The Black Alchemist: A Terrifying True Story

by Andrew Collins

  ‘Things are brewing,’ Bernard proclaimed, as he released his hand from the tree and began to pace about in an unstoppable manner. ‘Opposites ... so an imbalance ... the way now open for other darker aspects to build up ... a state of chaotic mayhem.’

  What about the Christ figure? Why had he found this?

  ‘The tree coming down, and the fire. It was a spoiling ... a deliberate cancelling of good intentions left by whoever buried it. There is a strong link between the spoiling of this place and oddball.’

  Oddball? I stopped writing and looked up for an explanation.

  ‘BA.’

  The Black Alchemist? What had he to do with this?

  ‘Working … that night … took advantage. I shall have to be on my guard,’ Bernard warned himself, as he continued to pace about looking for further psychic clues.

  Then he stopped and flicked a finger at me as if he wanted to crystallise an impression. ‘Write this down. A name. I’ll spell it: T-H-E-O-S-O-P-I-A.’

  He attempted to pronounce it. ‘Thee-o-soap-pia. It’s an opposite force. Not good. A female aspect … dark.’

  At this he moved onto the gravel path.

  I followed close behind, my pen still pressed against the notepad, awaiting his next statement. Yet, from past experience I realised he was sinking into an altered state of consciousness, which was always dangerous considering his acute psychic ability. I would have to watch him closely.

  Bernard continued to stroll slowly along the path and did not even seem aware of my presence. He was falling into a trance, and it concerned me. What should I do? Shake him out of it? Or leave him? I decided to leave him, for a few minutes at least.

  ‘Lots of things in the air,’ he calmly announced, as he glanced up at the night sky, before walking further along the path. Then he shook first his left, then his right foot.

  What the hell was he doing? Something was definitely wrong.

  ‘I now see a hag,’ he continued, unabated. ‘Name something like Pap-hot-tia.’ He paused to study the clairvoyant form. ‘Who winds the serpents.’

  The chilling manner in which he said those final words troubled me. His mind was being overshadowed by a malevolent influence. I had seen it before, and unless he withdrew quickly, his body would be fully taken over and possessed.

  I asked Bernard not to go any deeper.

  But it was useless. He did not respond.

  Following behind him, I caught further utterings—almost unintelligible words in a low menacing voice not meant for my ears. But still I scribbled them down, or those I could make out. Words such as: ‘the Dark Virgin’, ‘the familiar’, and ‘Nelos’. The rest became inaudible as he muttered strange gibberish in a disturbing guttural voice, leaving him even more unreachable.

  Bernard could no longer hear the voice of his friend. He felt like he was inside a giant bubble, away from the usual tranquillity of the churchyard. In the air around him were hundreds of wriggling black snakes, like overactive eels suspended in space. It mesmerised him for a moment or two, before his eyes turned to see her.

  On the path ahead stood a hideous form—a crone, wearing a black robe, its floppy cowl concealing her face. She was just standing there, penetrating his mind, reading his every thought.

  Yet he also understood her nature. She was a product, a visible manifestation, of the chaotic mayhem that had festered into existence at the height of the hurricane.

  So who was she? What was her name? She was many, he realised. But then a name did come—‘Paphotia, Winder of Snakes.’

  Why was she here in the churchyard? And what did she want with him?

  No answers came from the foreboding spectre. She just remained silent, facing towards him.

  Looking down, he now saw that around his feet was a moving carpet of snakes, curling and writhing about. Rapidly they began to wriggle and slide onto his shoes.

  Frantically, he attempted to shake them free from each foot, but still more and more came, twisting and curling around his legs, reaching ever upwards, engulfing him completely. They felt warm and dry. He felt sick, and dizzy and … weak.

  She was consuming him completely, and he knew he had to fight back or face the inevitable consequences, for she was a very real threat to his life. Despite this, the mental contact with the crone was allowing him some answers, without her even saying a word. He had sent her—this living evil. Their adversary had opened up a gateway, here in the churchyard, on that night, the night of the hurricane, and she had walked through.

  The Christ figure had held her, but only for a day or so. The fire removed the final barrier and now she was waiting ... for him to come to her … in submission.

  Darkness was slowly enveloping his senses and he could no longer fight it. She was taking control and he ... was losing the will to fight.

  Shouting his name, I put my hands on Bernard’s shoulders and began to shake him. But he would not respond. I told him to visualise white light pulsing through his body. Nothing happened. Thinking again, I quickly conducted a protection visualisation by using verbal commands and pushing streams of golden energy through my arms into his body.

  Still he did not respond. So, guiding him over to a nearby gravestone, I told him to try and discharge the negativity into the cold stone—earth it away, whatever it was—exactly as he had done in Downham churchyard, when he had experienced similar problems there.

  Fighting the dreadful intrusion, Bernard now reached out and held onto the grave’s memorial cross, although still he seemed lost to the world, and would not respond.

  I had to think again. I knew—the Cabalistic Cross, a powerful protection ritual that would hopefully bring him out of it.

  Yes, that was it.

  So I asked him to visualise a white cross of light forming and growing inside his body as I grabbed hold of his shoulders and attempted to see streams of golden energy pouring from me into him, as I shouted: ‘Ateh, el-malkuth, ve-geburah, ve-gedulah, leolahm. Amen.’

  It had no effect. So I did it again.

  Ateh, el-malkuth, ve-geburah, ve-gedulah, le-olahm. Amen.

  Only at this point did he begin to respond by lifting his hands and touching the brow of his head. Gradually he emerged from his psychic coma and returned to the land of the living.

  Slowly regaining his senses and orientation, he pulled out and lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.

  With great relief, I suggested we leave the churchyard and go back to The Griffin, where we could find out what the hell was going on.

  28 The Chaotic Gateway

  ‘Make mine a Guinness,’ Bernard called, as he sat down at a table. Despite the distressing scenes I had just witnessed out in the churchyard, he appeared to be none the worse for his encounter with ‘Paphotia, Winder of Snakes.’

  So who was this Paphotia, and Theosopia, the woman he had mentioned earlier? The former, apparently, was a form of the Dark Goddess. One, it seemed, with extreme chaotic tendencies. The latter was presumably a corruption of theosophia, a GraecoRoman word meaning ‘godlike wisdom’, or ‘knowledge of divine things.’

  ‘I keep thinking about Zosimos, for some reason,’ Bernard interjected, as he took the first gulp of his cold pint. He said nothing for a moment, but then leant forward as if about to make a profound statement. ‘Let me put something to you. Did Zosimos have a sister?’

  My initial silence and blank expression said it all, as I reminded him that very little was known about him.

  ‘I think you’ll find he did,’ he insisted, a note of certainty in his voice. ‘This “Theo” woman—she was his sister, some kind of opposite force to everything Zosimos stood for.’

  I reached for my pen and notepad. He was obviously picking this up as he was saying it.

  ‘Whereas Zosimos was of the light, so to speak. A good person. Theosopia symbolised his dark side. His shadow.’ He leaned back and glanced about at the crowded pub. ‘She was a spell caster, into serpents, demonology and the age of chaos. She frequented places where
she conjured demons through sacrifice.’

  I wrote this down.

  ‘And this “Pap” woman, whatever her name was …’

  Paphotia, I reminded him.

  ‘She was some form of foul virgin—a sort of opposite to the Virgin Mary, but looking like an old woman, a crone. “Theo” became possessed by her,’ he said, stopping for a moment to light a cigarette.

  Paphotia was thus similar to Hekate, who in classical mythology was occasionally shown in the company of writhing snakes.

  But Bernard was now onto other things. ‘There was someone else,’ he continued, ‘a priest, into the black side. His name was … ’ He searched his mind for an answer, then found one: ‘Nelos.’

  Nelos. The name he had mumbled out in the churchyard.

  ‘Give me your pad,’ he said, pulling it across and picking up a pen. For a minute or two he just sat there staring into space. Then he began to write.

  I let him carry on, eager to know what was going on.

  There seemed to be a noisy crowd in The Griffin that evening. A gaggle of women, out on a hen night perhaps, stood by the bar, their raucous conversation continually descending into loud fits of laughter. Hopefully, they were going somewhere else pretty soon.

  Bernard still appeared to be miles away from the hectic background noise of piped music, noisy women and passing bodies. Nothing seemed to disturb his psychic faculty when it was fully operational.

  Eventually he placed down the pen and slid the notepad back across the table. Twisting it around, I read what he had written:

  Theo. was into the black side of alchemy with a virgin [Paphotia] and a priest [Nelos] who was a short, wizened old man. Water was also used. An open pond, where they would scatter ground-up bones of animals hoping to invoke demons from the dark.

  She was warned by Zos’ but chose to ignore these warnings. She also knew that the ultimate search was not for a stone [i.e. the Philosopher’s Stone], but a higher force who would change the landscape to deserts, but would build her many castles in order for her to spread her word, hoping to bring forth the final chaos.

  Reading the reference to ‘ a higher force who would change the landscape to deserts’ reminded me of the mass devastation caused by the hurricane.

  ‘I reckon that after her death Theo’s soul joined with this Paphotia,’ Bernard said, breaking my train of thought. ‘They became one—a single, very powerful psychic force. And I reckon this was what I encountered out there in the graveyard.’

  How was it that an antithesis of the Virgin Mary could be synonymous with an ageing hag or crone? It seemed unnatural. Surely the archetypal form of a virgin should appear youthful and maiden like.

  His answer was simple: ‘She’s a shape changer of many names and forms. To some she will appear as a younger woman, a maiden, albeit a dark-aspected one. To others she will appear in her guise as a crone. That was how I saw her tonight.’

  For the next hour Bernard and I attempted to put into perspective everything that had taken place over the past twelve days.

  During the night of the hurricane the chaotic, destructive might of the howling winds had unleashed an equally destructive power—a primeval psychic force of immense magnitude, collectively personified in people’s minds as a crone-like shewolf—ruler of chaos, darkness, death, destruction and disorder. There the matter might have rested, had not certain practitioners of the black arts realised the sheer potency of the Dark Goddess, most obviously in her guise as Hekate, and decided to seize the opportunity to wield this immense magical power for their own misguided purposes. This is what we call distillation magic—the manipulation of powerful psychic energies generated by either manmade or natural disasters.

  That the hurricane had been selective in its targets was clearly not so absurd as it seemed. Aside from the horse chestnut tree in Danbury churchyard, other prominent sites featured in the Black Alchemist story had been destroyed that night.

  At Lullington, for instance, about half of the trees making up the wooded grove surrounding the churchyard had been destroyed, as were a number of the beech trees surrounding Ide Hill church, depriving the village of its title—the Dome of Kent. The North Downs around Ide Hill was one of the worst hit areas of the hurricane. On several occasions Ide Hill featured on the national news, because its electricity supply had still not been switched back on several days later.

  Inside the woods at Shenfield Common various of the trees surrounding the clearing used by the Black Alchemist to set his trap were torn down, including the one where the stone fixing marker had been found. The clearing was now a mass of fallen tree trunks amid a wide open space next to the railway line.

  At Rettendon the lightning-struck tree that had stood at the centre of the area’s landscape geometry, and appears in silhouetted form on the cover of The Running Well Mystery, was also taken out.

  Individuals such as the Black Alchemist knew full well that any magical operation carried out at the height of the hurricane would be many times more potent than if they were to utilise the same psychic forces at any other time. Even the time of year had been correct, mid October, when the influence of Hekate was rising in the lead up to Hallowe’en.

  Our adversary had utilised this primeval force to affect the normally harmonious energies present at Danbury, the site he had been waiting to infiltrate ever since his failure to ensnare Bernard and me at the Running Well exactly one year earlier.

  In fact, the hurricane had taken place precisely a year and a day after the Running Well confrontation—a synchronicity the Black Alchemist will not have overlooked when deciding to hit Danbury.

  It was also not the first time he had struck under the cover of very high winds. The ritual trap laid for us in Shenfield Common the previous year was almost certainly set up on the same day that some of the worst gales of the year had hit the country.

  Either by accident or design, the hurricane had torn down the old horse chestnut tree in the centre of Danbury churchyard, which had been the churchyard’s focal point of localised energies. Its removal had left the site imbalanced, with a chaotic gateway where the tree had once stood.

  It was this the Black Alchemist had used to forge a psychic link with the churchyard, allowing him to manifest the foul virgin—Paphotia, within whom was the soul of Theosopia, sister of Zosimos. Only the Christ figure had held her back, but once the fire by the tree stump had burnt away the artefact’s highly charged emotion, she had emerged in readiness for whatever the Black Alchemist had in store for her.

  ‘Very likely,’ Bernard agreed, glancing at the crowd of noisy women who had just let out a colossal drunken roar. ‘Well, whoever this Paphotia is, she is here now, in that churchyard. However, I don’t get the impression that anyone has physically been here as I’m sure I would have known.’

  Why? ‘The energy field I set up around the church using green crystals is still in place.’

  How could he be so sure?

  ‘I checked it when I was up here on Sunday,’ he now revealed, a note of smugness in his tone.

  How were we to rid the place of this Paphotia, before the Black Alchemist had a chance to strike?

  ‘Perhaps we should do something out by the tree stump,’ he suggested, putting away his final gulp of Guinness. ‘What about closing the gateway by placing a new crucifix in the hole where the Christ figure was found.’

  Of course. Another act of devotion, such as laying a new crucifix, was all it would take.

  It would need to be done during daylight hours in order to avoid further confrontation with Paphotia. Naturally, the act would have to be accompanied by a simple ritual, or prayer. It was so easy, it was ridiculous.

  A time and date was quickly set for the burial of the new crucifix. It would take place at 4 pm the following Sunday, just before sunset, exactly one week after Bernard had unearthed the metal figure of Christ.

  With the arrangements agreed, our conversation turned to other matters, such as the goetic barbarous names on the
fixing markers found at Lullington and Rettendon.

  My mind then returned to burying the new crucifix. If the Black Alchemist intended to utilise his chaotic gateway in Danbury churchyard, he was not going to stand by and clairvoyantly see us closing off his link to the site. Indeed, if he discovered we were going to conceal the cross, then surely he would do something about it.

  Perhaps the Black Alchemist would try using Paphotia’s presence to ensnare Bernard by enticing him up to the churchyard on his own one evening. He might even take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and pay Danbury a visit himself. This could result in some very nasty scenes!

  Bernard twisted his head as he watched a glamorous-looking woman with shoulder-length dark hair and a powerful lingering perfume walk past the table, ‘Sorry,’ he exclaimed. ‘Distraction. What did you say?’

  BA might pay Danbury a visit himself.

  ‘I hoped you wouldn’t say that,’ he said, with a grimace. ‘I don’t even want to think about the possibility. I don’t need the worry. Anyway, if BA does turn up here he’ll win.’

  I told him not to be so stupid. That said, I did suggest he refrain from going to Danbury before Sunday. If he did receive an overwhelming urge to come up here, he was to telephone me immediately.

  Then a horrifying thought ran through me. My stomach turned.

  Saturday night was 31st October—Hallowe’en. It was her night—the night Hekate was experienced and worshipped by devotees past and present. If the Black Alchemist was going to attempt to utilise, manipulate even, the powers of Hekate, through the presence here of the foul virgin Paphotia, it would be on Saturday night. Before we had a chance to plant the new crucifix.

  Bernard just sank back in his chair and forced a worried grin.

  It was obvious. Why hadn’t I realised it before? Quickly, I gave him the chance to change the concealment date from Sunday to Saturday, same time.

  ‘No, leave it now.’

  What! Why?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he responded, indecisively. ‘Curiosity, I suppose. Anyway, we’ve made arrangements for Sunday, so it’s obviously meant to be.’