Smoke and Dagger

by Douglas Wynne

  At his prior residence, a dilapidated mansion on Orange Grove in Pasadena, Parsons had opened his doors to all manner of fellow seekers. But following the revocation and reinstatement of his security clearance, Catherine worried that his habits might have changed. The government had scrutinized his associations going back decades. For all she knew, he could still be under surveillance, and if he thought he was, he might view a stranger with suspicion. She’d come armed with only a vague idea of the role she intended to play, thinking it best to feel out the situation and work with any opening that presented itself. After all, the Golden Bough had recruited her for her intuition and temerity. Or so they had said.

  As she neared the castle, a percussive sound reached her ears—a rhythmic clattering, more spontaneous than music, echoing off the concrete edifice and chiming down over the road on the salty air. Looking up, she beheld an image out of a storybook: A pair of dark silhouettes, dueling with fencing foils on a stone patio set between the crenelated towers. Back and forth they danced, stabbing and parrying. Clack! Clack-clack! The thinner of the two men was faster, flailing and thrashing. He wore a red bandana over his head, reminding her of a pirate. His opponent, a tall man in a tweed vest and rolled-up shirt sleeves, fought more aggressively, but not without grace, grunting beneath a high shelf of curly black hair she immediately recognized from a newspaper photo Hildebrand had shown her during one of their sessions at the New York Public Library.

  Jack Parsons.

  The duel gave her an idea. She headed toward the water, searching the tide line for a piece of driftwood the length of a sword. It didn’t take long to find a crooked stick that was white as bone. She carried it to the darkened sand from which the waves were retreating.

  In an effort to internalize enough Starry Wisdom material to break the ice with her target, Catherine had transcribed a series of incantations and diagrams until they were etched into her memory. Now she drew one of these—the sigil of Lung Crawthok—in the damp sand, tracing the strange geometry from an angle that would render it recognizable from the deck of the castle. When it was complete, she drew a circle around the figure, careful to leave her footprints outside so that it shone flawless in the sunset as silver water seeped into the channels. She worked slowly, moving with meditative intent, and was surprised to find she was in a light trance by the time she finished.

  The sigil complete, she knelt in the sand, closed her eyes, and waited, listening to the breath of the surf until she heard the gentle swish and crunch of shoes on the beach behind her.

  “Who are you?”

  A male voice, bemused. She looked up and saw him gilded by the sun, the castle a dusky lavender across the street behind him. The armpits of his white shirt were stained with perspiration around his tweed vest. The effect rendered him wild and well groomed all at once, his thin mustache neatly trimmed, his eyes fiery with curiosity. She nodded toward the castle where his sparring partner leaned on the iron patio railing, his fencing foil dangling idly from one hand.

  “I dreamt of this place,” she said. “That castle. I saw it in a dream before I ever saw it in the real world. And I somehow knew, when I woke, that it was a real place I would see on my trip.” She smiled. “You must think I’m crazy, but it’s true. Isn’t that the strangest thing you’ve ever heard?”

  The rocket scientist took a tentative step toward her. He bowed his knees, and lowered himself to the sand beside her. Gazing out at the ocean, he shrugged. “No, not really.” He plucked her stick from out of the sand and brandished it at the sigil. “I’m familiar with this. Do you know what it is?”

  “I saw that in my dream, too. If I’ve rendered it correctly.”

  “You have.”

  “What is it? I’m guessing a hieroglyph of some kind, but it’s not from any culture I’m familiar with.”

  “Are you familiar with many?”

  “I’m an anthropology student. It’s what brings me to California. I’m checking out grad schools and making a short vacation of it. But that dream threw me off track. I knew I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else until I found the place.” She tossed her head to let the wind unfurl her hair like a scarlet flag and cast her gaze up the coast. “Listen to me. I sound like a little girl, going on about castles and dreams and destiny. I’m really not like this. If you met me in ordinary circumstances, you’d know that. I’m actually quite rational when I’m not in California.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Massachusetts. Sorry, I never answered your first question.” She extended her hand. “Catherine Littlefield.”

  “Jack Parsons.” He threw the stick at the surf and shook her hand. “Where are you staying?”

  Catherine tilted her chin south, toward Malaga Cove and the tree-lined bluff curving out into the ocean beyond. “I rented a small house on Torrance Beach. A shack, really. I had a feeling about the place, but I’m a little awestruck to find the castle so close to where I’m staying.”

  “It’s my house.”

  She nodded. “I saw you and your friend fencing.” Catherine waved at the man on the patio. He flicked the ash off a cigarette and returned the gesture, but she couldn’t read his face in the fading light. “Is swordplay a requirement for living in a castle?”

  Jack laughed. “Maybe it should be. I’ve been fencing since I was a kid. It’s good for blowing off steam, but I can’t always find a good partner. Kamen is Iraqi. We met at the college where I used to have a lab. Fortunately for me, fencing has caught on pretty much everywhere the Brits have planted their tents.”

  Catherine stood and brushed the sand from her bottom. She stepped out of her sandals and walked around the giant symbol, relishing the texture of the wet sand between her toes. It reminded her of home, of Salisbury Beach and Plum Island on the other side of the continent. Her parents hadn’t understood why she needed to go to California. Ultimately, the fact that someone from a museum was funding the trip had been the best evidence she could offer that it was an important opportunity for her education. Her lessons with Hildebrand had filled in some curious gaps in her reading, but she suspected that here, on this dark stretch of beach, her true education was beginning. “I have to admit,” she said, “this symbol gives me an uneasy feeling. In my dream, it wasn’t encircled, but when I drew it, I felt it should be. To contain it, so it can’t get loose. Is that crazy?”

  “Not at all. You have good instincts for magic.”

  She met his eyes. “Is that what this is? It does resemble some symbols I’ve come across in my reading. Cornelius Agrippa comes to mind.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitched at the reference.

  “Where do you know it from?” she asked.

  He got to his feet and turned to the road, waving her along. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  Catherine hesitated. The channels she’d carved in the sand were drying out as the waves retreated from the beach. “I wish the tide were coming in to wash it away.” This wasn’t part of her act; she truly did.

  Jack was halfway up the embankment when he spoke over his shoulder. “Give it time,” he said. “In time, it will wash over everything.”

  She followed him through the tall grass, up the slope, and across the street to the waiting castle.

  * * *

  Jack placed the gramophone needle down on a record, setting serpentine strains of a violin to prowl the great room, slithering around the dark wood furniture and coiling in the corners. “Prokofiev,” he said, uncorking a bottle of red wine and pouring generous measures into a pair of crystal goblets. “His Second Violin Concerto. I wore out my last copy while performing a daily invocation a few years back.” He passed her a glass and made a toast. “To visionary dreams.”

  Catherine took in her surroundings: leather couches, Persian rugs, and wooden tables delineated the rooms of an open floor plan beneath an electric chandelier that threw shards of light across the scattered papers on a cluttered desk. The bookshelf nearest the gramophone was stocked with an eclec
tic assortment of chemistry and physics texts among the poetry and occult titles. Parsons took note of her interest in the spines and pointed a finger at one. “The von Junzt is where I’ve encountered the symbol you drew in the sand. And you mentioned Agrippa earlier. That tells me you’re not a typical anthropology student.”

  “I’ve done a little research into the occult.”

  “Research.” He tasted the word and found it lacking. “What about experimentation?”

  Catherine sipped the wine. A pinot noir with cherry and chocolate notes. “Oh no, not for me. I need to maintain objectivity, after all.” She looked from the bookshelf to another set of shelves where jars of powders and solutions loomed over a stained worktable. “Are you a scientist?”

  Jack nodded. “My specialization is rocketry. Propellants…explosives. These days I design chemical plants. It’s boring as hell compared to blowing things up and aiming for the stars. But now I’m closer to Hollywood, I’ve picked up some side jobs doing special effects.”

  “Rocketry! That sounds exciting.”

  “I got into it from a burning desire to put a man on the moon. Sadly, Uncle Sam only cares about how I can help him launch heavy bombers from short runways. So I’ve shifted my focus back to my real work.”

  “Which is?”

  “Exploring inner space.”

  “How do you mean?”

  He leaned against the arm of a sofa. “Well, I used to think we were most likely to encounter alien intelligence out there, among the stars. But my occult studies have convinced me we may not need rocket fuel at all. There are preternatural entities among us already, if we can only open our perception to commune with them. There could even be one in this room with us right now, hidden between the atoms in the air between us, visible along another plane, waiting for us to invite it in.”

  Catherine was well read on the concept of evocation, but the way he described it sent a chill down her spine, and she reappraised the room, half expecting to detect a shifting of shadows, a hint that they weren’t alone.

  A beaded curtain rustled, and she started. It was the man she’d seen on the roof, no longer wearing his bandana. “Food’s ready, Jack. There’s enough for three. Are you going to introduce me to your lady friend?”

  “Catherine, this is Kamen Abdelmalek. He’s a grad student in Mathematics at Cal Tech. He’s also a better chef than I am, so you should stay for dinner.” To Abdelmalek, he said, “Catherine is an Anthropology major at…”

  “Barnard. In New York.”

  “She’s visiting UCLA. As it happens, she shares our esoteric interests.”

  “Well in that case, you must dine with us. Do you like shepherd’s pie?”

  “I’d love to join, if it’s really no trouble. The food smells delightful and I’m ravenous from walking the beach all day.”

  “Wonderful.” Jack poured a third glass of the pinot and passed it to Abdelmalek. Together, the men were a stranger pairing than Catherine could tell watching them duel. Parsons had to be six-foot-two, radiant with confident charm, while his companion was short and stout with a shiny black beard and prematurely thinning hair framing a dusky complexion. His face seemed suspicious by default. His clothing was simple—blue slacks and a tan shirt with a high collar, like that of a priest. He took a sip of wine, then placed the goblet down on the long table and set to gathering the loose papers that littered its surface, tucking them into a manila folder.

  “That’s not necessary, Kamen,” Jack said. “We can eat at the kitchen table.”

  “You two go on and get started. I’m just tidying up.”

  Catherine glimpsed sketches among the pages—bold lines of black ink depicting alien anatomy. But the drawings disappeared before the other papers, leaving her squinting at diagrams and hieroglyphs as Jack led her away with a gentle hand on her elbow. She gestured at the other cluttered surface in the room, the workbench. It was strewn with small mounds of powders and resins among vials of chemical solutions and charcoal briquettes. “Do you work on your explosives in the living room, Jack? Doesn’t it put your books and papers in jeopardy, if not life and limb?”

  Parsons laughed. “I won’t lie to you and say I’ve never mixed anything volatile where I sleep, but no. These days, I keep that stuff in a shed. He waved her over to the bench and picked up a square of folded paper that held a reddish powder in the crease. He lifted it to her chin and said, “Smell. It’s perfectly safe.”

  She closed her eyes and sniffed the air. The aroma was like nothing she’d ever encountered before: rich loam and dark musk with overtones of honey and brine.

  “It’s oddly intoxicating. What is it?”

  “I’m manufacturing my own blends of incense, fine tuned to attract the entities we hope to entice across the membrane that separates our world from theirs.”

  “Careful, Jack,” Abdelmalek said. The chaos of papers that had covered the table was now reduced to three neat stacks. The folder in which he’d gathered the artwork was nowhere in sight. “You’ll scare her off.”

  “I told you, she’s one of us. Led here by a dream.”

  “Let’s hear all about it over dinner,” Abdelmalek said, gesturing with his wine glass to whatever lay beyond the beaded curtain.

  * * *

  “This is really good.” Catherine didn’t know what kind of chemistry her host was dabbling in at his workbench, but the alchemy of food and wine was working to relax her. Her calves ached from hiking in the sand all day, but the tension she’d carried in her shoulders while navigating her improvised chance encounter with Jack was melting away. She reminded herself to be careful with alcohol and to guard against slipping on some aspect of her cover story. She’d intentionally hewn close to the facts of her life with only small embellishments and omissions to make this easier. Except, of course, for the very large omission that a secret society had tasked her with breaching the castle to report back on the doings of the magician she was dining with. She felt a grin spreading across her face as she thought of it, a completely absurd turn of events in her fledgling academic life. And it was falling into place. This morning, she’d set out from the beach house with no idea how to approach the task. Now, here she was, chatting with Parsons, who seemed perfectly willing to talk openly about magic with anyone who showed an affinity for it.

  “You look amused,” Abdelmalek said.

  Catherine scooped up another spoonful of the mashed potato topping of the pie. “It’s just delightful. Thank you for having me.”

  “You should stay the night,” Jack said. “A girl shouldn’t be walking the beach alone after dark.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t. I don’t have anything with me. And I wouldn’t dream of imposing.”

  “Don’t be silly. I have more rooms than I can use. And whatever you need for a single night, I’m sure we can dig up. Candy, my wife, left plenty behind when she took off to Mexico. I’m sure her clothes would fit you.”

  “Or I could escort you back to your rental,” Abdelmalek offered.

  “That’s very kind. Both of you. I can feel the day catching up with me. Are you sure I wouldn’t be putting you out if I took you up on the offer of a spare bed?”

  “Of course not. It’s settled then.”

  Abdelmalek gave Parsons a hard look, but Catherine was unsure of what passed between them. It was obvious the Iraqi mathematician didn’t trust her. Beneath the veneer of hospitality, there was an undercurrent of hostility. But it wasn’t his house, was it?

  His eyes flicked from Jack’s to hers and, sensing an impending interrogation, she decided to turn the tables. “So tell me about yourself, Kamen. How long have you been at Cal Tech?”

  “I’ve just finished my first year.”

  “We’re hoping they’ll grant him another, to at least finish his Masters,” Jack said, twisting a corkscrew into a second bottle of wine. Catherine resolved to refuse a refill.

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  “I had always hoped to study in America eventually, but
the aftermath of the uprising in my country forced my hand in January.”

  “I’m afraid I have to plead ignorance,” Catherine said. “With my studies, I don’t get to read much international news.”

  “He’s talking about the Al-Wathbah uprising,” Jack interjected. “Kamen is too modest to take credit for his bravery, but he was among the student protestors when the police gunned down three-hundred of them in the street.”

  “More than that.”

  “I’m so sorry. That’s absolutely horrific. But why wouldn’t you be allowed to stay in America? You’re a student. A political refugee as well, it sounds like.”

  Abdelmalek focused on his wine glass with a sardonic grin. “We were protesting the renewal of the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, a document drafted to keep us under British control through a puppet monarchy. One would think that, of all nations, the United States would be sympathetic to our plight, but it is not that simple in the post-war world.”

  “The protestors were supported by the communist party,” Jack said. “I don’t know how it is at your school in New York, but the way things are going out here lately, that can cost you your job or student visa. Hell, they revoked my security clearance for a while just because I might have talked to a commie at a party one time.”

  “I’ve seen things in the paper, but I had no idea it was that bad. I have to admit I know more about Polynesian tribal politics than current events.”