To what?
DeClercq snapped his fingers, causing the boy beside him to jump.
… to project himself into the Astral Plane?
Now thoughts from here and snippets from there banged each other like boxcars shunting onto the same track, the one after knocking the one before so it could have the rails, bang, bang, bang, bang, down the line.
The origin of the Tarot is an unsolved mystery … Most modern occultists connect the Tarot to the Kabbala, a complex system of Jewish lore … The Kabbala greatly influenced magic throughout medieval Europe. Grimoires—sorcerers’ spellbooks for conjuring demons—derived their “words of power” from it … The Tarot-Kabbala connection was made by French occultist Eliphas Levi. His theory spread to Britain where it was adopted by the Golden Dawn, Crowley included. 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 in the Kabbala, the Dawn advanced the Tarot as a means through which we could work our will on the universe.
Between the Occult and its reflection (our physical world) lies the Astral Plane. Through this psychic medium pulse the Kabbala’s vibrations, wavelengths that create the here-and-now. The Dawn believed it possible, with the right key, to change our physical world by intercepting Occult vibrations before they reflected here. If the Tarot held “the Key to the Astral Plane,” ritualizing its symbols would open “the Closed Path to the Occult Realm.” By “astral projection,” we could then hurl our consciousness into the Astral Plane, sending our “astral double”—or Doppelganger—to work our will by changing the vibrations ritually. Through Tarot Magick, we could conjure Occult demons.
All that’s required is the proper Tarot deck.
Interpreted correctly …
“I was always, as a boy, fond of everything pertaining to mysticism, astrology, witchcraft, and … ‘occult science.’ ” At university in Munich, Stephenson carried out “successful experiments in connection with the Doppelganger phenomenon.” Also called an “astral double,” a Doppelganger is said to be the ghostly counterpart of a living person. Tautriadelta wrote: “I became obsessed by the idea that the revelation of the Doppelganger phenomena would make me an instrument of the gods; henceforth, on occasion, I would destroy to save …”
The gods of one religion become the demons of a succeeding one, thought DeClercq.
“As a medical student my interest in the effects of mind upon matter once more awoke … I suppose Sir Edward [Bulwer Lytton] was attracted to me … because he saw that I … was genuinely, terribly in earnest … I entered, he was standing in the middle of the sacred pentagon, which he had drawn on the floor with red chalk …”
Mary Kelly.
Ripped to pieces.
That’s how the pentagram fits.
In his mind’s eye, DeClercq saw the photo of Kelly taken in Miller’s Court, slash upon slash crisscrossing her flesh to form …
Triangles.
Three triangles, again and again, signing the pentagram.
Ripping her in a frenzy.
At 13 Miller’s Court.
Thirteen? The Magick Number? Signing a Magick Place? Jesus doomed to crucifixion on a tau cross by thirteen at the Last Supper, his twelve disciples and him?
Thirteen Miller’s Court? A Black Magick Place? Chosen for its power to project him into the Astral Plane? Like a rocket booster?
The more he thought about it, the tighter the pieces fit. Black Magick developed in blatantly sexist times, so the bodies of naked women are used as altars in Satanic rituals. A “female” zodiac circle closes the path to the Occult Realm, which the uprush of “male” erectness from the physical world forces open through symbolic rape. Mutilating the altar destroys its sexual polarity so astral doubles can enter and demons can conjure through.
Satanism is misogyny incarnate.
DeClercq had no trouble accepting the fact symbols produce results. Raise your middle finger to a gang of Hell’s Angels. Wear the swastika to a gathering of Holocaust survivors. Piss on the Stars & Stripes at a Memorial Day parade of Marines who raised the flag over Iwo Jima. You’ll quickly learn how symbols conjure physical effects, for nothing will get you killed faster than the wrong symbol in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Every ritual requires symbols, for a symbol that captures the imagination elicits a more profound response than the actuality it represents. A dying Catholic fears death and the afterlife until he’s given last rites and signed with the cross, supposedly opening the door to Heaven and everlasting peace. Certain rituals give us power over ourselves, for through them we tap the mysteries of our subconscious mind.
Our occult mind.
Occultists want to believe in the objective validity of what they’re doing, so all Satanic rituals demand performative utterance. Like saying “I do” at the marriage altar, the symbols and words of a ritual are acts themselves when performed and broadcast—uttered—publicly. Consequently, the utterance must be exact.
Jack the Ripper signed the cross and pentagram publicly, performing the ritual in the Hanged Man for all to see. “Leaving out the last murder, committed indoors … we find that the sites of the murders … form a perfect cross.” Tautriadelta began his article in Pall Mall Gazette by drawing attention to the Goulston Street Graffito: The Juwes are the men That Will not be Blamed for nothing. Solomon, son of David, was a tenth-century B.C. king of Israel. The Seal of Solomon is the pentagram. Eliphas Levi connected the Hebrew Kabbala to the Tarot, also encompassed in what Tautriadelta wrote: “In one of the books by the great modern occultist … Eliphaz Levy [sic], Le Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, we find the most elaborate directions for working magic spells … He gives the clearest and fullest details of the necessary steps for evocation by these means.” Not only did the Ripper’s letters, newspaper articles, and graffito taunt police with the Hanged Man’s ritual, but Tautriadelta went to Scotland Yardhimself! Inspector Roots: “He says he wrote the article about Jews in the Pall Mall Gazette …”
If that’s not performative utterance, I don’t know what is, thought DeClercq. No one put it better than Edgar Allan Poe. If you want to hide something from the authorities resort “to the comprehensive and sagacious expedient of not attempting to conceal it at all.”
So what went wrong?
Was the ritual Pandora’s box?
Did signing the symbols in the Hanged Man scare the Hell out of Tautriadelta?
Why else would he spend the rest of his life hiding in The Bible, obsessively writing The Patristic Gospels if not to save his soul?
Did he screw up?
And get the ritual wrong?
Which what? Conjured Hell’s demons, but not under his control?
DeClercq studied the symbols he’d marked on the Hanged Man.
The Ripper didn’t hang the bodies to sign the cross, he thought, while the Mirror of Venus hangs from the tau symbol in the Hanged Man. “All that’s required is the proper Tarot deck. Interpreted correctly …”
Did Jack the Ripper have modern disciples intent on doing it right, so they hanged their victims to form a tau cross—Marsh, Chloe, and Zoe, with a fourth to come? If so, how did they know the Hanged Man hid the ritual? By piecing together the Ripper’s clues from various sources? By analyzing every card in every Tarot deck? Or was it something more concrete…
Like Jack the Ripper’s trunk?
“That’s when Cremers entered D’Onston’s first-floor rear bedroom adjoining the office, and, finding a suitable key, picked the lock on his large black enameled deed-trunk. Inside, she found the bloodstained ties and ‘a few books’ ”
So where did the Ripper’s trunk end up? wondered DeClercq. In the hands of one of the Satanists who flocked to Thelema in the Twenties while Crowley was addled with drugs?
Again he studied the Tarot spread in Jolly Roger, but this time DeClercq concentrated on the middle card. The presence of
one card next to another strengthens or lessens the meaning of the cards combined. And here, sandwiched between the Hanged Man and the Devil was Judgement:
Gabriel, the angel of water, blows his trumpet bannered with a cross. Below, the naked dead rise from their coffins surrounded by the sea. The coffins are rectangular to signify the three dimensions of the physical plane. The snowcapped mountains beyond represent the heights of abstract thought. Water symbolizes the subconscious mind. Pooled water represents vibrations from the Occult Realm, which can be affected by the proper act. In the Astral Plane, or fourth dimension, symbolized by this card, all things are the reverse of physical conditions. Rebirth is found in death and Judgement determines the matter.
“Hey, mister. Where do we land?”
DeClercq glanced at the boy by the window who sat with a map of Vancouver unfolded in his lap. “Be with you in a minute, son. Look for Sea Island in the mouth of the river.”
A proper Tarot reading combines traditional interpretation with personal intuition. Did Jolly Roger see the cross on Gabriel’s banner as the tau symbol hidden in the Hanged Man? Did Skull & Crossbones see the Hanged Man’s “water” triangle as water pooled in the sea? If Judgement represents the Astral Plane, did he/they interpret the card as indicating the Magick Place where the fifth woman should be ripped to pieces by the pentagram?
Coffins surrounded by water. An island? thought DeClercq. With mountains in the background. Where in hell is that?
SKULL & CROSSBONES
Deadman’s Island
7:00 P.M.
Zinc Chandler felt like a Horseman’s ass. He stood in front of the antique mirror in the bedroom he shared with Wynn Yates and examined his reflection. The black-bordered invitation to tonight’s “Séance with a Killer” in the downstairs Banquet Room was engraved with the postscript “Dress to Kill.” He’d watched the old man get duded up in an out-of-style 1940s tuxedo with a red cummerbund— “How do I look?” Wynn had asked. “Like Humphrey Bogart,” he’d answered—before the American hobbled out to help Franklen prepare the murder. Through the door he’d seen other tuxedos moving down the hall, and Luna Darke in a plunging evening gown, beside Katt, whose tip to formality was low-slung baggy jeans, a train engineer’s shirt with the tail out, and the ever-present top hat with its Tarot card. The door had closed as Bolt walked past in one of those silly designer tuxedos peacocks sport at the Academy Awards. His was purple with a ruffled magenta bib, and a white silk scarf was draped over his steroid shoulders.
Buddy, you and I will clash in more ways than one, Zinc thought.
For Franklen had cajoled him into wearing red serge, which currently made him feel like a poor-man’s Sergeant Preston. “Canada,” her argument went, “is the only country known first and foremost for its police. The Mystery Weekend pits you as a Mountie against the other sleuths for a lucrative prize. The murder takes place at a formal dress-up dinner. How can you deny me the uniform when it fits perfectly?”
“I’m an Inspector,” he’d ducked and dodged, “so I wear boring blue. In which case don’t you think plainclothes are allied for?”
“Certainly not. Where’s the flash in that? If President Clinton comes to Canada after inauguration, and you appear with Mulroney to greet him—”
“That’ll be the day.”
“You don’t like President Clinton?”
“I hate Mulroney.”
“We all hate Mulroney, Inspector. The point is what if? So (I you’re asked to appear with that pork-barreling oaf, are you telling me you don’t have red serge to wear?”
“Well …”
“Red serge with black cuffs?” she’d added, making sure lie knew she had him painted into a corner.
“Do I have to wear the Stetson?”
“Of course you do. If there’s one thing you’ll learn from mysteries it’s don’t underestimate little old ladies.”
So here he stood in front of the mirror dressed in his regalia: the standard red tunic of The Mounted except for the black-bordered cuffs, harnessed by a stripped Sam Browne without the usual sidearm, his blue breeches yellow-striped und his riding boots fitted with spurs. At least the Stetson covered the indent in his forehead.
Half filling a glass with water from the decanter on the washstand, Zinc popped his third Dilantin of the day. He set the pill bottle down on the table beside his bed as a reminder to take the fourth cap before he went to sleep. Opening the door, he stepped from the room into the deserted hall … deserted that is until Alex Hunt opened her door.
She stopped on the threshold.
“My, my,” he thought she said.
Then Alex put two fingers to her lips and wolf-whistled him.
“Likewise,” he replied, nonplused.
Hunt wore a plain cream dress with simple gold jewelry. She might as well have been wearing Queen Elizabeth’s crown. Watching her glide fluidly along the hall toward him transported Chandler to the Shanghai Ballet. The first thing he’d done on his release from the hospital in Hong Kong was hydroplane to Canton to visit Minister Qi. As head of the Gong An Ju, China’s police, the octogenarian had helped solve the Cutthroat case, seeing Zinc through the death of his mother at the killer’s hands, but now he lay on his deathbed, riddled with cancer. “My greatest sorrow,” Qi said, “is not to see her dance.” His tired eyes fell on a ticket by the bed. “Would you go in my place and return tomorrow so I can see her through you?” A rocker at heart, ballet was foreign to Zinc. He sat in the crowded theater, the only white in the place, and wondered how he’d recognize who Qi meant by “her.” Then the lights went out and the stage was bathed in blue against a pale curtain that didn’t rise. Soul-soothing music caressed his heart as, back to the audience and dressed in formal white, a willowy ballerina crossed the stage wing to wing on the tips of her toes, arms undulating jointlessly like kelp in a clear blue sea. So simple, her dance was the most angelic movement he’d ever seen … but now Alex rivaled her coming down the hall. In truth, Hunt was less ethereal, but Zinc was in love. In the eyes of the lover, pockmarks are dimples, his mother used to say.
“How much to hire you as a boyfriend for the weekend?” Alex asked, sliding her arm through Zinc’s to guide him down the hall.
“You want a buffer between you and Bolt?”
“I don’t want to make a scene and spoil Elvira’s party, but I definitely want him to leave me alone. That man radiates danger.”
“Thwarting Lou’s a job I’ll gladly take on for free.”
“Good,” Alex said, and before he knew it she had his hat in her hand, plunking the Stetson down on her head at a jaunty angle.
His hand rose automatically to his indented brow. “It doesn’t bother me,” Alex said, gently intercepting him. “Don’t let it bother you.”
So that was that.
He had a new girlfriend.
At least till Sunday, beggars would ride.
They were halfway down the zig of the Receiving Hall stairs, the zag below doubling back to the Banquet Room corridor, when Alex paused by a velvet noose hooked to the wall. The cord was secured to a ceiling beam high overhead and jangled a servants’ bell as she gave it a tug. “Hard to believe Colonial pioneers lived like this,” she said, putting on airs to add, “Jeeves, draw my bath. I can’t even get served in a department store.”
Plink … plink … plink plink plink … the mullioned casements above rattled as the driving rain changed to hail.
“Burrrr,” Alex said. “I hope the dining room’s warm.”
The Banquet Room next to the Ballroom and across from the Turkish bath was cozy enough to be Hell’s antechamber. Not only was the fireplace that backed on the Ballroom ablaze, but a cooking hearth through to the Kitchen was stoked with glowing coals. An old-fashioned rotisserie cranked by weights and chains turned a spit of roast beef and side of lamb. A short, portly man who looked like Chef Boyardee—white hair and mustache, in a white mushroom hat, white scarf and tunic—basted the meat while the sleuths milled about dr
inking champagne. Set high in the wall next to the hearth and opposite the fireplace was a stained-glass triptych window depicting the Three Graces as naked Grecian women. The motto beneath read Sapienti Omnis Gratissima Ars: Every Art Is Most Pleasing to the Wise Man. The bowed window ended eight feet off the floor where flat dark paneling backed a display case the glass of which was murky from decades of dust. The banquet table ran the length of the room from this cabinet to the fireplace. The windows facing west along the far side of the table were lashed by the hailstorm assaulting the island, pellets pounding the glass so fast they sounded like Keith Moon’s drums. Suspended from the vaulted ceiling twenty feet above, Tiffany chandeliers augmented the candlesticks on the table. The dim lights threw gloomy shadows into the loft where lion, tiger, panther, elk, caribou, zebra, and grizzly bear heads stared blankly down at the sleuths. Above the fireplace that backed the head of the table hung a painting titled “The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.” The patron saint of archers and crossbowmen, Sebastian was a pincushion shot through with arrows and bolts. High-backed chairs lined both sides of the table, but there was no chair at the cabinet end.
No sooner had Alex and Zinc entered than Lou Bolt approached with an extra glass in his hand. “Bubbly?” he said, bowing as he offered the champagne to Hunt. “I assume you don’t drink,” he added offhand, glancing at Chandler’s brow.
“Ice?” Hunt said, feeling the chill of the glass.
“Elvira thinks of everything,” Bolt replied, indicating three ice buckets on top of the cabinet. “Even brought a cooler of ice from the Mainland.”
“Roof’s leaking,” Chandler said, noticing drips from above plopping into the buckets.
“Must be new,” Bolt said. “There’s no water damage. If your room’s above, Alex, you can share with me.”
“Thanks,” Hunt said dryly, “but it’s the room next door.”
“My room!” Bolt said, eyebrows raised. “Guess I’ll have to share with you.”
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