by Emby Press
“Okay,” conceded Mountjoy, “I guess you do have a case. Especially as she’s disappeared. But, what is her involvement? Was she compelled to do this or bribed?”
“Actually, I have a suspicion she was behind it.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Driscoll.
“Probable,” retorted Paul. “the only evidence of anyone else’s involvement is the Dark Mistress emails and I think they were fake – like the hair and the Arcana club, they were intended to make us think Jerry was kidnapped by an occultist in south London. I don’t believe there was one.”
“No, no, no, no,” cried Carla. “You said it yourself, Paul – there was someone else whom she called to send those… demons. Someone else!”
Paul smiled, grimly. “Well, it’s only really because of the Dark Mistress emails that we were looking for an occultist.”
“But,” Driscoll, “you said she didn’t have this Talent-thing, so she couldn’t summon them herself – and your theory is predicated on her phoning someone. So, there has to be a second person involved.”
Paul nodded. “Yes, a second person, but not someone else.”
“Speak sense, man!” Driscoll snapped.
Carla gasped. “Jerry!”
“Exactly,” said Paul. “He wasn’t kidnapped – he left of his own accord; in fact, helped plan it. I think he and Rebecca were in love and, knowing you’d never approve, set all this up so they could run off together.”
“But, those demon-things,” Driscoll protested.
“Oh, I think Jerry summoned them up,” said Paul. “His exposure to the occult either allowed him to find a grimoire that gave him the knowledge he needed or else he got his hands on an object that summons them.”
“You have to get him back,” sobbed Carla.
Paul shrugged. “He’ll probably be back in touch in his own good time.”
Mountjoy slammed his fist down onto his desk. “Not good enough!”
“Well, I can try another trace; if someone can get me something really of Jerry’s. Driscoll could see if Rebecca’s left any electronic clues, but I’d guess not; they’re good at covering their tracks and laying false trails.”
Carla sobbed.
“But,” Paul quickly added, “the good news, based on what we’ve learned, is that Jerry doesn’t seem to have the ability to actually block a trace. I should be able to locate him for you…”
*
The ritual trace went smoothly and once he was certain the link he’d established with Jerry Mountjoy was secure, Paul sent forth his astral body to follow the etheric cord, flanked by Arabella and several elemental spirits, to where the boy was. He was no particularly surprised to discover Jerry and Rebecca were at Heathrow.
Awaking once more in his body, Paul turned to Mountjoy and Driscoll, who’d been waiting for the outcome of the ritual, and told them where Jerry and Rebecca were. A quick call to the airport police would see what they were detained and Jerry returned to his parents. Paul didn’t think Rebecca had actually committed a crime – excepting wasting police time and maybe fraud, he wasn’t sure – but, he doubted she’d be keeping her job. He didn’t feel too positive about the outcome.
Of course, it was entirely possible that Jerry would resume his relationship with her in a couple of years. Equally, it was possible he’d saved them from a disastrous, short-lived romance, although his brief examination of their auras hinted at the former.
Finally, the job done, Paul was able to go to bed. He’d left a Sylph monitoring the situation at the airport, just in case Jerry was foolish enough to use the Ape Fiends to try and escape, but the boy either had good sense or their summoning was not simple for him, as nothing further happened and Paul was able to drift off to some well-earned sleep.
*
Paul didn’t see Jerry in the flesh, but the boy’s sombre-looking father handed him a cheque for a substantial amount before Driscoll led him down to the Rolls Royce that would drive him home. The amount would tide him over nicely. Despite his misgivings about putting a roadblock in the way of Jerry and Rebecca’s relationship, he was pleased at the outcome of the case.
Arabella was waiting for him when he arrived home.
“Don’t feel bad about it,” she told him, easily divining what was on his mind; “true love can overcome any obstacle. Just look at you and me.”
He smiled and kissed her chill cheek. “Thanks.”
THE RED BROTHERHOOD
Scott Chaddon
More than half of the way through his first day in the twenty-seventh precinct Detective John Munro signed for the only significant piece of hard evidence available on his assigned case, a worn looking brown leather journal with a buckle strap in a clear plastic evidence bag. There was also a handwritten note tucked in the plastic baggie along with the journal. It read ‘Journal is book marked at the relevant point. Author’s sanity may be in question.’
It was signed and dated by the last investigator to look into the case, a Detective James Smit, May 18, 1976. Munro knew the cold case was his baptism into the precinct. Sure he had been doing police work for six years and had gotten his gold shield just last year, but that was back west. Los Angeles was not New York, and this department had its traditions. In this case, new detectives got a randomly picked cold case to see what they could make of it. When he pulled the Pete Granger case he noticed somewhat amused looks passing between the other detectives. Now he supposed knew why, as he looked through the reports and papers contained in the file folder, this case wasn’t just cold it was frozen solid!
The crime scene had been a barn on an abandoned farm out in the country. It was rumored, at that time, to have been a hot spot of some kind of cult activity. The scene inside of the barn was gruesome, the walls were painted with strange, red and black symbols, an array of huge candles set in an intricate, circular, geometric pattern around a large slab of polished black stone, probably obsidian, etched with strange symbols and letters. Affixed at four points were shackles with chains bolted into the stone. There were black and white photos along with reports and documents in the case file, thin as it was. Upon investigation there had been evidence of a large gathering of people and fresh blood found on the stone. Whose blood, no one knew. The mystery was the disappearance of a local private investigator, Pete Granger. The evidence that tied the victim to the farm was that the journal and his clothes, a shirt, socks, shoes and his trench coat were discovered behind a stack of moldering straw bales. The journal had been hidden in the coat’s lining. What made the case so cold was that it had happened in 1923! That and a serious lack of evidence to follow up on, Mr. Granger had never reappeared and his body had never been found.
Detective Munro leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on his desk and began to read the journal from the marked spot. He scanned back through the entries preceding the marker and, sure enough, it documented the closing of a rather long, but successful, marital infidelity case. The next entry was indeed the one he wanted.
*
April 16, 1923 – 4:20pm – Brunette skirt walks into the office, looking rough but with a fist full of dough, practically begging me to take on her case. Despite having just finished with the McMurty case times were stretching thin and I could definitely use a good paying gig.
She drops the stack of greenbacks on my desk and says she can get more if needed but she wants me to start right away. At this point the dame realizes she hasn’t even introduced herself and says her name is Theresa Collins, a student of history and anthropology at the university, and she needs my protection. She tells me that someone is after her but if she can stay hidden until after June 21st she would be free and clear.
I look at the pile of simoleans heaped on my desk but don’t want to look like a push over, you don’t get a client’s respect by being an easy deal. I tell her I need to know a few things before I consider taking the job.
1) Who are you running from?
2) Why are they chasing you?
3) What’s going t
o happen if they catch you?
4) What exactly do you need me to do?
Miss Collins sits down, takes a breath and explains that she is being pursued by members of a cult devoted to some ancient, evil god. They’re after her for infiltrating the cult to gather information, she works as reporter. She, not being among the ‘true followers’, had been discovered and she barely escaped capture. She says that she thinks they’ll kill her if they catch her and she needs me to do whatever it takes to keep her alive until after June twenty-first.
Why the twenty-first? I ask her. She says that once the solstice is past the cult won’t need her blood so much and she may be forgotten. After all she hadn’t learned or seen very much before she was discovered. My mind tells me she’s nuts but I’m still curious.
What do they want your blood for? I ask. She tells me they would use it in a dark ritual of some kind. She looks genuinely frightened for her life, like she really believes it. I think on it a moment and then accept the job with a nod. I give her my rates and she agrees. Time to do some digging into this cult, get a history and find out what it is I’m up against.
Tonight she will crash at my joint and we’ll see about tomorrow.
April 18, 1923 – Finished making reservations at a couple dozen hotels all over the city. We change locations every few days, keep her moving and check in during the graveyard shift when no one is about. I pick up the keys and she goes in with her face covered, using a hood, umbrella, whatever. That takes care of being tracked. Next business is to look into this cult.
April 19, 1923 – Did some digging on the cult, turns out that its closer to being a secret society, not sure how far it reaches. Weird thing, more than half of the people I talked to flinched when I started asking about them. There doesn’t seem to be a name to this cult, rather its referred to loosely as The Red Brotherhood.
April 21, 1923 – Laid low today. I think my investigation is drawing attention, I was followed yesterday, took three hours to lose the sap. I need to get Miss Collins to spill about what she knows, she’s reluctant to talk about it but I may have to put the squeeze on her to learn what she knows.
April 22, 1923 – Having second thoughts about this job. With a bit of pressure Miss Collins gave up the goods and I think I might have been better off not knowing that The Red Brotherhood performs human sacrifice (this is the fate Miss Collins is hoping to avoid, she said) and that before she was discovered she was told that some very powerful citizens were members, though she doesn’t know who they are. I need to be extra careful from here on out. I’m going to be packing my .380, just the sight of it should deter most nasty encounters, if not then I’m a pretty decent shot and my stint in the army left me with some decent hand to hand skills.
*
Detective Munro set the book down and stood up. Human sacrifice? He shook his head and went for coffee. This was the stuff of horror movies, not legitimate investigations! Ridiculous! All the same, he had to at least go through the motions. He called the kid down in records and asked her to find everything she could on Pete Granger, Theresa Collins, the farm in question and a group or society called The Red Brotherhood. She told him she’d have it ready for him as soon as possible. He thanked her and hung up. He’d probably have to go and investigate the farm, if it still stood that is. Sitting back down with a fresh cup of coffee and a sigh, he opened the book up again and continued reading where he’d left off.
*
April 25, 1923 – Rescheduled the reservations, someone was waiting outside of today’s hotel. I spotted him first and kept myself out of sight. We ended up bunking down in a dive for tonight. I’m a bit concerned and Miss Collins seems frightened. I made some calls to trusted colleagues, called in a few markers, and paid a few snitches and have them bringing me pieces of the puzzle for the next few days. Let’s see what happens when we look under a few rocks.
April 27, 1923 – I didn’t hear from Mickey yesterday. I found out this morning that he’d been killed. Run down by an unmarked car, I was told that the car stopped and backed over him for good measure before racing off. A black sedan with darkened windows and no plates. Poor Mickey, what a raw deal!
Information has begun trickling in, another day or two and I can start piecing the puzzle together. So far, the news is of some farm, someplace upstate, where they perform these rituals to an ancient, dark god (or a monster of some kind – stories vary) on the equinoxes. Confirming Miss Collins’ story, I half wished she was making it up.
I’m starting to feel like I’m being watched whenever I go out. I haven’t seen anyone out of the ordinary so I imagine the creepy way this job is turning out is starting to get to me. Theresa is a wreck, much more pressure and she’ll be a candidate for the funny farm. What I can’t sort out is how they’re tracking us.
April 29, 1923 – Vinnie and Josh have gone missing. I’ve called off my other buddies, I don’t want to risk their coming to a bad end. I’ll have to look into it myself. I have an address for the farm now and Theresa volunteered that they gather on every Monday night so tomorrow night I will attempt to see what goes on in these meetings.
Rescheduled our reservations again, using different names with each one now and reserving for one person or three people rather than two. That might just do the job of shaking them off of our trail.
April 30, 1923 – I am writing this from a secure position in a hay loft in the barn on the farm, made a comfortable little nest with a perfect view of what must be their ritual area. The floor below has a lot of candles in some kind of circle pattern and a large stone with chains and shackles attached to it in the circle’s center. I arrived hours early so I could approach undetected and prepare my camouflage. I told Miss Collins I was meeting with contacts and would not be back until the early morning so as to ease her nerves. Now all I need to do is watch and wait.
They’ve begun to arrive, they all wear red hooded robes with black belts and daggers, hoods drawn so I can’t recognize anyone but there seem to be at least twenty members and ten more in similar black robes with red belts carrying swords serving as guards.
The ritual began with three red robes lighting all of the candles in what seemed to be a specific order, the entire group of red robes then formed a circle just outside of the candles and they began to mutter and chant in some low, strange sounding, guttural language I did not recognize. This went on for about twenty minutes before four black robes, carried in a young, nude woman, they manacled her to the stone and she lay still and silent and the chanting continued uninterrupted as the four black robes finished their job and then backed out of the circle with a bow. Gradually the chanting changed and picked up tempo and the words changed, growing louder and harsher. The group of red robes started swaying together in time to the chanting, from one end a red robe with two thick black stripes over each shoulder stepped into the circle past the moving red robes and he was chanting something different but complimentary to the circle’s chant.
He raised his arms up and suddenly all the candle flames shot up to about a foot tall, burning brightly, casting strange shadows that, with the swaying motion of the red robes made me swear that I saw I figure moving among the shadows on the wall that had no corresponding person in the circle. Red robe with the stripes drew his dagger and held it high, he sliced into the palm of his own left hand and as the drops of his blood fell, the girl on the slab began to rise.
As God is my witness she started floating until the chains attached to the stone strained to hold her down. When she had risen as far as the chains would let her, six red robes, still swaying and chanting in time with the others, moved toward her, past the brilliant flames, each with their daggers drawn. They stepped up to the floating girl and acting as one made a shallow cut on her upper arms, either side of her waist and outer thighs. They stepped back and rejoined the others. As she bled onto the black stone the moving shadow I had noticed before started to become more and more pronounced, it became blacker and now moved against the sway until it steppe
d out of the shadows entirely and into the circle of light. A thing composed entirely of shadow and yet still partially transparent, when it moved between myself and a candle’s light. I could see through it!
Then the thing began to speak aloud in a voice so raspy and cold that it could not be made by a human throat. It spoke in the strange language the red robes were chanting in and despite their uninterrupted movement and chanting they all seemed to be paying strict attention to everything it had to say. This shadow must have stood between eight and nine feet tall, a thick and stocky torso, dog legged, four arms and a head that seemed to grow right out of the chest and form a huge snake shaped snout with prominent fangs. While I could see no depth of detail all of this was evident. After saying its piece it seemed to walk straight into the stone that the girl still floated over and began to sink into it. As it sank so did the candle flames and the girl slowly drifted downward, by the time it was entirely within the stone the girl still floated an inch above it. As the stone supported her weight once again the four black robes came, unshackled her, wrapped the girl in a red robe and led her from the circle.
After she had gone the chanting slowed and slowed until the entire group was still and silent. The leader spoke a moment longer, closed his wounded hand into a fist and all the candles sputtered and died at the same instant. After a few moments of darkness the electric lights came up and the group started behaving like any social gathering, though from where I was I could not hear enough of the hushed chatter to glean anything of use. After thirty minutes or so of this they began to break up and go their separate ways. An hour afterward all was quiet and abandoned again.
Even as I write this my mind is trying to handle what it was I just witnessed. How could such a thing be real? But it had undoubtedly been real, there is no question of it. I’m still waiting another hour silently, to be absolutely certain I’m alone and even then I’ll moved quietly and carefully away from this place until I’m back in the comfort of the city. I fear to sleep, dreading what my dreams may contain.
