by Rex Baron
Emilio pulled away from his touch and, grabbing the rail tighter, stepped up his pace, plodding down toward the darkness of the beach.
“I’d better get a move on, or we’ll be at this all night,” he replied.
They continued to descend the stairs for long, laborious moments, inching closer to the boundless blackness that lay ahead of them, away from the comforting lights of the house and the safety of the asphalt road beyond.
“When is your nephew expected back?” Marc asked, now raising his voice against the rushing sound of the unseen ocean waves.
“Why?”
“I’d like to meet him... he sounds like a good guy.”
“He won’t be back till late. There’s something in Westwood he had to go to... don’t remember, maybe I wasn’t listening when he told me.”
“Too bad, I’ll be leaving soon and I’ll miss meeting him.”
Emilio did not reply, but instead made a concerted effort to make his way down the last few stairs and plant his feet firmly on the damp sand at the bottom of the stairs.
Marc’s brain reeled with the details he had failed to control. He had realized halfway down the long stairway that if he pushed Juarez to his death and tried to make it look like an accident, he would surely be implicated. He could not just disappear, because there was a wine glass in the house with his fingerprints on the stem. But now that he knew that the nephew, the artist’s kept boy, would not be returning for a while, he might still find a way to do the old boy in, and still have time to dash up the stairs and remove the incriminating evidence before the police arrived to investigate.
He knew that whatever he decided to do, he must make himself scarce because he was in the house under false pretenses, and had given a fake name and reason for being there. If the cops found the only other contender for the ECTA art commission was there at the time of the old man’s death or accident, it would look pretty suspicious. He had to think quickly and decide to make his move. He came up next to Emilio, who was standing in the sand staring out at the black waves.
“It’s a warm night... a great night for a swim,” Marc said with a hint of intimacy in his voice. “I’m very partial to the ocean at night, and swimming in the dark always seems a bit wicked. It always makes me feel like a bad little kid.”
“Where did you say you were from again?” Juarez asked. “I think you said Montreal. But I thought I heard a bit of Texas in there somewhere. The word partial is not a word commonly used that way outside the Plains States and the Southwest. I have a sister who married a Texan.”
“Just watch too many westerns I guess,” Marc explained. “So, how about that swim?” he persisted. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“I’m not dressed for it.”
“Neither am I, but that shouldn’t stop us. You can swim in your clothes, if you want. You can always change when you get back to the house. And I don’t mind skinny dipping, if you don’t mind.”
Marc pulled his black sweater over his head, baring his chest and hoping for a reaction of interest from the old artist. He undid his belt and let his black trousers drop to the sand. He appraised the strength of the old man who stood just a few feet away, watching him as he continued to undress. He reckoned that it would not take too much effort to hold him underwater, once he got him out into the surf. But Emilio only stood there staring, watching him with a strange detachment that Marc had not expected. Perhaps he had misjudged his physical attractiveness for the artist, or perhaps he had misjudged Emilio’s sexuality completely, and had gone to the trouble of stripping down to his underwear for nothing.
“Well, come on,” Marc prodded the old man impatiently.
He grabbed Juarez by the arm in a gesture that he hoped would seem playful and dragged him down to the water’s edge. Emilio resisted and dug his feet into the sand, as Marc continued to pull him in the direction of the crashing waves and anonymous black water. All he had to do, Marc thought, was get him out into the water and that would be the end of it. It would only take a moment to force him to surrender his life to the ocean, and within minutes, he would simply disappear, swallowed up by the blackness all around them, the water and the colorless night sky.
“NO,” the old man shouted above the sound of the shimmering waves churning at their feet. “I have no intention of going for a swim in the middle of the night. It’s far too cold out here, and I’ve just about lost my patience with this nonsense.”
Juarez shook the water from his drenched trouser legs, and stormed off in the direction of the stairs. Marc scrambled to get into his clothes, letting the old artist get ahead of him, as he started up the towering bank of steps leading to the safety of the house.
“Wait, let me explain,” Marc called after him.
But what was he to explain? That he had lured him down to the sea so that he could drown him and get rid of his competition? He hurried after Emilio, struggling to be heard above the pounding of the waves, as he tried to create a plausible reason for his behavior. He caught up with the old man halfway up the endless stairs.
“I’m sorry. I’m sure I made a great fool of myself. But I just wanted to have a memorable moment with a famous artist like you. I wanted to share something special with you... that’s all,” Marc pleaded with as much humility as was theatrically possible.
He had developed a great talent for appearing contrite or apologetic because his mother had always required his apologies and his contrition in order to enjoy the control she exercised over him until the day she died. As a result, he had created a masterful performance of his humility and sorrow that had moved the hearts of everyone he needed to manipulate, from priests to teachers, lovers and women.
He continued with his supplications until they reached the top of the stairs. At one point, his host had stopped in his tracks and requested that Marc get in front of him and lead the way. He had said that it was easier for him to make out the depth of each step, if he were following someone else. But Marc could not help but wonder if he had been asked to move up front, so that Juarez could keep an eye on him and keep him at a safe distance.
When they reached the deck that cantilevered out over the hundred-foot drop to the ground, Marc fantasized about peeling his competition’s grip from the wooden railing and tossing him over the precipice to the rocks below. Instead, he followed him into the house and closed the sliding door behind him.
“You were right. It was getting a bit cold out there,” he said. “If you’d have listened to me, we would have both probably wound up with pneumonia.”
“Excuse me for a minute while I go change out of these wet pants,” Juarez said gruffly, as he stepped out of the room.
Marc waited a moment, then crept down the hallway to hear water running in the bathroom. Without hesitation, he opened the old man’s closet and grabbed a yellow necktie that hung on a hook, in a cluster with a dozen others. Quickly, he rolled it up and stashed it in his trouser pocket. Noiselessly, he hurried back toward the drawing room and settled himself on the grey leather sofa. Within a moment, Emilio Juarez reappeared, dressed in a black sweat suit. His faced carried an angry expression that he did not try to hide from his companion.
“I think we’d better call it a night, Mister Hunt,” he abruptly announced to Marc. “I don’t know what your game is, or what you intentions might be. But I really don’t have the time or the inclination to find out. I’ve had enough. It’s time for you to leave.”
Marc could see that the old man was stressed and very much shaken by their encounter down on the beach. And in a small way it made him feel powerful and amused that he had made the great man sweat a bit. But there was more to come. He would not let this passé and now irrelevant artist off so easily. There was more to come… much, much more, he thought to himself as he watched Juarez’s lips form angry harsh words that he had been meant to hear, rather than daydreaming about what he would do next.
“If your people still want to commission me or buy something, I suggest they send anothe
r agent to negotiate. I must say, Mister Hunt, I find your approach far too unprofessional, and your insinuating yourself in such a personal, almost sexual way, totally unacceptable.”
Marc rose to his feet and leaned forward until he was mere inches from the old artist’s face.
“Don’t flatter yourself,” he said. “All I wanted was a little swim. What’s the big deal?”
“You need to leave, now,” Emilio Juarez snapped back, causing Marc to burst into laughter.
“Suit yourself,” he called back, as he made his way to the front door and his car parked in the driveway.
The old man stood firmly in the doorway, sending the message that he was no longer welcome, as Marc started the motor and backed down the steep grade to the street below. He felt in his pocket to make sure that the yellow necktie was still in its hiding place, and he smiled to himself, knowing that he had been clever enough to have wiped his prints from the wine glass when Juarez had stepped out of the room.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Marc’s studio, Westwood Village
The yellow necktie lay on the console table in Marc’s studio, alongside all the photos of his mother and those of his scarred but privileged childhood. He glanced at one of the glamorous black and white photographs from the Fifties, when Helen had been in her prime, and he smiled to himself, knowing that she would be proud of her son for the course of action he was about to take. It would please her to know that the son of her blood had finally come over to her side and the ways of the Kraft to get things done.
He glanced at the clock and realized that it was nearly ten o’clock. He would have to hurry, the time designated for the most favorable planetary influence from Mars, the ruler of revenge, was from 9:33 to 10:36. The spell was most successfully cast on a Tuesday, on the dark of the moon, but there was no time now to worry about that. He had less than forty-five minutes to accomplish his spell-casting within the time frame, to insure that his Will was carried out to its most expedient and satisfying conclusion. Quickly, he set about gathering the ingredients for the recipe of revenge that would take care of Emilio Juarez and insure his unobstructed path to the art commission that would take his career to an undreamed of international level.
With a thrill of excitement coursing through his blood, Marc snatched a woven triangle of white linen that had been waiting in plain sight, under a small lamp on a side table, and placed it on the coffee table, with one of its points facing due North. Around it, he placed two small silver figurines of horned rams, harmless enough as knick-knacks... but to his purpose, powerful representations of the horned god, Cernunnos, the bringer of retribution. Along the perimeter of the triangle he placed three red candles, his Athame, or ceremonial, black-handled knife, his Thurible for burning myrrh, the incense of wrath and chastisement, and the yellow necktie, the agent of destruction that belonged to Emilio Juarez, his rival.
With one eye always on the clock, Marc rummaged through his kitchen cabinets for some of the dried herbs and magical powders that he had procured, but never got around to using for the magic purposes for which they were intended. He found a small box that contained three glass vials filled with powdered mandrake root, lodestone and henbane. Each tiny glass container had a colorful label affixed to its front, reminding him that he had purchased them at the House of Hermetics in Silverlake, more years ago than he could remember. For good measure, he found a package with fresh poppy seed bagels that he had bought only that morning, long before he had any inkling of how the harmless seeds might be used to aid him in his diabolical intentions.
He scraped the seeds from the bagels and mixed them together with a generous pinch of each of the other ingredients, creating what is known in the Kraft as a marriage of baneful herbs. He then kneaded the mixture of herbs into an unformed wad of green potters clay that was on a slab near the window. The clay was originally meant to be used to create a small bust of Holly Driscoll that he intended to give to her as a token of his gratitude for all that she had done on his behalf.
“Fuck her,” he said to the empty room. “She uses me and I use her… the debt’s been paid.”
With fifteen minutes to spare, he quickly fashioned the clay into a small human-like figure of a man, making sure that some semblance of a face and even male genitals were represented on the small puppet. He concentrated on no one else but Emilio Juarez as he shaped the doll of clay, repeating his name over and over as the ceremonial man took shape.
When he had collected all of the magical ingredients of the spell known as Le Grand Envoutement, or The Operation of Grand Bewitchment, he proceeded to his makeshift altar at the coffee table and racked his brain for the simple invocation that would summon the God of Darkness, Cernunnos. His mother had taught him this invocation to the Horned God of protection and retribution when he had been packed off to boarding school at age ten. He had mumbled it over and over each night before he went to sleep, anxious to keep his angry nemesis close at hand, to protect him from the taunting and violence of the older, less attractive boys. He had recited the litany of names so often that it surprised him now that he struggled to recall how the incantation began. He stumbled, as a long unused doorway in his brain cracked open, and the old familiar names came tumbling out, like lost friends that had been absent for too long. Marc turned to face the East and chanted:
“Eko, Eko Azarak! Eko Eko Zomelak!
Eko, Eko Cernunnos! Eko Eko Arada!
Bagabi lacha bachabe
Lamac Lamac Bachalyas
Cabahagy Sabalyas
Lagoz atha Cabyolas”
It didn’t take long for Marc to be aware of the presence of the beastly Cernunnos. He felt the flesh on his face and hands grow hot and the atmosphere of the studio space around him fill with the unmistakable smell of patchouli oil, and what he imagined to be the stench of rotting meat. Once he was sure that the God was present, he took the Athame, his ceremonial knife, and engraved the name of Emilio Juarez into the chest of the little clay man. Then, he anointed the face with a drop of red wine that he dabbed on with the index finger of his left hand... all the while saying these words:
“In the name of the Imperial Lord Cernunnos, the horned one, I cast this creature of clay of earth and name thee Emilio Juarez.”
Again he touched the forehead of the doll with a dab of wine, repeating:
“Thou art now… Emilio Juarez. You are mine to do with as I will.”
Following along in the ritual that he drew back in memory, he now transferred the puppet of clay into his right hand, and taking the handle end of the weapon of evil in his left hand, tapped the earthen man, infusing life into it. Then, tracing over the figure with three small crosses drawn in the air, he baptized the inanimate creature, filling it with the spirit of the man who was to die. Next, he lighted each of the three red candles, beginning with the one at the northernmost corner of the triangle.
Marc hesitated for a moment, remembering a detail that he should have included earlier in the preparation of the spell. Silently, in full witness of the Horned God, he stood up and removed all of his clothes. He had suddenly remembered that the person casting the spell must have no identity. It was best if he was not recognizable by rank or social position, so the spell was best cast naked. Since the Horned God was employed as the Angel of Death, it would be he alone who was associated with the result, and no trace of the employer’s hand may be left behind at the scene to betray the origins of the curse. Marc tossed his clothes into a heap next to the table, and once again took his position, facing East, hovering over the triangle on the table before him.
He closed his eyes and lifted the newly baptized clay man into the palm of his left hand and tightened his fingers around the body in a vice-like grip. Using his right hand, he lifted the yellow tie from where it lay at the southern edge of the triangle, and wound it several times around the neck of the earthen doll. As he tightened the tie into a suffocating knot, he chanted the phrase:
“It is not my hand that does this d
eed,
but that of Cernunnos, Barabas, my will doth heed.”
Marc could feel his inner rage well up, as if every inequity and treachery that he had ever experienced was given voice to shout forth its demands.
“Die, Emilio Juarez. Let the breath of life be extinguished. Let my Will be done, by the hand of the Horned Messenger that I command... so mote it be.”
Emilio Juarez sat in his house by the beach, waiting for the young man he called his nephew to come home. In front of him was a tray of hors d’oeuvres that he had prepared but forgot to put out for his guest, Jerry Hunt, from the design team in Canada. His annoyance bristled as he thought of the bizarre events of the early evening, and the young man’s impertinence in dragging him out for an untimely swim in the cold of night.
He brought one of the crackers with a slab of wilted, unnaturally yellow cheese draped across its surface to his lips, and flared his nostrils at the stench of what he thought smelled like rancid oil and rotting meat. He took a bite and immediately reached for one of the two wine glasses that still stood on the low table in front of him. He took a sip from the dregs of one glass, to try and wash away the vile taste of what he had swallowed. But he suddenly became aware that the offensive bit of cheese had lodged itself in his throat and he began to choke. His face grew red and he gagged and coughed, trying desperately to dislodge the greasy morsel that clogged his airways and forced him to throw himself face down on the carpet gasping for life-giving air. The vacant living room filled with the sound of the rattling in the old man’s throat, as he could feel the muscles of his neck tightening, as if in the hands of a deadly strangler. He clawed at his throat with the nails of his fingers, opening wide scratches that bled onto the white rug. After an eternity of searing pain and an unbearable burning in his lungs, Emilio Juarez lay quiet and still on the living room floor.