An Affair Of Sorcerers m-3

by George C. Chesbro

  "I don't know for certain, but I assume it's supported by membership and lecture fees. I've never had much to do with it; too public." She paused, added, "Mongo, do you think John has something to do with the people who harmed the girl?"

  "I don't know, Mad. That's what I'm trying to find out."

  I tried to relax with a book, but I couldn't remember what I was reading from one page to the next. The pain in my stomach and thumb seemed to be calming down, and I was hungry again. I ate another sandwich and felt even better. I knew I should stay home and rest as I'd planned to do, but I couldn't. I was restless, and easily convinced myself that a little ride and chat couldn't do much damage. I got dressed, went out into the night and took a cab to Krowl's brownstone in Brooklyn.

  It took some talking to get past Krowl's surprised secretary, who told me that no one ever came to see John Krowl without an appointment, and that he'd have to call the giant Jonathan if I didn't leave. I told him I was sure Krowl would want to see me, as I had some information about Esobus and the Mystic Eye Institute. I purposely put the two names in conjunction just to see what Krowl's reaction would be.

  The ploy got me in to see Krowl. The albino was waiting for me in his sitting/reading room, his long white hair and parchment flesh forming a striking contrast to his purple Oriental smoking jacket, black slacks and shoes.

  "What do you want, Frederickson?" Krowl snapped, his pink eyes flashing angrily. "What's this nonsense about Esobus and the Mystic Eye Institute?"

  "I don't know; I thought I'd ask you. What is the Mystic Eye Institute? I thought maybe I'd join."

  "You're not welcome," Krowl said evenly.

  I opened my eyes wide in mock horror. "Don't tell me you discriminate against dwarfs!"

  "You're not interested in the occult; your only interest is prying into other people's business."

  "Harley Davidson must have found the curriculum fascinating. I understand he gave you all his money. When he was working, that must have amounted to a million dollars, or more."

  Krowl frowned. "Who told you that?"

  "It doesn't matter. It's true, isn't it?"

  Krowl shoved his spectral, chalk-colored hands into the pockets of his smoking jacket and began to pace back and forth. "Harley Davidson thought enough of our work to make a few sizable donations," he said at last. "But that's not unusual; a number of my clients have joined Mystic Eye and donated money. What of it?"

  "I don't know, Krowl," I said, trying unsuccessfully to look into his eyes. "But I'll tell you the real reason I came here: I keep stumbling over victims who started out as hand casts on your wall."

  Krowl stiffened, quickly drew his smoked glasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. Now he looked at me. "Get out of here, you little bastard!" he snarled. "And don't come back! The next time you show up here, Jonathan will meet you at the door. You and I have nothing more to talk about. You seem to think that I have something to do with these people you're after!"

  The smoked glasses resembled two huge insect eyes on his colorless face. "I never said that," I replied softly to the eyes.

  "And I'll sue you if you do, Frederickson! I don't involve myself with witchcraft at all."

  "Maybe not, but I'm betting you know a lot of people who do. Did you talk to Esobus after I left here the other night?"

  He laughed thinly, without humor. "What are you talking about?" he snorted. "Esobus is a fairy tale."

  "Bullshit. I'm betting that particular fairy tale is damn well upset right now. Somebody in his coven doesn't quite live up to the going standard of nastiness. The hospital received a tape recording explaining what was wrong with the child. Thanks to whoever sent it, the girl's going to live."

  I watched for a reaction; there was none. The black insect eyes simply stared back at me. Finally, Krowl said: "I'm glad the child is out of danger, but I'm going to give you a warning. I have no idea who the people are that you're after, but there's no doubt that you're on a fishing expedition-and you're fishing in my home. This time you came close to making accusations: I resent that. I've told you I know nothing about this matter, but you don't believe me. Have it your way: If you think I'm involved, prove it. Otherwise, I advise you to stay away from here. And keep your mouth shut." He paused, coughed dryly; it was a soft, slightly menacing sound. "I'll have your license, Frederickson. Believe me; I have very powerful friends."

  I believed him, and I knew I'd probably made a mistake in coming to see him. I was on a fishing expedition, and Krowl didn't have to be a genius to know it. If he was involved with the coven, he was now definitely on notice that I was looking him over. The powerful friends he'd mentioned could easily chew me up and spit me out in the various regulatory agencies I was responsible to. I was going to have to back off until I could gather more evidence.

  Of course, there was always the possibility that Krowl was totally ignorant of Esobus and his works, as Krowl claimed.

  I doubted it. He'd never even bothered to ask what had been wrong with Kathy.

  After a good night's sleep I rose at ten, feeling fairly decent. I ate a light breakfast and went over to the Medical Center for my shot. On the way it occurred to me that exactly one week before I'd been happily drumming away, planning to while away the rest of the summer nibbling at the Big Apple. I'd ended up with a mouthful of worms. It seemed years since I'd rolled up my practice pencils into the Tchaikovsky score and filed the package away in my drawer.

  Kathy had been moved from Intensive Care into a private room. She was out of the coma, but under heavy sedation as a result of the washing-out process she was undergoing. I was allowed to look in on her; as I stood next to her bed looking down on her peacefully sleeping body, I felt tears of gratitude well in my eyes. I waited a few minutes, hoping that April would show up. She didn't, and I went downstairs to keep my appointment with Joshua Greene.

  By now the injection procedure was becoming a familiar-if no more pleasant-ritual. After the shot, a nurse brought me tea and Joshua left me alone to dress. On my way out of the room I almost bumped into an excited and flushed April who was carrying a shopping bag that looked heavy. As always when I saw her, I experienced a small rush in my stomach and chest that had absolutely nothing to do with rabies shots.

  "Robert!" she cried. "I was just on my way over to your apartment. I met Dr. Greene in the elevator and he told me you were down here."

  "Ah, and you come bearing gifts," I said, smiling and pointing to the bag.

  "It may be something better," April said, her voice taut and humming with excitement. "After you left yesterday, I drove home to Philadelphia to look for those things of Frank's I told you about. Now that Kathy's going to be all right, I thought it was time I tried to help you and Garth." She used both hands to lift the bag. "Here's what I found."

  My heart began to pound as I took the bag from her and carried it over to an examining table. "Is this all there was?"

  "I don't know, but this is definitely what he brought last Saturday. I recognized the bag. There may be more in other parts of the attic, but I wanted to bring this to you as quickly as possible."

  Slowly and carefully, I began to take the items from the bag and lay them out on the table. There were a number of books on witchcraft, most of which looked academic and sophisticated. Many of the pages were heavily annotated in what April confirmed was Frank Marlowe's handwriting. There were also three notebooks, which I skimmed through quickly. They consisted of research notes on witchcraft and the occult in general. There was no mention of Esobus, or a supercoven.

  At the bottom of the bag was a leather carrying case which contained a tiny tape recorder of the sort a person can strap to his body in order to make surreptitious recordings. There was also a small spool of recording tape.

  "Have you listened to this yet?" I asked April, picking up the tape.

  She shook her head and gripped my arm. "I'm not sure how the machine works; I was afraid I'd break the tape, or erase it."

  I put the tape in
the machine, turned it on.

  "Black Bull of the north, Horned One, Dark Ruler of the mountains and all that lies beneath them, Prince of the Powers of Earth, be present, we pray Thee, and guard this circle from all perils approaching from the north!"

  The chant was repeated twice. April whispered in my ear: "It's an invocation of protection. It may be the coven!" I nodded as another, lone voice came on the tape.

  "Whence come you?"

  "I travel east in search of light."

  "What passwords dost thou bring Esobus?"

  "Perfect love and perfect trust."

  April gasped, and I shut off the machine. "It's Frank, isn't it?" I asked softly.

  She slowly nodded, her eyes wide with shock. "Yes. It's Frank's voice. What we're hearing is an initiation ceremony."

  "Frank's initiation ceremony."

  "And the other voice …" I turned the machine back on.

  "I, the Guardian of the watchtower of the north, forbid thee entrance. Thou canst not enter this holy place from the north, save thou first be purified and consecrated. Who vouches for you?"

  A third voice came on the tape; it was distant and muffled, barely audible.

  "I, guide of souls, do so. Let Bart Stone be one of us."

  The tape ran out; I rewound it and played it over again twice. April went to a corner of the room and stood leaning against the wall, her hands to her temples. The third voice that had come in was totally unrecognizable. Obviously, Frank Marlowe had wired himself for his initiation ceremony, but the tiny recorder had picked up only the sounds of the group's chanting, Marlowe's own voice-and the voice of the coven leader. That voice had been amplified and distorted.

  "The leader," April said tensely. "It sounds just like the voice on the tape that was delivered to the hospital."

  "That's right. It is the same person."

  "Robert, what does it mean?"

  "It means you were wrong about Frank not being a part of Esobus' coven." I paused and carefully started replacing the items in the shopping bag. What I was thinking was so off-the-wall that it threatened to turn the entire case inside out, blowing away a major assumption I'd been operating on up to that point. Yet the evidence offered by the two tapes appeared to point to one, inescapable conclusion. I finally put my thoughts into words, if only to hear how insane they sounded when spoken aloud. "It also means-or seems to mean-that the person responsible for saving Kathy's life is Esobus himself."

  Taking the shopping bag with me, I got into a cab outside the Medical Center and gave the driver directions to take me to Garth's precinct station house. I got there just as Garth came hurrying out the door. I intercepted him on the way to his car.

  "Hey, brother," I said, hoisting the bag in his direction. "Wait up. I've got something here you're definitely going to want to check out."

  "Not now, Mongo," Garth said tensely, brushing past me. He started to slide into the car, then motioned for me to get in beside him. "Come on. I guess you've earned the right to see this-if that's the way to put it."

  "What are you talking about?" I asked, knowing from Garth's tone that I wasn't going to like it.

  "Our elusive friend Crandall got himself lost permanently. He's dead."

  Chapter 16

  It was not yet noon, but the temperature had to be approaching ninety. The heat and the drugs in my system were poking at my brain, making it hard, despite my respect and feeling for this victim, to concentrate on the fact that we were on our way to a pre-luncheon meeting with Daniel's death. As if bodies weren't found, and people didn't die, on hot mornings. Then too, I may have been distracted by the pastoral surroundings-The Ramble, a heavily wooded area of Central Park notorious as a trysting place for homosexuals, but in fact freely used by lovers of all colors, creeds and sexual persuasions. Even heterosexuals.

  Neither of us spoke as I followed Garth along one of the many trails cutting through woods, around ponds and across the strong spines of granite mini-cliffs that sparkled in the heavy white sunlight. We passed a number of late-rising bird-watchers, tweedy men and women with necks bowed under the weight of huge binoculars that looked powerful enough to track an ant at three hundred yards.

  A uniformed cop was waiting for us a half mile or so down the trail. He led us off the main trail, up over a small outcropping of rock and along a narrow path that was incongruously marked with NYPD posting signs. We went around another outcropping. What I saw made my mind snap back into focus with such force that I involuntarily groaned and snapped my jaws shut.

  Daniel's body was in a tiny clearing in the center of a secluded, dense copse of trees, surrounded by uniformed cops and police technicians. It wasn't pretty. Daniel had been stripped naked and staked spread-eagled, face up, to the ground. He'd been tortured, and a cat's head had been stuffed into his mouth as a gag. The immediate cause of death looked to be an ornate ceremonial sword that had been plunged into Daniel's heart, but he'd been expertly carved up first. Occult symbols had been scratched into the rocky soil around him: it had been a ritual torture and murder.

  "It looks like Crandall finally found the people he was looking for," Garth said softly.

  I nodded slowly, but could think of nothing to say. Despite his brusque stubbornness, I'd liked Richard Crandall, and had come to respect his strange, unyielding demand for solitude. As April had said, he was, by nature of his beliefs, a loner who had to do things his own way. It occurred to me that his hunt had been a kind of spiritual exercise. The ceremonial magician was dead, and I wondered who would pray for this strange priest of the occult. I decided I would.

  We waited for the police photographers to finish their business, then went back to Garth's car, where I played the tape for him. When it had finished, I turned the machine off. He didn't say anything, and I asked, "You want to hear it again?"

  Garth shook his head. "I'll give it to the lab boys. They may be able to clean it up and raise the levels so we can try for some voice identification." He paused, added, "So that's Esobus. It's the same voice we heard on the hospital tape. You can tell that, even with the distortion."

  "Yep. It was Esobus, the leader of this shithead crew, who backed off and supplied the information that saved Kathy's life. Interesting, huh?"

  "To say the least," Garth replied quietly. "There's something else that's interesting: this tape proves that the distortion on the two tapes wasn't done after the recording. Only Esobus' voice is distorted; except for poor quality, all the other voices on the tape are normal. What the hell do you think is going on?"

  "It's electronic," I said. "You can get that effect with certain kinds of microphone and feedback setups. Obviously, Esobus masks his voice from his own coven, which could mean they don't even know who he is."

  "Christ, that's hard to believe. Wouldn't they try to find out?"

  "Some weird people here, brother, which I don't have to tell you. Everyone I talk to who's ever heard of Esobus speaks of him as a legend. If Esobus wanted to keep his identity secret, even from his own coven, he just might have the muscle to get away with it. The rest of the coven might view it as some kind of ritual source of power."

  Garth stared out the side window for a few moments, then made a sharp, hissing sound of disgust. "What the hell was that girl's father doing with this bunch of creeps? You gave me the impression you thought Marlowe was pretty straight-at least morally."

  "I still think he was. And Marlowe isn't the only one who doesn't seem to fit this picture. Bobby Weiss-Harley Davidson-wouldn't have hurt a fly, unless he accidentally dropped his ego on it. Neither of those men was a torturer nor murderer. Not only that, but I've been told over and over again that Esobus is a ceremonial magician who wouldn't form a coven with anyone but other ceremonial magicians who are almost as heavy as he is. Obviously, that isn't true." I hesitated as a thought flitted up from some dark corner of my mind. I tried to look at it, but it ducked out of sight behind dmg-shadows of weariness and confusion. "Maybe," I added feebly.

  "What 'may
be'?" Garth said scornfully. "A coven has thirteen members, period. In this case, there would be Esobus and twelve others. So Marlowe and Harley Davidson turned out to be closet pussycats."

  The thought came back for a return run. This time I grabbed it and flopped it over on its back. Its face was ugly. "Unless Marlowe and Bobby Weiss were marked as victims from day one. They only thought they were members of the coven; the real members were doing a number on them."

  Garth was still staring out the car window, idly tapping his knuckles against the glass. "I like it," he said at last. "Go ahead."

  "All right, let's noodle on it together. Try this for openers: Thirteen members of the coven are heavies, and all very kinky-with Esobus himself the only question mark. They prey on vulnerable people who are sucked in and made to think they're members. The suckers are given all the sex, drugs and anything else they want; and all the while the real coven is going to work on them."

  "Milking them dry, like they did to the kid."

  "Sure; they took Bobby's money, but there are other things the coven could want-and get. Power; political influence. God knows we've got enough closet screwballs at all levels of government. Can you imagine what this coven could do with a senator or two in its pocket?"

  "Shit, yes," Garth said softly, slowly nodding.

  "And they may have them," I said, thinking of the hand casts on Krowl's wall.

  We sat quietly for some time. Out of the silence another idea began to emerge, and I voiced it. "I think they may have found one joker in the deck," I continued, poking my brother in the side. "Frank Marlowe, with his research notes and tape recordings; he was the joker. Maybe he was trying to do a number on them. Check this out: Marlowe was initiated as Bart Stone-only one of a dozen different pseudonyms he used. The coven members thought they were initiating a rich and famous Western pulp writer. I don't think they knew that wasn't his real name. If they had known his real name, why not use it at the initiation ceremony?"