Over the next few days, the Bukowskis took turns going to visit Juniper, who was enjoying a period of convalescence in her bed. She was still tired and her complexion brought to mind a child in the throws of consumption, but she’d regained some of her energy and was in good spirits—pleasantly surprised to still be alive. It was from her that they learned the history of the collective.

It was founded ten years ago by a group of artists who’d bought the house together. They’d found that cooperative housing suited people who wished to pay low rent and had little interest in growing their personal assets, favouring instead the fostering of community and undertaking of creative projects. It was a noble endeavour, begun in the true spirit of artistic collaboration.

“I’ve been here almost since the beginning,” said Juniper, a touch of pride in her voice. “I was twelve and I was tired of foster care. We’ve become like a family since then. But it wasn’t ‘til Sheena brought us the chant a few years ago that we started making great things. Suddenly we didn’t have to work anymore. There were royalties from John’s film soundtrack, and income from Hanna’s book sales.”

“And John and Hanna are now…” Rex trailed off.

“Yes, they’re dead,” said Juniper candidly.

“As you saw, it’s an unfortunate side effect,” said Ronan, who’d joined them, likely because Rex was there.

The whole band was present; even Jaymie had taken a break from editing the recording of Juniper and Jo’s song. The Bukowskis all agreed it was lovely, though the cult weren’t sure it would be accepted as Truly Great, having been only half composed by a ghostly conjuration. They were undecided on whether or not to release it.

The former leader, Sheena Wilder, the band learned, had once been a scholar of Victorian literature. She’d come across an incantation that called up the spirits of long-lost geniuses in an old tome she’d found deep in a London archive while researching for her PHD thesis on 19th century occultism. After invoking the spell, for fun, at a séance-themed house party with a handful of drunken grad students, she’d been amazed to find that it actually worked. She’d disguised the ensuing death as an unexpected heart failure and immediately left academia. She set sail for the New World to share her discovery.

“Long story short,” said Ronan, “She heard about us through a friend and came to offer her gift.”

“We were won over immediately!” said Juniper. “It was nice here, but none of our projects had the same… weight…the same impact… as what we could create using the chant.”

“And without us, the spirits’ works would be lost forever,” Ronan added.

“Honestly, we just weren’t that good on our own.” Juniper shrugged. “We kind of needed it.”

Ronan and Juniper seemed convinced that what they’d been doing was the right thing. Rex couldn’t help but wonder if the flock’s former shepherd had been truly gifted in the art of persuasion, or if each of them had always been a bit of a nut.

Aaron took the list he and Jo had found out of his pocket and unfolded it. “So out of all of these forty-odd people, I’m guessing none of them just lost interest and left?”

“All of us have remained,” said Juniper. “We are a family.”

“And the twenty that aren’t around here anymore…”

“They are with us, in their own way.”

“That means they’re dead,” Aaron whispered to Jaymie.

“And it didn’t bother you that your ‘family members’ didn’t survive the…creative process?” asked Jo.

“They will be rewarded,” said Juniper serenely. When met with blank stares, she continued, “After we do the ritual, we’ll be reborn as real creatives.”

“Oh jeez,” said Jaymie.

“How convenient,” muttered Aaron.

“It’s true,” said Juniper woundedly.

“How do you know?” asked Jo.

“Sheena promised us.”

“Of course she did,” said Aaron.

“So you wanted to do it?” asked Rex.

“Of course!” said Juniper. “But… I have to admit I’m relieved to have more time. The life I’ve got is actually not so bad.”

“Forgive my asking, but did this Sheena, ahhh… stand to gain anything? From you all doing the ritual?” said Jaymie.

“You mean besides all the royalty money?” Aaron scathingly reminded him.

“She died too!” said Rex. “So, she must have had reason to believe in the rebirth thing!”

“Died? No, no,” Juniper laughed. “When it came her turn to do the ritual, it didn’t work the same on her. It gave her a whole load of arts management skills and now she’s an agent for theatre actors in Vancouver! The ritual enabled her to share the art of others. It made her what she was meant to be.”

“I’m sure it did,” said Jo blandly, as the Brzezinskis stared at Juniper or put their heads in their hands. “I’m sure it did.”

***

Jaymie still refused to forfeit in his attempts to get the residents of the house to cultivate their own creativity. After dinner on Wednesday he gathered the group together for that evening’s motivational lecture.

“You can do anything, if you set your mind to it! Look at John Steinbeck—rags to riches! Look at Dickens! Look at, fucking, Harry Potter!”

His disciples listened quietly and attentively, but he couldn’t help noticing many of their faces conveyed apprehension and malaise when he gave these talks, rather than the rapture and inspiration he expected. Somehow, he was still not getting through.

A hand rose in the audience.

“Jaymie, I have a question. Do you mean that if I write enough dog songs, eventually I’ll be able to write really great dog songs?”

“Yes, that is what I mean. I know you have difficulty with self-confidence—”

“And are you saying that hard work is all it takes to transcend the barriers of race and gender and class?”

“You’re cis white guy, Aar. I’m not sure why you’re concerned about that.”

“Are all of the people in this room cis white guys, though?”

“Well, no… Which brings me to my next point—overcoming adversity! Did you know that the most successful people actually had more and not less setbacks to get past…” He sighed. “Yes, a question from the snowflake in the third row?”

“Jaymie, what if I have to choose between being an artist and supporting my family? Is art still the most important thing?”

“Fortunately, Aaron, you have no such choice to make.”

A woman stood and quickly left the room, her head hanging in shame. Jaymie narrowed his eyes. He knew his brother had a dangerous penchant for lurking around with his ear to the ground, absorbing the insecurities of others. He grinned at the crowd.

“Obstacles will present themselves from all angles. It could be in the form of poverty, busyness, self-doubt, siblings—”

“Jaymie, if I devote my whole life to music but then when I’m sixty-five I realize I’m actually a really mediocre musician no matter how hard I tried, what does that mean for my life?”

“Ok you little fucking troll…” And so on.

Miranda exited the room the moment the speech ended and caught Steve and Evelyn on their way out.

“Meeting,” she said curtly, and led them into the side room off the main entrance. The room they’d chosen was the same one where the band had stowed all of their gear, and the three were forced to arrange themselves around stacked drums, cases, and keyboard stands. Evelyn, a small woman swathed in many scarves, hoisted herself onto the bass amp.

“We’re getting nowhere,” Miranda said, finding an empty corner and crossing her arms.

“Well, what do you suggest we do?” asked Steve. “You’d think showing him the ritual would have been enough to awaken some compassion in him.” He nearly tripped on an oversized duffel bag containing all the band’s drum stands, tried to move it, realized it was too heavy, and settled for lightly kicking it instead. “It’s like he doesn’t want us to survive.”

“Maybe he’s still trying to figure out how it works?” Evelyn suggested. “He was just a tiny boy when he got possessed. He probably doesn’t remember how he did it.”

“Well, he should be trying harder! We should be having more rituals! Experimenting with different things!” Steve insisted.

“You know we can’t have them too often,” said Miranda sharply. “We’ll raise suspicion. We’ve only gotten this far because we’ve been careful.”

“And this was supposed to end the rituals. I don’t want to lose another one of us. We shouldn’t have to,” said Evelyn. “We know he can help us. That’s why we chose him.”

“Of course he can,” said Steve. “So, what’s taking so long?”

Miranda massaged her temples, thinking. "Alright," she finally said. "We'll hold another ritual soon. If that's not enough to motivate Jaymie to work out a safer way, we can have one of the brothers volunteer for it—Rex, since they've been so keen about our cause. "

Steve nodded, satisfied.

“What if they don’t want to volunteer?” asked Evelyn nervously.

"Do you have a better idea?" Miranda gestured a little too aggressively, knocking a pair of drumsticks off a shelf above her and onto Steve, which startled him backwards into Rex's hard-shell bass case. He tripped and fell against the door. The case rocked perilously for a moment, then toppled and landed partly on his knee and partly on Aaron's open bag of cymbals, eliciting a cacophonous duet of timbres from man and instrument.

Miranda hastily apologized and helped him to his feet, but Evelyn felt as though some part of this slapstick performance had frozen her in place—a phrase, “cacophonous duet of timbres,” had come to her at that moment, and a sudden shiver of anticipation ran through her.

“I’m sorry, I have to go,” she said.

“Go? Where?” asked Miranda skeptically.

“I…It’s very important.” And she swept out the door.

***

Pressed against the wall of the kitchen, which bordered the storage room on the opposite side as the door, two identical men who had been preparing to shout curses at each other and possibly engage in physical violence instead stood rooted to the spot, listening. One mouthed the words, “I fucking told you so.”

“I’m sensing that it’s time for us to go,” said Jaymie quietly when they’d peeled themselves away from the thin drywall.

"No shit!" hissed Aaron. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered trying to have conversations with Jaymie at all.

"I just... I thought maybe I could help them. That if I could get them to listen and to put in the effort, then we could all stop doing that horrible ritual and killing each other." He clasped his head in his hands, the very picture of a tormented martyr.

"What do you mean, we could stop? Listen to yourself! We are not like them. Let the police stop them, Jay. Admit it, we're just here because you love the attention. All these helpless lost souls salivating over you from their séance circle..."

“Write that down, Aar,” said Jaymie callously. “Perhaps you’re a poet after all.”

“They wouldn’t care if I was, just like they don’t care that you are! They only care that you’re a fake mystic back from the dead or however the fuck it’s supposed to work—God! Have they even read any of him? You’re nothing like Bukowski!”

Actually, the group had discussed this incongruity and decided that, had C.B. had a childhood not plagued by physical abuse, neglect, poverty, alcoholism, and the stifling expectations and gender roles of 1930’s Los Angeles, he might well have turned out a lot like Jaymie. Could anyone prove he wouldn’t have?

Aaron forced himself to calm down. He surveyed the tidy kitchen, which had appeared so bright and benign on the first day they'd arrived, countertops shining and fruit hanging invitingly from baskets. Now even the umbrella plant in the corner seemed to reach threateningly toward him.

"Relax! Hey, don't have another panic—Christ, fine, we'll get out of here. I hear you. We'll go tonight. Ok?" Jaymie slumped against the wall.

“Man, I’m going to need at least two or three days apart from you once we’re home and all this is over,” said Aaron, shaking his head.

“Fuck it, I’ll stay away for a whole week! In fact, why don’t you just quit the band again like you love to do?”

“Oh, do I have permission to quit your band now?” Aaron snapped.

“God, you’re mean sometimes.” Jaymie did a quick arm stretch and rolled his shoulders, and soon his face eased back into its usual crooked smile. “Come on, let’s go tell Jo and Rex.”

They went back to the living room to look for the others, debating which of them had been meaner during this particular discourse, and narrowly avoiding meeting Miranda and Steve as they headed down the same dark hall less than a minute later.

***

They say that if a piece of work has resonated with even one person then it has been worthwhile, and Jaymie’s lecture—the last one he would ever present to this group of followers—had finally clicked with someone that evening.

After their meeting, Evelyn went to her room, placed a towel under the door to mute the sound of tapping keys, and sat down at her antique typewriter. She shuffled through a small stack of pages she’d written over the past few days, glancing over her work and making the occasional pencil correction. As she did, she felt a warm, excited stirring in the pit of her stomach. Then she loaded a new blank sheet of paper—an object that until this week had terrified her more than any other—into the machine, and began to type.