The Book of Paul -- A Paranormal Thriller Read Online Free PDF

gradually lost their main appeal, which was their ability to genuinely frighten me. They just weren’t real enough.
    I turned to the occult. Once again, I studied everything I could get my hands on—Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Luciferianism, Satanism, Pythagoreanism, Rosicrucianism, Paganism, Kabala, ancient legends and obscure myths, witchcraft, pagan festivals—the Druids. It didn’t stop with books. I learned about divination. Numerology, the I Ching, and the tarot. And guess what? I suddenly discovered that my little “gift” wasn’t limited to visions of the here and now —I could see the then too. Well, some of the time. Those visions were always murky by comparison, distorted like a funhouse mirror. Even so, it was enough to interest girls at a party. Keep the bullies off my back.
    I loved the tarot and started collecting old decks I found at flea markets or in musty, dusty antique shops and secondhand junk stores. One time I found a hand-painted deck that was so old I couldn’t believe it. The dealer only wanted forty bucks for it, which I haggled down to thirty. Any good collector is a good haggler. I recently had it appraised for several thousand dollars, though I’d never think of parting with it.
    See? That’s what it’s like to be a collector. Treasures mean so much more than money.
    I never told Mother about any of my occult wanderings, but I’m pretty sure she saw anyway. One day out of the blue she said, “Never use your gift for personal gain. And stay away from the darkness.”
    Oops. Too late.
    I left Mother as soon as I turned eighteen. I couldn’t wait to get as far away as I could, applying to East Coast Ivy Leaguers. My SATs and GPA were in the top two percent nationally. Got a scholarship to Harvard. Impressed? You needn’t be. I was expelled after the first semester for selling acid in my dorm. Oh, well. I didn’t fit in with the pink Lacoste polo shirt crowd anyway. My asshole preppy roommate ratted me out. I never should have had a roommate. Never had one since.
    I fled Boston for New York, far away from Mother’s outpost in Berkeley, moving into a small, cheap apartment between Avenues A and B. With only a high school diploma and minimal job skills, my career prospects were fairly grim. Even if I stuck it out at Harvard, I still wouldn’t be catnip for any headhunters, unless there’s a greater demand than I’m aware of for graduates with a major in evolutionary biology and a minor in anthropology.
    Guess what I did to make a living? Fortune telling. I put an ad in the Village Voice . The headline read: Scientific Readings. The “scientific” part mainly consisted of combining the numerology interpretations with the zodiac designations of the minor arcana cards in their readings. Translation: I could pick the dates when shit would happen. The accuracy of my readings was a surprise even for me. I had a very strong repeat business, which financed what I really wanted to do: collect stuff.
    At first it was more of the things I’d already been collecting. Tarot decks, Ouija boards, amulets, talismans and books. Lots and lots of old books, particularly books of spells, incantations and invocations. Grimoires. The Testament of Solomon , the Clavicula Salomonis , The Black Pullet , The Book of Simon the Magician , The Book of Enoch , The Sworn Book of Honorius , The Pseudomonarchia Daemonum . Blah dee blah blah.
    We’re talking ritual magic here. Alchemy. I learned Latin, Greek, Coptic, Arabic and Aramaic just so I could read the original texts and come to my own conclusions about the proper translations. I spent every dime I made when the opportunity arose to possess one of the (hopefully) authentic manuscripts. The culmination of my efforts—and the beginning of my degradation—occurred after visiting a very old man in a very old bookstore in London. He claimed to have in his possession (and was offering for sale! ), a slim volume with a white leather binding and yellow vellum