Jack of Ravens

by Mark Chadbourn

  Church began to see more connections in the recent events that had shaped him and brought him to this point. He had a strange impression that Leary, and the study, and Millbrook Mansion, were an illusion and that in fact Existence was speaking directly to him.

  ‘Do you ever wonder why children are murdered or suffer in poverty? Why diseases devastate our bodies? Why wars destroy generations? Why there is such an overwhelming drive to make money even if it brings about more human suffering? That we all know these things are wrong and that it is in our power to put them right, yet we do nothing about it?’ Leary pressed his palms together as if he were praying. ‘Because this creation is a defective work. The material world is a trap for man and always has been, in the control of a force that we characterise as “Evil”, but which is simply the opposite of what life should be. Dark to Light. Anti-Life to Life.’

  ‘Despair to hope,’ Church said.

  ‘The Gnostic Secret says there is a solution,’ Leary continued. ‘The sacred secret that has been taught for thousands of years is this: that at the point when Light and Dark split into two, sparks of the divine light became embedded in what would be humanity, like slivers of glass from a broken mirror. The aim of all Gnostic teaching is to awaken those who contain the divine spark so they can find a way back to the Light, or Life.’

  Tom leaned forward eagerly. You understand what he’s saying? You know who these people are with the “divine spark”? You thought you were fighting to save this world from the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders. The truth is, they’re trying to stop you from leading a revolution that will overthrow their master, who created this world and who has let it tick over in his absence.’

  ‘And now he’s back to take control of his creation?’ The concept was so huge Church found it difficult to comprehend. ‘You’re saying the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders are the foot soldiers of this … this power … this force for Anti-Life?’

  ‘It has many names,’ Tom replied. ‘The Void. The Demiurge. The Tuatha Dé Danann know it as the Devourer of All Things.’

  ‘You suddenly know a lot of things you’ve never seen fit to mention before,’ Church said sharply.

  ‘Life itself is an initiation, Church.’ In Tom’s words, Church heard echoes of what he had been told so many centuries ago by the spirit in the Blue Fire. ‘Once you pass the test, you gain the knowledge.’

  Gabe turned to Leary. ‘Tom said you’d seen the spiders.’

  ‘In some trips, one in particular.’ Leary shifted uncomfortably. ‘They were moving behind the scenes of reality, keeping things the way they should be in the Void’s world.’

  ‘But now they’re in this world because you’re here,’ Tom said to Church. ‘Because now Existence has champions, and it’s finally a threat to the rule of the Void. Because humanity is now rising and advancing, and there’s a chance that everything could change. Everything.’

  ‘What’s this got to do with the president’s assassination?’ Gabe interjected with frustration.

  ‘Everything is connected,’ Tom said.

  Leary nodded. ‘When you’re up hard against the pattern, you can’t see the pattern at all. What I’m going to tell you now you have to keep secret for your own safety.’

  More showmanship, Church thought.

  ‘A couple of years ago I was contacted by a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer at my office at Harvard University. She’d been following my experiments with LSD very closely. Mary is an artist in Washington, and she wanted to organise an LSD session for some friends.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Mary was JFK’s principal lover. Forget Marilyn – Mary was always the one.’

  Gabe was aghast. ‘You’re saying the president took drugs in the White House?’

  Leary smiled at the teen’s naivety. ‘JFK smoked pot and took cocaine, which was his favourite. But the important point here is that he turned on to acid. Mary arranged several trips for him. He was expanding his consciousness … starting to see the way the world really works.’

  Gabe looked as if he might be sick. ‘My dad … I mean JFK … He really did this? I’m sorry. I’m starting to get confused.’

  ‘The day after JFK was assassinated, Mary called me up.’ All traces of showmanship had been replaced by a deep unease. These were her exact words: “They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much … They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid.” They’ve left Mary alone so far, but she’s still living in fear.’

  ‘You’re saying JFK was assassinated because he dropped acid?’ Church couldn’t hide the note of incredulity in his voice.

  ‘Not because he dropped acid – because he began to understand some universal truths. I’m saying he was a charismatic, influential and powerful person who, although flawed, was starting to open his eyes. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking metaphorically or not – “spider-people” is a good way of describing those who buy into the whole Anti-Life agenda – kind of like the pod people in that Body Snatchers movie. The spider-people are everywhere, and every year that passes they control more and more of the world. But they have to carry out their business from the shadows, because otherwise they’d ruin the illusion of what they’re trying to create.’

  ‘How do you recognise them?’ Gabe said anxiously.

  Leary thought about that for a moment, and then said simply, ‘You don’t.’

  6

  ‘I know what you’re doing, Tom,’ Church said when they were back at the apartment. ‘You’ve learned a lot of manipulation skills out there in the Far Lands. But if you think you can get me back wasting my life in a fight I can’t win, you’d better think again.’

  Tom shrugged and acted as if Church was speaking nonsense.

  ‘Especially now you’ve told me I’m supposed to be fighting some kind of universal god of darkness. It’s just insane.’

  With infuriating aloofness, Tom ignored Church completely, dropped an LP onto the record player and turned the volume up full.

  7

  In July, author Ken Kesey took his first Magic Bus Trip to New York on an LSD-fuelled quest to discover America, at the same time as President Lyndon Johnson was signing the Civil Rights Act.

  On the night of 19 July, Niamh dragged Marcy into the apartment. Blood streamed from a gash on Marcy’s head and Niamh had a stunned expression that Church had never seen before.

  Gabe ran to help. ‘Who did this?’

  ‘The police,’ Niamh said. ‘They came at us as if we were vermin being driven from a sewer.’

  Marcy sat in a chair in the kitchen, clutching a towel to her wound. ‘It was a Congress of Racial Equality protest in Harlem,’ she said. ‘The cops went crazy. Shot one guy dead, hundreds more injured. There was blood all over the sidewalk.’ She stared into the middle distance with an expression of mounting horror. ‘We only wanted a voice, just black people saying who we were.’ She smiled weakly at Niamh. ‘Sorry for dragging you into it, darlin’.’

  ‘Do not apologise. I need to see these things.’ She rested a hand on Marcy’s shoulder. Church could see that a bond had grown between them similar to the one between Gabe and himself.

  ‘We need to get out of this city,’ Gabe said, demoralised.

  ‘No,’ Marcy replied defiantly. ‘We need to fight.’

  They buried their differences for the rest of the summer and into the autumn. But then in October, as the cold winds blew harder, Tom came across a small article in the newspaper. Timothy Leary’s presidential contact, Mary Pinchot Meyer, had been murdered as she walked along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath in Georgetown. It looked to have been the work of a professional hit man. The first bullet was fired into the back of her head, and when she did not die immediately, a second shot was loosed into her heart. The evidence showed that in both cases the gun was almost touching Meyer’s body when it was fired.

  Immediately afterwards, Church, Niamh, Tom, Gabe and Marcy left town and headed west.
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  While President Johnson was outlining his Great Society, they were holed up in a leaky warehouse in St Louis. By the time the US had started bombing North Vietnam in earnest on 8 February 1965, they had moved to slightly better surroundings in an old meat-packing plant in Chicago.

  There was no sign of the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders anywhere near their lives. Church couldn’t make the guilt go away entirely; he knew they were being left alone because he had chosen to walk away from the battlefield. With the lamp containing his stolen Pendragon Spirit still safe in his bag, he could claim to be little more than an average person, trudging through life below the radar of the forces that controlled everything.

  On 21 February, black revolutionary leader Malcolm X was shot and killed. Marcy cried all night and there was nothing Gabe could do to drag her out of her growing despair at the worsening political situation.

  All around them the misery continued to mount. On 6 March the first American soldier officially set foot on Vietnam’s battlefields, and two days later 3,500 marines landed to protect Da Nang airbase. In between, Alabama state troopers attacked 500 civil rights workers preparing to march, and by the end of the month the Ku Klux Klan had murdered another civil rights worker in the same state. At home and abroad, the spider-people – in metaphor and reality – continued to take control, spreading despair, crushing hope.

  ‘Existence needs its king to lead its troops,’ Tom said to Church as he browsed a day-old paper one morning. Church gave his standard response: it was somebody else’s job now.

  Over the months, to Tom’s annoyance, Niamh had sided with Church. She pointed out that people were fighting back of their own accord. Martin Luther King Jr. and 25,000 supporters took the fight for civil rights back to Alabama. A further 25,000 marched on Washington in April to protest against the spiralling Vietnam War.

  ‘Music is the voice of hope,’ she pointed out to Tom as he listened to his growing record collection, and he had to agree: Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and Judy Collins joined the anti-war marches, and the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan spread the message of discontent.

  On 5 September, writer Michael Fallon applied the term ‘hippie’ to the San Francisco counterculture in an article about the Blue Unicorn Coffeehouse where campaigners for sexual freedom and the legalisation of marijuana met.

  And on Christmas Day 1965, the Libertarian came to town.

  9

  ‘You don’t get it, Gabe. Standing up and fighting for what you believe in is the only way. Malcolm was right. If you turn the other cheek they’ll just keep slapping it.’ Marcy had changed more than all of them in the months they had been together. She’d developed a flintiness as a defence against the attacks that were coming from all quarters.

  She trudged through the snow towards the convenience store in her boots and ragged jeans, a thrift-store coat pulled tight for warmth, annoyed at the childish frivolity of Church and Gabe who had stopped for a snowball fight.

  ‘If you get involved in violence and confrontation you’re just as bad as the people you’re opposing,’ Gabe protested. ‘There’s always a peaceful route. JFK could have bombed the Communists like all the hawks in the White House wanted, but he talked his way out of it and saved the world in the process.’

  When she was trying to keep her anger inside, Marcy always held her head in a way that made her appear haughty. ‘This is a war, and you’re on one side or the other. There’s no room for sitting on the fence. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. Sooner or later you’ve got to choose, Gabe.’

  ‘You know I’m with you.’ Gabe turned to Church. ‘What do you think?’

  Marcy snorted. ‘There’s no point asking him. He’s already dropped out.’

  Her comments were delivered off the cuff, but they stung Church. The hardest part was that he couldn’t argue with her because she was right.

  While Gabe and Marcy went into the store to pick up supplies, Church watched the children playing in the park across the street and the gulls swooping across the Windy City’s skyline. It was a grey and white world of dirty snow and industrial smoke, the kids’ anoraks the only colour.

  Every day his thoughts turned back to that day in Leary’s study and the revelation of why the world was the way it was. He hoped that soon it would fade and he could drift into a soporific acceptance. Marlowe must have known the truth all those years ago when he briefly broke off from his spy games to write Doctor Faustus: Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.

  After ten minutes the cold began to get to him, and Gabe and Marcy were still not at the checkout. He ventured into the store, but they were nowhere to be found.

  When he came back out into the cold, puzzled, he was met by a boy with red cheeks and a nose caked with dry snot. ‘Mister, your friends have gone over there.’ He pointed to a derelict tenement further down the street. The windows were broken and the walls were scarred with graffiti. Scrawled in big white letters were the words ‘Watch out for the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders’. The message was everywhere these days and it gave Church a kind of black satisfaction to know that he had set it in motion. When he turned back to ask for more information, the boy had already skipped away to rejoin his friends in the park.

  The building smelled of damp and turps and long-dead fires. Church couldn’t understand how Gabe and Marcy had slipped past him even though his back had been turned, nor why they had come to such a desolate place. He called their names, but only echoes replied. He started to wonder if the boy had been playing a trick on him.

  But on the top floor he came to a large space where all the walls had been knocked out, and there he saw two people sitting on chairs in the middle of the floor, their backs to him. It was Gabe and Marcy. Their heads rested against each other and they were unmoving. A pool of blood grew beneath them.

  Church backed against the damp plaster, torn between the recognition of what was clearly a trap and the devastating shock of grief for his friends.

  ‘Is it really so bad? I’d have thought you’d have been used to it by now.’ The fruity voice rolled out from behind a pillar of bare brick and yellowing wallpaper. The Libertarian stepped out, dressed all in black, coat swirling around him like some silent-movie villain. A crescent of blood darkened the fabric covering his chest. He removed his sunglasses to wipe stray droplets off the lenses and fixed his lidless, red gaze on Church. ‘Surprised to see me again? I suppose you thought you could just slip back into the woodwork with all the other vermin.’

  Church wished he had Llyrwyn and imagined himself hacking the Libertarian’s head from his body. He glanced at the dripping corpses of his friends, tongue-tied, trying to comprehend how things could slip away so quickly after months of inactivity.

  ‘Why did you kill them? There was no need.’ He hated himself for the pathetic tone he heard in his words.

  ‘There’s always a need for death. It reminds us why we’re alive.’ The Libertarian circled the bodies slowly.

  Church followed, wanting yet not wanting to see Gabe and Marcy’s faces one last time. As they came into view, he was surprised and relieved to see that the two bodies were not his friends after all, but had been carefully selected to resemble them from the rear.

  The Libertarian smiled as he watched realisation dawn on Church’s face. ‘It’s important to make an impact to drive a message home.’

  ‘You killed two people randomly to send me a message?’

  ‘You’ve been very good recently. No dashing around waving a sword trying to upset the apple cart. That’s very satisfying. And it’s how things should continue.’

  ‘I’ve walked away. There was no need for this.’

  ‘But you’re a contrary sort. I wouldn’t want you having second thoughts. See this as a subliminal affirmation. Picture the image you saw the moment you walked through that door. This will happen to your friends, wherever they are, if you start getting ideas above your station.�
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  ‘You come anywhere near them or me again, and I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Wooh!’ The Libertarian flexed a mock-defiant fist.

  Church backed towards the door.

  ‘You should be careful,’ the Libertarian continued. ‘We’re getting very close to the Source now. We’re getting stronger. Soon you can shine your little blue light all you want and it won’t do any good. You’ll be just like them.’ He nodded towards the two bodies.

  Church marched out of the tenement and back to the apartment, where Gabe and Marcy were putting away the groceries. Church took Gabe to one side. ‘We need to split up. For a while.’

  ‘I thought you liked us travelling with you.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘We’re like family, man.’

  ‘That’s why I’m doing this. There’s danger. I want you away from me until I’m sure it’s safe.’

  ‘We could go to San Francisco.’ Marcy was leaning in the doorway thoughtfully. ‘There’s a lot of energy out there, a lot of kids moving down … organising.’

  ‘All right,’ Gabe said. But you’ll join us, right? Every month we’ll put a small ad in the local paper, telling you where we are.’ He masked his sense of abandonment and went to pack his bag.

  Tom was smoking in his room while Niamh lounged nearby, listening to music. Church told them about the Libertarian. ‘We need to hit the road, keep on the move.’

  ‘He’ll find you wherever you are,’ Tom said dismissively. ‘This is his world.’

  It was Niamh who raised the most pertinent question. ‘If he could have found you at any time, why did he feel the need to come to you now, in this place?’