by Edward Lee
She looked up Prelate in the same text:
PRELATE [also prelates, or mastrum]: The liturgical leaders of activistic sects, predominant among the aorists. Prelates were thought to be reincarnatible, psychic, and wise. They were also inexplicably wealthy, supposedly financing their aorist activities through treasure granted via Satan or apostate demons. One prelate, apprehended near Paris in 1399, confessed to inquisitors: “He bestows treasure upon the faithful.” He, in this case, was not Satan but a demon called Gaziel, a lower demon said to preside over underground treasure, namely gold. Soldiers of the Holy Office found a fortune in gold and currency buried in the prelate’s chateau. Additionally, prelates were said to be clairvoyant, and possessed the ability to trance-channel at will.
Next, Faye looked up Baalzephon:
BAALZEPHON: A demon of higher orders. He reigns over fertility, passion, and creativity. European sects, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, according to the Church registry, knew Baalzephon as the “Father of the Earth,” or “He who stands closest to the earth,” and is said, due to this proximity, to encourage his worshipers to incarnation rites. Baalzephon’s appearance is not known. His sign is the triad, or trine, of black stars.
Lame, Faye thought. She needed details. This grim stuff was actually starting to get interesting. Next she looked up the name in a much older text translated from French, called Demonomanie Pharmacopae. It read, simply:
BAALZEPHON: An incubus.
Chapter 17
Faye nearly gasped when she stepped into Jack’s office at 9 p.m.; he looked wrung out, and his looks did not improve when she explained what her day’s research had divulged. His own disclosures of the latest murder did not surprise her. She knew quite a bit now about the protocol of the aorist sects. Earlier, TSD had verified Karla Panzram’s graphological conclusions; the latents from the Barrington murder were different from the Black murder, which meant that two killers were executing the same modi. Faye easily translated the Latin left on the wall: Pater terrae, per me terram ambula meant “Father of the Earth, walk the earth through me.”
“It’s a specific reference to the demon they’re worshiping,” she told him now. “His name is—”
“Baalzephon,” he muttered when he spotted the name highlighted several times in the material she’d photocopied.
“An incubus,” she added.
“What the hell is an incubus?”
“A male sex-spirit or incarnate. It comes from the Latin incubare, which means to lie down upon, or to lie with. Incubi were said to have sexual relations with sleeping women, supposedly using sexual pleasure to incline a woman away from Christianity toward evil. Satanic incarnation was a chief belief among aorist covens for about five hundred years. Sufficient supplication and ritual homage was thought to bring the devils closer to the earth. Sacrifice was considered the best way to achieve a complete incarnation, the full bringing of a devil into the coven’s midst, which they called onmiddan. Think of it as an objectification of a spiritual realm, the putting of flesh upon spirit. That’s what incarnate means in Latin. To make flesh.”
“In other words these psychos thought that cutting people up on altars would bring real devils into their presence?”
“For a time, yes, but not necessarily on altars. The aorists’ rituals were occulic, which means interstitial. In fact, the impresa for Baalzephon — the triad of black stars — was thought to be an actual occulus.”
“You’re losing me, Faye,” Jack complained.
“An occulus — a doorway. The impresa was—”
“What’s an impresa!” Jack half shouted.
Faye half smiled. “The emblem, the triangle that the killers left on the walls. It was supposed to be a gap between the domain of the demons and the real world. The deacon’s story indicates this pretty clearly; not only did the two surrogates become incarnations of incubi, but the girl, after she was sacrificed, disappeared through the impresa on the church floor.”
“She went to hell, you mean.”
“Yes, or I should say she was given to hell through the rite. She was given, in body and spirit, to the demon. To Baalzephon.”
“And Baalzephon is the same demon that is being worshiped by the murderers of Shanna Barrington and Rebecca Black?”
“It seems so,” Faye said. “The methodology of the ritual is the same, and the impresa is the same. Then there’s the Latin on the wall. Pater Terrae — Father of the Earth. Baalzephon was known by many nicknames like this. Father of Passion, Father of Art, and Father of the Earth.”
Jack slouched. “I don’t know about you, Faye, but I could sure use a drink.”
* * *
Jack drove them in his unmarked straight to the Undercroft. Faye could tell he’d had a bad day. He smoked three cigarettes on the way and said almost nothing.
Inside was a typical weeknight crowd. Jack and Faye pulled up stools as Craig poured from three taps at once behind the bar. “I want something with some kick,” Faye said.
“I think that can be arranged,” Jack remarked. “Craig, the young lady here would like something with some kick. We’ll leave it to your professional discretion. As for me—”
“The usual,” Craig finished. He poured Jack a Fiddich and got Faye a bottle of Tucher Maibock. “By the way,” he said, “one of your least favorite people in the world was in earlier looking for you.”
Jack opened his mouth but stalled. “Who ever it was, don’t tell me. The way I feel right now I don’t even want to hear about it.” He held up his glass in the bar light. In a few moments it was empty.
“You drink too much,” Faye said, “but I have a feeling you’ve heard that before.”
“Once or twice. Alcohol brings out the best in me.”
“I can see that.” Coming here, Faye saw now, was a mistake. By consenting to come here she was allowing him to be fed upon by his problems. She knew that she liked this man, but right now she didn’t like the part of him she was seeing. Yesterday she’d vaguely entertained the idea of getting involved with him, and last night, they’d slept together. Now, though… She didn’t know. Jack’s voraciousness for drink unsettled her. Did she really need the headache? Jack drank because he couldn’t handle his problems, and if he couldn’t handle them, then that wasn’t her problem. I’ve got my own problems, she thought. I can’t worry about his. And this presented another problem. She didn’t know if that’s how she really felt, or if that’s how she thought she was supposed to feel.
“Ninety percent of all homicides are either domestics or drug-related,” Jack said when his next drink was poured. “Those are easy. Why do I get all the winners?”
Now he was feeling sorry for himself, which Faye couldn’t stand in a man. “Maybe it’s because you’re a good investigator.”
Jack looked at her. “I doubt it. This case is sinking. Maybe the people upstairs know that, and they’re letting me have it because they think I’ll screw it up. Then they can get rid of me.”
“Poor little you.”
“Why are you so sarcastic tonight?”
“Self-pity brings out the best in me.”
“Sarcasm is your best trait?”
“Keep talking like you’re talking, and you’ll find out.”
Now Jack smiled genuinely for the first time tonight. “You’re doing very good work.”
“Please don’t patronize me.”
“I’m not. You’re doing good work, but I need you to do better work. Now I want you to identify the geographics of the ritual.”
“I don’t think I can; it’s too diffuse.”
“Give it a try, though.”
“Okay. What else?”
“You’re the researcher, not me. I’m too busy with the mechanics of the case. You decide what research avenues would be the most productive, then give me what you’ve got.”
No, he wasn’t patronizing her at all, he was putting his faith in her, and she guessed she liked that. She liked the beer too; it was smooth an
d malty, and they weren’t kidding when they said it had kick. She was beginning to feel a buzz already.
“Do you think any of it’s true?” Jack pondered.
“What, the stuff the aorists did? Sure.”
“No, I mean the supernatural stuff.”
Faye squinted at his meaning. “Are you asking me if I believe that human beings became incarnate of devils, and that sacrifice victims were ritually transported out of the real world?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“Of course I don’t believe it.”
“But they believed it. There must’ve been a reason.”
“Oh, there was a reason. They were peasants reacting to a tremendous oppression. Oppressed people become fanatical in their belief systems. All of history is a pretty good example.”
“So the guy was lying?
“Michael Bari, the deacon spy? No, he wasn’t lying. He was living in the middle of a delusion he didn’t understand, that’s all. He was intimidated to believe by a simple but repetitive exposure to an antithetical force. The Catholic church believed in demons; it still does. That’s one part of Christian thesis that never changes: to believe in God, one must also believe in the devil. It’s also pretty likely that Michael Bari was under the influence of narcotics; the aorists routinely used drugs to heighten their religious experiences. Bari could never have maintained his credibility as a sect member without taking part. I have no doubt that he believed he witnessed an incarnation. And as for the sacrifices, the rituals and descriptions — all that stuff was definitely true.”
“It makes me think about how much mankind has progressed.”
“Or hasn’t progressed,” Faye said.
“God, you’re pessimistic.”
“Am I really? Michael Bari’s account of the aorist ritual is six hundred years old. You’ve got people practicing the exact same ritual, in this city, right now.”
“I guess you got me on that one.” Jack slugged back the rest of his Fiddich and flagged Craig for another. “That reminds me — what you were saying about drugs. My TSD chief found an herbal extract of some kind in the first victim’s blood, but it’s not in the books. Find out everything you can about drug use among the aorists. And find out more about…what’s his name?”
“Baalzephon,” Faye replied.
Even Craig winced when Jack put his empty up for a refill. He’d just downed two drinks like they were shooters. Great, Faye thought. She’d need a wheelbarrow to get him out of here. Again, she began to revert to the lack of compassion she always felt when she was disappointed.
“Haven’t you had enough?” she suggested.
“There’s never enough, and there’s an old saying by a very famous person that I subscribe to wholeheartedly. ‘If I don’t drink it, someone else will.’”
“We got here less than a half hour ago and you’re already ordering your third drink!”
“I like odd numbers,” Jack said.
“Jack’s favorite number, by the way, is thirteen,” Craig joked.
But before Faye could further complain. Jack said, “Be right back,” and excused himself for the obvious.
“He tries,” Craig said when Jack went up the stairs.
“Tries? He’s ruining himself.”
“Why don’t you give him a break? He’s got some problems.”
“Everybody’s got problems, Craig. Getting drunk is the weakest way to deal with them.”
“Well, Faye, you must care about him despite his weaknesses, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”
“I work for him, that’s all,” Faye insisted.
“You sure that’s all?”
Even if it wasn’t, what business was it of his? “Are you trying to piss me off on purpose?”
Craig grinned, chewing on a bar straw. “Only for the sake of practicality. Offhand, I can’t think of anyone who’s perfect. Can you? I mean, besides yourself, of course.”
Faye glared at him. She had a mind to slap him but didn’t for fear that he would probably slap back a lot harder.
“He used to be famous, sort of — I mean locally. Couple of years ago he solved a bunch of really bad murders.”
“What’s that got to do with what we’re talking about?” Faye said.
“A lot. Jack’s devoted his career to helping people in need and making the world a little bit better. He always got the worst murder cases because he was the best investigator in the county. Every day he was neck-deep in the worst crimes you could imagine. He had to look at all that — all that tragedy, all that evil — and somehow hold up enough to get the job done. Could you, Faye? Could you work on a case where some slob is raping kids to death and burying them in his basement? Could you work on a case where crackheads are kidnaping babies for ransom and then killing the babies? Could you do that and hold up, year after year?”
“No,” Faye said.
“Jack did, and there are a lot of people alive today because of it, and there are a lot of scumbags and murders sitting in the can because Jack had the strength to hold up.”
Faye didn’t know what to say. If Craig was trying to make her feel like shit, he was doing a fine job. “So what happened?”
“He burned out, used himself up. About a year ago he was working on a pedophile case. He followed up a bunch of long-shot leads and got a line on a suspect, some rich guy, president of some big company. Jack’s superiors told him to lay off or else. But Jack didn’t lay off. He bamboozled a warrant to search the guy’s house. He found dozens of videotapes of the rich guy and his friends sodomizing little kids. The guy’s doing life in the state pen now. But that was it for Jack. He was never the same.”
Faye felt a lump in her throat. “And now you think I’m a shitty person for not taking Jack’s problems to heart.”
“I wouldn’t say you’re a shitty person, Faye. Just not a very considerate one.” With that, then, Craig loaded up a tray of Heinekens and Rocks and took them to a table.
I guess he’s right, Faye thought, though she didn’t like the idea of being outpsychologized by a brash, cocky bartender. When Jack came back from the men’s room, Faye tried to smile but it didn’t come off. I’m sorry, Jack, she thought.
“Baalzephon,” he muttered, jiggling the ice in his glass. She watched this blank and tragic futility — fleeing one form of hell through the inundation of another. She felt helpless.
He was getting drunk already, but his eyes looked keen, or ruminant in some displaced wisdom. “Baalzephon,” he muttered again. He signaled Craig for drink number four.
Baalzephon, Faye thought. Madness. Devils. He’s right. They gave him a real winner this time.
And for the next hour she watched Jack Cordesman disappear into his own impresa, not one of triads or satanic rites, but the universal impresa: alcohol.
Chapter 18
P assion for everything, the strange words seemed to lilt in her head; they were like a shadow peering over her shoulder as she sketched. Veronica looked at the clock now for the first time since noon and saw that it was midnight. She’d worked twelve hours without even being aware of it.
Delve into your passion, whispered Khoronos’ words.
Veronica felt stunned.
She rubbed her eyes and stretched. Prototypical sketches lay all over her worktable. She pictured herself sitting here all day and night, a blonde oblivione maniacally wearing out one charcoal pencil after the next. The block was gone; Khoronos’ wisdom had inspired her into a creative tempest. At last, Veronica had begun to see her passion.
She examined her work in the bleary lamplight. Most of the sketches failed to convey the eye of her dream. They seemed compressed by structure; she knew the failure at once. True art must never be bound by structure. The dream, the fire-lover, was an image, not a concept. It was up to her to give the image meaning, to release it from structure into aesthetic truth.
Blake and Klimt had advised that the artist must always work until he or she dropped. Faulkner had rec
ommended stopping when the going got good, to protect the creative élan from becoming famished. She tried again, reconstructing the fire-lover on a fresh sheet of Lanaquarelle pH-neutral paper. The figure must make the viewer feel the same impassioned heat that Veronica felt in the dreams. She gave it a new poise and put it further back in the jagged dreamscape, but she still couldn’t quite make it work. She decided, then, that it was time to take Faulkner’s advice.
Hunger gnawed at her belly like a taloned paw. She went immediately down to the dark kitchen and opened the fridge. Someone prepared snacks for them every night — Marzen or Gilles, she guessed. Rolls of smoked Nova salmon, a creamy nougat on tiny bread pieces, and bowls of various spiced kimchi. Veronica ate insatiably.
Then she heard a splash.
It was a tiny sound, a secret. She looked abruptly out the window, then just as abruptly withdrew.
People were in the pool.
Next she carefully cracked the French doors and peeked out. Ginny and Amy Vandersteen, their shed clothes on the pool ledge, backpedaled in the luscious water before two onlookers — Marzen and Gilles. Dressed only in white slacks, they were staring, smiling at Ginny and Amy. Voyeurs, Veronica thought. Like Khoronos. But Khoronos wasn’t with them. A moment later, Marzen and Gilles had stripped too, and were lowering themselves into the pool.
Thanks a lot for inviting me, Veronica thought in complaint.
The four frolicked in the water amid tails of moonlight. Veronica felt something like jealousy bubble up — she felt left out even though skinny dipping wasn’t her style. Amy Vandersteen was giggling like a high school girl as Gilles cornered her and splashed water in her face. Marzen hoisted Ginny up and heaved her headfirst into the deep end. Then the frolic quieted.
Damn!
Veronica wished she could see more. The moonlight reduced them to pale forms in the water; they’d paired off in opposite corners. Amy and Gilles were more visible — they were kissing. The director’s arms wrapped intently about the Frenchman’s muscled neck, hanging on. What burned Veronica more was the certainty that Marzen and Ginny were doing the same thing.
