Smoke and Dagger

by Douglas Wynne

  Leblanc could hear it too: a droning chant. The words eluded him. “Frank.”

  Whittaker opened his eyes.

  “Come on. We have to get out of here. Someone’s upstairs.” He gestured with a circular wave. This time, his partner seemed to comprehend the urgency. Whittaker could move quickly when he needed to, even on his tiptoes. In less than a minute, he was jumping down onto the patio from the railing.

  LeBlanc hurried him, jabbing a finger toward the illuminated window.

  “Gotta be the redhead,” Whittaker said. “She’s the only one missing from the festivities in there.”

  LeBlanc ducked his head between his shoulders and hurried to the concrete stairs they’d taken from the street. He’d descended the first ten before sensing that Whittaker wasn’t following, then bounded silently back up to find the man stock still at the edge of the patio, staring out at the ocean with the same intensity he’d previously focused through the stained glass. No, this was different. That had been lurid fascination. This, to the extent that Whittaker’s doughy features could convey it, was awe.

  LeBlanc followed his gaze.

  Something glowed under the water, a phosphorescent sigil wavering in the shallows.

  Whittaker glanced down at him. “Shoulda brought the binocs. I left them in the glove box. You’re eyes are better than mine. Can you tell which symbol that is?”

  LeBlanc couldn’t be sure without a closer look. He shook his head. “Let’s check it out. He shot a last look at the window beyond his partner’s towering silhouette. The candlelight still danced beyond the glass, but there was no one looking back.

  * * *

  Catherine closed the door enough for it to stick in the swollen wood of the frame. A concrete house on the beach had to be one of the dampest places a man could choose to live, but she was grateful the tight fit didn’t require her to latch it, allowing for a quieter retreat to her own room if the chanting stopped. For now, the sound was her only assurance that she wouldn’t be walked in on while searching the room. It droned through the house, tinged with harmonics that set the crystals chandeliers chiming. The melody was primitive, but the layering of voices complex; a triad of overtones as exotic as the incense that rose to the balcony on the house’s drafty currents, trailing her into the darkened room.

  She relied on the scant light from the window to locate a candlestick on the bedside table, and lit it from a matchbook she found on the same table, snuffing the match between her thumb and forefinger before tucking it into her pocket to avoid leaving evidence of her presence behind. The room bloomed into visibility, stark and empty except for a suitcase and a few hanging shirts in the closet and a briefcase on a desk beneath the window. Would the smell of burning wax linger in the air? She hoped the incense from below would mask it.

  The briefcase, a scuffed and worn thing that had probably started its life in a shop in Baghdad, wasn’t locked. She sprung the latches and lifted the lid carefully, propping it against the wall. Inside, she found a stack of papers, a pad of graph paper covered in calculations and strange runes, and what might have been a weapon or tool of some kind—a silver spike about nine inches long with an ornately carved handle. She couldn’t discern what the carving was meant to depict, but thought it might be some kind of dragon. Was this a ritual dagger? If so, why hadn’t Abdelmalek brought it downstairs with him to the ritual?

  Maybe he has the only tool he needs for that.

  She knew that daggers were most often used for banishing, and tonight, the trio seemed to be engaged in an invocation; the summoning of some force the woman was lending her body to.

  The papers appeared to be mimeograph copies of a handwritten manuscript, but the alphabet was alien to her. Scattered amid the copies were a few pages of original parchment. Of these, some were covered almost entirely in splotches of what looked like spilled India ink. Drawings of marine creatures adorned the margins, as unrecognizable as the words and letters—unnerving specimens, bug eyed and bedecked with rows of teeth and claws. If such things existed in nature, they likely roamed beyond the reach of the sun’s longest rays.

  She’d waited out most of the night in bed fully clothed, even though Jack had provided her with a selection of nightgowns to choose from. Now she took the subminiature spy camera from the front pocket of the pants she’d spent the day hiking in. She slid it open, her pulse galloping and her hands clammy. Documenting everything was a task too big to complete in the scant time that might be available to her. She flipped through the chaos of papers, searching for anything that might be significant and complete enough to warrant a photo.

  When she found what she was looking for, the shock of it took a moment to absorb, and she realized that despite acting on Hildebrand’s instructions, she had never really expected to find what he’d sent her here for. Sure, Jack was into some strange cult activity, strange enough even to conjure an entity to near visible appearance with the aid of a medium and some concoction of apparently sentient smoke. But the notion that an ancient artifact was concealed in Cleopatra’s Needle in New York, and that a West Coast faction of the Starry Wisdom had kept records of it for generations because of the threat it posed to their apocalyptic plans…well, she wasn’t going to turn down the promise of adventure just because the chances of finding proof were remote, but she’d also never doubted how remote they were.

  And yet, here it was: Three pages of runes flowing around drawings of a scarab beetle clenching a gem in its pincers. Two of the pages were on parchment and appeared to contain verses or incantations. The other, rendered in the blue mimeograph ink, appeared to be a cypher key, with neat columns of runes and their English equivalents. If the parchment verses could be decoded using the English key, then she could be sure it didn’t originate in ancient Egypt, though the simple fact that it was on parchment and not papyrus was enough to indicate that much. Still, that didn’t mean it hadn’t been passed down through generations of the latter day Starry Wisdom Church, which had left footprints in a scattering of Middle Eastern countries before jumping the Atlantic and emerging above ground in 1844.

  Something thudded against the outside wall of the castle, causing Catherine to spill the papers across the floor and under the bed. She stared at the closed door. The chanting continued without interruption. She knelt and gathered the papers, thanking her guardian angel that she hadn’t dropped them onto the candle and knocked it from its silver base.

  When she’d gathered the bundle and set the two scarab pages on top, she realized that she had no idea what order the pages had been in before the spill. For a moment, she considered putting them back in the briefcase and searching for a window she could climb out of. All she’d told the men was that she was renting a shack down the beach. They couldn’t knock on every door in the middle of the night. And if she left the briefcase where she’d found it, Abdelmalek might not even notice the missing pages until morning. But if she fled in the night, she would be burning a bridge behind her, admitting by her actions that she’d come on false pretenses. Fate had literally handed her the keys to the castle. She couldn’t afford to squander the opportunity to learn more from Parsons just for the sake of a manuscript she could only hope to decipher a fragment of. Better to document what she could and take her chances prying for more in the morning. After all, these men had worked with the material. And judging by what she had seen from the balcony, they were getting results. What might they have learned that she could never hope to glean from writings alone? If they discovered that her curiosity extended to prowling, would they really harm her? She thought not. More likely, they would throw her out. So why leave before she had no choice in the matter? They didn’t know her allegiances, and truth be told, neither did she. She was fumbling in the dark, grappling with the contours of a mystery that might ultimately align her with Jack’s inscrutable aims. He had been so open and welcoming, had seen in her a kindred spirit. The least she could do was talk with him tomorrow about his nocturnal exploits. Given the volume of the
chant reaching a crescendo mere feet below the bed they’d given her to sleep in, they were taking no pains to hide what they were up to.

  How much longer could they go? The mantra rolled on with no hint of exhaustion. Catherine positioned the scarab pages in the candlelight and lined up the viewfinder. Between each click of the shutter, the camera trembled in her fingers.

  * * *

  “What is it?” Whittaker stood in the dry sand beyond the high tide line, his oxfords tangled in crabgrass and the wind-blown husks of dried seaweed. LeBlanc’s shoes lay abandoned a few yards closer to the surf. For once, it was the big man hanging back while the thin man examined the threat. LeBlanc waded into the shallows, drawn to the manifestation by an irresistible fascination, his slacks rolled up over his knees.

  A creature of light rose from the submerged sigil, breaking the surface of the water and towering over the waves. It had to be at least twelve feet tall, a transparent projection of violet light, though what medium the light used to hang in the air with three-dimensional solidity, LeBlanc couldn’t say. There was no mist or fog on the air to sustain it. He recognized the form as Lung Crawthok, a humanoid deity with crustacean armor, a tail like that of a scorpion, and rows of claws curling from its ribs. The characteristic details were all there, as described in the church documents—the harpoon staff and fang-tipped flower petals of flesh framing the rictus of horse teeth. But nothing he had read could have prepared him for the experience of standing in its presence, even in the thin form of holographic light. The creature was almost beautiful, torso set low in a balanced, bent-legged-warrior stance, head slowly scanning the horizon. Its shimmering face radiated an alien nobility and savage intelligence, and he knew in his bones and balls that he stood in the presence of a nascent god.

  The creature gave no indication that it was aware of him. Its cold eyes seemed to be focused on the castle, acknowledging something LeBlanc couldn’t see, as if its gaze could penetrate the concrete walls in the same way that he could see the stars through its towering form.

  He advanced through the gentle surf and reached out with a tentative hand. A sound of reproach escaped Whittaker’s throat, carrying on the wind from the man’s position up the beach, an inchoate groan. But LeBlanc paid it no heed. He thought of the microbial life that shared the environment with mankind, the dust mites and other organisms that crowded the air and earth but failed to attract our regard. He was as insignificant to this creature as those life forms were to him. The scale was not as different, but the planes of existence they occupied were.

  So what was facilitating this insubstantial perception? Was it the sigil carved in the sand? The ritual unfolding in the castle? Some combination of the two? Or was it the chant?

  He passed his hand through the shaft of the creature’s armor, prepared to turn and flee if the gesture awakened it to his presence. Nothing. Not even a hint of resistance in the air as his fingers traveled through the light. Not a flicker. They called this god the Lurker at the Threshold, the Guardian at the Gate. It was the consort of the goddess Shabbat Cycloth, and her protector. Hers was the name they chanted inside the castle.

  A stone plunked into the water a few feet away, breaking the trance LeBlanc was falling into. He looked up the beach at Whittaker, who had come closer and was holding his discarded shoes, waving him back. Deciding that if the monster couldn’t see him it probably couldn’t hear him either, he called out, “Do you see it? Lung—” He stopped himself short of uttering the name, fearful that the sound might complete the manifestation. “The creature,” he finished.

  “Yeah,” Whittaker said. “Come on. It’s fading.”

  LeBlanc saw that he was right. The light was dissolving, the phosphorescent lines of the sigil dimming.

  “They must be winding down,” Whittaker said.

  LeBlanc plodded out of the surf and Whittaker handed him his shoes. He took them absently, staring back at where the creature had been. Whittaker clapped a hand on his shoulder. “Snap out of it, Jeremy. Let’s go. If she leaves, I want to tail the cab.”

  9

  Catherine woke in a room almost white with sunlight. For a disorienting moment, she couldn’t remember where she was, and then it all came back. Not a dream, but a long night of intrigue. The sound of the ocean reached her through the window, mingled with the cries of gulls and children, and she sat up, aware of two things at once: For the room to be this bright with a westward facing window, she must have slept very late. And if no one had disturbed her, it was likely that her late-night prowling had gone undetected.

  She looked at the clothes Jack had left for her, folded and stacked on a chair. She’d left the nightgowns untouched, opting to sleep in half of the clothes she’d worn the previous day. Now she considered a fresh change and quickly decided against it, opting instead to shake out her own salt and sand crusted pants and wear them again. After taking the temperature of Jack’s hospitality, she would maybe take a quick shower, but for now she didn’t want to be beholden to him any more than was necessary. Nor did she want to remind him of his estranged wife. Most of all, she didn’t want to complicate her exit if she found a need to make it quick.

  Overnight, the castle house had felt dank and drafty, a cave of shadows. Now, in daylight, it had an entirely different personality: spacious, airy, bright, and inviting. The acrid aroma of incense had been cleared away by the morning breeze, replaced with the scents of coffee and grilled sausages beckoning from the open kitchen area below.

  She found Jack at the long table, alone among his scattered papers, as if Abdelmalek had never made the effort to hide them from her prying eyes. A mug of black coffee sat neglected at his elbow, and a crust of toast dangled from his hand like he’d forgotten entirely that he was eating it. He looked surprised at the sight of her when she reached the bottom of the stairs, but with a quick smile, he bounced to his feet, tossing the unfinished toast onto a plate, and waving her toward a chair.

  “Catherine. Good morning. Did you sleep okay? I know the bed is a little rickety.”

  “It was lovely. I must have needed the rest more than I realized.” She scanned the walls for a clock. “What time is it?”

  Jack glanced at his watch. “Half-past breakfast. But I’ve kept it warm for you. Sausages and coffee are on the stove. How do you like your eggs?”

  She almost told him not to bother, but her stomach was already growling at the smell of food. “Scrambled? I can make them. I don’t want to disturb your work.”

  “Nonsense. You’re my guest. Please, sit down. Do you take cream, and sugar?”

  “Just a little cream. Where’s Kamen?”

  “He took a drive down to Long Beach. I don’t expect him back until later.”

  Catherine thought of the briefcase. She should have checked to see if the other bedroom door was ajar before coming downstairs. She could have peered in to see if the case remained where she’d left it. She let her eyes roam the papers scattered across the table. Were any of those she’d seen last night among them? These looked just as strange. The mimeographed cypher key jumped out at her. But for all she knew, this could be a second copy.

  “What’s in Long Beach? Sorry. I don’t mean to pry…”

  Behind her, Jack cracked an egg in to a pan and fired a burner. “His church has a chapter there. He’s giving a friend a ride home. She dropped by after you retired. I hope our chanting didn’t keep you up.”

  So there would be no effort to deny the events of the previous night. Perhaps he already knew that she had been through the papers in the briefcase and didn’t care? She dropped any pretense of disinterest and openly studied the pages closest to her seat at the table. They were covered with visionary verses and bold pen-and-ink drawings depicting a grotesque bestiary of demigods.

  And on the 31st of October 1948, BABALON called on me again, and I began the last work, that was the work of the wand. And I worked for 17 days, until BABALON called me in a dream, and instructed me on an astral working. Then I reconstruc
ted the temple, and began the Black Pilgrimage, as She instructed.

  And I went into the sunset with Her sign, and into the night past accursed and desolate places and cyclopean ruins, and so came at last to the City of Chorazin. And there a great tower of Black Basalt was raised, that was part of a castle whose further battlements reeled over the gulf of stars. And upon the tower was this sign

  If there was a glyph or sigil that followed, it was obscured by another sheet of paper, tossed askew across the handwritten text. This was one of the drawings. It depicted a horned and hooded figure, four-armed like a Hindu god, its face concealed in shadows but for an eye like a shard of light. Its four hands played the strings of a strange instrument—a lute or guitar with a crescent shaped sound hole.

  She drank in the details of the other images, her eyes flicking from one to the next, her hunger—ravenous just a moment ago—turning sour in her stomach. There were eyeless, long fingered creatures holding candles before their chittering teeth; a giant winged beast crouching over Moai idol heads howled at the sky, its head sprouting enough eyes, tentacles, and horns to defy earthly evolution; a diagram of the silver dagger she’d found in Abdelmalek’s case, surrounded by more of the cypher runes she’d seen on the scarab pages; a smiling Negro wearing a crown and strange spectacles, surrounded by luminous marine creatures that reminded her of the eels she’d glimpsed from the balcony, swirling in the greasy smoke. The memory made her shiver.

  Another fragment of writing caught her eye, a sliver of a page. Was this in Jack’s hand?

  I, BELARION, ANTICHRIST, in the year 1949 of the rule of the Black Brotherhood called Christianity, do make my Manifesto to all men.