by Rick Dakan
“I know that feeling. Being a writer it’s the same way. You must have good employees at the bookshop I guess.”
“No, it’s just me. But the store is in my home as well. I run it from the spare bedroom. Well, what used to be my bedroom in fact before mother passed on a few years ago. All my sales are via the Internet in any event, so it never seemed wise to invest in a retail space.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I said. Another misconception corrected. I’d always pictured an older Sinclair ensconced in a musty old bookstore, surrounded by moldering volumes. “What did you find in Chicago?”
“Well, I’ll have to be careful how I tell you the story. I’m sure you’ll understand, but just as I keep my dealings with you and Conrad strictly confidential, I must also respect the privacy of my other clients and contacts as well.”
“Sure.”
“I took the train instead of flying, which was a more grueling than picturesque experience, and in part explains why I was so delayed in my endeavors. I took the Lake Shore Limited from Boston, which is an overnight trip, and without a sleeping berth it played havoc with my back. By the time I met with my contact, I was in quite a bit of pain, but still more than able to negotiate for the letter. Of course it took me some time to become convinced of its genuine provenance, and once I was satisfied, the gentleman suddenly balked and wanted more money. But a deal’s a deal and I held him to his word as a gentleman, and he eventually sold it to me at just a few dollars over the agreed-upon price.”
“What was the price?” I asked. Conrad hadn’t told me exactly.
“Well, I’m not sure I should… ” Sinclair said, trailing off into uncertainty.
Hungry for information and realizing that for some reason Conrad was trusting this odd fellow with more of it than me, I decided to bluff. “It’s my money you were spending too, not just Conrad’s. How much did he sell the letter for?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized. Of course. He wanted to go much higher, but I brought him back down into the realm of the reasonable. Only $1100.”
“Jesus! Over a thousand dollars?”
“That is the price we discussed earlier,” Sinclair said, sounding worried. “I think, when you see the letter, you’ll understand how important it is. That it was worth it.”
“OK,” I said, for a moment there I’d forgotten that it wasn’t actually my money at all, and Conrad had sunk so much cash into this fight against Shelby, I wasn’t sure another thousand would make a difference to Lauren one way or the other. “Let’s see the letter then.”
“Well, it’s in my suitcase,” Sinclair said. “I have it in a locked box for safekeeping. It was quite an adventure getting through airport security with that, I assure you.”
I thought about pulling off in St. Petersburg somewhere to see the thing, but I decided it was better to get back to Sarasota as quickly as possible. “So, give me the gist of it then. What does the letter say?”
“It is indeed a letter from Sonia Greene to one of her occultist comrades in Chicago, a man named Geoffrey K. Ari, who was a noted spiritualist in his day, famous for supposedly channeling the voices of long-dead Atlantean priest-kings. That’s all probably nonsense, of course, and it seems likely that this letter was in some way responsible for him abandoning his typical spiritualist ways and embarking on a darker path that eventually left him hospitalized and insane in the 1930s.”
“What kind of darker path?”
“Well, we have only a few of his letters and a couple of newspaper accounts to go on, but from what I and my Chicago contact could piece together, it seems that he became obsessed with the Necronomicon thanks to his relationship with Sonia Greene. After she and Lovecraft divorced she went to Chicago and spent some time with him there.”
“I thought Sonia Greene moved to Cleveland after she left Lovecraft,” I said. I’d been doing my research too, finally.
Sinclair paused and looked at me with a curious tilt to his head. “Well, yes, she did ultimately. But first she spent some time in Chicago. Indeed, she’d been pressuring Lovecraft to move to Chicago with her before they divorced, but he refused. It seems clear now that she wanted both men under her influence at once — one the genius writer, the other the intuitive medium. Both men had fragile psyches which she could easily submit to her own powerful will. It’s a shame that so little serious scholarly attention has been paid to Greene, and her own autobiography whitewashes away all the sordid truths, I assure you. One must go to the primary sources,” Sinclair said, his tone chiding. “It’s impossible to rely on what anyone might throw up on the Internet.” He did have me there. None of my research had taken me beyond my computer.
“And of course there is evidence about her true nature in Lovecraft’s stories as well. Indeed, some of his most powerful works depict manipulative women using their magic to either give birth to monsters or dominate brilliant but susceptible men. Look to ‘Dreams in the Witch House,’ with the ancient extra-dimensional crone imposing her mind on the poor student boarder. Or ‘The Dunwich Horror,’ where Lavinia connives to give birth to an alien god’s bastard children. And of course there is my personal favorite, and one that illustrates Sonia Greene’s foul influence perfectly: ‘The Thing on the Doorstep.’”
“Yes, you mentioned that before. It’s really one of your favorites? I didn’t much care for it.”
“Oh, no, it’s quite underrated, and it’s especially germane to our current endeavors. I think there can be no denying that Lovecraft is talking about Sonia in this story. Even years later, he still has the psychic scars of her attempts to dominate him, just as your friend Mr. Tyree is currently under the spell of his own witch-woman. Not in the exact manner as in the story of course, no. But I’m quite certain that she’s using the same sorts of domination techniques Sonia Greene used on at least two of the men in her life. Techniques that she learned from the Necronomicon.”
“How do you imagine these techniques work then? Hypnotism of some sort?”
Sinclair paused, as if searching for the right words. “No, nothing so simple, I think. How best to explain this to you? Perhaps it’s better to say that they take advantage of certain fundamental truths about the way in which our minds work. Truths unknown to modern science and medicine but which the ancients knew and have passed down from… from, well, wherever they learned them. It’s of course impossible to say, but we can see evidence of their ancient nature from the fact that they’re in the Necronomicon and further evidence of their effectiveness from the way in which Sonia Greene and Kym have used them. And no doubt many other women as well over the ages. There are hints that Lucretia Borgia might have once possessed a copy of the Necronomicon.”
“What?” I said. “You’re kidding.”
“Just hints, as I said,” Sinclair clarified. “But it would fit the pattern.”
“What pattern? Why women?”
“The pattern that goes back to the origins of human myth and literature. Back to Eve, the original temptress who suborned treason in Adam’s mind and angered God. Women have a profound power over men. Most are only dimly aware of their power, of course, and use it without being conscious of doing so, but those few who receive the proper training or have some innate ability or, worst of all, both these characteristics in concert, they can cause great pain and suffering in the world.”
“Thus the lofty and powerful position of women throughout human history,” I teased.
“It’s no joke,” Sinclair insisted. “Look at what Kym has done to your friend Mr. Tyree. She’s turned him into a kind of megalomaniacal cult leader. Perverted his imagination and creativity to her own twisted goals and those of her dark heritage.”
“Shelby was not normal before he ever met Kym,” I said, ignoring the whole “dark heritage” comment for the moment.
“Not normal, of course. Conrad has told me about his wild and eccentric past. But isn’t it true that he was previously more of an artist and a loner than a leader? Someone wh
o facilitated events rather than drove them forward? It was only after coming into contact with this dark woman and her perverted interpretations of Lovecraft’s work that he became a leader of sorts. Is that not true?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “Maybe.” And I didn’t know. Certainly Shelby had never started a cult before, but I wouldn’t have described him as a passive facilitator before either. “So you lay this all on Kym then? Shelby’s not to blame at all for his own actions?”
“I do not think he is, no. You must realize that we’re talking about a woman who may very well have grown up with pages of the Necronomicon for bedtime stories! She’s been indoctrinated and perverted since birth by her whole clan. The black rites of savage Africa have long persisted in the more secretive sects of the Caribbean, defying all modernity. This woman who calls herself Kym is the scion of a degenerate miscegenation between primitive races and the modern European tradition. It makes her both very powerful and, because of her mixed heritage, very unstable.”
“You’re losing me here, Sinclair,” I said, trying to keep my calm in the face of the book collector’s unexpected racism. “What does her ethnicity have to do with anything?”
“Don’t you see?” Sinclair said in a high, almost shrill voice. “Everything! I’ve found Lovecraft’s insights into human nature to be almost universally spot-on. Particularly so when it comes to issues that modern sensibilities find too challenging to face in an honest, scientific matter. Who can honestly say that all civilizations are in fact equal? Would you be just as happy living in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan or AIDS-ravaged Africa? I think not. And what are civilizations but the product of the people who comprise them? Can we ignore the primacy of European art, culture, and intellect in the world? Again, I think not. To do so would be to ignore science itself. And while the less-civilized races might well have certain animal-like strengths and savage capabilities that give them temporary advantage in some situations, as a whole these advantages ultimately reveal their innate genetic faults more than anything. It is no coincidence that Sonia Greene was a Russian Jew and this Kym woman is a Caribbean black. How else but by manipulation could those types of women win the devotion of inspired men like Lovecraft and Mr. Tyree?”
I sat in sort of shock, staring out at the highway and wondering how to react. What do you do when you find yourself chauffeuring such an outspoken racist to your own home? Confront him? Ask him to stop saying such offensive drivel? But of course we still needed the letter and he was our expert and so I didn’t want to offend him. Not that he seemed to mind offending me, nor was he done yet.
“Lovecraft, of course, addressed these important issues of race and miscegenation in many of his stories as well. One of my personal favorites is ‘The Horror at Red Hook,’ which details a cult of swarthy foreigners up to evil in New York City. Although when he wrote it Lovecraft was giving voice to his own reasonable reactions to the kinds of people he encountered while living in New York, it rings even truer today as a warning against the kinds of dark influences that caused 9/11. These cross-cultural contaminations are having deadlier and deadlier effects, and not just in diseases like AIDS — a purely African phenomenon you must remember — but now with terrorism and war. And let us not forget the masterpiece that is ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth,’ where a whole town has succumbed to the foul temptations of breeding with monsters just to satisfy some temporary crisis. They marry away their souls for a pot of gold and in the process become monsters themselves. There’s no clearer example in literature that illustrates the danger of cross-contamination and taint.”
I needed to change the subject right away before I said something to him I might regret later. “You know what, why don’t we call Conrad and let him know you’ve arrived safely,” I said, handing Conrad my phone. “Just hit redial.”
Sinclair took the phone, not seeming to mind that I’d interrupted his racist rant. He fiddled with the buttons for a moment and then said, “This isn’t the number Conrad gave me to call him.”
“It isn’t?” I asked, surprised.
Sinclair dug out a thin, scratched and stained leather wallet and removed a piece of paper from it. “No, I’ve been contacting him on this other number. I remembered it because it has three ones in a row.”
“Well, go ahead and call the number he gave you then,” I said. So that explained why Conrad never answered his phone, although not why Sinclair had the number and I didn’t. Well, I’d have it now as soon as he dialed it on my phone. I leaned over and took the phone from Sinclair as it started ringing and put it on speaker so we could both hear.
He picked up after the fifth ring. “Hello?” he whispered.
“Hi, Conrad. I’ve got Sinclair with me and we’re heading back down to Sarasota. Where do you want to meet up? My place?”
“Rick, I can’t get away from here. Something’s going on and I can’t leave,” Conrad replied, still whispering.
“Where are you?” I asked, but I knew the answer before he said it.
“I’m at Shelby’s. I’m hidden, watching. They’re preparing for the big ritual.”
“Is it the Walpurgisnacht ritual we spoke of?” Sinclair asked, both anxious and excited.
“I think you were dead right, Calvin,” Conrad said. “Hold on.” There was a rustling or scraping noise then, as if Conrad had stuffed his phone in his pocket. Sinclair and I exchanged worried looks and waited in silence. I pressed down on the accelerator and pushed my car past 80. After a few minutes Conrad’s whisper returned. “I had to move hiding places. Listen, do you have the sigil?”
“Yes!” Sinclair hissed. Now he was whispering too. “I’ve got it with me. But please, what do you see of the ritual?”
“It’s hard to tell from here,” Conrad said. “They’re still setting up. I can’t see inside the temple, but they’ve got some sort of huge tarp over something in front of the doors to the temple. It’s big but I haven’t gotten to see what it is for sure.”
“You must tell us as soon as you see more!” Sinclair said, his voice more a stage whisper than a real one. “Then I can help you conceive of the proper countermeasures.”
“Will do. Keep your phone on, Rick,” Conrad said. “I think I know the perfect hiding spot, but I need to hang up to get to it. Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” He hung up.
I was still speechless from my realization that it sounded like Conrad was hiding somewhere inside the compound, something that seemed incredibly dangerous to me. But since I couldn’t question Conrad about it directly, I turned to Sinclair. “What was he talking about with the sigil?”
“It’s part of the letter I recovered. Those cards with symbols on them that Conrad gave you after Kym and Cara had used their mind-control techniques on you, do you remember them?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I sent those to Conrad to give to you. They work on a subconscious level to sever the tendrils of control others have placed in your mind. Those were relatively simple versions since you had not been exposed for very long. I tried a shotgun approach, sending several versions that might work. Sonia Greene’s letter contains similar symbols, although these were used to reinforce her control of the letter’s reader and were taken directly from the Necronomicon. With the letter in hand, I believe I was able to reverse engineer them in a manner of speaking and create a sigil that will, at least temporarily, counteract the mind control that Kym uses to dominate Shelby. Conrad believes that if we can use the sigil on Shelby, we can break him free of her clutches.”
“You think just showing him this symbol you drew up will snap him out of it?”
“I hope so, yes.”
“You said you reverse engineered it yourself. Which means you pretty much just made it up yourself.”
“No, I extrapolated the proper form from the original symbols Sonia Greene took from the Necronomicon, as I said,” Sinclair replied, not hiding the hint of distaste in his tone. “I am an expert in these matters, Mr. Dakan. That’s why you asked me to
come and help him.”
“Are we talking some sort of magic ritual here?” I asked. “Are you going to cast a spell or something?”
“Nothing so crude or superstitious, I assure you,” he said. “You’ll understand fully when I show you the letter, trust me.”
I had no response to that and so tried to focus all my attention on the road. Sinclair had nothing more to say to me either, and so we drove south in silence, speeding towards Shelby and Conrad.
Once we’d stepped through the door to the condo, I demanded to see the letter Conrad had paid so much money for. Sinclair begged to use the bathroom first and then took his time rooting through the stuffed valise before pulling out a small metal box with a lock on it. He produced a key ring, unlocked the container, and handed the entire box to me with all the care of someone presenting the Hope Diamond as a gift. I took the box and carefully placed it on the dining room table. Inside was a cream-colored envelope with spidery black writing on the front addressed to a Mr. Geoffrey Ari in Chicago. The envelope had been torn when opened, destroying the top right corner where the stamp and postmark would have been.
I took the envelope out and it felt strange in my hand. It was worn and faded, with brown stains along its edges, but the paper didn’t feel old. I took the single page out and unfolded it. It was the same spidery writing as on the outside of the envelope, in faded black ink. The paper was also stained and worn-looking, but there was something nagging me about its feeling. Still, I was more interested in reading the letter’s contents than any of these other details. There were indeed symbols all along the edges of the letter, forming a kind of irregular border. I recognized the Elder Sign in there, along with others that seemed familiar from the Cthulhu Manifesto. I strained to make out the faded words.
To G. K. A.
I know this letter finds you excited to hear from me at last. You’ll no doubt be pleased to learn that I’ve decided that your time has come. The time is coming, my willing slave, for great changes in the world. A time for those of my race to seize the reigns of power openly at last, and you have been chosen to serve us and will be rewarded for your devotion. As I predicted to you in my last letter, those pages of that glorious, baleful book that rules my heart like no man ever could have been returned to me and now their power is once again at my disposal. You shall witness it yourself soon enough, but only if you do as we command. Contact your bank as previously discussed and arrange for payment to cover my trek to Chicago next month as well as other expenses. Fear not for your material well-being or any privations you might thus suffer. As it says in the N., “Body is merely a body. Spirit is merely a dream. All is stardust.”