get a magical upgrade,” said Simon. “There’s no way our bosses would allow one until they get a better idea of the HEAD’s powers and intentions.”

“You’re too suspicious,” said Tom. “Unlike our late painter friend, the HEAD’s not as black as it’s painted.”