Frank regained his composure and continued. “When this memory hit me it was like being sucker punched between the eyes. It literally knocked me down. I sat on the steps that led down to the den and just reeled with the intensity of it. And then I guess I lost it there for a minute. I was bawling like a baby, but more out of fear. I was so utterly petrified, so scared for my life you wouldn’t believe it. Until then I had sort of been coasting through this whole ordeal, accepting the fact that I had been physically and psychologically abused as a child, but still not accepting the whole Satanic thing. I guess you’re feeling the same way.”
Vince nodded. It was hard to grasp.
“But when this memory came back, I was floored. I’d never told my therapist about any suspicions I had about my parents being in a Satanic cult. The memories that always came up before were those of basic dysfunction; my dad striking me, the neglect I used to suffer. Nothing like this. And I realized then that the room I was standing in when this flashback occurred was the same room it happened in. That’s what triggered it. So I got out of the house as quickly as I could and drove to Mike’s place. Told him everything.”
They were silent for a moment, Vince digesting everything Frank had just told him. He finished his Coke and set the empty down in the cup holder. Frank sat forward in his seat, looking out at the park, sipping his Dr. Pepper. The afternoon sun was burning high overhead, and a scratch baseball game had started in the diamond to their left.
“Okay,” Vince said, breaking the silence. He turned to Frank. “So you put two and two together and came after me. And you have no hard, physical proof that any of this happened.”
Frank nodded. “Just my memories.”
Vince thought this over. “How much do you know about this group?”
“Too much and not enough.” Frank shifted around in his seat. He turned to Vince again. “The present lineage has been in existence since the 1960s. They’re called The Children of the Night. The earliest mention of the cult comes from the early part of this century, but it’s believed their links go back much further. I don’t have the time to get into ancient Sumerian and Babylonian occult teachings, but elements of their belief system and rituals go back to them, especially in regards to the Sumerian devil Hanbi.”
“Hanbi?” Vince asked. “What’s that?” His mind flashed back on that jumble of words written in his mother’s blood. That word had been one of them.
“My research on that isn’t complete yet,” Frank said. “In fact, it’s pretty fucking hard unless you can read ancient Sumerian. Hanbi is said to be the father of a more well known Sumerian God named Pazuzu, who was the devil-god of the southeastern wind and brought drought and pestilence. Ever see The Exorcist?”
Vince nodded.
“The little girl in that movie, Regan, was possessed by Pazuzu.”
“So…Pazuzu is just another name for the Devil?”
“That’s what it all boils down to.” Frank took a sip of his drink. “The devil has gone by numerous names throughout history. Azazel, Beelzebub, Shaitan, Behemoth, Satanael, Melek Taus. With each name he goes by a different appearance but he’s pretty much more or less the same.”
“A fallen angel,” Vince said, the Bible lessons his mother forced him to partake in coming to mind.
“So they say, but there’s a lot more to it than that. I’m still trying to chase that end down too. Needless to say, he’s been worshipped since the dawn of time. In fact, my evidence suggests he was worshipped well before our concept of God even developed.”
“Oh yeah?” Vince looked at Frank curiously.
“I’ll tell you more about that later. Let’s stick with what we’re going on now, which is the group our parents were involved with. The first tangible evidence of our group is from Europe around 1914. It’s alleged that Aleister Crowley associated with them and later left, some say, out of fear, which was out of character for Crowley. There’s evidence of cult activity in the U.S. in the 1920s, especially regarding the Archibald Lasher serial killing case in Los Angeles. By the 1940s, the cult was very active and it’s alleged that Adolf Hitler and several key SS personnel were members. The cult was largely inactive after World War II until the late 1960s. That’s when you had the End Times Church, who worshipped Jesus, God, and Satan simultaneously, their reason being that you can’t have one without the other, that all of them worked together in some sort of tandem. A group called the Four P Movement broke away from yet another cult, one called the Process Church of the Final Judgment and was largely blamed for the rise of cult killings in the US in the late sixties and early seventies. I studied both groups and that’s when I saw that The Children of the Night had re-emerged within this period. By then they’d seamlessly blended into the background of mainstream society. Folks like Charles Manson and his cult were popularly attributed to belonging to one or the other.”
“Oh yeah?” Victor had watched a documentary on Charles Manson a year or two before Laura’s murder.
“Yeah,” Frank said. “There’s no hard proof, of course, but the evidence is pretty strong. There’s even stronger evidence The Children of the Night rubbed shoulders with members of the Japanese Yakuza, various Islamic splinter groups from the Middle East, Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the Army of God, Jim Jones, and serial killers like Henry Lee Lucas and Son of Sam. Their leader was—and still is—Samuel F. Garrison, the “Grand Chingon,” or “Head Devil.” You wouldn’t know he was involved in this stuff from looking at him.” Frank leaned back in his leather bucket seat. “Very suave looking man, early seventies, in great shape for a man of his age. Sharp minded. Very cultured, polite, respectful. A man who has contributed immensely to the business world and the community. A man who is an icon of respectability. But beneath that the guy is the fucking devil.”
Vince was silent for a moment. He was just about to ask a question when Frank continued.
“They’re also connected to similar sects around the world, all involved in the same thing. Are they responsible for all the child abductions and murders you hear about from Christian fundamentalists? No. But they do prey on runaways for their rituals. They’re the easiest targets. Do they keep women in compounds as ‘breeders’ for infants that are later sacrificed to the devil? No fucking way. They probably had a hand in spreading such a rumor because doing so takes all suspicion off of them. But they have used infants in sacrifices.” He stopped himself and for a minute Vince thought he was going to collapse again, but he managed to get under control again. “They are in our government and military. They are experts in mind control, Physiological experimentation on humans and controlling via biochips. They are deceptive and infiltrate the government, modern society, and the Christian church intentionally to pervert it and cause divisions. And the reason they’ve been able to survive for so long is because they are incredibly organized and by outward appearances are outstanding citizens: doctors, lawyers, CEO’s, Law Enforcement Agents, Government Officials, members of the clergy.”
Vince was shaking his head. “This sounds so unreal.”
“I know,” Frank said. “How do you think I felt when we started uncovering it? I’m starting to feel like Whitley Strieber.”
“Who?”
“Whitley Strieber…the guy who wrote Communion. He’s a very high profile horror and science fiction writer. Wrote a couple of great novels: Wolfen, The Hunger. In his book Communion, he claims he was actually abducted by aliens and was used as a guinea pig in their experiments. He claims they’re still doing this to him, tracking him down. All this from a guy who makes a great living making this kind of shit up.” Frank patted his chest. “That’s how I feel.”
So he feels funny believing in it, too, Vince thought. Still, he found it even hard to consider what Frank was telling him. It was just too crazy. But he couldn’t voice that to Frank. He had to deal with whatever doubts he had himself. Maybe tonight he would do some research on what Frank was insinuating.
Vince let out a careful sigh. “This stuff soun
ds pretty heavy.”
“It is,” Frank said. He finished his Dr. Pepper and set the empty in the cup holder. “You wouldn’t believe some of the stuff Mike and I have discovered. Did you know the Son of Sam killings in the late 1970s are vaguely connected to an offshoot of this group?”
“No.”
“There’s evidence that suggests that David Berkowitz didn’t act alone when he gunned down those people in ’76 and ’77. In fact, witness descriptions place three or four other gunmen at the scene of the crimes. One theory is that the shootings were committed by order of the cult to enact something—exactly what, I have no idea. The attacks were all committed on a day that corresponds with a holiday or festival on the occult calendar. Berkowitz, on the other hand, was most likely fingered to take the fall before he even knew it. He initially clammed up and claimed to have acted on the order of his neighbor’s dog, which he said was possessed by a demon. Psychiatrists dismissed that as a ploy, but a few years later when he began talking to an investigative reporter about the murders and hinting he was involved in a large nationwide satanic cult, he was attacked in prison. His throat was slashed and he almost died.” Frank looked at Vince. “As you can imagine, he kept quiet about the cult after that.”
Vince was silent, taking this all in.
“There’s more. I can go on and on about what we’ve found out. The Manson family, the Metamoros thing down in Mexico, the Edwin Groose serial killing case, all that stuff had some trail leading back to The Children of the Night. Did you know that they even own a major Christian Broadcasting system?”
Vince shook his head. This was all sounding like the paranoid delusions of a bad dream. The events of the past week raced through his mind: his mother’s sudden death, rushing to Pennsylvania, Lillian’s sudden death, talking to the detectives and his mother’s friends in Lititz, the visit from the attorney, the crazy guy at the airport that tried to kill him and Tracy. And now this.
“Why is all this happening?” Vince said, more to himself than to Frank.
“I have my suspicions, trust me.”
“No, I mean…” Vince turned in his seat so he was facing Frank. “Why me? Why is all this shit crumbling down around me? Even considering the possibility my mother might have belonged to such a group and that they exist even now and are involved in everything you claim they are, why would they be after me? Why would they want to kill me? I have a fairly good life, I have a career I love, I have friends that I love and care for and who care for me. I have a good life. I had nothing to do with what my mother did in the sixties. I’m not in the least bit interested in the occult. So why should I care if my mother—our parents—were involved in a satanic cult? Why would a bunch of religious nuts want to kill me?”
Frank was silent for a moment. He regarded Vince sternly, his dark eyes resting heavily on him. “I could just go on and say that I came here to help you. If you remember, I told you that you were in danger. That part is certainly true as evidenced by what happened to you and Tracy.”
“But why am I in danger?” Vince asked. “Why would they want me dead? I’ve never done anything to them! And why did you go through all this trouble to find me? What business is it of yours?”
“It’s my business just as it is yours. You see, Vince, my reasons for tracking you down are not entirely for your concerns. I have my own self-interest at heart as well. I came here today in the hopes of helping both of us out because this is my problem, too.”
“How so?”
Frank reached in the rear of the Saturn and pulled out a black leather satchel of the sort carried by business executives. He rifled through it and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He handed them to Vince, who took them curiously and began to glance through them. “These are transcriptions of Internet communications,” Frank explained. “They were copied and pasted into an e-mail I got two months ago. I’ve been unable to track the sender of the e-mail. See there?” he pointed to a portion of the communication. “Where it refers to ‘plateau’?”
Vince saw it and nodded. “Yeah.”
“Read it.”
Vince read it. It only took a few lines to realize the implications of the communiqué. He looked at Frank, astonished. “There’s a reference here from this one guy about snuffing out ‘plateau’.”
“Exactly.”
“Plateau is you?”
Frank nodded. He looked grim. “That’s my screen name.”
“How did they get your screen name?”
“I don’t know,” Frank answered softly. “I’ve never tapped into any kind of occult bulletin board before in my life. All of my research on this was done at libraries and bookstores. My electronic correspondence is largely confined to people in publishing. I’ve tried to trace who I know in publishing who could know people that belong to The Children of the Night, but I’ve been unable to come up with anything. Everything runs into a dead end. I started thinking maybe none of this was real, that I was chasing something that doesn’t exist.” He held up the sheaf of papers. “But this group exists. They’re real. Whether there really is a literal devil is irrelevant in this case. These people believe there is a devil, much like Pat Robertson and Oral Roberts believe there is a literal God, and they will do anything to advance their agenda.” He paused for a moment, staring down at the floor of the Saturn.
“What’s their agenda?”
Frank appeared to think about this. “All I know is they seem to be working on something really big. They’re devil worshippers all the way; they not only hold allegiance to the Christian devil, they honor his father in even higher regard. The ancient Sumerian god Hanbi.”
“That name was written on the wall in my mother’s bedroom,” Vince said.
Frank looked at him. “You sure?”
Vince nodded. “Yeah.”
Frank turned away. Vince thought he muttered, “They’re moving fast,” but he wasn’t sure. He quickly regained his composure. “Anyway…they know who I am now. To conduct the kind of background check that revealed my e-mail address would require what O.J. Simpson paid for his defense team.”
“But somebody found out anyway?”
“Yes,” Frank answered, looking more grim. “The day I got that transcript I was away from the house. My wife was at work, and the kids were at her mother’s. Somebody broke into our place and ransacked it. Tore it apart. Nothing was taken, but they destroyed my computer and my office. They started a small fire there—that’s how we found out about it. A neighbor saw smoke pouring out of my office window and called the fire department and managed to track my wife down, who called me out of the meeting I was at.” He paused, as if struggling with that tragedy. “My office was a shambles. I lost everything except a backup tape that I keep in a safe deposit box, and my laptop computer, which I had with me. All the information about the cult, with the exception of the stuff I managed to save on tape, was destroyed.”
He regarded Vince with those deep brown eyes again. “And here I am.”
Chapter Ten
VINCE WALTERS DIDN’T get back to the office until 1:30 that afternoon. When he returned he went immediately to his office, shut his computer down, and checked his messages. There was a call from detective Staley. Vince returned the call, on nervous edge as he was put through to the detective.
“So what’s the news?” he asked detective Staley.
“We don’t think he’s the guy,” Detective Staley said, clearly irritated at this turn-of-event. “Insufficient evidence. The guy has a clear alibi, but we’re holding him on weapons charges.”
“What turned you on to him anyway and who is he?”
“He was fingered by a witness at the airport,” Detective Staley said. “I won’t name the witness, but he related that the guy resembled somebody he knew that had been making terrorist threats at his place of employment. We followed up on it and visited the suspect at his home in Huntington Beach. Turns out the guy is a neo-Nazi and had a pretty good arsenal, most of it illegal firearms. We’re holding hi
m on that charge now without bail until we can build a case against him. But I don’t think he’s the guy that shot at you.”
“Why’s that?”
“This guy claims he was attending a White-Power rally in San Diego,” Detective Staley said, his voice tinged with disgust. “We checked that angle out and found video-tape that supports his alibi. He certainly appears to have been elsewhere.”
“So what happens now?”
“That’s up to you. Have you been to your home yet?”
“I’m planning on going now.”
“I’d be careful. I can’t spare any more resources, so I suggest you lay low and alter your driving routes and habits. We’re doing all we can on this end.”
“Thanks.” Vince hung up. He wanted to call Tracy right away and he glanced at the digital clock on his desk. He had to get going if he wanted to meet Frank at the house. He would call Tracy later.
He quickly packed up his briefcase and headed out. He told his secretary he wasn’t feeling well and was going home. Then he left for the day.
Frank met him at his house. He’d given Frank directions before being dropped off at the mall to pick up his car. Frank told him that he still wasn’t sure if the group was on to him; if they’d wanted him dead, they would have made it look like an accident, not a full-blown assassination attempt. He was going to call Mike from his cell phone and give him the latest news, then he would meet him at Vince’s home. Whoever it was that tried to have him and Tracy killed was probably lying low after Sunday’s aborted attempt. While Vince was fairly confident The Children of the Night hadn’t been making inquiries into him, Frank’s story spooked him. Luckily most of the staff was out at late lunches or still in meetings and he was able to escape the office relatively undetected. If anybody inquired as to his whereabouts, Glenda would simply tell them he’d gone home sick. No problem.
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