Alchemy of Murder

by Rex Baron

  “And neither are we,” the old woman laughed. “Although I'm getting on a little in years, I hardly think of myself as a hag. You must realize that for the sake of secrecy and safety during the time of the persecutions, those myths were invented to protect those who understandably were the most powerful and often the most beautiful. Even some of the Popes, at one time or another, practiced the Kraft.”

  “But how would someone know if they were a witch or not? Supposedly, a witch feels no pain, or has moles on the outside of the heels of their feet... or a dark mark on their shoulder, where Satan was supposed to have bitten them. How would one know that it wasn't just a birthmark or nerve damage to the lower back that caused these conditions?”

  “Satan is a corruption of the word Saturn, the planet, which in many ancient disciplines was thought to rule the dark side of life, diseases and misfortune. Those who practiced astrology, or those who gave up offerings to this planet, in order to influence it and mitigate its harsh effects, were assumed to be worshipping a dark master. Many an inquisitor could not tell the difference between those who presumably carried the witch's marks and those who did not. Many of the unenlightened were killed along with our sisters in the persecutions. Sometimes, these time-honored marks of recognition are present. Just as often, they are not. The true initiates in the Kraft can recognize each other only because of a quality of understanding that they radiate out to others of their kind. The positive effect of the Wisdom on the world around them is the true power, the thing that those who are still in darkness fear and hate.”

  Elizabeth nodded her understanding and took up her sherry with a trembling hand. She took a deep swallow and steadied herself against the flood of information that overwhelmed her.

  Miss Auriel returned to her seat near the fireplace.

  “The crux of the matter is this young man, Marc, is unquestionably descended from Helen Liluth,” she continued, pouring herself a fresh cup of tea. “If you are any student of the Bible, you will remember that Lilith was Adam's first wife, who refused to accept the role of doing God's work, and turned instead to the other side. She is the queen of the Dark Lodge and the direct ancestor of Helen Liluth, who brazenly took her name. She spells it slightly differently, perhaps an affectation of an actress of the early cinema, but the vibration of the name is still intact.”

  Elizabeth only heard part of Miss Auriel's enthusiastic diatribe. Her brain recounted in horror the part she had been cajoled to play in the diabolical conjuration of the demon, and the humiliating consequences it had wrought for her.

  She realized at once that because she and Marc represented opposing forces, she could not share in the promise of good fortune that the pact with the demon had promised. It had been an evil spell, concocted for Marc's own selfish needs and never had any provision to help her in her work or promote a true and faithful love between them. Her mind reeled as she thought of the evil she had helped bring into the world.

  “He is obsessed with power and success,” Elizabeth interrupted Miss Auriel's Bible lesson. “What can I do to stop him? I've played a part in helping unleash this horror, and now I must do something.”

  The old woman thought a long moment before answering gravely.

  “Sometimes one's world has become so crystallized, so enshrouded in a cocoon of repetitions and fears, that something enormous must come along to crack it open, freeing the butterfly inside. This single act of horror has just so freed you, and given you the opportunity to act as a conscious Soul on the side of good. What you choose to do to right this wrong is up to you.”

  With Miss Auriel's last words, Elizabeth somehow knew that the visit had ended. It was as if the electrical glow in the room that she had at first mistaken for the light from the Tiffany lamp, had dissipated and slowly faded away, leaving a charming but slightly shabby and well-worn room in its place. The illusion of warmth had dispelled and the eyes of her companion, which had burned with the light of cold blue fire, had paled to the cloudy color of a winter sky.

  “I really must go,” Elizabeth said, reading the subtle language of Miss Auriel's frail and weary body. “I'm afraid I've taken up too much of your time as it is.”

  The old woman showed her to the door and pleasantly bid her goodnight, planting a kiss on her cheek as a grandmother might, at the end of a friendly visit.

  “You will let me know what you decide to do, won't you?”

  As Elizabeth walked down the darkened steps, through the black wall of twisted shrubbery, back into the reality of a thriving Friday night, she still felt the presence of the old woman. She felt strange, as if she had awakened from a restful sleep and found herself secure, and for the first time, not alone.

  The idea of being marked for identification, so that others of her kind could know her, churned over in her mind, and yet the elderly woman had not asked to see her shoulder, or requested that she remove her shoes to look for moles. She had recognized Elizabeth by the qualities of which she had spoken and needed no further proof.

  Elizabeth felt her shoulder with her fingertips as she walked to the car. After she unlocked it and crouched into the driver's seat, an idea came into her head that made her feel foolish. Regardless, her curiosity got the better of her, and she slipped the shoe from her right foot and peered down to see a small raised mole on the outside of her heel, illuminated in the light of the dashboard. Quickly, she kicked off the other shoe to see another mole of identical size positioned on the other foot.

  It was true, she said aloud with resolution. In her mind's eye, she could see the face of the old woman smiling at her in amusement, as she drove home.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emilio Juarez’s house, Los Angeles

  Holly Driscoll was getting too clingy. In fact she was nearly as bad as Elizabeth, Marc told himself, as he drove up into the Palisades above Malibu beach. He was tired of relying on these women to get the wealth and fame he so desired, especially since they were taking their sweet time about it. But now that he had the demons and all the forces of darkness at his command, he would no longer need either of them. The spell that he and Elizabeth had cast in the basement video lab had assured him of that.

  He could certainly use Holly’s help in creating a buzz about his new show of portraits in her New York Gallery. And yes, she did have media connections and a track record with shows like Eye on LA and Who’s in the News, so he would be wise to stay on her good side. But the truth was that things were different now. He would no longer have to make love to women who he did not find attractive. He might give them the benefit of his companionship, in exchange for special services that might be of use to him, but he would no longer have to spend the night, constantly reminding them that they were still exciting to men like him. He laughed aloud at how foolish they were to trust his words.

  Marc’s low black car approached the top of a steep grade driveway, and he pulled up outside a sprawling mid-century house, with the sound of the surf crashing on the beach below. It was the home of another artist... an artist who was, in fact, his rival, because they were both being considered for an international art project, commissioned by the European Common Trade Alliance. He had heard of Emilio Juarez, who had made a reputation for himself decades before as a portrait artist and hobnobbed with the likes of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Holly had submitted three-by-five inch film transparencies of Marc’s work to the selection committee without telling him, and revealed to him, only the previous day, that he was in the running against this respected favorite, Emilio Juarez.

  Marc had decided that he was unwilling to leave his future in the hands of fate, much less the committee from the Trade Alliance, and wanted to see, first hand, who his competition was and who he needed to beat. He had called the artist that morning, posing as an art dealer from a prestigious design firm in Canada, and claimed that they were interested in buying a collection of his work for an installation in a corporate complex in Montreal. He had researched the names and backgrounds of all of the
important people in the firm, so that if Juarez knew any of them, he would be able to answer questions without arousing suspicion. He had dressed for the occasion, all in black... and knew that he would have no trouble talking the talk of the design world, and appearing to be just exactly what he claimed to be.

  When he rang the bell, a trim, grey-haired man of about sixty answered the door, and Marc recognized him at once from numerable photos he had seen, spanning the decades back to the post-war fifties.

  “Hello, I’m Jerry Hunt,” Marc said, extending his hand in what he hoped would appear to be a warm greeting. “I’m so very pleased to meet you, Mister Juarez.”

  The older man took his hand, then stepped aside and ushered Marc into a low-slung, ultra-modern house that was everything that he could aspire to for himself.

  “Call me Emilio,” the artist said, as they stepped down into a living room with a glass wall that overlooked the sea. “If we’re going to be doing business together, you’ll be calling me by my first name sooner or later, so you might as well start now.”

  On the walls hung dozens of small prints and a few large paintings that were much like the ones that Marc had seen in collections, or had been reproduced in books. The large green nude of a girl playing the pipes of Pan had been used as cover art on an expensive book he had perused at Rizzoli’s Bookstore in New York, but could not afford to buy.

  “Thanks for seeing me personally. I’ve been a big fan of your work for years, but have only seen it in museums,” Marc, as Jerry Hunt, stated with a sliver of obsequiousness, but not enough to appear unmanly or pandering.

  “I let my agent do the bargaining and make the deals, but I only trust my own intuition about the people involved in the process,” Emilio stated as a matter of fact. “I often want to meet the buyers or their representatives myself.”

  He motioned for Marc to have a seat on a dove grey, Italian leather sofa, and walked across the room to retrieve a bottle of red wine from the illuminated wet bar that dominated an entire corner of the room.

  The artist caught a glimpse of a questioning expression on Marc’s face and laughed.

  “No, I’m really not a big drinker. If that bar was for my personal use, I’d never get a single painting done. I host a lot of art and charity events here, so a professional bar comes in handy for catering and the like. May I offer you a glass of red? I find I prefer red after the sun goes down. I tell myself it takes the chill out of the night air, but the truth is that I simply prefer it to chilled wine. I fancy that it’s warming and goes down smoother.”

  Marc accepted a glass, and toasted his host with the gesture of raising it.

  “It certainly sounds like you’ve put some thought into your drinking. I’d wager you, however, that most people hardly need an explanation as to why they should be drinking one versus the other. In my experience, they are more than happy to drink it just because it’s there... no questions asked.”

  Marc’s host laughed graciously at his cordial comment.

  For the next hour, the two men drank wine, as Emilio Juarez dragged out oversized portfolios of drawings to show to his guest, as well as bound volumes, filled with photo transparencies of dozens of paintings that were available for sale. A mounting jealousy crept into Marc’s consciousness as he viewed his rival’s work, not only for the success that Juarez had attained, but also for the obvious talent the man possessed that surely exceeded his own.

  “Tell me, Mister Hunt, what kind of pieces are you looking for?” Emilio asked, after they had thumbed through several bound portfolios. “I assume that if you are talking to me as a buyer, you have some idea of what you want. Are you looking to buy existing work, or are we talking about a commission. As you might not know, I am being considered by the ECTA to do a large international commission, and I’m not sure how much time I’ll have, if that goes through. I think several other people are being considered, so I may already be out of luck and out of the running… but, then again, one never knows if fortune may smile.”

  Marc’s mouth drew up in an artificial reflection of the smile the older man had on his face. He hated him, at that moment, for his graciousness and his lack of unbridled ambition... the absolute NEED to make that commission his own.

  “Who’s up against you?” Marc asked, curious to know if this man had ever even heard his name.

  Emilio shook his head as he refilled Marc’s wine glass.

  “No idea,” he replied. “Although I must admit, these days I just do my work and don’t socialize much. I’m afraid that much of the current scene has passed me by, and I might not know the name of someone who is all the rage, even if I heard it. It’s like the new film stars... they all look alike to me, and I couldn’t tell Richard Harris from Harrison Ford. They are just names to me.”

  Marc rose and walked toward the wall of windows. He stared down at the crashing sea, which was now black against the night sky and only visible when the moon caught a glimmer of white, as the waves crested and threw themselves against the rocks below.

  “What an impressive view you have,” he stated with all sincerity. “It’s a bit lonely though somehow. Do you live up here alone?”

  Juarez rose and joined Marc at the window, looking down at the familiar seascape.

  “You’d think that living in a house like this, I’d paint pictures of the sea, but I don’t. I paint nudes… go figure.”

  He breathed out a sigh that was meant as a philosophical response to the seascape.

  “But to answer your question… no. I live with a nephew. Well, he’s not really a nephew, but a young man that I’ve allowed to live here, and I’m helping him through UCLA. He’s studying medicine... and who knows, at my age, having a doctor around might come in handy.”

  “I see,” Marc responded with a noticeable smirk.

  “Don’t be judgmental, Mister Hunt. Young people always take such a dim view of many quite natural things in this world. Not that it’s any of your affair, but I’m too old for the arrangement you are envisioning... and the truth is that I enjoy the company. As you have noticed, this house is far away from everything and, as you suggested, gets far too lonely, if I’m left to my own devices.”

  Marc’s mind suddenly churned with a newly hatched plan. Now that he had a good look at his opponent in the competition for the ECTA commission, he decided to come at this man from a different angle.

  “You misread my thoughts, Emilio,” Marc said with a sigh that was meant as theatrical, and was neither biological nor philosophical. “What I was thinking was that it’s so beautiful up here, looking at the sea... so unlike where I live in Canada. It’s cold and snows most of the year, and is too far from the sea to have any delusions about painting a seascape.”

  “Are you an artist then, Mister Hunt?”

  Marc shook his head with false modesty.

  “No, not at all. I’m afraid that I’m only a negotiator... a lover of art... and artists.”

  “May I call you Jerry then?” Juarez asked, as he toasted Marc with what remained in his wine glass.

  “ Of course. I had noticed you kept calling me Mister Hunt and wondered why.”

  “Because you had not given me permission to call you otherwise.”

  “Please forgive my clumsiness. I had no intention of being rude,” Marc answered in a low voice, as he placed his hand on Emilio’s shoulder. Suddenly, he brightened, breaking the spell of intimacy that had developed between the two men.

  “Now that we’re both on first name terms, may I ask you a great favor?” Marc said with a studied laugh. “Is it possible to go down to the beach. I love the beach at night, and I’m only in town until tomorrow night. I came here especially to meet with you and have to go back almost at once.”

  The older man considered Marc’s request, then placed his wine glass down on the concrete table and motioned for him to follow to a doorway at the end of the room that led outside to a deck and a long, lighted stairway that stretched down to the expensive real estate of surf
and sand below.

  Emilio gripped the railing tightly and slowly made his way down, step by step, taking care to place his foot carefully on each stair.

  “I have very poor depth perception, so I have to go very slowly,” the older man explained. “There are one hundred and forty steps down to the sea. I used to go up and down twice a day as exercise when I first moved in. But now, I rarely use them unless I have a guest, or my nephew coaxes me to come down and chat with him in the sunshine.”

  “Be careful. We wouldn’t want you to fall,” Marc warned him thoughtfully, as his mind churned with the possibilities of just how he might go about making just such an accident happen.

  “The good news is that since I can’t see what other people see, and have no depth perception, my paintings have a flat quality that most people like. They can’t figure out how I can make things look the way they do in my work... as if it were a contrivance of some kind. But the fact is that I just paint it the way I see it... and that’s the way it comes out.”

  Once again, jealousy reared its head in Marc’s conscious mind. For this man, even a disability had been made to work to his advantage. He had everything that Marc wanted. He hated him for the apparent ease with which the world had bestowed fame and wealth upon him. This was surely someone that always won and never lost the prize. That’s why he could afford to be so casual about whether or not he would win the ECTA commission. Marc knew for certain that he would never triumph over Juarez and be awarded the reward he so coveted. He told himself that he had no chance as long as this man was alive.

  “Be careful there,” Marc called out, not to remind the old man of his footing, but rather to try and rattle him into making a false step and plunging headlong, hundreds of feet to his death. “Here, let me take your arm. Maybe I can help steady you,” he said, as he put his hand on his host’s back.