by John Luxton
“Lorna,” I croaked.
When the fin was only yards away I could see it was a deep lustrous black, edged in gold. It had cut a path through the mist to find me. The river was no longer running, the tide not pulling one way of the other, an equinoxal slack tide had arrived, and just beneath the water’s surface there was a phosphorescent shape hanging there in the still waters of the Thames. From all elemental sources - the rivers, the oceans and the sky; between all poles – geographic and electrical; and across the space between celestial bodies – gravity’s pull paused between inhalation and exhalation.
I leaned forward from my zone of safety upon the bench on the edge of the universe and reached out my hand. As soon as it touched the water the thought came to me: that this was a moment for baptism and I must immerse myself completely.
Suddenly I recoiled – a turd was floating by and then I saw another. A breeze sprung up and when I looked out onto the river I saw only wisps of the grey mist and my companion was gone. I hurriedly wiped my hand on my coat to remove all trace of the tainted waters, and as I did so I saw my watch read twelve-noon.
So that was it – by high tide tonight the battle would be won or lost. I heard a voice calling from over the water – a woman’s voice.
Make haste, make haste,
or Lorna will be lost in the wastes.
Use gravity’s pull
when the moon is full.
Then a jumbo jet on its flight path to Heathrow rumbled overhead drowning out any more. I jumped down from the bench and climbed the nearest embankment, hopped over a fence, wriggled through a hedge onto a football pitch and began my soggy trek back to civilization.
I was only a stone’s throw from Mortlake and so repaired to the tower, which had been my original intent but by now I was too played out to even remember my reason. After a while I opened the chest and placed the objects of divination on the table in front of me. The obsidian wand I set aside and concentrated my attention on the dark mirror. After a while shapes began to form around the edges, flickering in and out without manifesting anything other than vague and abstract patterns; I shifted my gaze to the deep dark centre, and after a while was rewarded.
I saw a room of crystal, I saw Lorna prone on an altar, surrounded by a hellish vision straight out of the Hieronymous Bosch playbook. And above it all a vast black denizen of the night – wings spreading out until all became darkness and even the nightmare was obliterated. By the time I looked away my heart was racing and a cold fear had crept into my soul. I hurriedly put the mirror back into the chest, the obsidian wand I put in my bag. Then I left the tower.
Chapter 19
BROTHERHOOD OF THE SERPENT
Eddie had used the Burundanga on her straight away – it was his favored method. In Europe pretty much unknown but in Bogota it was rather more ubiquitous in its use than the travel brochures acknowledged. The clear and odorless liquid sneakily dropped into tourist’s drinks, its effects of increased suggestibility and compliance giving it the nickname of the ‘CIA drug’; the appropriate memory slot a lacuna of forgetfulness when Rolex, travelers checks, passport and pants were found to be gone. An altogether more esoteric effect was that it could give prophetic dreams and according to legend produce shamanic states.
Larger doses produced deep unconsciousness. Lorna’s pale skin was suffused with a blue tint from the spots as she lay on the hospital gurney somewhere within the Vertical Abyss; she did not seem to mind their brightness. Neither did she seem to mind Eddie, his cheek only inches from her closed eyes, inhaling deeply the scent of her hair. He was concentrating on the damp swirl that adorned the nape of her neck. He was being ecstatically tantalized by the suggestion of a fragrance that he could not quite place, emanating from the creature before him. He was just about to stroke the spot, possibly with his tongue but definitely with his fingertips, when Simon Magus entered the room.
“Shouldn’t we be getting enrobed?”
Eddie straightened up. It was true there was much to be done before ‘midnight on earth’. He had wanted to prepare Lorna himself, but there were orderlies who were skilled in this procedure. Meanwhile the whole of the obverse side of the Vertical Abyss was on standby – the entire upper echelon of the Brotherhood were gathering for tonight’s eclipsing, some members still arriving from far flung outposts in order participate in the approaching adoration of Baphomet. Several hundred robed and chanting hierophants would later gather in the glass pyramid atop the Vertical Abyss in order to writhe in their deity’s ectoplasmic oozings, their minds ripped by alien currents – all this to be channeled through the body of the exquisite Lorna Z.
“For sure, let’s get with the program,” said Eddie pleasantly. “But shouldn’t we be inspecting the temple first.”
“For sure, for sure,” said Simon holding the door open.
All the while Eddie was feeling the thrilling tingle of anticipation energizing his etheric body; Simon had promised him that when the time came - he would be first. He tore his eyes from Lorna and left the room.
Tonight all the initiates would wear white robes, an indication of their intention to usurp the power of Alpha world; almost like a false-flag operation into the sideways realm. Eddie followed Simon’s broad back along the corridor still trying to tease the origin of Lorna’s fragrance from some lost tributary of his memory. Tonight, all would wear white except for the Dieucifor, the master of ceremonies, who would be resplendent in blood red robes – and tonight, as always, Simon Magus would assume that role.
Together that stepped into the elevator and Simon selected the topmost button on the panel. The glass pyramid that they were smoothly ascending to was the exact same proportions as the original in Giza. Eddie noted in the unforgiving light of the elevator that Simon looked pale and exhausted – of course there would be energy aplenty available from the medicine cabinet – same as there ever was, but Eddie saw something more, or at least thought he did.
He wondered if Simon was able to intuit in some way the plan that Eddie had formulated: That when the ceremony was at its height he would simply draw a knife from beneath his cloak and sever Simon’s jugular, claiming that Lorna had awoken and grabbed the ceremonial dagger from the altar and that it was obviously Papa Legba’s will. At that moment, although surrounded by a thousand orgiastic chelas, he and Simon would be cloistered within the Peristyle, a makeshift enclosure made of tropical hardwoods that was the only concession to the Voudou roots of the ceremony it resembled an elongated shed with just one window and one door, where Lorna’s ritual sacrifice would take place. With Simon gone he himself would be free to assume the title of Dieucifor.
Simon was indeed looking at him strangely, it seemed. He made an effort to push such thoughts aside and instead to concentrate on Lorna. He imagined how she would look when prepared – lying naked on the altar, silver serpent bracelets around her wrists and ankles - my blue-lidded daughter of the sunset, he thought, savoring the phrase remembered from Aleister Crowley’s writings, most of which he knew by heart.
The lift doors opened straight on to the atrium, now transformed into a temple of blasphemy. Two huge glass tanks were set in the centre of the floor. They were covered with black sheets to prevent the beasts inside from becoming restive before their big night. Each anaconda was over fifteen feet in length – these ‘serpents of the moon’ would draw black rays from the penumbral vortex of the priestess – to be later used in the alchemic joining of fire and secretional vibration – their toxic excretions the isotope for all subsequent Chaos Magic practiced by the Brotherhood of the Serpent for the next twelve months.
Chapter 20
BLACK TIDE
As I made my sorry way back towards Hammersmith Bridge the phrase, ‘til tide turns - seemed to mark time with each step of my progress. Eventually I was able to reach a track and then a road and although I kept looking over my shoulder for a bus that might bear me back to my lodgings in order to get changed from my damp shoes and socks, none passed me by unt
il I was putting my foot on the first few yards of the bridge itself and of course here there were no bus stops.
Down below I saw that although the tide had receded, the stacking effect of the highest of tides coupled with the fluvial flow caused by heavy rains over the Thames Valley, meant that the brown and debris filled river water was running fast, like the plug had been pulled somewhere down stream.
Halfway across the there were several wooden benches built into the super-structure and for no other reason than I was exhausted I availed myself of one. Exhausted and weirded-out, not just by the small explosions of alkaloid induced sensation detonating on the periphery of my consciousness, but a dawning certainty that a unwished for future was approaching my sad shack of a life, like a runaway express train – and here I was powerless to act, with my life, everyone’s lives, Lorna’s life – soon to be matchwood.
The sky was the silver and blue backcloth to a multitude of baguette shaped clouds that were marching north-west, beneath me billions of cubic tons of river water were rushing away to the distant estuary and then the ocean beyond; I by contrast was going nowhere, anchored to a spot dealt to me by random fate, high above Eliot’s and Blake’s river of dreams, searching for my fallen angel – lost somewhere between heaven and earth. Lorna, Lorna, Lorna.
Despite the beauty of the moment, the dance of creation, the hope that is always manifested in life itself and the glory of the natural world – I felt that I was being lowered into a deep and dark tomb, from which I would certainly never emerge. I remembered the graffiti I had seen on the night I had been given the key to the tower in Mortlake by Alan - Don’t let the dark past eat you up, were the words, and back then they had struck a chord of hope – now there was none. It pinged-off back on the riverbank when someone flipped the hourglass on me, an infernal gear meshed and the golden trans-dimensional porpoise of love departed from the tainted, turd-molested waters of the Thames...
The only message I had heard was one of doom so I checked my man-bag for something that might help all this make sense - and it was there. The paperback version of the Alembic Valise; I thumbed through the pages until I found the description of where JoKanu shows up, or rather an etheric hologram of JoKanu, a paradoxical figure whose appearance is the foreshadowing of a redemptive event, a moment of retrieval that is open to all mankind.
I read:
There is a tower to the east made of glass and titanium – it serves as a pylon for the ingress of demonic entities. And another to the west where angel magic once unsealed divine forces; but that was centuries ago. Between these twin pylons the voodoo ray will arc when it is midnight on earth, then JoKanu will sail away and from the depths new outriders will emerge.
At this time - the bells of the abandoned tower between vineyard and tinderbox - must once again awaken the sleeper. The taproot of the Yddrasil runs deep beneath the London soil.
It was cryptic, to say the least but it was also all I had to go on. The tower in Mortlake, I reasoned, was once a magical weapon – and this Wesak it would be again. For tonight was Tuesday and according to Alan was the practice night for the bell ringers of the parish. That would be the beginning, and then I would have to find Jokanu himself to guide me to my station in tonight’s battleground, for it seemed that contrary to tradition, Wesak was happening right here and not in some Himalayan ‘La la’.
Beneath the soil of London runs the taproot of the World Tree – I thought, I read it in a book.
I must have nodded off because flickering eyelids revealed a sepia sky; a smoky pelmet of rain swept in. The tangled cloudscape fashioned itself into an avian cryptid with the face of Nosferatu’s cousin-fucking cousin. I stuffed my book into my bag and ran, feeling the suspension bridge moving under my feet.
No matter, I told myself recalling the line: I intend to live forever – or die trying. Above the handrail things were bad but down below I saw in the gloom a number of boats moored. I galloped the final yards and lunged down the stone steps to the embankment. My intention was to shelter beneath the bridge before Beelzebub gained traction; the gale issuing from the underpass swiftly banished that notion so instead I walked briskly along the floodwall towards the boats that were bobbing gaily up and down in the tempest.
There is no JoKanu. Only the constellated sentience of mankind and the retrieval opportunity for a kind of redemptive dharma to remember to remember itself and shift energy from the world-egg’s solar plexus chakra - to it’s heart’s. And yet an equal progenitor to the JoKanu current was the one foreshadowed by the appearance of the avian cryptid.
There is no Jokanu, I repeated, a refrain of the departed spirits of the river. The cold power of the Blake Organisation was cranking up to subvert the God-given energy of the Wesak. Their use of Chaos Magic had swiftly brought them to a tipping point, where the redemptive remedy for the pure blasphemic evil that they were unleashing could never be found.
I kept walking, not knowing where to or even why, any more, past shuttered boathouses, past the boats wildly rocking on their moorings, the only sound the clacking of flagpoles and the low drone of the wind. Where the floodwall ended the high waters had deposited the usual tidal debris on the path. I skirted around the lager items – bits of tree, old oil cans – a child’s toy boat caught my eye and on impulse I stooped and picked it up. It was a yellow plastic canoe, snapped in half; on the prow I was able to read the name – Jokanu, and see the symbol of the all-seeing eye. If, at that moment, I was the kind of fellow who might easily fall to his knees, weeping and crying out that all was lost, I would have done so. I was not that fellow. My response was to turn my tearless cheek into the diminishing gale and gaze upwards whilst silently and impudently asking whichever deity was presiding over my own particular shonky life – what the merry fuck?
It was then that I heard the bells, their discordant peals coming around the bend in the river to be delivered to my ears by some uncanny auditory phenomenon. The tintinabulists of Mortlake were unleashing ‘Hell’s Bells’ and part one of the final battle was beginning.
I followed the tidal slipway, an ancient causeway of granite cobbles, across the mud and down to the low water; it was still seething but just a comparative trickle. The tide had once again turned. The sound of the bells ebbed and flowed in the windings of the wind as the spiral processes both metrological and trans-dimensional paused between exhalation and inhalation. I dropped Jokanu into the water.
When I lifted my eyes from the tidal dregs that were boiling around the rocks at my feet and looked out across the river, I saw coming round the bend, out in midstream, a boat. Instinctively I raised my arm and began to wave.
At first I just dumbly stared at the approaching boat as I stood on the greasy causeway cursing my luck. I waved again and then when my greeting was reciprocated I began to get the message that beneath the event horizon of my own dumb ego, something momentous was emerging. Finally I saw that it was Detective Z out there in midstream and that he was doing more than waving – he was shouting, but the wind took his words away leaving me to guess as to his meaning. Then I divined that he was aboard the Alembic Valise. How, I had no idea, but there he was nevertheless.
Getting aboard the Alembic Valise was not going to be simple because all the jetties along that stretch of river were high and dry in the mud and although the causeway had once been used in medieval times to cross the river, wading out and taking my chances in the fluvial flow, albeit much reduced at that point, was not something I was willing to try.
However, by dint of my imaginative response to adversity, only minutes later I scrambled on board. I had managed to get myself onto the Chiswick Eeyot and then from there, using of all things a stolen surfboard, paddle frantically across the thirty feet of fast-flowing open water to be deposited onto the slippery deck of the Alembic Valise.
“Permission to come aboard, Captain?” I had flippantly enquired.
“Denied,” said Detective Z. “But you seem to be here anyway, ye scurvy scum.”
> Chapter 21
THE ENERGY OF SLAVES
It was to be a six-hour ceremony. A dozen veves were already traced on the black marble floor, including: the Bucket of Blood – a representation of a dagger embedded in the heart; the Coffin – the magical cabinet of Dieucifer; and the Black Hole - over which was positioned the table, already prepared for the ritual offering.
Astral energies would be focused by the apex of the glass pyramid under which the final operation would take place and then the spectral components repurposed in order to energize the adherents of the serpent, and the serpents themselves, who were no longer sleeping beneath their silk shrouds but uncoiling and slithering languidly within the confines of the glass tanks.
Upon reaching its climax the ceremony would deliver the Omega Paradigm to the manifest world and from that moment all traffic between worlds would be within the domain of the Vertical Abyss – effectively reducing the existence of those excluded from the ‘citadel of repression’ to that of slaves, forever trapped in beta world.
In an anteroom Lorna was being prepared – her eyelids were painted purple and there was gunpowder beneath her fingernails. She herself was already deep within the Loa, held there by the action of the deadly nightshade – Burundanga, which Eddie had administered and then re-administered to her on three occasions. But there was movement, although below the threshold of detection, as Lorna was moving within a field of light towards her own Ogun – a matrix of energies that would be both her refuge and her battle station.
Eddie strode through the Great Hall. It was now quiet as candles were lit and all other lighting subdued, the storm raging outside unseen and unheard within the shuttered pyramid. He was fully appraised of the meaning and importance of Wesak, the yearly relighting of mankind’s connection with spiritual illumination, cosmic fire, the Icarus Paradigm - that was played out as part of the ancient yearly cycle, when the ignition of hope and redemption became possible for mankind like an offering not to the gods, the old gods, but from them.
