by John Luxton
The sunshine was a blessing in what had been a mild but exceedingly wet end to the winter months, our sandwiches were no doubt tasty, and the passing joggers, horse riders and fresh-air fiends a joy to behold in this most civilized of locations. However, as we swiftly finished our lunches and I saw Detective Z begin brushing the crumbs from his trench coat, I knew I had to speak up or lose this serendipitous moment forever.
“I believe we have an acquaintance in common,” I said.
He stopped brushing the crumbs and looked at me sharply.
“A certain elderly gentleman residing in Old Mortlake, Alan by name... er,” I said.
I had contravened one of the many protocols that surround sharing a park bench with a stranger: invaded his space, ruined his lunch, trod on his beagle. At this point the Detective could not stand my shilly-shallying around any longer.
“He mentioned me? So you know who I am, and you just happened along and seeing me here today felt that it was time to unburden yourself? What a coincidence!” He said.
“There are no coincidences in your life, Detective Z. Neither are there any in mine.”
I stood up brushed the crumbs from my own coat, folded up the paper that my sandwich had been wrapped in, pocketed it, and then took a step forward and stood before the man, thus blotting out the cobalt blue sky, the racing clouds, the bare winter trees and the rest of his pleasant view.
I extended my hand. “Darren Sprawl, professor of phenomenology, I am at your service.”
To my surprise he rose slowly and shook my hand, then sat back down again.
“Sit down, Professor, and tell me your business,” he said.
* * *
Relaying the content of our conversation is no way to transmit the exegesis of the forces that spread out like waves across the ocean of time and beyond; beyond this plane and into the hidden trans-dimensional spaces where we cannot or will not look.
I knew that Detective Z had some experience of such things, for he had looked and furthermore he had walked through that portal where all previous belief systems are rendered nugatory. He had taken that journey in order to retrieve the most precious part of his life – his daughter. He had taken that journey and he had paid the price. His doltish superiors, instead of supporting their man in his time of trial by fire, had instead adjudged him to be having a mental-breakdown and suspended him from the police force. He had been allowed back at a lower rank after many months of the prescribed rehabilitation had been completed.
After Alan had handed me the antique key on that rainy night in Mortlake, I changed from a depressed and suicidal academic to a man with a mission. I grabbed it with both hands, like a drowning man grabbing onto a low hanging branch, hanging on, and thus not swept away to a dark finality. I saw a unique chance to make a difference, a conveniently vague phrase reeking of insincerity that has been used to death by those wishing to establish their caring credentials. But a difference is what I wished to make – and still do.
I had arrived home and placed the key in a box that I have that seemed to cry out for such an object; made of stout oak timber and carved with dragons and serpents, it is a reliquary intended for religious items and seemed suited to the task. And there the key sat for a week before I took it from the dragon box, pocketed it and left the house with the express aim of carrying out old Alan’s instructions; something that I had solemnly promised him I would do.
Old Alan could no longer play this role, a role that he had carried out faithfully for three decades. Gaining access to the ‘place’ was not easy and I returned to Mortlake that day to rendezvous with my mentor in order for him to coach me through a process that once learnt I would come to repeat many times.
The Church of Saint Mary Magdalene stands close to the river in Old Mortlake – it was not always so – it was moved brick by brick in the fifteenth century owing to royal whimsy. When it was reconstituted on its present day site certain parts of an older pre-existing building were incorporated into the structure.
In the tower is a hidden chamber that contains only the mere remnants of a once great library of occult literature, one of the most important in the whole of Europe during that distant time. But there are not only books and manuscripts extant in this chamber – there are also various object used to scry into the spirit world. Apparently angels were summoned and demons banished in this hallowed place, but historical records tell us that it all got a little out of control and ill luck befell the practitioners of these conjurations. Nevertheless these books, and mirrors, and crystals have survived. The men involved covered their activities with the mantle of materialism – claiming that they were pursuing the study of alchemy – this hardly guaranteed them a low profile, but it did prevent them going to prison, or worse, for the crime blasphemy. So they continued with their ‘angel magic’ until changes in their circumstances brought the working to an end.
However, there are many people, occultists, historians and adepts of both the right-hand path and the other – who maintain that the forces that were released, channeled, summoned – whatever expression you are most comfortable with – in those far off days, contributed, nay triggered the outpouring of art, science, philosophy, exploration and social change that was the hallmark of the Elizabethan Age; an epoch powered by the subtle energies that flowed through the portals of time, and entwined with the men and women of that most golden age.
Then the portal was sealed, and lay dormant. Until another great conjurer was to appear. Over the centuries this cycle was repeated. Other portals were opened and the world became the one that we see today. But do we? Do we really see? Do we really see the nature and the manner of ingress of the forces that are propelling our tangential hurtle towards the inevitable Omega Point? A time when self-replicating energies will subsume our human innocence, for practitioners of Chaos Magic will have forced open the gates to the Mauve Zone with their destabilizing rituals of cruelty and perversion.
From this tower, on the banks of the Thames, Alan had been monitoring the comings and the goings of entities between this world and the Mauve Zone. He had tracked the ways that these Quiphoth had gained traction in our world and organized themselves in order to propagate their twisted designs. These non-human entities are parasitical in nature.
Down the millennia, from the Stone Age shaman, to the adepts of the Golden Dawn in the twentieth century, the Nightside of Eden has always been the domain of the initiated and the recondite.
The conjurations to open the Mauve Zone and thus allow the Quilphoth to escape from the Tunnels of Set, were performed by certain adepts. They quickly transmuted themselves from a marginal cult into a shadow organisation that today controls governments and financial institutions across the globe; all the while their influences growing as fresh demonic currents are awakened.
* * *
The Church was deserted, no bell ringing or choir practice on this day and at this hour. I met Alan under a stone arch in the Church Yard. We watched a robin hop down from a branch and onto the top of a worn gravestone. Old Alan muttered some words in its direction that I did not catch – then he turned to me.
“Are ye ready, Master Sprawl?” he asked.
From the knave a stone staircase spiralled around the inside of the tower – this was to be the easy part of the climb. We stepped through a doorway into the bell-ringing chamber – all was silent, the floor worn by centuries of tintintabulist’s feet as they practiced their craft. Another door was opened and I was looking up what appeared to be a chimney, iron rungs were set into the brickwork. Alan set off and I followed. At a certain point the rungs stopped and an old wooden ladder was lashed to a short piece of scaffolding right at the very top.
“One at a time on the ladder,” called Alan.
Up he went and for a moment he was silhouetted against the sky then the ladder was clear; I followed tentatively and a minute later joined him on the very top of the bell tower. There were high ramparts and surprisingly far reaching views over Old Mortlake and
beyond. But there was no time to give this more than a cursory glance.
“The key, Master Sprawl?” said Alan.
I saw a trap set into the floor, and kneeling down fitted the heavy old key into the lock. The door swung open easily on well-oiled hinges and first Alan and then myself dropped down into a circular chamber, lit by an otherworldly soft pinkish light that was coming through a round stained glass portal set into the West facing part of the wall. All the rest of the wall space was covered with bookcases. Despite the obvious antiquity of the place the air was dry and fresh. There was a desk and a leather ottoman and a threadbare carpet upon the floor.
I looked at Alan and saw that he was being racked by some powerful emotion; I put my hand on his shoulder.
“Are you alright, old chap?” I asked of him.
He nodded.
“I won’t be coming here anymore.”
Here he stopped and shook me by the hand.
“I’ll still be around in my capacity as the Verger. Everything you need to know you will find here,” he said indicating the surroundings. “Read my journals first.”
I saw that indeed there was a large stack of books upon the desk.
“You will need to keep one too, a journal that is. If anybody asks what you are doing in the church, just tell them you are the Verger’s Assistant and refer them to me. And never come here on a Tuesday night. It’s the bell ringing practice night. They are so bad they are known as ‘Hell’s Bells’ by the locals.”
And then he was gone. I dove into the journals and read until the pink light turned violet and I could no longer read. I found my eyes drawn to the round window and fancied I saw dark outlines darting against the skyscape. I deliberately looked away – having read far too much HP Lovecraft as a boy to fall for that one. Bats in the belfry, I thought and hurried to make my departure before the daylight went completely. I ended up using the torch app on my phone in order to retrace my steps and climb back down the tower until I was safely returned to mother earth.
It took me several weeks to work my way through Alan’s journals and as I did so I began to build up a vision of the layered realities that surrounded the place. Every day brought new revelations; in the end I knew too much. Then I turned my attention to the library itself. Here there were complete volumes of infamous ‘black books’ from the Middle Ages, renowned works of mage and magus, from natural magic to how to conjure thunderbolts to smite at one’s enemies – it was all here. Books that were only rumored to have once existed but usually marked as ‘no copies extant’ in the records of the British Library. Here there were: spells, conjurations, dark philosophies, the Devil’s cookbooks, copied and recopied down the millennia.
Finally I opened the trunk. It sat under the window, a green tapestry depicting unicorns and forest folk draped over it; each item within was carefully wrapped in black silk. I took them out one at a time: a sphere of polished crystal, an obsidian scepter or wand, a brass astrolabe, and the dark mirror. Then I carefully rewrapped them and put them away.
This was confirmed when I looked on the web and read all about consecrating these selfsame items at midnight on a hillside when the moon was full and infusing them with my chakric energy, in order to scry for any denizens of the spirit world who might show up once I learnt to gaze through the miasma.
Had Alan been using any of these magical machines, how did he monitor the battle between dark and light, and where was I supposed to begin? Several times I caught a glimpse of him – cutting the grass in the churchyard, carrying a ladder along the pathway that led down to the river. But each time I hurried from the tower to speak with him – he was gone. Leaving me standing foolishly and out of breath with my questions unanswered.
I returned to Alan’s journals but I had to read on, right up to the present day when my own account would begin before I developed a clear sense of the nature of the battleground on which myself and all humanity stood – now and forever, an age-old battle in which only the players had changed but never the game.
Alan had over the last few years recorded much information about the work of the Brotherhood of the Serpent; their origins in the shamanic traditions of Siberia and Mongolia, Haatian Voudou and beyond, but they all employed a similar MO, and this was their exploitation of ‘cone energy’ to force open the portal to the Mauve Zone. All this background information was fascinating but not necessarily any use in getting started and actually ‘doing something’.
It was in the final part of Alan’s journal that I had first learned of Detective Z and his daughter Lorna. The information here was sketchy, Alan was caring for his ailing wife at this point I believe, but it seemed that by working together they were able to firstly strike at and weaken the power of the Blake Oranisation. This was all very well but what actually happened? I wondered. Then I came across several footnotes on the relevant pages where two books were mentioned: the Alembic Valise and another named Cembali Silvae – assuming that these were part of the library of John Dee I began to search; I could find neither until I remembered a couple of curiously titled modern paperbacks in one of the desk drawers. Amazingly these were exactly what I had been searching for. They were both written by a Joel Barlow and seemed like the kind of fantasy stories that teenagers might enthuse about, but for me the both the author and the titles were unknown.
It was only when I began to read the Alembic Valise whilst riding the bus home that evening to my lodgings in Parsons Green that I realized that the book was a fictionalised account of Lorna Z and her father’s struggle against a sinister cult bearing a striking similarity to the Blake Organisation. What is more the book contained precise specifications of the structure and cosmology of the zones where the battle between these fantasy worlds was taking place.
Then one day I had a breakthrough. It was dusk and as had been my practice I had switched on the portable light source that I had added to the rooms facilities in order to extend my studies beyond the daylight hours. But I was not comfortable with the synthetic nature of the light and what is more the damn thing had started to emit a buzzing sound that was annoying me. So I lit the three fat white church candles that were lined up on the big desk and switched off my nasty light; the buzzing continued. I flipped the switch back and forth; it made no difference. I sat back down and considered the possibilities and gradually a drowsy mindful state descended on me and I drifted into a kind of trance. I had closed my eyes and yet I saw colors that flickered from the candle flames and brushed my eyelids, painting strange and glittering dreamscapes. And what is more I now realized that the buzzing sound was within my skull and that it had acquired a depth and resonance that I sought to decipher. And so began my journey into the interior and my discovery of the gift of clairaudience, something I had read about but always thought it was perhaps a lesser cousin of the gift of clairvoyance that everyone is more familiar with.
To deliver the totality of my ‘business’ to the undoubtedly receptive Detective Z in what was left of his lunch-break, whilst seated there on a, admittedly pleasant, park bench was beyond my powers of communication. So instead I elected to throw him a bone; or maybe even two.
“There is a kind of ‘Hellfire Club’ that is comprised of a number of the supra wealthy – billionaires whose wealth is entirely related to their alliances with an organisation of which I know you to be familiar.”
He said nothing but I saw his jaw muscles tighten and he looked away so as to conceal his loathing.
“They never went away, Detective Z,” I said.
“Tell me what you know,” he said.
Before answering I looked around – there were children playing on the grass, kicking an orange ball whilst their parents looked on, someone was trying to get a kite into the air, a dog ran by without any obvious owner in the vicinity. All seemed well in the world. I took the plunge.
“The inner core of the Blake Organisation is a dark and evil cell known as the Brotherhood of the Serpent, which would be a laughably bad name if they were just a
bunch of crackpots, however that is not the case.”
By now the kite was airborne – I was reassured to see a golden dragon etched onto the bright red cloth. Its appearance seemed to confirm the rightness of my meeting with Detective Z.
“Their control over the global shadow banking system is almost total, and therefore they have created dozens of billionaires who are the only visible aspect of the cults increasing dominance. What they demand in return is that the recipients of this wealth promote and practice Chaos Magic at certain times and at certain locations. One such time was last night - the first full moon after the spring equinox – and one such place is very close to where we now are seated. In the ritual, which is a variation of the infamous Baltimore Working, a priestess is depleted of her energy to the point of zombieism, until her shade is subsumed by entities that lurk outside the Circles of Time, in the Mauve Zone.”
“And you would know of this because...?” asked Detective Z.
“I have a contact, a certain Armenian gentleman named Viktor.”
“And what happens, did she quit or was she fired, what does your man Viktor say?” he asked.
“Look there is no Viktor. But if there was he would probably refer you to the star Algol, the source of many of the emergent demonic entities; a real live death star at perpetual war with the race from Sirius a twin binary system which is home to our DNA. This conflict between the First Root Race and the Second Root Race is millennial.”
Dubious does not even begin to describe the look in the detective eyes. So I carried on digging.
“And perhaps the use of the same Draconian current by voodoo adepts of the feared ‘red sects’ of Haiti, who still practice sacrifice, could be sited as a similar contemporary manifestation.”
Detective Z raised an eyebrow.
“Meaning?” he asked.
“This all real, this is their MO,” I answered simply.
He raised his eyebrow further.
“There’s still a lot I am figuring out,” I said, in order to cover my seeming lack of clarity.
