The Brotherhood of the Wheel

by R. S. Belcher

  “The temple restored,” Max said without missing a beat. “How can the Builders help the Brethren?”

  “That’s it?” Lovina said. “Anyone could know those passwords. For a secret society, you guys seem pretty lax about security.”

  “It’s not just the words,” Max said, turning to Lovina. They locked eyes for an instant longer than normal, and they both knew it and looked away. “Um, it’s inflection, tonal range, breath control. To do it properly, it’s almost impossible to deceive and hit the proper octave frequency. We call it ‘speaking the soul.’ Each order trains its members how to do it, to project the oaths the proper way to be recognized and to be able to recognize a true member. The Brethren train so they can even pick up tonal identifiers over CB-radio transmissions. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a lot more secure than it appears to the untrained eye.”

  “Lot like learning a birdcall,” Jimmie said. “After a spell, you don’t even think about it.”

  “Oh,” Lovina said. “Okay. But you just told me all that, and I’m not a member of anything.”

  “Oh,” Max said, turning red. She looked to Jimmie, who was smiling. “I … oh … that is to say … I’m … I didn’t mean to…”

  “This is Lovina Marcou,” Jimmie said. “With the Louisiana State Police. She’s working the same case as us and she’s been a big help, and she can be trusted. This is Heck Sinclair—he’s my squire.”

  “Sinclair?” Max said, looking at Heck and then back at Jimmie.

  “What?” Heck said. “It’s my mom’s family name.”

  “William St. Clair, or Sinclair, if you prefer, was the third Earl of Orkney, Baron of Roslin, the first Earl of Caithness,” Max said. As she spoke, she gathered verbal steam, her words always clear and precise but almost falling one on top of the next in her enthusiasm. “He built Rosslyn Chapel in Midlothian, Scotland, a location of great significance to Free Masonry, the Templar order, and the Builders. One of his descendants, another William Sinclair, was the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. The Sinclair name is synonymous with Templar and Masonic royalty.”

  Heck grinned widely and looked at Jimmie, who appeared to have just swallowed a cup of thumbtacks. “Royalty,” he said. “How about that!”

  “Yeah, great,” Jimmie said, shaking Max’s hand. “Thanks for coming out so quick to help.”

  Aaron gestured to his people and more food, drinks, and chairs were brought out. There was a lull in the club’s music, replaced by the murmur of the crowd. Jimmie offered Max his seat and took one of the new chairs. Heck began work on another scotch, and Lovina sipped her water.

  “Coffee,” Max said to one of the female attendants. “Lots of cream and sugar, please … or a Monster, or Red Bull, if you have them. Anything with caffeine would really be great. Thanks.” She slipped a tablet out of the satchel she set beside her chair and turned it on. “I have to admit, I didn’t know exactly what to think when I got the call to come out here. I’ve never done fieldwork, ever. The most action I ever see is trying not to get groped too many times on the DC Metro coming home from Georgetown.”

  Jimmie chuckled. “Well, they kind of threw you in the deep end of the pool, Doc.”

  “How did you know I was a doctor?” Max asked.

  “Wild shot in the dark,” he said. “So what can you tell us about Black-Eyed Kids?”

  “They’re contemporary urban myths,” Max said. “A confabulation of the Internet.”

  “Peachy,” Heck said, shaking his head. “Yeah, this was worth the wait, Jimmie.”

  “Doctor—Max,” Lovina said, “we fought these creatures yesterday in Illinois. They killed one of Jimmie’s Brethren. Several of them were formerly missing children. I can tell you, they are very, very real.” Again, they shared a glance that hung in the air an instant too long.

  Max shrugged and smiled. “I understand,” she said, tapping the screen of her tablet. “But I searched the Builder database thoroughly on the way to you for any information on the phenomenon, and all I got back was online drivel. There are no documented cases of any Builder ever encountering a BEK. I’m sorry, I wish I could be more help to you than that.”

  “Any Builder?” Jimmie said. “You keep track of Brethren reports in that database of yours?”

  “We do,” Max said, eagerly taking the can of energy drink offered by an attendant. She eschewed the glass of ice and pulled the tab to open the can. “However, much of the information we gather from Brethren field encounters is, well, very hard to verify or quantify, to say the least. It’s still recorded and maintained, but we can’t put it all in the database, because a lot of it can’t be confirmed as accurate data.”

  “You sayin’ you don’t trust us?” Jimmie said, his face darkening. “You think we’re making this shit up?”

  “No, no,” Max said. “Of course not. It’s just … look, I know vampires exist. I have the skull of one on my desk back in Georgetown. I know that in 1934 a salt golem was created in Poland that killed a number of Nazis operating covertly in that country. I know because we actually have film in the archives of the creature, as well as the journal of a survivor of the onslaught and several pounds of the actual enchanted salt—a preponderance of evidence that’s been vetted, tested, and verified.”

  “Now all you need is for someone to create a pretzel golem,” Heck said, “and you’re set.”

  “We deal in what we know, what we can prove with one-hundred-percent accuracy,” she said.

  “Hell,” Heck said. “Ain’t a whole lot of that anywhere in the world, Doc.”

  “In the field, on the Road, we have to trust our gut,” Jimmie said. “Sometimes that’s all you have, Max.”

  Max sipped her drink. “I understand, Mr. Aussapile—”

  “Jimmie,” he said. “I really don’t think you do understand, but I know it ain’t your fault—it’s just the way the Builders operate. I appreciate you coming out here, all the same.”

  “Well, I think I can still help,” Max said. “I’m considered a bit of an iconoclast by my colleagues. One of my fields of research is cryptozoology—”

  “Icono-what? Crypto-what?” Heck interrupted.

  “The study of hidden and unknown life-forms, Mr. Sinclair,” Max said.

  “Heck,” Jimmie said, jerking a thumb in Heck’s direction as he polished off another drink. “Call him Heck. Thinking of him as Mr. Sinclair makes my brain hurt.”

  “Even if I don’t have these BEKs in my files,” Max said, “I can help you figure them out—their patterns, their biology, their weaknesses, and their motives. I can help you track them.” She looked from Jimmie to Heck and finally held Lovina’s eyes again. “I’d really like to help, if I can.”

  “I ain’t passing up any help at this point,” Jimmie said. “But you do understand, Doc, things get pretty hairy out in the field. It’s no damn intellectual exercise. I can’t recall ever hearing of a Builder out on the Road before. I just don’t want you getting hurt or anything.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Max said. “Besides, I’m engaged in doctoral work on sacred geometry and numerology at the Imperceptible Preceptory, and I have some data I need to collect to test a theory. This will be a great opportunity to do that.”

  Jimmie gave a slightly pained look. “Swell,” he said before addressing their host. “Well, A, you got anything for me?”

  Aaron smiled. “Well, I’m no doctor,” he said. “But I got some pretty credible info on these BEKs from a bunch of folks in the occult underworld who ought to know the skinny.”

  “Spill,” Jimmie said.

  “Well,” Aaron said, “they started showing up around the late nineties. They’re linked to disappearances and abductions—mostly kids and teenagers, but some adults. They have to be invited into a personal space, like a car or a home, kind of like a vampire, but only if it’s currently occupied. They have some degree of hypnotic ability, and they can induce an almost mindless fear in the right circumstances. When they get riled up,
they become very angry and violent. They usually travel in pairs and seem to walk in unison, talk in unison—”

  “A hive mind,” Max offered. “A single, powerful consciousness operating through a series of drones. If I may, where did you get this data from?” she asked.

  “Synn, from the Horror Show,” Aaron said. “Joey Two-Shadows, the Antimatter Buddha, Laytham Ballard, and that tabby cat who’s a telepathic exorcist—what’s her name?”

  “Jingles,” both Jimmie and Heck replied.

  “Jingles,” Aaron said, snapping his fingers. “Right, right. Why can I never remember her name?”

  “Forgive me,” Max said, “but that’s a pretty disreputable group of individuals in the occult underworld to trust for information.”

  “No offense taken, darlin’,” Aaron said. “They are a pretty rangy-looking crew, to be sure, but they know what they’re talking about.”

  “And when you’re out on the Road,” Jimmie added, “you can’t always be picky about where your help comes from. From everything we’ve encountered so far, it sounds like the intel is solid.”

  “Does anyone have any idea who’s behind this?” Lovina asked. “If it’s some kind of powerful consciousness possessing children, then where does it come from? How do we find it and stop it?”

  “I have it on the best authority that there’s no infernal agency behind it,” Aaron said. “Everyone who’s had a run-in with BEKs has said the force animating them is old—older than Hell, older than people.”

  “Older than humanity is usually bad,” Max said.

  Jimmie nodded. “And tentacle-ly” he added. “I hate damn tentacles.”

  Lovina’s phone hummed in her jacket pocket. She looked at the screen—it was Russ. “Excuse me,” she said, as she stood and walked into the cool shadows away from the balcony. “You would not believe where I am or who I’m with,” Lovina said into the phone.

  “I’ll call that and raise you the symbol on that BEK video you wanted me to track down,” Russ said. “You know who the Pagan is, don’t you?”

  “That’s like asking who’s Jack the Ripper or Zodiac,” Lovina said, taking a quick sip from her water bottle. “Serial killer, been hunting nationwide since the early fifties. Kills victims four times a year, sometimes multiple victims on the same night. He got his name because he kills on the seasonal equinoxes. The FBI figures him for a Pagan, or a Pagan wannabe. He’s been on their most wanted list since the eighties, when they think he stopped killing. He’s spawned copycats for decades.”

  “There’s another reason they called him the Pagan,” Russ said. “One the FBI kept secret, in case they ever did get a collar. There was a symbol carved onto the bodies of every victim, from the first, in 1956, onward. Care to guess what that symbol was?”

  “You’re kidding me,” Lovina said, plugging a finger in her ear as the music started up in the club again. “That circle with the crescent moon over it that was on the video?”

  “Bingo!” Russ said. “It’s actually a Wiccan symbol for the Horned God—the masculine energy balanced by the feminine energy of the Triple Goddess.”

  “Triple Goddess?” Lovina said.

  “The Mother, the Maiden, and the Crone,” Russ said.

  “You have been busy,” she said. “Very Lilith Fair, Russ.”

  “This is really pretty fascinating stuff, chère,” Russ said. “The worship of these anthropomorphized forces of nature dates back to the dawn of Homo sapiens.”

  Something was tumbling in Lovina’s brain. Something in Russ’s words—pieces shifting and moving—waiting for them to snap into place.

  “So now we have a fifty-year run of occult serial murders tied in with these missing kids and the BEKs. It may be fascinating, Russ, but it doesn’t put us any closer to a perp.”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” Russ said. “This will…”

  * * *

  “So this Dewey Rears was tracking BEK sightings and linking them to disappearances in a database,” Max was saying to Jimmie and the others when Lovina stepped back into earshot.

  “That’s what Lovina told us,” Jimmie said. “Even said he was linking it to the Road in some way or another.”

  Max’s owlish eyes grew impossibly larger. “Really,” she said. “I’d love to see his data.”

  “You can look it over on the way,” Lovina said, handing Max a USB drive as she walked over to Jimmie. “My contact got a lead on Mark Stolar, the guy who was in Rears’s apartment and went missing, too. He’s turned up in Atlanta.”

  “Hot damn!” Jimmie said. “Good work. Okay, saddle up, everybody! Doc, you sure you’re on board for this?”

  Max was gathering up her satchel and replacing the tablet and other items she had scattered on her lap with one hand and chugging down the energy drink with the other. “Yes, please,” she said, taking a breath between gulps. “I want to help, and it might prove my hypothesis as well!”

  “Okay,” Jimmie said, grabbing his coat.

  “What do you know about Wicca, paganism?” Lovina asked Max. The Builder’s notebooks and pens clattered on the floor as if she had been startled. “Specifically, the Triple Goddess and the Horned God.” Max and Lovina knelt to gather the items off the floor.

  Max kept her gaze fixed on the floor. “Um, quite a bit,” she said softly. “I can tell you whatever you want on the way.”

  “You want me to call up a few of the Memphis Mafia? Shouldn’t take more than a few hours. We could ride shotgun for you,” Aaron said.

  Jimmie shook his hand and slapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, A, but we got to get on the road, ASAP. You’ve been a huge help, as always. I owe you another one, man.”

  “You don’t owe me nothin’, Jim,” Aaron said, hugging the trucker and slapping his back. “You go take care of business, brother—TCB. Mafia’s here if you need us.”

  “Goes both ways, A,” Jimmie said.

  Aaron snapped his fingers and gestured toward some of his attendants. A young woman with a silver tray walked among the group of travelers giving out gold necklaces like the one Jimmie and the other patrons at the boat dock had presented. Heck was given a “TCB” necklace, while Lovina and Max were given ones that said “TLC.”

  “You’re a prince, man!” Heck said, tucking the necklace into his jeans pocket.

  “Not exactly a prince,” Aaron said. The club owner leaned back into Jimmie, as if hugging him again. “Jim, that kid, Heck, you know he’s—”

  “Yeah,” Jimmie said, interrupting him. “I do, but he’s also my squire.”

  “Just watch your backside, brother,” Aaron said, stepping away. “Y’all come on back anytime,” he said to the crew. “And good huntin’.”

  “Let’s ride!” Jimmie said.

  FIFTEEN

  “10-26”

  Mark’s sleep was fitful, full of shadow hands grabbing him with fingers so cold they burned and palms, like cigarette smoke, clamping over his mouth and nose, smothering him. Sometime after sunlight began to burn at the edges of the hotel room’s thick curtains, he awoke to the crash of the door flying open, the security chain raining down in tiny fragments. He froze, thinking they had found him; he would die now, like Dewey.

  Strong warm hands grabbed him, and he felt a weight on his chest. He was pinned to the bed by a hefty-looking stranger, while a beautiful but stern-looking woman stood beside the bed aiming a gun at his face. “Mark Stolar,” she said. “Don’t move. You are under arrest in the kidnapping of Dewey Rears.”

  Mark couldn’t help laughing, in spite of his terror. “You have got to be fucking kidding me, man!” he said. “You’re busting me for Dewey? Of course you are.”

  The big burly guy on top of him, his knee planted on Mark’s chest, didn’t look anything like a cop, though he had a fancy pistol-grip shotgun resting against Mark’s chest. He looked like a gear-jammer, a trucker. “Tell us what happened, then, Mark,” the trucker said. “What happened to Dewey and you?”

  Mark looked from one fa
ce to another. There were four people in his hotel room—the cop, the trucker, a woman with long curly black hair and glasses, who looked as if she should be on a college campus, and a biker, complete with his colors. Mark saw the patches on his back and the squat, ugly assault rifle he had slung over his shoulder, as the biker shut the door to the room. Mark suspected that he was the one who’d kicked it in.

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Mark said. “Who are you guys?” He looked at the lady cop. “Let me see some ID.”

  “Put the gun away, please, Lovina,” Jimmie said, moving his shotgun away.

  Lovina looked at him, frowning. “We don’t know his part in all this yet, Jimmie,” she said.

  “My part?” Mark said. “My fucking part in all this is I got grabbed, tortured, got to watch my best friend murdered in front of me by some freak with a knife, and then forced to go do the bastard’s dirty work. That’s my part, Officer, and it’s a bit-fucking-part, too.”

  Lovina slid the pistol back into her shoulder holster, under her leather jacket. “So Dewey’s dead?” she asked. Mark nodded. Jimmie climbed off him and helped him sit up in the bed.

  “Yeah,” Mark said, not meeting anyone’s gaze. “He’s dead. And, in other news, the world just keeps on not giving a shit. How did you find me?”

  “We tracked you by your credit card when you got this room,” Lovina said.

  “Stupid mistake,” Mark said. “Another in a long line. Shit.”

  Lovina sat on the edge of the bed. Jimmie took a seat near the window, cradling his shotgun. He peeked out from the edge of the curtain to see if there was any response to the commotion. In this part of downtown Atlanta, you minded your own business; no one seemed even to have noticed their entrance. Max sat on the other, unoccupied bed in the room while Heck began to pour water into the small coffeemaker beside the sink. Through the walls, you could hear the muffled thudding of a boom box playing Wiz Khalifa’s “Medicated” way too loudly, and outside the window was the moaning Doppler of the late-morning rush hour on the elevated I-20.

  “Who took you two, Mark?” Lovina asked. “Who killed Dewey?”