Floats the Dark Shadow

by Yves Fey

  Moina leaned toward Theo. “Why is it important?”

  Meeting that warm, searching gaze, Theo went to the ghastly heart. “Children are being murdered. Only one body has been discovered—a little girl I knew. But there have been many mysterious disappearances and the police think the same man killed the others.”

  “And left this mark behind?” As if it were contaminated, MacGregor pushed the sketch back toward Theo.

  She did not pick it up. Perhaps it might yet spark a memory. “Yes. The same symbol has appeared several times.”

  “This is terrible,” Moina said. “Do you want me to do another Tarot layout for you? Even if it does not reveal your Devil, perhaps it will point in some new direction.”

  Theo shook her head. She needed substance, not mystical vision, however compelling that vision might be. “You believe magic should be used for good….”

  “White magic, not black,” Moina said softly.

  “But you may know others who want to control those darker forces.” Theo hesitated.

  “And that we might know such a despicable person?”

  MacGregor sounded as offended as Theo had feared. Yet the children’s lives were more important. If he didn’t see that, the others must. Theo appealed to them. “Haven’t you at least heard of someone like that—a black magician who would attempt some sort of ritual sacrifice?”

  “Symbolic sacrifice is an old and powerful form of magic,” Yeats said.

  Theo flared. “The murder of these children is not symbolic. It is horrible.”

  “However horrifying, it may still be a symbol,” Yeats said quietly. “I am only saying that sacrifice is a powerful element, one that can be used for good or for ill.”

  MacGregor was seething. “Fools and charlatans abound in the occult—as they do in the mundane world. But a villain such as this, who would pervert the ancient wisdom, we would shun absolutely. Such black energy can infect the minds of others.”

  Theo decided to ask directly about Vipèrine, but before she could, Yeats intervened. “Macgregor, do you remember when I brought my friend to visit you in England?”

  “The skeptic who yearned to believe?”

  “The very one.”

  “Would you perform a similar ritual for Miss Faraday? This symbol may be significant.”

  Macgregor frowned. “I do not know that it is appropriate.”

  “My friend was no more an initiate than she,” Yeats countered.

  “Miss Faraday’s path has crossed ours for a reason,” Moina said. “Forces gather around her to which we should pay heed. We should help her in any way that we can.”

  Suddenly full of purpose, Macgregor stood. “I will prepare.”

  Theo swallowed her urge to protest. She had come for information, not rituals and incantations. Yet her trepidations about the Tarot were because the reading had been all too true, if all too ambiguous.

  Macgregor withdrew to a far corner of the room, while Moina directed Theo and Yeats to move some of the lighter pieces of furniture aside, making the central space much longer. Macgregor opened a chest and withdrew a few objects and folded pieces of cloth. One of these, richly embroidered in jeweled hues, he lay over the chest to form a kind of dais. Atop it, he placed a small mace of golden polished wood, then propped up a tablet filled with squares of many colors. Each had a number on it. Macgregor unfolded an deep indigo robe that he donned. He picked up the mace and studied the tablet, moving a few of the squares to new positions. Then he turned to face them.

  It seemed both strange and strangely simple to Theo, looking at the box with its numbered squares. The robe was painted with runes of some kind, but it was not particularly theatrical. The robe of a workaday wizard, she thought, biting back the smile that surfaced unbidden. She did sense a new concentration in MacGregor. His expression was intense but inward, absorbed in private thought or visions. Moina gestured for Theo and Yeats to stand together, facing her husband, then placed herself halfway between them, her gaze on him as well. She kept the drawing, studying it for a moment, then holding it so that Macgregor could look at it. He began to speak, a low chanting, which Moina echoed. Their resonant voices had a quiet power, but Theo did not recognize the language. It was not Latin. Was it an invocation in Greek—or perhaps in something more ancient still?

  Not understanding, Theo felt ill at ease but knew she must make an effort to be more receptive. Closing her eyes, she drew a calming breath, and another, pacing her breathing to the exotic sounds. Slowly the unknown words become a kind of poetry, music, evoking images from pure sound. The soft intonations slowly created a quivering vibration in the room. The very air seemed to hum. Behind the darkness of her closed lids, Theo pictured the black cross with its upswept wings. What did it mean?

  Suddenly, the lines quivered and moved, taking on dimension. The white of the paper condensed within them, forming a great, gleaming swan, fantastical and vividly alive. The wings flashed out, fire soaring from the tips of the quills. A corona of crimson light surrounded the bird and bled across the pale feathers. The wings closed, shadow and smoke pouring down.

  “I see a swan,” Moina said.

  And MacGregor replied, “A swan in flames.”

  Theo gasped. The image vanished. She opened her eyes, staring at Moina, who had not moved but continued to commune with her husband.

  Beside her, Yeats counseled softly, “Do not question now. Open yourself.”

  Shivers drizzled over Theo’s back, fear and excitement mingled. She closed her eyes again, recalling the swan, but she could summon only a pale memory of the vibrant image that had blazed in her mind.

  “He comes. He rides a black horse in the center of a procession,” MacGregor said. Theo clasped her hands tightly and bit her lip in frustration. She did not see a man on a black horse.

  “There is a great pageant, a performance.” Moina said. “He has spent a fortune on the costumes, the livery. Even the beggars’ rags are made of shredded silk.”

  Then, as if she were a hovering bird, Theo did see a vast procession winding slowly through a medieval city. Was it only because Moina evoked it? The images wavered, vanished, reappeared. Theo heard singing and found herself standing in the crowd, watching as the procession passed. Passing pageboys sang hymns in their exquisite voices. Young women flung handfuls of rose petals in the street. And finally, there in the midst of the others, was a knight in silver armor. On the crest of his helmet, a bird lifted its shimmering wings.

  “The swan crowns his head,” Moina said, again echoing Theo’s vision. “He bears the cross on his shield.”

  With the certainty of a dream, Theo knew the identity of the knight. Gilles de Rais. No—she had read about the pageant in the book. But she had not talked about Là Bas with Moina or MacGregor. With her denial the images wavered, faded, but this time they did not vanish. She watched the knight pass by her.

  “Le Mistère du Siège d’Orléans,” Moina said. “It is the tenth anniversary of the Maid’s victory. They will perform the play he has written in her honor.”

  A young woman rode a white horse, her banner rippling in the wind. Theo knew that she saw Jeanne of Arc, not the Jeanne portrayed in the pageant but the real Jeanne, her cropped hair whipped by the same sharp wind, black and shining. Her face glowing with the fierce certainty of victory as she rode—not to Orléans but to Paris. Her soldiers, her lieutenants turned to her, faith alight in their eyes as they approached devastation. Like transparent scrims, the images overlapped in Theo’s mind. The staged triumph mingled with the blood and sweat of ruin.

  Then, even more strangely, Theo saw the black horse Gilles had ridden led into a dimly lit stable. It was all very furtive. She watched as the black horse and eight others were sold along with their lavish trappings—sold for a pittance.

  “Casse-noissette was his favorite,” Moina said. “He is bankrupt.”

  “Like his coffers, his soul is empty,” MacGregor intoned. “There is no alchemy that can transform his sin.
”

  Theo saw Gilles kneeling, hands squeezing his temples as if he could crush the images there. He screamed silently as demons battled in his mind. Behind a locked door, a necromancer beat a mattress and screamed aloud as if he were being murdered. “He seeks to rule the Devil but is already his servant,” MacGregor said.

  “His faith was burned.” Moina’s voice was almost a sob.

  Her armor stripped away, Jeanne walked forward, dressed in penitent’s garb. She asked for a cross. An English soldier broke his lance and bound the pieces together, then handed her his gift. She clasped the cross to her. Theo saw her chained to the stake, the oiled wood lit beneath her. The fire ignited, the smoke billowed. The flames leaped higher and higher, terror mounting as the blaze soared. Theo could no longer see Jeanne, only a wall of flame.

  The wall became the wall of a room, burning. A house, burning. A girl with long black hair ran through it, barefoot, her white nightdress catching flame. She stumbled. Fell.

  Theo sobbed aloud, memories of Mélanie igniting in her mind.

  Like an echo came other sobs. Weeping, endless weeping—a child crying, alone in the dark. The fault is his. His hatred has brought her death. Love has been incinerated with her.

  “Jeanne!” Moina’s cry is full of grief.

  Theo sees the square where Jeanne was burned, the blackened stake. An image drifts over it on a cloud of smoke, a twisted, charred corpse pinned under a fallen timber. Everywhere the reek of ashes, reek of despair. Gilles wants to buy Jeanne’s heart, but they have thrown it in the Seine.

  The weeping goes on and on, sobs of the grieving child weave with Gilles’ choir of innocents singing of salvation.

  Then another fire, a furnace with a great fiery maw. Two men appear, lieutenants who had ridden beside Gilles in the parade. They carry a blood-stained canvas and lay it down before the furnace. Pulling back the canvas, they reveal the body of a child, his curling hair matted with blood, his eyes staring into nothingness. With small axes and knives, they hack the boy into pieces and throw him into the flames.

  “They destroy the evidence of the murder.” Moina faltered.

  Theo knew it was not the first body fed to the flames and would not be the last.

  “So many—” Moina’s voice broke. She pitched forward but MacGregor caught her. “I cannot watch this!”

  Theo opened her eyes to see MacGregor looking at her over his wife’s shoulder. “We can do no more.”

  They were all visibly shaken. Theo did not doubt that they had shared a vision, however piecemeal the images. Moina turned to her. “Do you know who we saw?”

  Theo spoke the name aloud. “It was Gilles de Rais.”

  “Yes.” Macgregor handed her back the drawing. “The cross was his, and the swan, but this mark you found is only a symbol, an evocation. Did you learn the identity of the man who uses it?”

  Theo sat on the divan, swept by a wave of frustration. She had learned a horrible truth, but how could it help her solve the murders? “No. I think perhaps I glimpsed him. Not everything I saw was from the medieval era. But it was too vague, too quick.”

  Moina sat beside her. “Your Devil has fused Gilles de Rais’ identity with his own.”

  The shivers returned, slithering along Theo’s nerves. Almost from the first, Gilles de Rais had become her own symbol of the killer. It was too bizarre to find the killer had chosen him as well. The chill of horror was quickly followed by a thrill of triumph. She had come full circle—back to the question she meant to ask before the Mathers had allowed her into their strange ceremony. “Do you know a man called Vipèrine?”

  Yeats only looked curious, but the Mathers glanced at each other with expressions of disgust. MacGregor expounded. “Not a fool, but undeniably a charlatan. A villain who builds his power on seductive parlor tricks and tainted charisma. He is not interested in knowledge, only in power and manipulation.”

  “Do you think he is involved in these terrible crimes?” Moina asked.

  “He plays at being sinister, but I believe it is more than an act,” Theo said with growing certainty. She remembered Vipèrine’s cold, lustful stare and cruel smile. “When I first saw him, he had a blue beard in imitation of Gilles de Rais.”

  “That is extraordinary,” Moina said.

  “Yet Là Bas may have tempted others to play with such malevolence.” Yeats voiced her hidden fear. The Revenants all knew of Gilles de Rais.

  “Vipèrine has appeared at the wrong place at the wrong time—but so have others,” Theo admitted. She wanted it to be Vipèrine. It could not be Averill. It must not be one of her poets. But she hoped the killer was someone the police already suspected. If they were watching him, then he might be caught before he killed again. Was there anything in today’s strange events that provided a clue for Inspecteur Devaux? She turned to MacGregor. “Have you seen a historical depiction of the shield, or the swan?”

  “Little survives from that era,” MacGregor answered. “Perhaps the concept seemed familiar because I read of it in heraldry. Gilles de Rais was not someone I studied extensively. His crimes were horrific, but he was not a powerful magician or even a serious alchemist.”

  Moina gestured to the drawing. “The choice of the swan is so perverse. They are the symbol of purity.”

  “But also of lust—remember Zeus took the form of a swan to ravish Leda,” Yeats said. “In many ways they are creatures of contrast. Their movements embody the grace of the feminine, their necks the virile thrust of the masculine. In that union, they also represent the hermaphrodite.”

  “In medieval times, they were called hypocritical creatures, vain and deceitful, for the black flesh hidden beneath their white down,” MacGregor argued. “Just so, this killer hides his corruption.”

  “Death,” Theo said, thinking of the children. “Don’t swans symbolize death?”

  Moina nodded. “The myth says that mute swans sing only at their deaths.”

  Yeats leaned forward, intense and earnest. His slender hands were clasped together, almost in prayer, as he spoke directly to her. “There is great danger here, Miss Faraday. There are elemental forces, entities which shape our art and our lives. To imitate them is to summon them. The imagination is a more potent force than most realize.”

  “Such forces can inhabit us. We are always at risk.” Once again, MacGregor gazed inward. Theo felt unnerved by the glassy intensity of his eyes. Moina touched his arm lightly and he looked round at them. “Such evil must be exorcised, or it will destroy whomever it inhabits. It will swallow them whole and take them into the abyss.”

  All the Revenants believed in looking into the abyss. No coward, Theo too believed in looking—but not in flinging stones into the darkness to see what demons could be stirred. “You think Vipèrine might be inhabited by such a spirit?”

  Yeats said, “Perhaps the killer who now stalks Paris and Gilles de Rais were both inhabited by the same darkness.”

  There was a brooding pause. They were all still disturbed by the vision. Theo did not think she would find any more clarity, and she was too perturbed to sit and drink mint tea. “If you hear news of Vipèrine or of anyone else suspicious, can you let me know?” she asked the Mathers.

  “You will take this information to the police?” MacGregor frowned.

  “I know a detective who is discreet.”

  “Such persons are discreet at their own discretion,” MacGregor said. “They cannot understand our purpose and so distrust us all. It may serve their purposes to discredit us as well as capture this villain.”

  “There is no way to prevent the ignorant from throwing us all in the same stewpot,” Yeats said. “We should do what is right.”

  “Such darkness shadows the light of those like us, who seek wisdom rather than power,” Moina said.

  MacGregor hesitated then gave a sharp nod. Turning to Theo, he said, “We do not tolerate evil. If we hear of anything suspicious, we will inform you.”

  “Thank you.” His answer filled The
o with both new hope and new trepidation.

  ~

  Theo rode her bicycle to the foot of the Butte Montmartre and dismounted near the Moulin Rouge. Dusk was falling as she wheeled it up the steep incline of the rue Lepic, still mulling over what she had learned. She understood even more clearly the fascination Carmine felt with the occult world, but she knew her own path was different. Despite being brushed by the power of that world, Theo was an artist, not a seer. Whatever talent she possessed for understanding people came from reading their faces, observing their body movements, and listening to the shifts in their tone of voice, not because she could read minds or see into souls.

  Theo stopped abruptly when she reached the first plateau. There were several gendarmes and groups of people talking. Farther up the street, even more people were gathered. She went to the nearest gendarme and asked what had happened. “A young girl has been kidnapped,” he said, “the daughter of the bakers on rue….”

  “Ninette?”

  The gendarme nodded solemnly.

  Lovely, innocent Ninette with her rosy cheeks and the scent of bread and sugar perfuming her skin.

  Theo ran up the street but was stopped outside the shop by another officer. Instinctively, Theo looked through the window for Inspecteur Devaux. Just as she chastised herself for presuming him to be everywhere, she saw him. Beyond him, Madame Pommier wept on her husband’s shoulder. Theo felt an awful twisting in her stomach, as if her innards were knotting themselves. Suddenly, vividly, Theo remembered Casimir and Averill joking about Paul’s attraction to Ninette.

  Paul. Not Averill. Paul. Theo felt a rush of relief, followed by a rush of shame. All the doubts she had shoved away had not vanished, but lurked, waiting to sink their claws in her. If Paul had seemed overly attentive to Ninette, that didn’t mean he had kidnapped her. But it was yet another child that the Revenants knew. Like Denis, and Dondre, and Alicia….

  Unbidden, Theo remembered Alicia sitting on her little chair in the morgue as all of Paris filed by to gawk at her. Again her stomach twisted and acid bile rose in her throat. She leaned against the nearest wall, fighting her nausea. A narrow street ran behind the bakery. Memory was a physical thrust, pushing her into the gloom to hunt frantically for the winged cross. It was nowhere to be seen. Where had Ninette been going? How many streets must be searched? Theo looked up and saw Inspecteur Devaux approaching. Silently, he shook his head, his expression grim. He had already hunted here just as she was hunting now. “There is no mark here,” he told her. “She didn’t return after school. We are exploring that area as well. It is more likely to be there.”