They found the Darkness, and the first medium, in Scotland. They didn’t just come across it; they weren’t searching blindly. They had read oblique references to a spirit that manifested as a black light, and that had capacities of prophecy and divination. Those references, very brief, said that certain people could contact it and make it speak. In its words there was knowledge, and in the contact, the possibility of obtaining its favor. It is clear, said my grandfather, that they were not searching for the Darkness specifically, but for some reason it did catch their attention, maybe because of the mention of how those capable of contact would undergo a physical metamorphosis in some part of the body, especially the tongue or the hands.

The medium was the son of a peasant: he predicted the future using the scapula of a sheep, a detail that always made me laugh because of the precision in the choice of bone. The boy alerted his community about useful matters like how they should care for the livestock, how much money they would earn or lose in the next harvest, when a storm was coming, if they were in danger in a time of political violence. I liked the name of the method and the way my grandfather pronounced it: silinnenath.

Where in Scotland? Beatriz always asked. Near Inverness, said my grandfather. Far to the north. The town was called Tarradale, but if you look for it on a map, it will be called Muir of Ord, because they changed the name. The town was isolated by two rivers: it was hard to get there, but they managed it, fortunately, because they wanted to meet the seer.

The two friends frightened the youth, who was weak, thin, and had eyes that Thomas described in his journals as “like codfish eyes.” They convinced him to go with them to London. It was a period of rebellion in Scotland and they insisted he would die in the conflict if he stayed because, with his build and sickly constitution, he wasn’t a fighter. They offered to take care of him. It wasn’t hard to take him from the village: his parents trusted the elegant English gentlemen. And the locals, though they appreciated his prophetic ability, also feared him. The most religious among them believed his gift had come from the Devil.

They brought him to Thomas Mathers’ house, and they didn’t have to wait long for the first manifestation. He showed them the black light in a nearby field. In those days the ritual was done differently. The boy had to be lying down on the ground when he summoned the light, which, they say, didn’t wound back then. It was less savage, or it was asleep. “We touch it, and it’s cold and wet to the touch, like rain,” wrote Thomas Mathers in his diary. “The boy is Dee’s black mirror. He’s a medium, like Kelly.”