by Paul Kane
“Well done,” Magillicutty said under his breath. Then he raised his voice: “Speaking of sacrifice, we have a special occasion this evening. It is the celebration of the birth of Poemander, the bringer of the knowledge of Ra.” He spread his arms as if to encompass all the others. “What say you we celebrate this great moment and become one with the universe?”
The men of the order shouted, “Aye!” together, and the sound carried through the chambers. The candle flames above them flickered as though the words had created their own breeze.
Nate moved to go back to his place in the circle, but Magillicutty’s hand landed suddenly on his arm, heavy and cold. “Stay,” he said. “I would have you participate in the ritual.”
Nate’s stomach did a sad, sick lurch, then knotted back up when the twins were pushed through the doorway and into the circle. Their mouths were covered by cloth, their hands bound in front of them, and they’d been dressed in small white robes. Crimson bows pulled their blonde hair back from their pale, terrified faces.
Two Adepts placed them on the altar side by side. They were so tiny it only took one man to hold their feet, and another to push down their shoulders.
The Magus spoke again. “Adepts, who art thou?”
“We are followers of Poemander,” the Adepts said in unison. “We are the mind of the Great Lord, the most Mighty and absolute Emperor. We know that thou wouldst have us, for we are always present with thee.”
The Magus spoke yet again. “First Order, who art thou?”
“We are also followers of Poemander,” the members of the First Order said in unison. “We are the mind of the Great Lord, the most Mighty and absolute Emperor. We know that thou wouldst have us, for we are always present with thee.”
“And how do I know you?”
Everyone said, “By the third eye, the golden heart, and the rose cross.”
“And how shall you be known to each other?”
“By secret sign and by our deeds.”
“And what are your deeds?”
“To seek higher spiritual order and to become resident in the Tree of Life.”
“So mote it be.”
Everyone bowed their heads. “So mote it be.”
Nate started to lift his own head then felt a weight pressed into his hand. He looked down and saw the dagger made from the caduceus. Named and formed after the staff of Hermes, the messenger god, Nate supposed that the dagger would hasten the spirit to the afterlife. Glancing over at Magillicutty, he couldn’t help but fix on the soft space at the base of the man’s throat. But then he followed the man’s gaze to where Burt Johnson now held his Henry rifle at eye level, sighting down the barrel and ready to send a bullet through Nate’s heart, just as the Magus had promised.
“For Poemander and Thoth and Hermes, we take these lives,” Magillicutty intoned. “Repeat after me.”
Magillicutty began the Rosicrucian Prayer and everyone followed his words, their eyes on the dagger as they waited for him to finish. Nate knew what was expected of him. Two swift jabs, one through each girl’s heart.
What should he do? He could make their deaths swift, remove the fear from their eyes, take them from a world that would allow them to be stolen away to fulfill the maniacal whims of a cult leader who promised others a better harvest if only these two innocents’ lives were given in return.
Nate thought of Caravaggio’s painting and how the artist had put himself in as witness to the taking of Jesus. How ironic it was that Saint John seemed to flee while the stranger, Caravaggio, stayed. John had been one of Jesus’ followers, yet in the betrayal of his master by Judas, he’d tried to run. Had it been curiosity that made Caravaggio seem to stay? Or had it been necessity?
Suddenly the truth came to Nate. Not curiosity, never that. He simply hadn’t wanted Jesus to be alone in his last, worst hours.
Nate stared down at the girls with the same feeling. These were truly their last, worst hours.
When the prayer ended, all eyes turned on him. The silence in the room was incredible, almost suffocating... except for the sound of the Henry rifle being cocked.
Nate had no choice. He did what he had to.
He ducked down and stabbed Magillicutty right in the jimmy. When the man shrieked and bent over, grasping his groin, Nate jabbed upward and shoved the dagger home deep into the man’s left eye. By then all hell had broken loose, and the row of Adepts surged forward.
Nate stood and hooked an arm around each girl’s neck, dragging them off the table until his back was to the Caravaggio painting. As he pressed against the canvas, to his great relief, he felt a breeze at the base of his neck.
The men clambered toward Nate, their faces bright red, as a sea of hands reached forward, ready to rip him apart. He let the girls sag at his feet and urged them under the marble altar. As they crawled underneath it, he spied Burt Johnson trying to aim at him with his rifle, but there were too many heads in the way for a clean shot.
One of the Adepts leaped toward him.
Nate kicked down with the inside of his right foot, catching the man just above the knee and shattering it. He fell aside, screaming, but another one jumped to take his place. Nate caught this one across the throat with the edge of his right hand, dropping the man’s bellow into a thin gurgle.
A gunshot made him jerk his head toward Burt Johnson, but instead of the expected bullet through his own head, Nate saw the cowhand fall forward.
Then a Mexican with a wide-brimmed hat and crossed bandoliers stormed into the room, brandishing a pair of pistols—
Arango!
Stunned, the members of the Golden Dawn scattered as more and more Mexicans poured into the chamber. Too late, they flailed at their robes and tried to pull out their own guns, but a full half were shot before they could even tug their weapons free. Others succeeded, and suddenly the noise became unbearable, explosion after explosion as the sounds combined with smoke and the smell of gunpowder to create a ten-second dose of hell just below the surface of the earth.
When it was done, the only ones left standing were seven Mexicans—Arango and six of his men—and Nate Dupes.
Arango picked his way over the bodies to where Nate stood, then helped him pull the girls from their hiding place beneath the altar. Untied and freed of their gags, they clutched at Nate and began to cry.
“This is a delicious revenge,” Arango said. He pointed at the room full of dead men. “These are the ones who have been murdering our children.”
Nate nodded, suddenly fighting with his emotions. He’d been holding everything so close inside that he felt like spinning with happiness. Instead of making a fool of himself, he grinned and said, “It took you long enough.”
“You know us Mexicans, amigo. We love our drama.”
“Did you think this was all shit, Nate Dupes?”
Nate and Arango spun at the same time, and Nate gasped at the sight of Magillicutty, standing tall and firm just behind them. The caduceus dagger jutted grotesquely from his eye above a wet stream of blood and clear fluid. Magillicutty raised one hand toward the ceiling and pointed at Nate with the other; his voice was hollow and oddly echoing. “Did you believe there was nothing to what we do?”
Nate felt a tingling along his spine and he backstepped, stumbling against Arango.
“I curse you, Nate Dupes. You shall never be happy. You shall never find peace." The words reverberated off the stone walls.
“How is he alive?” Arango demanded. “How can this be?”
Nate tried to answer, but found he couldn’t speak. Magillicutty swayed and switched to Greek, his words tumbling out. The ground began to tremble. Pieces of debris fell from the ceiling.
Arango pushed Nate aside and shouted to his men. “Corre!”
They scrambled out just before a piece of the wall collapsed and blocked the exit. Without hesitating, Arango drew both of his pistols and shot Magillicutty with every bullet he had, until he was clicking only on empty chambers. The Magus jerked with every gu
nshot, then stood for a long moment. When he finally fell, the ceiling—first in parts, then the rest—fell with him.
There was no more time to waste.
Nate ripped the painting free, revealing a tunnel bored into the rock wall. Arango went in first, pulling the twins behind him. Nate dove into the hole in the rock just before everything in the room collapsed with a roar. Pulling himself to his feet in total darkness, he felt his way along the tunnel, using his hands as eyes and following the faint sounds farther down. According to the Chinese coolie who’d told him about this escape route, it would twist and turn until it came out the back of the mountain. It seemed like forever until Nate finally smelled the clean and dust-free air of an Arizona night and came out on a ledge about seven feet above the ground. The girls were waiting for him with their backs to the hillside.
Arango had already made his way down. Four horses were staked and waiting for them below. The Mexican leaped atop one and reached out a hand. “Here, let me help.”
With the painting dragging from his left hand, Nate reached for the nearest girl.
“The painting first,” Arango called.
Nate stopped. “Why?”
“Let’s get it out of the way.”
Of course—right now it was a hindrance, dragging on the ground and getting in the way. Nate hastily rolled it, then leaned over the edge and handed it down to Arango.
The Mexican grinned broadly. “You have shown me what one has to do, amigo. I thank you for that. My people thank you as well. You are always welcome with us. I shall make it known.” He yanked on the horse’s reins and spun to the side.
“Wait,” Nate cried. “Where are you going?”
“Soon there will be a revolution!” Arango pulled up hard and his horse reared and pawed the air. “We will take back what was taken from us.” He hefted the painting above his head in a sign of victory. “And this will help to finance it!”
“You’re leaving us,” Nate said incredulously.
“You have horses,” Arango pointed out. “You have your life. Be thankful.”
“But you could help us!”
“Solo el que carga el cajon sabe lo que pesa el muerto,” Arango told him. “It means ‘Only he who carries the coffin knows how much the dead man weighs.’ Know this, Nate Dupes, and live it. You cannot know what someone else carries in his soul, nor feel the suffering he bears.”
Nate’s mouth twisted. “Trust no one, you mean.”
“It’s more than that,” Arango said with an almost sad smile. “Much more. Adiós, amigo—and know that you gave birth to the Revolution!”
And Arango was gone, leaving Nate on the side of a hill in the middle of nowhere with twin girls, feeling like he was standing in the Garden of Gethsemane.
* * *
Fifteen years later, after a decade and a half of experiences, but never a day of true happiness, Nate Dupes sits at a café table in New York City and recognizes a picture in the newspaper. The black and white image shows him a Mexican revolutionary bandit whom he knows was born José Doroteo Arango Arámbula.
But now, in this newspaper and forever after, this Mexican is known as Pancho Villa.
THE VANISHING ASSASSIN
By
JONATHAN MABERRY
It should, I suppose, be entirely appropriate that I sat with my friend C. Auguste Dupin in the gloomy autumn shadows inside the cavernous and—some would insist haunted—walls of the decrepit mansion we shared at No. 33 Rue Dunot, Faubourg St. Germain. We had been to see a rather melancholy play about phantoms and murder and it had brought us into a discussion of many things gruesome and bloody. Over excellent wine and a tray of small cakes, we whiled away the hours speculating on the nature of the supernatural. I have a tendency toward belief in it, or at least in some parts of it; however, Dupin will have none of it.
“Specters are the product of a lack of information,” he said as he lit his pipe, “as well as a failure of perception.”
“How so?” I asked, intrigued.
He took several long puffs of the strong Belgian tobacco he had been favoring lately, blowing ghostly clouds of smoke into the air between our chairs. Small vagaries of wind made the smoke dance and twitch before whipping the hazy tendrils from sight.
“There is an example,” he said. “Had you, a credulous man, peered in through a frosted window and beheld the dancing smoke that has so recently departed us, and had you not perceived the meerschaum in my hand, might you not have thought that inside this house, haunted as it is, at least in reputation, you beheld a specter? And, had you been even more credulous—as say our charwoman has demonstrated herself to be on so many occasions—wondered if the two gaunt men who sat with heads bowed together were not, in fact, sorcerers who conjured the dead from the dust of this place?”
“Perhaps,” I said cautiously, for I know that to agree or disagree too quickly with Dupin is the surest way to put a foot into a bear trap of logic.
“Then consider the nature of a ghostly sighting,” he continued, warming to his thesis. “Most of them occur at night, and of those many in remote places, darkened houses, dimly lit country lanes, and church yards—places where proper lighting is seldom provided. Such places lend themselves to morbid thoughts, do they not? Now additionally consider the nature of the sighting itself. So often there is a sense of unnerving coldness, a perception that something unseen is moving so close that its frigid reach brushes against the perceptions of the witness. Add to this the fact that most specters are only seen as partially materialized figures or amorphous blobs of light and shadow. Reflect further on the time of day, and let us remember that at night we are often sleepy and closer to a dreaming state than we are at the height of noon.” He sat back and puffed out a blue stream. “The evidence we collect are elements of circumstance and a predisposition of mind that not only lacks clarity and is likely fatigued, but which is also shaped into a vessel of belief because of the macabre atmosphere.”
“So it is your opinion that all ghosts are merely the creations of overly credulous minds who witness—what? Mist or fog or smoke on a darkened night? How then do you explain the movement of these specters? How do you dismiss the moans they make?”
“I do not dismiss any sounds or movement,” said Dupin, “but I challenge the authenticity of the eyewitness account. Let me hear an account of a ghost who appears on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées at two o’clock on a May afternoon, and present me with at least three unbiased witnesses who have had no time to confabulate, and then perhaps you will ignite a flicker of credulity even in a stoic such as me.”
Outside, the wind blew against the house and found some crack in the slate tiles on the roof so that its passage was an eloquent wail, like a despairing spirit.
Dupin nodded as if pleased with the confirmation of his argument.
We sat there, smoking our pipes and listened to the sounds of the old house, some caused by the relentless wind, others by the settling of its ancient bones into the cold earth. Despite the cogency of his argument, we both huddled deeper into our coats and cast curious looks into the shadows that seemed to draw closer and closer to us.
Then there was a sharp rap-tap-tap that was so unexpected and so jarring that we both jumped a foot in the air and cried out like children.
However, when the door opened, in came Monsieur G—, the Prefect of the Parisian police, and his presence broke the spell. Dupin and I glanced at each other, aware that we had both been as surely spooked as if we had seen a specter in truth. We burst out laughing.
“Well, well,” said G., looking rather startled and confounded by our sharp cries and ensuing gales of laughter, “now behold another mystery. Have I come in upon some great jest or have you two fine gentlemen taken sure and final leave of your faculties?”
“A bit of both, I dare say,” said I, and that sent Dupin into another fit of laughter.
G. smiled thinly, but it was clear that he was forcing a cordial face. Dupin saw this, of course, and quickly
sobered. He waved G. to a chair.
“Let me pour you some of this excellent wine,” I suggested. “It is a Prunier Cognac, 1835. Quite scandalous for a blustery autumn night in a drafty pile such as this, but appropriate for whiling the hours away with dark tales of shades and hobgoblins.”
However, G. remained standing, hat in hands, nervous fingers fidgeting with the brim.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “I wish I could join you, but I am afraid that those things of which you jest are perhaps out in truth on this wretched night.”
Dupin lifted one eyebrow. “Do you say so? And what spectral vapors could possibly conspire to draw the Prefect himself away from a quiet evening at the Jockey Club de Paris?”
“It is a matter of...” began G., but his voice trailed away and stopped. “Wait, how could you possibly know I was at that club this evening?”
Dupin waved the stem of his meerschaum as if dismissing the matter as being of no importance. “A blind man could see it.”
“Then I am blind,” said I. “Please light a candle to this darkness.”
The briefest ghost of a smile flickered across Dupin’s mouth and I knew from long experience that although my friend can appear both cold and inhuman at times, particularly in his pursuit of the pure logic of observation and analysis, he has a splinter of perversity that enjoys both the confounding of whatever audience is at hand, and the later satisfaction of their curiosity.
Affecting a face of boredom, Dupin said, “The scandalous matter of race fixing which was resolved so satisfactorily last month was entirely the doing of our good Prefect of the Parisian police. One of the more notable applications by modern law enforcement of the value of evidence collection and the science of observing details to discern their nature rather than forcing assumptions upon them.”