Wings In Darkness

by Gregory Kay

  She supposed her attempt at a poker face must have worked, because Whitey kept going. “Okay, you’ve probably heard of some places in the world being spiritual centers, right? They can be good or bad or both, depending on what happens there. This area is one of those. It’s like a magnet for monsters, ghosts, UFOs, curses, government conspiracies, the whole nine yards.”

  Whitey stopped there, and she glanced at Luke to see him showing only his own carefully-composed blank face as he bit into his sandwich, waiting to see how she’d react.

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “The Indian tribes said this place has a bad spirit, but I blame the ley lines. You know, the magnetic conduits in the Earth?”

  “Yes, of course.” As assistant paranormal editor, she was familiar with the concept, as well as the idea that places where such theoretical lines came together were not only places of great supernatural power, but even attracted UFOs...not that she actually believed it herself. “So, a number of ley lines intersect here?”

  He shrugged.

  “Most likely, although the science on that isn’t exactly clear. Still, I’m sure they at least pass through and influence things. Around here, though, at least in later years, they’ve been modified.”

  “Modified? How?”

  “By the power plants and overhead high tension wires. Think about it for a minute; we’ve got four coal-fired electric plants and two hydroelectric dams either in or bordering directly on Mason County, and several more within an hour’s drive. The big overhead lines – each one carrying over three-quarters of a million volts – crisscross everywhere.”

  “So you think all that voltage...” she began after pausing to swallow a mouthful of surprisingly good steak sandwich, but stopped when she saw Whitey shaking his head.

  “Not the voltage; the electromagnetic fields.”

  “EMFs!” Fiona exclaimed, finally finding something familiar enough in what he was saying that might make at least a little sense.

  Luke frowned.

  “EMFs? Like in those ghost-hunting TV shows?”

  “Yes,” both of them answered at once, and she took over once more, “High EMF levels can cause a lot of things, from unexplained, unprovoked fear to nausea to actual hallucinations; that could easily explain – “

  “No,” Whitey cut her off, “It’s not causing hallucinations, at least not as we understand them. I don’t believe they really cause those issues like ‘accepted, officially-approved’ scientific theories keep telling us; otherwise, everyone working in the power-plants full-time would be bat-shit crazy, right?”

  Fiona nodded carefully. She didn’t think it was right at all, particularly since it went against everything she believed she knew, but she couldn’t think of any way to answer it, because his argument did make a certain amount of sense.

  “So what’s your theory, then? That ghosts and evil spirits use the energy to manifest?”

  “Maybe, but not mainly. I think the energy can help open doors into other worlds, other dimensions...maybe even the spaces in between them, allowing whatever is there to show themselves audibly or visibly, or even physically cross over into our space.”

  “And how, exactly, would this process work?”

  “By making the patterns that allow it to happen; EMF patterns forming certain shapes that do the same thing as some religious patterns, like Buddhist mandalas, pentagrams, hex signs, crop circles, things like that. The geometry of the fields is what makes it work.”

  “Okay, hold up for a second. You’re talking H.P. Lovecraft and his infamous ‘non-Euclidian geometry’ here!”

  “Yes, exactly!”

  With a sigh of exasperation, Fiona said, “I hate to break it to you, Whitey, but Lovecraft was a fiction writer.”

  “Yes and no.”

  Both of them turned toward Luke, who had answered unexpectedly, and they saw a very thoughtful, albeit somewhat cautious look in his eyes. Before they could ask what he meant, he went on.

  “When I was in school, I did a paper on Lovecraft, his life, and his writings for an English class, and what we’re talking about just reminded me of it. He was the first writer to take horror beyond the standard ghosts and vampires of the day, and into a more science fiction-type realm. He did it by mixing facts, scientific theories, and known occult traditions into his stories.”

  “I know a little something about Lovecraft too,” Fiona assured him, “and he was agnostic at least, more likely atheistic; he didn’t even believe in any religion, let alone the supernatural or the occult.”

  Luke shrugged.

  “Maybe and maybe not; he wouldn’t be the first man to write or say one thing while believing in something entirely different. But, whatever his true beliefs were, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that he studiously mined and used actual occult beliefs and practices in his stories, modifying them as needed, apparently to make them more plausible in the readers’ minds by injecting notes of familiarity. Regardless, his sources were legitimate, or at least as legitimate as anything occult is likely to be.”

  “Are you saying you don’t believe in the occult yourself?”

  With another shrug, he honestly told her, “I don’t automatically dismiss it, but I don’t know that I believe in it either. It’s been a long time since I really...really believed in anything.” He paused, taking a drink of his Coke and then spending a second or two staring at the droplets of condensation gathered on the glass. “As far as Lovecraft was concerned, though, someone believed in it, maybe even enough to murder him for prying into their carefully-guarded secrets and using them, even under the guise of fiction. If that theory is true, then that’s taking it pretty seriously, if you ask me.”

  Resting her chin on the palm of her left hand while her slender fingers curled up alongside of her jaw, Fiona said, “Okay, give. I’ve got to hear this one!” Her tone was sarcastic, disbelieving, and spoke of a readiness to dismiss whatever he said on the subject, but she was unable to keep a note of genuine curiosity from entering her voice as well. “Just whose grimoire did he plagiarize? Merlin’s?”

  With a shake of his head, Luke answered, “According to the story I heard, it was Aleister Crowley’s.”

  “What?” Again, it was both of them at once, with Whitey, even though a serious conspiracy buff, having evidently never been anymore exposed to this particular theory than she had.

  “What you need to understand from the beginning is that Lovecraft was a staunch White supremacist, but not in the same way we usually think of it today. He was an Anglo-Saxon supremacist, even regarding most other European groups somewhat less than White, and most other races as barely even worthy 'of the name man,’ as he put it in one of his poems on New England. He had a particularly intense and well-known dislike for Jews, which is surprising, considered he married one, a woman a few years older than him, and yet his views show no evidence of having mellowed during their brief marriage. In fact, he’d been known to express anti-Semitic opinions right in front of her.”

  “Did he know she was Jewish?” Whitey asked, and Luke nodded.

  “Yes, not to mention it was pretty obvious from her features. And before you ask, she wasn’t a rich heiress; she ran a hat shop in New York, so money didn’t enter into it. She did, however, according to the people who subscribe to this theory, have one redeeming asset a writer of his chosen subject matter would find irresistible; she was said to be a very close friend and disciple of Aleister Crowley. They theorize that Lovecraft married her in order to use her to gain access to Crowley’s most secret material, which he then cannibalized as fodder for story ideas and backgrounds. His stories looked legitimate because they contained genuine occult elements, and, if you believe in that stuff, possibly even dangerous ones.

  “Needless to say, Crowley would not have been very happy about this, and, later, when Lovecraft died of what was diagnosed as intestinal cancer, some people speculated that Aleister Crowley may have killed him.”

  “You me
an, as in put a spell on him?” Fiona asked. She, like anyone even remotely familiar with the occult, knew at least a little about the man variously called ‘The Great Beast’ and ‘the most evil man in the world.’

  “I doubt that,” Luke assured her, “but he could easily have poisoned him, or more likely had it done, considering the dedication of some of his followers. A lot of substances, if ingested, would produce a fatal cancer, especially during that time period when forensic investigation was still primitive. Then too, should anyone get suspicious, it’s worth remembering that Crowley had some pretty powerful friends.”

  Both of them jumped when Whitey shouted, “That’s it!” and slammed his hand down on the table without warning, making the glasses rattle. “It’s all coming together now!”

  “What is?” Luke asked him, puzzled, “That was just a theory as to the origin of the Lovecraftian connection to magical patterns...”

  “No! Not Lovecraft; Crowley! You do know he was supposted to have been a British secret agent, don’t you?”

  “No, I hadn’t heard that; but then again, I did the paper on Lovecraft, not him. That would have been, what, around World War I?”

  “Yes, exactly, and there’s some rumors that he may have even been an assassin as part of his duties. If that's the case, he would have had both the tools and the know-how to carry it off.”

  Fiona decided to interject a note of reason.

  “Crowley was hardly James Bond. Don’t you think he was more likely using his position in the Spiritualist Movement that was all the rage at that time simply to gather information on the Germans, and maybe dissident British elements elsewhere?”

  Whitey’s eyes were wide, and he waved his arms with excitement, prompting Luke to pull his cola glass back out of harm’s way.

  “Yeah, of course he was doing that, but I think he was doing a little bit more too. I’ve read stuff that says he was waging occult warfare against the Kaiser and certain other enemies on behalf of the British Government.”

  “You mean like in that movie, a Men Who Stare at Goats kind of a thing?” Luke asked, and his friend nodded enthusiastically.

  “Exactly!”

  Whitey went on to explain that, due to the power and influence of the spiritualists, especially in the upper crust of society at the time, it only stood to reason that the British – and probably the Germans, French, and Americans too, for that matter – would have attempted to take advantage of it with a covert remote viewing psychic warfare program, since it was widely documented that both Allied and Axis intelligence agencies did it in World War II, the US and the Soviets have admitted to doing it during the Cold War and beyond, and the Chinese, at least, were still experimenting with it today. “If our enemies are doing it,” he told them, “no doubt we are too.”

  She asked, “Do you really think it went back that far?

  “Farther,” Luke told her, “I learned in school that William the Conqueror hired a witch to stand on a platform during the invasion of England and rain curses down on the enemy while the battle was going on. And, way back in the Old Testament, you had Saul consulting the witch of Endor. Then there were the Lincolns and their séances, Nancy Regan and her astrology; a lot of leaders throughout history have sought an occult edge.”

  “Well,” Fiona pointed out, “This is all very interesting, and I appreciate it; you’ve given me the inspiration for about a dozen articles and maybe even a book or two. What I want to know, though, is what this all has to do with the Mothman sightings?”

  “So would I,” Luke said, and Whitey suddenly shut up, squirmed, and looked very uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you that.”

  Fiona’s temper started building, her face reddening like a thermometer in a blast furnace, and, recognizing the look for what it was, he hastened to explain.

  “Look, I’m not trying to mess with you. I just need to get approval from my source, okay? You’re a reporter, so you know how that works. He’s the one it happened to, and I don’t know how secret he wants to keep it. Just a minute; let me call him.”

  Producing his cell phone from his jacket pocket, he did just that, then did it again on another number, and finally had success on a third. The conversation was garbled and disjointed, since they only got one side of it and Whitey had his hand shielding the receiver to insure his privacy.

  While he spoke, Fiona glanced around the restaurant and at the restaurant’s front window, and blanched. The man in the black suit she had seen outside her hotel last night was staring in at her and smiling. His opaque sunglasses concealed his eyes, but his gleefully malevolent expression was perfectly readable nonetheless. Despite his even, white teeth, it reminded her for all the world like the smile of a crocodile she had seen at the Bronx Zoo as a little girl, and it had haunted her nightmares for weeks afterward. It was the cold, reptilian, and anticipatory smile of a predator. It was hungry.

  The look lasted a second, maybe two, and then he walked on down the street, leaving a permanent impression behind in her mind.

  She shuddered, and Luke gave her a quizzical look, but before she could decide whether to say anything or not, Whitey finished his call.

  There was a “Thanks, man; see you then,” before he pressed the disconnect key and returned the phone to his pocket.

  “There have been a series of top secret military operations going on in the TNT Area since the beginning of World War II, with the latest one dating back to at least the 1990s,.” He said the words with neither preamble nor inflection, just as a simple statement of fact.

  “Who did you call? The Pentagon?” she asked sarcastically, and was surprised when Luke abruptly gave her leg a firm and definitely warning squeeze. Whitey didn’t seem to notice her tone.

  “Sam Gordon.”

  She didn’t miss Luke quickly letting go of her leg and leaning forward with interest.

  “Sam? Hell’s fire...”

  “Alright, I’ll bite; just who is Sam Gordon?”

  “He’s a biker, a former snake-eater – “

  “A Green Beret,” Luke interjected for Fiona’s benefit when he saw her lips part to ask, and Whitey nodded his agreement.

  “He’s been on several highly-classified ops, and knows how the system works. He’s also done a little mercenary and private...security work here and there.” Fiona didn’t miss the momentary hesitation, and being familiar with her Uncle Pat’s pre-Arrow mob activities, understood exactly what he meant. “Then he went into business for himself, got active in politics, got himself elected mayor of a little town across the river, and now he’s one of the movers and shakers in the Republican Party in southeastern Ohio. He said he’d rather tell you the story himself, if you’d like to come by his shop tomorrow night; he’s booked up with appointments tonight.”

  “What kind of shop does he own?”

  “A tattoo parlor,” Luke answered for him, casually taking a sip of coke while simultaneously giving Fiona’s leg another warning squeeze to stifle another sarcastic outburst he knew she was on the verge of making.

  There was a couple more minutes of small talk while they finished their quite good but heretofore largely ignored food, and Whitey got up to leave. Once he was gone, Fiona glared at the deputy.

  “What’s the deal with the leg massage? I’m probably going to have bruises!”

  “I’m sorry,” Luke told her, looking into her eyes, “I didn’t mean to squeeze quite that hard.”

  There was more than enough apology in his tone and expression to not only mollify her, but even to make her feel a little guilty for complaining about it in the first place.

  “Well, maybe not bruises, but what gives?”

  “I didn’t want you to say anything that might hurt his feelings.”

  “Like what? That he’s nuttier than a freaking fruitcake?”

  A hard, almost dangerous expression passed fleetingly across his features; there for an instant and then gone, but it lasted just long enough to make Fiona catc
h her breath and wonder, just as she had at the traffic stop where they’d met, if she’d gone too far. Other than the brief look, however, the only reaction Luke gave her was to sigh deeply and sadly.

  “Yes, Fiona, he is. My best friend is crazy. I know it, everyone around here knows it, even he knows it; you’d better believe he knows it better than anyone. The thing is, he doesn’t need to hear it, or to see it in an article. He’s gone through enough crap for ten lifetimes, so of course it’s affected his stability, but it hasn’t affected his intelligence. He’s a smart as he ever was; it’s just that his mind doesn’t organize it all the same way. Not anymore.”

  “You mean he wasn’t always like this?”

  “No. He used to be normal...normal as I am, anyway,” he said, making an utterly failing attempt at a smile in the process, “More normal, probably.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Luke sat there so long she didn’t think he was going to answer her.

  “I can’t tell you...no, I won’t tell you, not exactly. I think I’m the only one around here who knows, and that’s only because I was with him once when he was drunk out of his mind. I doubt if he even remembers telling me, but I won’t betray his confidence.” He was obviously thinking hard before coming to a decision as to just how much he would say. “I'm cynical enough that I'm pretty much apolitical, but Whitey was always a big flag waver, at least then, and after 9/11, nothing would do him but that he had to join the army to go and ‘fight the terrorists.’” Luke snorted derisively, a far clearer statement of his own opinion on the war than could have ever been put into words. “They sent him to Afghanistan and attached his unit as security to a bunch of contracted interrogators, who did stuff that made Abu Ghraib in Iraq look like a Sunday school picnic.

  “Hell,” she whispered, and he nodded.

  “Yeah, a lot like that. Whitey is a tough guy, but he was always softhearted to a fault. Finally, he couldn’t stand what he was seeing over there anymore, and there was...an incident. I’m not going to go into the details, but let’s just say he snapped and he...did something, and then they did something back. The military wanted to keep it quiet, so they discharged him and sent him back home all screwed up in the head with one of his knee caps blown off.