Review: The Matrix

AYCLIFFE, Jonathan, The Matrix, HarperCollinsPublishers, London, 1995.

Octavo; paperback, with gatefold wrappers; 238pp. Minor wear; light toning to the text block edges; mild bumping to the bottom corners of the wrapper. Very good to near fine.

The name Daniel Easterman is somewhat familiar to me; but then, many names of many authors are familiar to me because I have worked in a long line of bookshops. Ask me who Jonathan Aycliffe is, however and – before this book – I would have just shrugged: no clue. This innocuous volume was sitting out front of the shop on the specials table before it caught my attention; I assumed – as you might have, given the title of this post – that it had something to do with the movie. How wrong can you be! Still, the parallel titles must have had some unusual effects on the sales of this book...

It turns out that Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe are one and the same person: Easterman writes the sort of blockbuster-y books you pick up at airports while the Aycliffe pen-name is the one he uses when he’s penning stuff of a more personal interest. His background is as a researcher in Islamic Studies; he speaks Arabic and Persian and he lectured in Fez, as well as in Newcastle-On-Tyne. He is also a bibliophile, as represented by this creepy tale which centres upon a book of forbidden knowledge and the dangerous effects it has upon those who open its pages.

The story involves an academic named Paul McLeod, who hales from the Western Isles of Scotland. We learn that he recently lost his wife and returned to live with his parents during the grieving process. As the novel starts, he is just returning to his life once more, taking up a research position in Edinburgh. Encountering an unwelcoming and rigid academic hierarchy which perceives him as an unnecessary drain upon grant money, he decides to keep his head down and pursue his chosen topic without ruffling too many feathers. His area of study is the sociological organisation of the New Age fringe counterculture, how it manifests and promulgates, what its markers and other identifiers entail, how its presence affects the members who contribute to its existence. Accordingly, he goes undercover and begins networking through a murky underworld of tarot card readers, Wiccans, amateur folklorists and ghosthunters.

Inevitably, he focuses upon a core of magical practitioners who seem to be the real deal and he becomes initiated into their weekly rites and “workings”. Even here though, he suspects that there is another organisation, even more secretive than this one, and he starts to inveigle himself with a member who appears to bridge the two cabals – high-flying lawyer Duncan Mylne. The eminently knowledgeable but somehow strangely dispassionate Mylne takes Paul under his wing, offering him weekly tutorial sessions in the ways of True Power and access to some extremely rare and arcane books.

Paul becomes obsessed and his research goes out the window. With Duncan’s help he gains access to the cabal’s library and there discovers something that causes his life to quickly unravel...

Lest anyone out there still thinks that this is about the movie and are wondering when Keanu Reeves will make his grand entrance, let me disabuse you. The Matrix here is actually a book, an ancient grimoire of unnerving power, which Paul finds tucked away hidden in the library and which he takes home without permission. Aycliffe even gives us the title page, and this made me go all gooey (I’m a sucker for title pages).

The book is early attempt to translate an Arabic text into English and it renders the original language phonetically into gobbledy-gook. Of most disturbing import to Paul is an engraved plate showing a monstrous figure before an open tomb in an ancient cathedral-like building. Once having seen this image, the book plays upon his mind. A scratching presence haunts his apartment building and he feels as though he is being pursued. In desperation he burns the book to ash, but the strange obsession continues. His health fails and friends stage an intervention, after which he is sent home to his parents to recuperate.

The story partakes a little of M.R. James’s “Casting the Runes” as the book curses those who accept it. Having taken it (stolen it) from the occult library, he destroys it (he thinks) but he doesn’t realise that once accepted the book returns. As in the James tale, the only way to offload the thing is to give it to someone who wants it. At a later stage, Paul tries to buy a Bronte novel which he knows one of his interventionist friends is looking for; when he opens the parcel, there’s the Matrix instead.

Under Duncan’s tutelage, Paul loses his position at the university but his new master takes care of all his material wants, such as rent and food. They travel, beginning a pilgrimage which takes them on a wide circuit through North Africa, visiting Duncan’s associates and their covens. At one point, they arrive in Fez and Paul is led deep into the labyrinthine net of the old city, to meet Duncan’s spiritual master, a decrepit old Arab whom Paul is convinced is more dead than alive.

These scenes, trapped in the heart of the crumbling town with the unemotional Duncan and his corpse-like patron are truly strange and disturbing. Paul slowly begins to realise that he has wandered into a nexus of true spiritual power, not the stylised witterings of bored nouveau-riche retirees, and despairs of finding a way out. The two return to Edinburgh and, shortly afterwards, Paul decides to break his connexion with Duncan. The key moment happens while they stay at Duncan’s estate outside of the Scottish capital. During the night, unable to sleep, Paul sees Duncan walking through the snow to the edge of a dark wood. Out from the trees shuffles a zombie-like female figure, lurching spastically and howling horribly. Duncan stands with this creature for awhile and they both pass from view. The next morning, Paul can’t leave quickly enough.

But ditching Duncan is easier said than done. After skipping a few tutorial sessions, Paul is notified by the police that his wife’s grave has been disturbed and it appears to have been a ritual desecration. Having sold his soul to Duncan with the promise that his wife would be returned to him, Paul knows exactly what’s going on, but it’s hardly the sort of thing one can offer to the constabulary by way of possible motive.

The book wends its way to its shattering conclusion – which I will say nothing about. This is an excellent tale about the dangers of inveigling one’s way into a magical organisation and the methods that they can use to twist such an investigator out of shape. The cultists in Duncan’s control are multifarious and unexpected but each of them is exquisitely established so when they appear, the reader is not incredulous, but rather chilled. As twist piles on top of twist, the insidious Duncan’s long game becomes ever more apparent and the truly terrifying thing about the tale is the width of the net that the cultists cast to catch Paul in its mesh. At the end of the day, the victory is all but hollow, and everyone is damned ‘cause they did, damned if they didn’t.

My only gripe with this book is that it tries just a little too hard to cover a range of different cultish tropes without really sinking its teeth into any of them. The descriptions of Scotland – both mainland and the Western Isles – are evocative and form a stark counterpoint to the equally wonderful and mesmerising scenes in North Africa, particularly Fez. It’s obvious that Aycliffe knows the shortcomings of academia also, because he paints a nicely cynical portrait of university life. There’s much that gamers could borrow from this to incorporate into their roleplaying – the Matrix Aeternitatis is a very similar book to the Mythos tome Saracenic Rituals as it contains all of the same kinds of necromantic incantations.

This is not going to be an easy book to find, but I highly recommend it, especially to any Keepers out there who are thinking of running the campaign series “Shadows of Yog-Sothoth”. I’m giving it four tentacled horrors.