by D J Mcintosh
“And Bennet knew … about me?”
“She had no idea Helmstetter was your father, if that’s what you mean. I kept that valuable piece of information from her. She would never have agreed to get involved otherwise. You seem to have gotten under her skin. When she called, she claimed she couldn’t face loving the son of the man who destroyed her mother. The connection seemed too ominous. She was furious with me.”
I felt the earth move under my feet. In my mind’s eye, I saw Bennet’s blank face at the airport, her blowing me off, wanting nothing more to do with me.
“Poor Bennet. She’s quite bereft now and she really is poor, you know,” Strauss said. “But don’t you see? It has turned out all right in the end.” He glanced at his desk again. “Forgive me for my little game. You’ll find a check on my desk over there. I’ve rewarded you for your trouble quite liberally. You may leave the volume there too.” He shifted in his chair as if he was in pain and reached around to press his hand to his back.
I welcomed putting an end to this commission and my association with Strauss. He’d been honest about one thing at least. When I picked up the check, I saw he’d paid me double what we negotiated. I took Trithemius’s book out of my jacket pocket and laid it on the desk. As I did, I happened to glance at the cabinet and saw the three Mesopotamian artifacts arranged neatly on the upper shelf—the two cylinder seals and the statue.
Perhaps that’s what reminded me of Tricia Ross. And then the flash of firelight I’d noticed earlier on the metal buttons of Strauss’s jacket connected to a memory. The scene in Ross’s kitchen flooded back. The small round thing I’d seen among the tea things. It had eluded my memory, the telltale sign of who’d tortured her. It was a bloody metal button, just like the one Strauss pulled out of his arm the night of the spiritualist séance when I first met him.
I rounded on him, ready to accuse him of killing Ross, then reeled back in shock.
He’d stood up and moved in front of the mantel, his body silhouetted by the orange glow of the fire. He had a gun in his hand.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Completing our transaction to my satisfaction.”
“You’re depraved. And far worse for murdering Ross.”
He let the accusation float by him. “The good professor decided to report the three artifacts to the FBI. She’d finally concluded they must have been stolen. Graciously, she wanted to give me a chance to voluntarily hand them over first and summoned me to her house to tell me.”
“So you proceeded to beat her to death?”
His lack of response was all the confirmation I needed. My stomach turned.
“So what was the deal about me? Were you taking a warped form of revenge on Helmstetter by putting his son through hell?”
Strauss’s expression was full of menace. “Do you recall the Bible verse I recited at my channeling in Carroll Gardens?”
I remembered he’d stared at me after quoting that passage. At the time I didn’t understand why.
“I’ll refresh your memory,” he continued.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding none it says, ‘I will return to the house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order. Then it brings seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that person is worse than the first.
“I meant the passage for you as much as for Gina, for that is your fate. You’ll recall that Helmstetter believed himself to be a direct descendant of the real Faust?”
“You told me that.”
“Faust sold his immortal soul not for fame and fortune as is commonly believed but for knowledge. It’s an old story, isn’t it, stretching all the way back to Adam and Eve’s desire to eat of the fruit of the tree. In some respects Marlowe and Goethe recycled that myth. From Adam’s time, man has not been content with his lot in life. He must rival the gods and always have more.
“The original Faust was never identified when he died. And some believe the devil made good the bargain. That he granted immortality to Faust’s tortured soul.”
“Do you hear yourself? That’s crazy.”
He smiled. “Perhaps. But Helmstetter clung to this idea. It’s what prompted his own search for eternal life.”
“Well, I’m sure Bennet told you all about that too. It turned out to simply be a state of mind. Time vanishes under the influence of certain hallucinogens.”
“Don’t be a fool. Helmstetter was brilliant. His mental capabilities totally eclipsed mine. Had he remained in America, he would have become one of the foremost magicians in history. He knew all about hallucinogens, would never have traveled halfway across the globe simply to partake of them. It is said the original Faust experienced a moment of transcendence. So too did George Helmstetter. Somehow, he discovered the secret of transformation in Trithemius’s writings. He achieved his dream.
“But to close the knot he needed a suitable candidate. Someone weak. A personality barely formed. A fetus in the womb.”
Thunder rolled in my head. I felt as though I was suffocating. I shook myself to get some sense back. “What are you implying?”
“Bennet told me you’re experiencing nightmares. Sleep paralysis. You’re losing your own identity, Madison. It’s come slowly at first but it’s speeding up, isn’t it? Those men in Kandovan thought they’d killed Helmstetter. They were mistaken. When he died he was no more than a husk. And that’s what you’re becoming now. The breaks will grow stronger and much more frequent. They’ll happen during the day when you’re awake, not just when you’re sleeping. They’ll begin to merge, the personality of John Madison becoming more and more transient. George Helmstetter will be renewed. He didn’t just spawn you. He possessed you.”
Strauss gave me an icy smile then. “But Helmstetter did not bargain on my seeking revenge.”
At that moment, Loki bared her teeth and howled. While we were talking she must have crept right up to his feet without either of us noticing. Strauss reared back in surprise, angled the gun down haphazardly, and fired.
The bullet tore through his thigh. His body jerked and he crashed into the fire grate.
Fifty-Five
The gunshot deafened me. For an instant I thought I’d been hit and terror had made me numb to the pain. I leapt over to Strauss, pulled him away from the fire, ripped off the now flaming scarf and threw it back on the coals. I used my jacket to beat out the flames in his hair and then put my hand on his neck to feel for a pulse. I couldn’t find one. His skin felt slippery where I’d torn away the scarf.
One of the fire-grate pickets had punctured his temple when he fell; blood now surged around the injury. His body shuddered with convulsions. I waited. Despite my sense of horror, a new feeling welled up inside me. A manic, exuberant joy. I’d escaped what minutes ago I thought would be certain death.
Loki had retreated into a corner. I picked her up, grabbed my jacket, and plucked The Steganographia off the desk. As I hurried out I cast a longing gaze back at the artifacts in the cabinet, remembering Strauss had promised them to me in exchange for retrieving the book. I couldn’t afford to be found with them now.
I thanked God Strauss had chosen such an out-of-the-way place. I got a plastic bag from the trunk to wrap my jacket in, charred by the flames and stained from Strauss’s blood. I’d dispose of it later.
After a two-hour drive I judged it safe to stop at an all-night service station. I parked the car near a row of tractor trailers and sank my head on my arms. From the time I’d walked out of Strauss’s living room I’d been on autopilot. The adrenalin had finally subsided, leaving me shaking.
Was Strauss right about Helmstetter invading my identity, slowly taking me over? “You’re a dangerous man, John, in more ways than one,” Bennet had said. Did she sense something about me that even I wasn’t aware of? Memories of my last sojourn in Iraq came back to me. Things I couldn’t mak
e sense of at the time. The two apparitions in the Kutha throne room who hadn’t attacked me but instead signaled some kind of bond. My lack of compassion for the violent acts I’d carried out. How I’d felt at times. Not evil, just coldly amoral. Had those been Helmstetter’s emotions coming to the surface?
No, it was impossible. Strauss was insane, his virulent hatred of Helmstetter so extreme that he’d concocted a bizarre fantasy about me. I felt utterly drained. It was all I could do to lift my head from my arms and sink back on the headrest. I stayed that way for hours, not dozing but not able to summon up the energy for much else either. When I revived, I started up the Porsche and sped off again.
April 21, 2005
New York
Weeks went by before I realized Strauss hadn’t lied to me. Although I’d been feeling restless and out of sorts, I had just about persuaded myself there was nothing to fear.
Then Strauss’s prediction began to come true.
A balmy day beckoned, the signs of spring just beginning to make themselves felt. I took Loki to the dog park in the square. She was no longer in a cast and had learned how to play with other dogs. A woman sat down beside me and unclasped the leash from her spaniel; he ran off suddenly and the leash fell from her grasp. I bent down to pick it up for her and something shifted, as if a plane of glass had suddenly dropped down between us.
“Thanks,” the woman said. I barely heard her. The hum of traffic became a loud chorus in my ears. I felt nauseated. “Thank you,” the woman said more loudly and held out her hand for the leash. I dropped it on the bench and got up without acknowledging her.
A memory had come to me. I was a young boy, perhaps twelve—no more. I wore a dirty pair of jeans that were too large for me and a man’s faded shirt. I was in a farm field, all alone. A windy day and cloudy. In the distance I could see a rickety old farm-house and dilapidated red barn. I’d flattened down the dried corn stalks to make a rough circle and looped a piece of twine around the neck of one of my mother’s hens. When I tightened the loop, the hen struggled and flapped its wings in panic as its air was cut off. I passed my hand over its neck. The twine seemed to disappear. The hen scrambled up and ran away.
Not my memory. It belonged to someone else. My father. A boy raised on a dirt-poor farm who grew to become a gifted magician. A man who embraced dark knowledge and used his own son as a vehicle to renew himself. I shuddered and tried to wrench myself from the memory. To force my own personality back again. The drone of the traffic subsided. My vision cleared. Loki ran toward me. I picked her up and pressed her to my chest as if her warm body could obliterate my fears.
I was fracturing, the shell splitting just as Strauss had predicted it would, and now the new being, George Helmstetter, was emerging. I made my way home, almost unconscious of crossing the street, taking the elevator, opening my apartment door, removing Loki’s leash. I collapsed onto my sofa in front of the long unused fireplace, terrified that another false memory would come to haunt me. This first schism during wakefulness had come entirely unbidden and out of my control. I now had a ringside seat to my own destruction.
Once some time had passed I calmed down a little. There had to be a way. Maybe some knowledgeable person could guide me in overcoming the process of disintegration. My mind cast about wildly. And then I remembered something Veronica Sills had said. “There’s always a way out if you know the way in.” My glance fell on The Steganographia sitting in the glass cabinet. Could I recognize in its pages the rituals Helmstetter had followed to achieve his transformation? I did, after all, have a perverse ally—the ability to call upon Helmstetter’s own memory. He’d done the hard work by deciphering the book; my task would be to recall the steps he took and find a way to reverse them. That gave me some hope of staving off the metamorphosis. But I knew I had little time.
The next day I left New York with Loki and rented a cabin in the Catskills close to the Devil’s Path where my friend and I had hiked months before. If pushing myself to physical extremes had helped ward off the sleep paralysis then, it might also delay Helmstetter’s resurrection now. I rose early every morning and spent hours scaling the path, choosing the most hazardous portions of the route, concentrating on the climb as a way to force back my fears. Evenings were devoted to studying Trithemius’s book. All this achieved a balance of sorts but I made no real headway.
Early spring in the Catskills often brings uncertain weather. One day it’ll be fine and warm, the next brittle cold with high winds and frost, especially at higher elevations. On this morning I’d tried to free-climb a particularly difficult stretch, a high precipice of limestone off the official path. I should never have attempted it alone. If I met with an accident, no one would know. Even with a partner it would have been foolhardy. It had turned very cold and the cliff was slick with a fine patina of ice. About three-quarters of the way up I reached a brim of rock so narrow it could hardly be called a ledge. I balanced on it to get my breath and looked below me to a hundred-foot drop, jagged, slippery rock all the way down.
It had not been a good day. I’d felt especially despondent, hopeless about ever being able to reclaim my peace of mind. So easy to just slip off. And my choosing more and more perilous routes, I saw now, unconsciously pointed me in one direction. Perhaps that was the best way. Having so far failed at unearthing Helmstetter’s method, I could cheat my demon father by ending it for us both.
Just then a shadow passed over me. I craned my neck and spotted a giant bird—a vulture. Its wingspan had to be at least seven feet. I’d never seen one that size anywhere in the state.
When it settled on the lip of the precipice above, a warmth stole over me. Perhaps it was just my imagination, but the bird had a strange presence. It seemed to bond with me, to give me courage. It took off suddenly with a graceful lifting of its huge wings, and as it soared upward it reminded me of that other being. The ancient priest I’d met in Eden, the vulture its emblem. The presence who had guided me into an unknown night, who I now realized was with me still, had never really left my side.
As I watched the bird grow smaller until it was only a dot in the sky, I sensed I would win the battle with the man who sired me.
Notes
Part One
5 The only magic is really that of words: Dr. Thomas Ernst, as quoted in “German Monk’s 500-Year-Old Mystery Solved,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, June 29, 1998.
Chapter 6
33 When the unclean spirit … that person is worse than the first: Luke 11:24–26 (English Standard Version Bible).
Chapter 18
98 Aratta’s battlements … where the cypress grows: “Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird” (The ETCSL Project, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford, 2003).
Chapter 20
112 A river flowed out of Eden … And the fourth river is the Euphrates: Genesis 2:10–14 (English Standard Version Bible).
Chapter 23
131 That man, about whom you wrote me … the teachings of the Holy Church: Frank Baron, Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1978).
Part Two
147 I know your works and where you dwell … where Satan’s Throne is: Revelation 2:13 (King James 2000 Bible).
Chapter 31
183 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer! Isaiah 14:12 (King James Bible).
Chapter 32
192 Genesis 2:13 describes … the Mountain of Kush: David Rohl, Legend: The Genesis of Civilization (London: Random House, 1998).
Part Three
195 Food of death they will set … I have spoken, hold fast: From the Mesopotamian myth Adapa and the South Wind (cuneiform parallels to the Old Testament), R.W. Rogers (London: Oxford University Press, 1912).
Chapter 45
250 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden … every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good to eat: Genesis 2:8–9 (English Standard Version Bible).
Chapter 47
262 Of the Tree of Knowledge … thou shalt surely die: G
enesis 2:17 (King James Bible).
Chapter 52
281 The Serpent Lady … all was brightness: From the Nippur tablets, “The Destruction of Kharsag,” as documented by Christian O’Brien and Barbara Joy O’Brien, The Genius of the Few: The Story of Those Who Founded the Garden of Eden (Padukah, KY: Collector Books, 1999).
Bibliography
The following books, articles, and websites have all been valuable sources of information.
Books
Baigent, Michael, and Richard Leigh. The Elixir and the Stone. London: Random House, 1997.
Black, Jeremy, and Anthony Green; illustrations by Tessa Rickards. Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003.
Cline, Eric H. From Eden to Exile. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 2007.
Collins, Andrew. From the Ashes of Angels: The Forbidden Legacy of a Fallen Race. Rochester, VT: Bear & Company, 2001.
Rohl, David. Legend: The Genesis of Civilization. London: Random House, 1998.
Walker, Reginald Arthur. The Land of Eden. Rhyl, U.K.: Voxov, 1987.
Wilensky-Lanford, Brook. Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden. New York: Grove Press, 1980.
Articles and Websites
Atsma, Aaron J. “Asklepios,” Theoi Project, www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Asklepios.html.
Bennet, Dina. “Border Crossing Guide: Van, Turkey to Tabriz, Iran,” Matador Network, June 11, 2012, http://matadornetwork.com/trips/border-crossing-guide-van-turkey-to-tabriz-iran.
