The Witch’s House.
A haunted house.
Where she now lived with his ghost.
Outside, the girl and her father disappeared down the beach. The Alex on the windowpane fought back tears. The (ide moved in, paused awhile, then the tide moved out. Gulls swooped. The sun sank. The telephone rang.
“Hello,” Alex said, craving company.
“Elvira Franklen, dear. Am I disturbing you?”
“No, Miss Franklen. lust watching the sea.”
“Please, dear. Elvira. You make me feel old.”
“No, Elvira.” Alex smiled. “Just watching the sea.”
“You’re quite sure you won’t change your mind about the Mystery Weekend? Saddened by your rejection, our secret benefactor has written to me. He says your book on H.H. Holmes inspired his own work, and has promised the hospital $5,000 more if you’ll come. Sick children need you, dear.”
“Inspired his work? How’d I do that?”
“He doesn’t say. But there’s one way to find out.”
Alex chuckled. “Elvira, you are sly.”
“I think this weekend is exactly what you need, dear. The reason you gave for begging off is the recent death of your father. At my age, one has seen more of death than one cares to admit, but take it from me, a relaxing change does wonders for the pain.”
“Still no idea where you’re going?”
“Not a clue. A delicious mystery like that, how can you resist?”
“A floatplane, huh?”
“Leaving from Coal Harbour. Expenses paid, any transport you want, from Cannon Beach to Vancouver. And there might be romance, dear.”
Alex laughed heartily. “You’re not sly, you’re a devil.”
“When I was young—1936, I believe—millions of movie-goers hearts swooned for Rose Marie. We were all Jeanette MacDonald in Nelson Eddy’s arms, wrapped in scarlet with ‘Indian Love Call’ crooned in our ears. A pleasure your generation missed, so here’s your chance, dear. The Mountie coming is handsome, and more important—single. What if he’s the love of your life and you pass the weekend by?”
“Enough,” Alex capitulated. “What time does the floatplane leave? You’re right, a carefree weekend is exactly what I need.”
GHOSTWRITER
Approaching New York City
3:59 P.M.
DeClercq kept in touch with Special X by Airfone from the plane. Finding Chloe and Zoe’s hanged bodies confirmed his belief Jolly Roger was the blueprint for this case. The gutting and organ-hooking reflected murders in the novel, as did carving the torso of the “altar-woman.” The only difference was Chloe’s body was marked with a pentagram, while victim three in the book was scratched with “three overlapping triangles.” If only Jolly Roger had contained a diagram. DeClercq recalled what he read last night about Crowley’s incantation:
In 1909 Crowley experienced possession. He and Victor Neuberg performed the ritual in the North African desert. Crowley wanted Choronzon, a demon mentioned in sorcerers’ grimoires, to occupy his body temporarily. While Neuberg sat protected by a circle, Crowley sacrificed three pigeons in a triangle. As the invocation to Choronzon was recited, Neuberg swore he saw phantoms swirling about his master.
Triangle? DeClercq thought. What sort of triangle? He juxtaposed what he knew about Crowley’s thoughts on the Ripper:
Crowley published his Confessions in 1929. This work contains the passage quoted in Jolly Roger. He later expanded the story about Vittoria Cremers and the trunk in his essay “Jack the Ripper.” It mentions five ties, not the original seven, and identifies the trunk’s owner as Robert Donston Stephenson, a London physician. The doctor wrote contemporary columns on Jack the Ripper for Pall Mall Gazette. His work for Lucifer, an occult journal, was published under the pen name Tautriadelta.
Tau is a Hebrew/Greek letter written as a cross or T.
Tria is the Greek number three. Delta—Greek for D—is triangle-shaped.
Tautriadelta. Cross-three-triangles
DeClercq unhooked the meal tray from the seat in front of him. Pen in hand, he used the air sickness bag for paper. As the plane descended into New York, he doodled triangles. His occult sense at work, he ended up with this:
Three triangles. Combining to form a big one. Surrounding an upside down fourth.
Symbols, he thought.
LaGuardia Airport
4:41 P.M.
Waiting for his luggage to appear on the carousel, DeClercq placed calls from the baggage area. The first was to Fly-By-Night Press on 29th Street. Again the phone was answered by that damn machine: “I’m out of town till Friday. Leave a message at the tone.” The second was to Marsh’s editor at one of the major houses. She was delayed in Fort Lauderdale by a Florida hurricane, and wouldn’t return from a sales conference until tomorrow at noon. The message conveyed was she’d meet him at the Russian Tea Room for lunch. The NYPD had sent their latest report to Chan.
New York City.
A night loose on the town.
Midtown Manhattan
6:05 P.M.
The Big Apple.
Worms and all.
From his hotel on 54th Street, DeClercq walked east to Fifth Avenue and turned right, heading downtown. Wind blew up the canyon from the Atlantic Ocean south, driving snow flurries before it like an army in retreat. The stream of traffic, going his way, was full of yellow fish, impatient cabbies honking their horns at every imagined slight. On the sidewalk, the name of the game was survival of the fittest, those still on their feet surging by the crippled and walking-wounded. Against the wall of St. Thomas Church—“Our Lady of Fifth Avenue”—a man sat, head bowed, with arms around his knees. A Styrofoam begging cup lay crushed by his shoeless feet, his sign
HOMELES
HIV POZITIV
PLEASE HELP
tromped with mud. Mick Jagger’s lips—a hundredfold—blew kisses through the window of B. Dalton Books. Down the street, halter-necked with white accordion pleats, the most famous dress in the world billowed about the hips of a Marilyn Monroe mannequin. Passersby paused for a flash of her panties, then moved on. Weaving and darting like Gretzky going for a goal, DeClercq took advantage of every break in the throng. By Rockefeller Center, the sidewalk was blocked.
Here, a sign at the curb read
No Parking
Not 5 Minutes
Not 30 Seconds
NOT AT ALL!
Beneath it a black Santa Claus rang a clanging bell, while the Salvation Army—Sharing is Caring, Need has no Season—sang Christmas carols through a tinny amp. A crowd about a thousand strong filled the concourse to his right, awed by a mammoth Christmas tree ablaze with countless lights, above which zoomed the phallic needle of a gray skyscraper.
On every second corner between 57th and 34th stood an NYPD cop. To the blues of Midtown North, these were “holiday posts.” An NYPD uniform never goes out of style, so the cop at 47th wore his grandfather’s reefer coat. On the steps of the Public Library at 42nd Street, a rapper played hectic drums fashioned from a set of plastic pails. Near the Empire State Building at 34th, a heavy Brooklyn accent blared from an open-front store, calling New Yorkers one and all in to clean out the stock. “We are going out of business we are selling selling selling we are going out of business after twenty-five years! We are going out of business we are selling selling selling …”
South of 33rd, the building facades were dirty and graffiti marred the walls. Signs had burnt-out letters and the gutter litter was cheap. Traci Lords and The Best of Buttman competed with Batman Returns. Intending to case the joint and return tomorrow, DeClercq turned right at 29th and checked the address numbers. The street was one block up from historic Tin Pan Alley. Midblock, with the colophon of a vampire bat, he found a grungy sign: FLY-BY-NIGHT-PRESS.
He was surprised to find the lights on and someone moving inside.
The man who answered the door hadn’t slept for three days. His face was puffy, flushed, and blue bags weighed down h
is eyes. Stubble darkened his jaw like a kid with melting chocolate ice cream. He had rings on every finger, and studs through one of his ears. His hair was gathered behind his head in a mane that reached his waist. He wore a belted green tunic stolen from Robin Hood, and biker’s boots jangling with chains. Protecting his heart ‘was a starburst badge admitting him to the past few days’ Fantasy SF Horror Convention in San Diego. “Police?” he asked, sleepy-eyeing DeClercq. “This won’t wait, huh? I just got in.” The Mountie assumed the NYPD left a message on his machine.
Fly-By-Night Press occupied the front room on the ground floor. The room was cold from lack of heat, but clanking radiators hissed to overcome that. The walls were papered with book jackets, posters, and movie bills: Karloff, Pin-head, Savini, and Deep Red; Lorre, Eraserhead, Raw Meat, and Vlad the Impaler; Cronenberg, Re-Animator, Godzilla, and Peeping Tom; the art of Beardsley, Clarke, Finlay, Brundage, Coye, and Bok. Backed by a cardboard cutout of Leatherface waving his trademark chainsaw, a battered desk was piled high with manuscripts and galley proofs. On it sat a jar of eyeballs, hopefully plastic, and a coffee cup fashioned from a skull.
“We’re a small press,” the man said. “Just me and a couple of friends. Whispers, Scream, Dark Harvest, and Grant aren’t worried yet.”
DeClercq saw his opening to break the ice. “Would Lovecraft be around today if not for Arkham House? The Outsider and Others is the cornerstone of my collection.”
The man blinked. “You are a cop?”
“Chief Superintendent DeClercq.” He flashed the shield.
“Roger Korman. No relation.” Testing him.
“King of the A’s?” DeClercq said, tapping the galley proofs.
Korman laughed. “Want a coffee? Fresh made to keep me awake.”
“Thanks. Black. No sugar,” DeClercq replied.
In the far corner sat a table with a Mr. Coffee machine. High on one wall pneumatic Elvira burst from her plunging gown. Ogling her cleavage from the other wall were prostheses masks of Grizzle, Gusher, Blasted, Decay, and Mangled. A Crypt Keeper puppet hung above the coffeepot.
“How many books have you published?” DeClercq accepted the mug. Steam rose like a genie from the ceramic shrunken head.
“Five on sale. Six in the works.”
“Jolly Roger your latest?”
Korman nodded. “A thirty thousand print run sold out in a day. I hope you don’t think I killed those women to jack up sales? After the Publishers Weekly piece, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“What piece was that?”
The publisher frowned. “The guy on the phone said that’s what you wanted to talk to me about. Told me to wait here till you arrived. I only came in to gather orders off the machine. Teach me to answer after-hours calls.”
“What piece?” DeClercq repeated.
“Every one of our books has been trashed by Publishers Weekly. I’m convinced it’s run by little old ladies with blue hair. They seem to want the guarantee This won’t scare you too much. Give them real horror and they piss their pants.”
“Those that can, do,” DeClercq said. “Those that can’t become critics.”
“We sent them a copy of Jolly Roger in galley proofs. What we expected was the usual unsigned pan. Instead this guy did a feature titled “Gutter Fiction,” decrying the nadir to which the serial killer novel had sunk. The first thing frightened people do is burn artists in the square.”
DeClercq agreed with Publishers Weekly, but held his tongue.
“To rationalize horror”—Korman washed his face with one hand—“is to try to rationalize rock and roll or the roller coaster. If it doesn’t grab your primal core, then I can’t explain it to you. We live in a brutal world, so horror collects in the mind. Only the foolish let it fester, bottled up in the dark. We have to exercise horror in order to exorcise it. The best part of the roller coaster is when you get off. Highbrows don’t understand you gotta lance the boil. They shake their heads in bewilderment when some bottled-up guy goes berserk with a gun.”
The man was in verbal freefall from lack of sleep. “Am I in trouble? For publishing a novel? Can’t anyone separate fact and fantasy these days? Why does the piece on Jolly Roger interest the FBI?”
“The FBI? You mean the NYPD?”
“The guy on the phone said FBI. So who in hell are you?”
“Royal Canadian Mounted. About the Vancouver murders.”
“I’m confused.”
“Frankly, so am I. The reason I’m here is to track down the face behind Jolly Roger. Who uses the pen name Skull & Crossbones as a mask?”
“Oh boy,” Korman said, slumping into a chair.
“You don’t know?”
“Haven’t a clue. The manuscript arrived by mail and I replied that way. We correspond through a Vancouver post box.”
“Correspond with whom?”
“Skull & Crossbones. I promised him secrecy. That’s why he published with us.”
“He?”
“She? It? Them? Damned if I know.”
“Death’s-Head Incorporated holds the copyright?”
“That’s my company. The rights are held in trust.”
“Whose idea was that?”
“Skull & Crossbones. It’s like King and Bachman, except nobody knows.”
“Who cashed the advance?”
“We don’t pay one. Just royalties calculated on sales.”
“So the only contact you have with the author is through Skull & Crossbones at a Vancouver post box?”
“Reg Skull, actually. That’s the name used.”
“Hell of a way to do business.”
“I thought it was cool. Having a ghostwriter, in every sense.”
“Got the address?”
While Korman shuffled through his files, there was a knock at the door. The pair who entered were so well-groomed they had to be with The Suits. “Who are you?” the slickest asked, staring at DeClercq.
“RCMP. Special X. The Jolly Roger murders. What brings you here?”
“The Bureau’s doing a background check for Barbados police. New York critic got his head crushed on a Caribbean cruise. Looking for motive. Grasping at straws. Checking the authors he slammed. Wrote a piece in Publishers Weekly titled “Gutter Fiction.” Filleted Jolly Roger, published by this … house?”
THE HANGED MAN
Vancouver
10:15 P.M.
The origin of the Tarot is an unsolved mystery. The deck has assumed many guises through the centuries, but the basic meaning of each symbol has remained the same. A Tarot deck consists of 78 cards: 56 in four suits called the Minor Arcana (these evolved into modern playing cards) and 22 symbolic pictures called the Major Arcana.
The Major Arcana (or “Greater Secrets”) have been attributed to many sources: Egyptian hieroglyphics in the oldest book in the world; the kabbalistic lore of the ancient Hebrews; to the Chinese, or Gypsies who brought them from India; to the city of Fez in Morocco where symbols were used as a common language among diverse cultures. To Jung’s disciples they represent the archetypes of our collective unconscious. Perhaps the wildest theory is refugees from Atlantis created them to encode their wisdom as the doomed continent vanished beneath the sea.
Whatever the Tarot’s origin (Why not ask the cards?) the oldest deck surviving in Europe dates from 1392 at the end of the Dark Ages.
Most modern occultists connect the Tarot to the Kabbala, a complex system of Jewish lore that mythically reads the Scriptures to penetrate their mysteries and foretell the future. The Kabbala greatly influenced magic and mysticism throughout medieval Europe. Grimoires like the Lemegeton, the Picatrix, and the Clavicula Salomonis—sorcerers’ spell-books for conjuring demons—derived their “words of power” from this lore.
The Kabbala holds creation is the product of vibrations. Its symbol for the universe is the Tree of Life. The Tree grows from the underworld to the stars, from subconscious enigmas to spiritual awareness, from the past to the future through the now. Ten
positions or “sephiroth” on the Tree of Life symbolize the creative vibrations. Twenty-two paths of power connect the ten positions, each secretly linked to one of the twenty-two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. The letters are linked to the twenty-two cards in the Tarot’s Major Arcana.
The Tarot-Kabbala connection was made by French occultist Eliphas Levi in Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, 1854. Levi’s theory spread to Britain where it was adopted by the Order of the Golden Dawn. Members of the Dawn included Aleister Crowley, A.E. Waite, and Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula. In 1888, the year of Jack the Ripper, S. MacGregor Mathers (cofounder of the Dawn) wrote The Tarot, Its Occult Signification. By linking the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana with the twenty-two paths of power on the Tree of Life, the Dawn saw the Tarot as a means through which members could work their will on the universe.
“The Magick is in the cards.”
Tarot Magick is based on the law Occult power is omnipotent. All existing things—including us—are reflections of a greater reality. This greater reality is the Occult Realm, so what’s “up there” projects “down here.” “Quod superius, sicut inferius,” occultists say. “As above, so below.”
Between the Realm and its reflection lies the Astral Plane. Through this psychic medium pulse the Tree of Life’s vibrations, wavelengths that create the here-and-now. The Dawn believed it possible, with the right key, to change the physical world we know by intercepting Occult vibrations before they reflected here. If the Tarot held “the Key to the Astral Plane,” its symbols, ritualized, could open “the Closed Path to the Occult Realm.” By “astral projection,” a Dawn adept could then hurl his consciousness into the Astral Plane, sending his “astral double”—or Doppelganger—to work his will by changing the vibrations ritually. Through Tarot Magick, the adept could conjure Occult demons. All that was required was the proper Tarot deck.
Ripper Page 14