Death of the Gods

by Rex Baron

  They walked to the car that had been parked near the woods in an area that was now cloaked in darkness. Lexi started the engine, but just as she was about to pull on the headlamps, Helen's hand shot out, grasping her wrist, arresting the movement.

  “No,” she whispered, “no lights. We don't want anyone to know we're coming. We'll drive in for about two miles, then walk the rest of the way.”

  “But how do we know where we're going?” Lexi asked.

  “I know,” Helen answered cryptically.

  It had been the real purpose of her nap, to make contact with the unconscious telepathy of the coven. While in her altered sleep she had been able to listen in to the mental telegraph of the local witches, broadcasting the details of the upcoming gathering in the wood. She had found out all she needed to know. Now she even knew for certain that a Hand of Glory would be present.

  She had asked for it in her thoughts and one of them, who was unaware of the intrusion of the stranger in the communication, agreed to bring the most precious of relics to the feast.

  The auto crept along in first gear for what seemed like an eternity, while Lexi clung to the steering wheel, her eyes dilated in the blackness. She could scarcely see the road and wove back and forth through the tangle of fallen pine branches.

  She felt Helen's hand on her arm, motioning without words to pull the car behind a clump of trees and stop. A dim haze of light ahead, behind a silhouette of black trees, told them that they had arrived.

  “Stay here,” Helen said firmly. “If you wander off, I swear to God I'll leave you here. Stay put, do you understand?”

  Lexi nodded her head, not fully registering the pain as Helen's fingers dug into her forearm.

  Helen unscrewed the tiny bulb overhead to keep it from going on as she opened the car door. Lexi heard the door open slowly, then was aware of being alone in the suffocating blackness as the door silently closed. Helen had slipped away into the underbrush, silent and invisible as a cat.

  Slowly, she moved toward the glow behind the trees. They were only a few miles from the village, and yet this place seemed as otherworldly as if it had been hidden in the bowels of the Earth. A vortex of power surrounded the clearing in the wood, making it so ethereal, so charged with supernatural energy that a stranger, coming upon the ceremony unawares, might, later on, begin to doubt whether he had in fact seen anything at all. The clearing had been chosen because of its mystical properties that clouded the mind of the uninitiated with disbelief. It was a center of power where the consciousness of the elements of the forest, the wood sprites and fairies, communed long before it had been discovered by the Chosen.

  A strange foul-smelling mist rose out of the ground as Helen cautiously approached. It smelled of sulfur, the element associated with the Devil and the minions of darkness, but she was unperturbed, intent on her purpose.

  At the edge of the clearing, Helen heard the sounds of the Sabbath in progress. The thin reedy music of the pipes of Pan mingled with the wind blowing toward the north and the mountains. Helen crept up to the circle, illuminated by a great bonfire at its center, and watched from her hiding place as a hundred men, women and children, hands linked, slowly moved about in a great unbroken circle, orbiting the fire and chanting a single low sustained tone of power. Many of those present were small and of dark complexion… Gypsies, she thought. They were hardly the pale-skinned blondes of the German countryside or even the small dark-haired Bavarians, but those of the ancient race whose blood ran unadulterated by intruders since time immemorial.

  In the center of the circle, a tall fair-haired woman, dressed in a yellow cloak, who Helen judged to be the high Priestess, scattered herbs and dried flowers around the outermost perimeter. She carried a sprig of pine in her right hand and gently scented the air around her as she slowly spiraled and danced toward the circle's edge. Helen strained her hearing to catch the song the woman whispered. The words were half hidden below the sound of the flute and the ever persistent drum that beat stronger and stronger with every rotation of the great circle, like an eager heart, building toward a climax of anticipation.

  “It is the time of Solstice,” the Priestess sang, “when night has dominion over the day. All of nature is suspended, frozen in the ground, awaiting the moment when the king of darkness shall be transformed into the infant of light. Let the light come from the east and warm the lifeless world with his shining countenance.”

  At that moment a beautiful young man appeared, carrying a small goat in his arms. The great circle opened to admit him into its center, and he climbed the woven branches leading to the altar to place the trembling animal in its place for the ritual. The celebrants in the circle, without prompting, raised their linked hands high above their heads and moaned out a new sound, higher in pitch than the last.

  At this tonal signal, the young man took a ceremonial knife from its white silk sheath and with both hands raised it over the animal. He brought the knife down skillfully and quickly, dispatching the small life to its reward, a place of honor and remembrance in the consciousness of the coven.

  Then, the young man tore open the cloak he wore, revealing his body in full nakedness beneath it. He dipped his hands into the blood of the tiny sacrifice and smeared it across his chest in bold ritualistic gestures of purification.

  The Priestess followed his example, parting her cloak to reveal her pale body to the golden light of the winter bonfire. They danced together a primeval dance of fertility, clinging to each other in a passionate, breathless embrace that looked to Helen more like lovemaking than a ritual of renewal.

  The faithful, dancing round in the circle, raised and lowered their arms in unison, their eyes focused on a point above the altar at the center of their orbit. Faster and faster the circle turned, throwing those caught in its centrifugal force into a trance-like state. Their eyes appeared to glaze over and their seemingly lifeless bodies, without a will of their own, continued their rabid pursuit, caught in the inescapable vortex.

  They chanted and moaned as one being, each surrendering to the whole, a great single consciousness, one voice in direct communication with the moon and the forces of nature.

  At last, Helen saw what she had been waiting for. The Priestess produced a carved wooden box from a black velvet bag, and sliding back its carved cover, revealed the Hand of Glory. Gingerly, she coaxed it from the ornate casket and placed it next to the slaughtered goat on the altar of renewal.

  It was a ghoulish thing, still resembling a human hand, the fingers curled up, cradling a thick yellow candle in its palm. The young priest of the ritual lit a twig of pine from the bonfire and carried the torch to the hand. He carefully set the candle alight, then backed away in reverence from the artifact.

  The Priest and Priestess continued their dance with revived passion, writhing in an ecstasy of transcendent abandonment as the rest of those present rolled their eyes and babbled in tongues, lost in communication with beings of unseen worlds, chattering in the languages of those universes, carrying on dialogues with demons and angels and the spirits of the air and the four winds.

  The fire at the hub of the madness crackled with a voice of its own, wagging a thousand obscene tongues of light, licking at the naked bodies dancing past in a lewd orgy of heat and flesh. The spirits of the flames, the salamanders, could be seen writhing at the heart of the fire, arching their agile bodies and changing in hue from gold to copper to the color of blood.

  Helen waited until the ritual had reached a fever pitch intensity, absorbing all present in the fervor of the moment, rendering them unaware of their surroundings or even their own actions. She had waited until they would be least aware of her presence and her intrusion into their midst.

  From inside the lining of her sweater she produced a small silver ring. It was the ring that she had used to cause the accident the day she had first met Lucy. It was the ring that made her invisible. Claxton had tried to hide it, afraid it made her more powerful than him. He wanted more control over her
and her abilities, but Helen had found the ring again, having seen where he hid it in a dream. She had never worn it since, but had never let it out of her sight.

  She slipped the ring onto her finger and gently touched its shiny surface to the tip of her tongue. At once, the properties of the metal of which it was composed and the spell cast over it took effect. Helen was instantly aware of the strange, heady sensation of being invisible, as if the stifling air had turned into a cool breeze. She had not left her body, but merely transformed it, rendering herself invisible to any and all present at the Sabbath.

  Without a second to lose, she made her way unnoticed through the ring of revelers to the altar in its center. Carefully, she reached out her fingers, inching toward the Hand of Glory. Her mind reeled at the idea of its power. Her hand trembled in anticipation of its ownership. She turned her face away from it to catch her breath and met with a sight that caused her heart to stop dead for an instant. It was her shadow, cast by the magical light of the ceremonial fire. There was no physical form before the light to cause it, but there it was, stretching out boldly, unmistakably, toward the outermost ring of the circle, as if the consciousness of the fire, unfooled by her deception, was able to read the unseen world and cast her shadow.

  She had to act before the shadow was discovered by one of the celebrants. She lurched forward toward her goal, but the Hand of Glory was gone. The High Priestess now raised it above her, chanting in unison with the ever-persistent drum.

  Without hesitation, Helen snatched it from her hands and ran back toward the edge of the spinning wheel of people. The Priestess let out a wail of consternation, confounded that the spirits would deprive her coven of their most valued relic. The Hand appeared to float out over the raised arms of those turning in the ring of power. They dared not grasp at it or try to stop it in its flight, for such is the way of the spirit world, bestowing blessings and demanding repayment without a word of explanation.

  Helen bounded away, the scent of the pinewood fire still filling her nostrils. The lamentable cries of the Priestess filled the stillness of the forest as the rhythmic heartbeat of the drum stopped. Helen heard the crackling of the fallen leaves under her feet and knew that she was once again in physical form. The effects of the ring had worn off. She felt the weight of her body with each running stride. She heard her own human breath coming in regular intervals, clouding the frozen night air in front of her with the vapor from her lips.

  She ran in the direction of the car, but just as she was able to make out its shape in the near distance, she ran headlong into an obstacle and was knocked to the ground. Lexi blinked up at her, collapsed under the weight of their collision.

  “What the hell are you doing away from the car?” Helen demanded in a hoarse whisper.

  “You were gone so long. I was beginning to wonder if I ought to come looking for you.”

  “I told you to wait, and I expect you to do what I tell you to,” Helen choked out an angry whisper.

  Helen recovered her footing and dragged her accomplice up by the back of her jacket. Lexi's bare legs were covered in dead leaves and clumps of earth mingled with frost.

  “Now look what you've made me do. I've lost what we took all this trouble to come here for.”

  Helen searched the floor of the forest, stooping over on her hands and knees, patting the frozen ground frantically, like a blind woman in a state of panic, trying to recover the hand.

  “Is this what you're looking for?” Lexi asked, holding up the odd shaped thing that had helped break her fall. “What is it?”

  “It's the severed hand of a dead man,” Helen answered succinctly.

  Lexi's scream was involuntary. It resonated throughout the forest as an echo to the cries of the bereaved Priestess.

  Helen snatched it out of Lexi's trembling hand.

  “ You idiot,” Helen spit the words at her. “You'll bring them down on us with your stupidity.”

  Just then, the silhouette of trees, obscuring the glowing bonfire in the distance, seemed to move with a hundred imperceptible shapes. The sound of running feet splintering the dried leaves and fallen twigs underfoot grew nearer with each breath. Helen cocked her ear and listened, judging the witches to be only seconds away.

  “They know we're here,” Helen whispered, grabbing Lexi by her sleeve and flinging her headlong in the direction of the auto. Lexi had left the cars engine idling quietly, ready to take the wheel the moment Helen returned, but with the witches in pursuit, Helen had taken the driver's seat.

  She scarcely waited for Lexi to climb inside before putting the car in motion. Angrily, she slapped the prized object into the woman's lap.

  “If you scream again, I'll throw you out that door and let them do what they like with you.”

  Lexi stared down at the lifeless horror and tried to swallow the scream trapped in her throat.

  Helen drove double the speed they had entering the forest, without the benefit of headlights, so as not to give away their position in the dark. Skillfully, she wove around the trees, her eyes fixed on the rearview mirror. Headlights from hidden cars appeared, tracing a network of confused paths through the woods in close pursuit of the intruders.

  “They're getting closer,” Lexi cried out in alarm.

  Helen raced the car's engine as she followed the traces of the obscure roadway, overgrown with a tangle of winter vines. Just up ahead, Helen saw the warm glow of what she judged to be the lights of the village and the way out of the dimensionless blackness of the forest. As she raced toward the opening, pressing the foot throttle closer and closer to the floor, she was relieved to see the headlamps from the pursuing cars drop back, and finally disappear altogether.

  “They're turning back,” Lexi said, gasping with excitement.

  “Of course they are,” Helen said, smiling to herself in the darkness. “They don’t dare be seen coming out of this place and be recognized by their fellow townspeople. They aren't hanging them any more, but witchcraft is a practice still considered more than a bit undesirable.”

  “Is that who those people are who were following us?” Lexi swallowed hard.

  Helen laughed at her naiveté.

  “Well, one can't exactly go to the butcher to get a little trinket like the one you have on your lap,” Helen said with ghoulish enjoyment.

  Lexi glanced down at the waxy thing and felt her stomach turn.

  Chapter Seven

  Munich and Hitler’s Berchtesgaden

  Michael tapped softly on the door to Claxton's office and waited for the familiar reply before gently pushing it open.

  Claxton looked up from the morning mail. His face was beaming with pleasure.

  “Well, well, Michael, come in. I have some exciting news for you. I have been invited by the Chancellor himself to his country place for a weekend outing and I'm taking you along.”

  Michael did not know how to react to his employer's jovial mood. He had come with the intention of telling Claxton about what he had overheard on the stairway to Helen's studio, but now he was uncertain as to how he might begin. He had spent days mulling it over in his young mind, afraid that Claxton would be angry with him for eavesdropping on Helen and Kurt’s conversation in which Helen suggested that her husband had become nothing more than an obstacle that must be removed. At the time, as he had stood there on the back stairs, he was not entirely certain of what he heard, let alone the significance to Claxton. But the more he thought about it, the more he was sure of the menacing tone in the words they used and he knew that it had surely been a threat.

  Claxton noted the boy's lack of enthusiasm with irritation.

  “Confound it boy, show some excitement. Do you realize what an honor it is for you to be able to say you met the Fuhrer himself? At last, they're showing some sign of respect for this office.”

  Michael managed a wild-eyed smile of approval, more mirroring the agitated excitement of his employer than reflecting his own emotions.

  “To be perfectly honest wit
h you,” Claxton continued,” I wouldn't give you two bent pfennigs for the Fuhrer and all of his psychotic band of goose-steppers, but respect is the issue here, and I'm glad to say, it's nice to be getting some for our hard work, regardless of the source.”

  Michael nodded in agreement.

  “When?” he asked.

  “When what?” Claxton repeated.

  “When is the outing scheduled?” The boy rephrased his request, making an effort to focus his question for the distracted older man.

  Claxton let out an uncustomary chortle of silly laughter.

  “This weekend of course.” His face dropped for a frozen instant, then, he took up the conversation again with new vigor. “I hope you're not going to tell me that you can't come. I insist that my aide-de-camp be there, and I won't hear any excuses.” He pounded the desk in front of him so emphatically that it caused Michael to laugh.

  “Of course, I wouldn't miss it,” the boy said, coughing into his hand to clear the laughter from his throat. “I've never seen the Chancellor up close. I hope he doesn't ask me any political questions.”

  Claxton eyed the boy, enjoying the mixture of affection and mild exasperation he felt for him.

  “I hardly think the leader of all of Germany is going to engage you in a lengthy personal conversation requiring your opinions on the state of the modern world. You are meant to be there as an extension of my official duty as Assistant Minister of Propaganda and nothing more.”

  Claxton had dismissed him with a wave of his hand, when Michael remembered what he had come for. He hesitated in the doorway.

  “Will your wife be there?” he asked, pulling the door closed again.

  Claxton looked up from his paperwork, a bit surprised.

  “I have every intention of asking her to join us, provided she doesn’t have a commitment. Why do you ask?” he added with mild irritation.