Smoke and Dagger

by Douglas Wynne

  In recent years, a sect of the peacock angel cult from Iraq had taken up quiet occupation of the site, though no one could say when exactly they gathered, or if any reverend or imam had taken up permanent residence in the church. The faithful came and went in ones and twos at odd hours. When a local child or spinster spoke of hearing the strains of a choir chanting in the deep hours of the night, the account was usually dismissed for having coincided with the noise of a thunderstorm. Surely the place didn’t draw sufficient numbers for a choir. There were no signs posted regarding services. The only visible change to the stone facade was an iron emblem: An encircled triangle, nailed to the door. Strangers knocked on that red door, as the short man in the vest did now, rain dripping from his hair. They knocked, and when the door opened, spoke a word into a gap from which no light escaped. And if they were granted entrance, the same observer could never attest to witnessing their exit.

  Abdelmalek closed the door behind him. He didn’t recognize the woman who had accepted the password, but here, passing through the curtain into the vestibule was a face he knew, a face tattooed with the thorny letters of a language last spoken on the plateau of Leng. The Reverend Ciprian flicked his eyes in Abdelmalek’s direction before stepping forward to place his hands on the shoulders of the woman in the burka. There had been no telegrams or letters to announce their arrival. The church had no phone service, and any attempt to forecast the meeting would have been too risky with the eyes and ears of SPEAR upon them. There was only so much their man inside the agency could do to divert that surveillance. So why was there such knowing in the reverend’s eyes, even before he lifted the burka from the woman’s head. Had he dreamt of this moment?

  Cyprian inhaled deeply at the sight of her. “Salome.” The name came out choked, laden with suppressed emotion. “The papers…they said you were killed in a raid.”

  Salome touched the reverend’s cheek. A tear had formed in the ink-stained crow’s feet at the corner of his eye. She wiped it away with the pad of her thumb. Tentatively, but perhaps emboldened by her touch, he reached out and laid a hand on the black cloth that covered her belly, causing her to flinch and touch his wrist.

  “The baby,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  Salome shook her head. “The baby is fine. I’m just tender from powder burns.”

  “We apologize for any distress you’ve suffered,” Abdelmalek said. “It was necessary that the papers carried news of her death. Thanks to brother Jeremy’s brave efforts, both SPEAR and the Golden Bough believe the child died with the mother.”

  “How can this be?”

  “Reverend, forgive me, but it’s been a long trip. We passed through the city on our way here, to secure the amulet.” Abdelmalek patted his vest pocket and Ciprian’s eyes widened. The news that the jewel was secure would take some of the edge off of what he had to explain next. “May we come in? I imagine Salome could use some refreshment. It was a hot day for hiding under a veil.”

  “Yes, of course, please. Would you like some sweet tea?”

  “Thank you,” Salome said. “That would be lovely.”

  Cyprian held the red velvet curtain aside and waved the two of them into the nave. They followed him to an aisle between the rows of pews, then down a winding stair to a kitchen in the basement, where the woman who had answered Abdelmalek’s knock set about preparing the tea. Abdelmalek thought she was probably younger than she looked dressed in the traditional garb. A single skunk stripe of white ran from her temple to a braided bun. A silver sigil hung from a chain around her neck.

  The reverend offered them chairs and assisted Salome as she settled into hers. The woman set a plate of figs, cheese, and bread on the dark wood table and lit candles before withdrawing to a place in the shadows beside an ancient, grease-stained stove where a kettle rattled above a blue flame.

  Ciprian waited for Abdelmalek to speak, legs crossed beneath his robes, fingers laced around his knee.

  Abdelmalek cleared his throat. “Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist I told you about, has made great progress toward a medium of manifestation. So much that we have him to thank for the conception.”

  The reverend looked pained at this but kept his silence.

  “Our most recent experiment resulted in the near physical emergence of Azothoth.”

  “Near?”

  “The powder isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough to bring the god into a sphere that touches both worlds.”

  Ciprian looked at Salome. “I imagine Salome’s voice deserves more credit for that success than you’re willing to confess.”

  “No, Reverend. With all due respect for her gifts, we’ve reached a limit. Salome’s voice has been fixed since she reached womanhood. A voice alone won’t provide a breakthrough until her child matures. Jack, however, could achieve a breakthrough with his smoke which transcends that limit.”

  Ciprian passed the platter of food to Salome. She politely selected a fig and ate while he asked, “How is it that you and the baby survived this…experiment, my dear?” And turning a hard gaze on Abdelmalek, “And why in the name of R’lyeh would you risk their wellbeing with a rite doomed to failure?”

  Abdelmalek straightened his spine. “We accomplished two things, reverend. We verified that Jack’s smoke can embody the harmonic event to a degree undreamt of before—”

  “Don’t try to bedazzle me with jargon! You have no patience, Kamen. If it takes a generation, then so be it. We don’t need to bring in outsiders. We’ve waited eons already.”

  “And…we convinced the government and a rival order that the voice died with Salome. You have Parsons to thank for that, too. He and brother Jeremy staged a brilliant piece of theater in the desert. And Salome played her part like a Hollywood starlet.”

  Salome rubbed her belly unconsciously. When the gesture drew the reverend’s eye, she took a sip of tea. “He’s an expert with explosives,” she said. “He placed a pair of small charges in my clothes with a bag of chicken blood.”

  “Fake gunshots,” Abdelmalek interjected. “Jack bought us time. A generation, if we need it, but I don’t believe we will. All his life, he’s been laboring to bring mankind to the stars, but now he will bring the lords of the stars to us.”

  “I wish you could have seen it,” Salome said to Ciprian. “It was beautiful. And so close.”

  “And you trust this…thelemite?” The question was wholly directed at Salome. “You are the vessel of the prophecy. Tell me what you would have us do, and I will abide by it. Tell me what brings you here.”

  Salome glanced at the woman by the stove and traced a lazy circle on the scratched table with a fingernail. “We need passage. Anonymous passage. Jeremy got us this far by train, but from here, I would take the old paths north, the subterranean ways. So that I might raise my child among his cousins in Massachusetts.

  The reverend stroked his beard. “It will be arranged. You will sleep here tonight and I’ll prepare a boat in the morning. Will you accompany her, Kamen?”

  “No. I need to leave the country. My work with Parsons is done for now. Our adversaries believe we’ve failed, but there are still artifacts that threaten our future. The scarab, dagger, and mirror. I will scatter them far from the shores where Salome will raise our greatest hope.”

  The reverend laced his fingers into the mudra of the dark star. “So mote it be.”

  CASE FILE

  June 18, 1952

  Case # 156418

  Field Report: Pasadena, CA

  Subject: Death of John Whiteside Parsons (age 37)

  Investigation of the explosion at 1071 South Orange Grove

  Due to our ongoing surveillance of the subject, Agent Whittaker and I arrived at the scene before local police and firefighters. Examination of the debris revealed fragments of occult writings and chemical formulas consistent with our theory of the case, namely that Parsons was still actively engaged in testing new iterations of his trans-dimensional manifestation medium.

  Brief interviews
with Parsons’ neighbors, Ganci and Fosshaug, turned up no useful details. Marjorie Cameron Parsons was unavailable for comment.

  The coach house where the accident occurred was well stocked with volatile chemicals, including nitroglycerin, trinitrobenzene, and penthaerythritol tetra nitrate. The local authorities will likely attribute the blast to improper handling of fulminate of mercury, which Parsons is believed to have been working with at the time. It is surmised that he was mixing the volatile chemical in a coffee can and dropped it, setting off a chain reaction with his other explosive stores.

  While there are indeed similarities to the flattening of structures by invisible force documented in the Dunwich case of 1928, it is my initial finding that this is mere coincidence. I found no conclusive evidence that Parsons attained his long sought breakthrough with a compound of sufficient efficacy to cause a trans-dimensional event without the aid of a genetically gifted vocalist. Nevertheless, Agent Whittaker and I confiscated all traces of the arcane smoke powders before the remaining chemicals were removed from the site by the 58th Ordnance Disposal Unit of the US Army.

  These samples were logged at the new secure SPECTRA facility at the China Lake Naval Station shortly before midnight on June 17th, 1952.

  Yours,

  Agent Jeremy Leblanc

  About the Author

  DOUGLAS WYNNE wrote his first novel in high school but took a creative detour to spend the next decade writing songs and singing in rock bands before coming full circle back to fiction. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and son and a houseful of animals. He is the author of five novels, including the SPECTRA Files trilogy:

  Red Equinox (Book 1)

  Black January (Book 2)

  Cthulhu Blues (Book 3)

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  Smoke & Dagger on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TT8KW82

  Get in Touch!

  Douglas maintains a website at Monsters & Miracles and loves to hear from readers. You can also follow him on Twitter or connect on Facebook.

  About the Artist

  Artist/musician MAT FITZSIMMONS has contributed graphics to the underground (music posters; surf, skate, snowboard art; punk ‘zines; independent books) for over 25 years, along with fronting the savage rock juggernaut, Herbert/Automatic Animal (1993-2018). A life-long resident, Fitz lives in Santa Cruz, CA with wife Brandi and giant cat Chloe, where he draws inspiration from the shadows of the mountains to the depths of the sea. Contact: feralteethpress@gmail.com

  Acknowledgements

  Smoke & Dagger had its genesis when Mat Fitzsimmons, a reader of the SPECTRA books, sent me some artwork inspired by my additions to the Cthulhu Mythos. One thing led to another, the stack of drawings grew, and somewhere along the line Mat suggested that I should write a story about Jack Parsons, the pioneering rocket engineer and occultist who blew himself up in 1952 and has a crater on the dark side of the moon named for him (cue the Pink Floyd soundtrack). It wasn’t the first time a reader had suggested I do something with Parsons, so I figured I should take the hint.

  Given Jack’s fascination with the occult, his involvement with classified government projects, and the false accusations of espionage that briefly cost him his security clearance, he and his milieu did seem tailor-made for a SPECTRA Files adventure. Once I did the math and realized that he could have crossed paths with Becca Philips’ grandmother Catherine when she was Becca’s age, the urge to blend fact and fiction became irresistible.

  Like any historical fiction, the book you now hold in your hands called for a good bit of research. I owe a primary debt to George Pendle’s excellent biography of Parsons, Strange Angel. The CBS TV series based on Pendle’s book does a great job of capturing the atmosphere of the era and the essential passion of Jack Parsons, but in some ways it’s as fictionalized as my novella. I urge anyone interested in the real John Whiteside Parsons to pick up Pendle’s biography. If you do, you’ll discover that though my aim was to blur the lines of fact and fiction around Parsons, some of the weirdest stuff about him is what’s true.

  For the details of Catherine’s 1940s New York stomping grounds, I found great helpers in the research librarians who haunt those halls today. Mai Reitmeyer at the American Museum of Natural History sent me scans of the 1949 exhibit halls guidebook, while Martha Tenney and Shannon O’Neill at the Barnard Archives furnished the same for the college’s Anthropology course catalogue of that year. The Metropolitan Museum’s publication, The New York Obelisk: How Cleopatra’s Needle Came to New York and What Happened When it Got Here by Martina D’Alton provided a treasure trove of cool details to spark my imagination, and if you go looking for info on the freemasons who brought the obelisk to America, you’ll find the one instance where I combined two historical figures into a single fictional character.

  I owe my greatest thanks on this project to my collaborator, Mat Fitzsimmons, for his stunning art, clever cyphers, and generous spirit. Next up, my writer friend Nick Nafpliotis provided valuable creative support, editorial guidance, and the perfect title. Chuck Killorin, an early reader of all the SPECTRA books (and cover artist for the trilogy) read a rough draft and gave me the confidence to see it through, while Matthew Bright captured the feel of this prequel episode with a cover that sings. Robert S. Wilson polished the final edit on a tight deadline, and Jill Sweeney-Bosa was kind enough to lend her sharp eye and red pen to proofreading under pressure. Any errors of fact or grammar that slipped through are mine.

  Love to Jen and River, who keep my life happy, stable, and creative. And special thanks to you, faithful reader of my weird tales. Without your support this story would never have been told.