The Sixth Key

by Adriana Koulias

  ‘You saw the manuscript, didn’t you? It is the original Apocalypse of Saint John isn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to open it.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’ Rahn felt like throwing his hands up in the air.

  ‘We have to assume, for the time being, that it is what we think it is.’

  Rahn was so exhausted he didn’t know when he fell asleep, or how long it took for them to reach the turn-off to the hermitage. He woke, perhaps sensing the sudden stillness, with his feet numb and his mouth tasting like charcoal. He sat up. Eva was staring straight ahead.

  ‘Do you know what tonight is?’ she said, buttoning up her coat, getting ready for a battle, looking practical and cool.

  ‘Tonight?’ Rahn said.

  ‘Remember what Madame Corfu told us at Rennes-le-Château two nights ago, when she recounted Gélis’s horrific murder over dinner? Remember what the Serbians said?’

  He could hear the gorges below, water rumbling over the rocks. The moon was edging the clouds, filling the world with phantoms, spectres and demons disguised as rocks, trees and bushes.

  ‘Today is All Saints’ Day and tomorrow will be The Day of the Dead,’ she said. ‘Tonight is the cusp. This night, forty-one years ago, Gélis was murdered.’

  ‘You mean, at midnight?’ Rahn said.

  She nodded.

  Rahn allowed a smile to steal over his face. The creator of this script had thought of everything except for his choice of leading man! He took one look in the rear-view mirror and inspected his red eyes and his split lip. La Dame was wrong about him – he wasn’t leading man material. He badly needed a brandy and his hands were shaking. Perhaps Pabst would one day make a film about such a man as he might have been, a wise-cracking, hairy-chested archaeologist – a larger-than-life Grail hunter who wore an ironic smile on his face, a tropical helmet on his head and a pistol on his belt. He sighed. It was a ludicrous thought. Now another thought occurred to him. Perhaps he had died at Wewelsburg; perhaps those shots had killed him and he was now in some hellish version of a story by Edgar Allan Poe? A story in which the hero is trapped in Purgatory and doesn’t realise he’s dead. Where he is made to live and relive Hell, over and over again, like the legend of Judas – stuck on that island where every day is Good Friday.

  ‘The hour before midnight is used for good, the half-hour after is reserved for evil,’ Eva said, cutting through his thoughts.

  ‘How do you know these things?’ Rahn asked her, amazed.

  ‘I’m the personification of wisdom.’ She smiled sadly. ‘So few men are truly wise.’

  ‘But the Cathars were perfect,’ he gave back.

  ‘Ah, but who in this world can truly say they are perfect?’

  He sat stock-still. Where had he heard this before?

  ‘When is midnight?’ he asked.

  ‘Soon,’ she said. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘I won’t go with you,’ Deodat said, with disappointment in his voice. ‘I’m not feeling myself. It’s my heart, I think. Madame Sabine may have been right after all – I’m just an old fool trying to relive my youth.’

  ‘You just need some rest, Deodat.’ Rahn soothed.

  ‘We won’t be long. Lock the doors and stay out of sight,’ Eva said, perfectly in control.

  ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do, both of you?’ He asked.

  Rahn chewed on the inside of his mouth. He couldn’t think. ‘I don’t know, we’ll improvise.’

  ‘Listen,’ Deodat said. ‘You’re not on a movie set now. This is real. When evil wills are brought into communion in a circle, such a circle can be made stronger than the world. Don’t let them use the key. Whatever you do, don’t let them use it!’

  ‘We have to hurry, it’s nearly time!’ Eva said.

  Rahn had an idea; he reached into the back of the Peugeot looking for his bag. It was still there. He took out the Countess P’s grotesque clock and put it under his arm.

  ‘What are you going to do with that?’ Deodat said.

  ‘It’s the only weapon we’ve got and it’s heavy enough to hurt. After all, I don’t have a candlestick,’ he said, looking at Eva.

  Her smile in return was wry.

  They got out of the car and Rahn braced himself against the squall’s cold teeth. ‘So what do you propose, Dorothy? Should we trespass on the party, click our ruby shoes, demand the manuscript from the Wizard of Oz and then make our merry way back to Kansas before supper?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, flatly.

  ‘Haven’t you heard of the Wizard of Oz? Louise Brooks was from Kansas, you see . . .’

  ‘Who is Louise Brooks?’

  He sighed, feeling ridiculous. ‘Never mind . . .’

  ‘Shall we get started then?’ she said, and with the philosophical mien of a captain about to enter the field of battle, added, ‘Let’s go!’

  49

  Le Papesse

  ‘Then an unconquerable terror seized upon me from which I could no longer get free. I felt that a catastrophe was approaching before which the boldest spirit must quail.’

  Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

  Rahn followed Eva feeling inept and clumsy, an emasculated hero. Trees hung across their path and their bare limbs stood out against the inky blackness, like bony fingers pointing to a half-worn moon obscured by drifting clouds. The wind carried the sound of an owl and a creature scurried in the undergrowth. That feeling came again, the feeling of peril ahead, and not just that: a pure form of terror began to seize him, not that same panic he felt going into churches but a calm terror that was visceral. No, there was no turning back.

  Not far ahead he could see the outline of the hermitage set high over the gorge and the sound of water tumbling and foaming below was louder now. When they came upon firebrands lighting the way he knew they were expecting company. He had a sense for where they would be; Grassaud had mentioned an abbé who had entered the underground tunnels some years before and returned incoherent and lethargic. He had died soon afterwards, without elucidating what had happened.

  Rahn’s instincts were proved right when they reached the forbidden grotto of Mary Magdalene. Here a grilled door lay open with firebrands on either side, and beyond it there was a tunnel illuminated by torches. Rahn entered first with Eva following close behind. Soon there were stone steps and a steep descent; after that more steps, followed by more descending. It was cold and damp and easy to lose one’s bearings. Strata and substrata passed by until they began to hear the low snarling and growling of dogs intermixed with chanting. They moved now with stealth until they reached the mouth of a great open gallery.

  Eva signalled to a spot behind a high rock and he followed her to a position in the shadows from which they could see into the gallery below.

  The gallery was wide and domed and lit by a large fire and black candles. Rahn saw the dogs now, three Dobermans tethered to a rock. A number of people were gathered in the cave, all of them dressed in black cloaks and facing a circle that had been drawn on the ground. Written around the circle at the four cardinal points Rahn could make out the letters ROTA. Inside this circle a pentagram had been drawn and in the middle of that, before an altar, stood a woman dressed in a black cloak, wearing a sword in a red girdle around her waist. When she turned around, Rahn gasped. It was Madame Dénarnaud!

  The madame now addressed the group in a solemn voice: ‘Aeons ago the great general council of all the masters was called. Fearing that the Church would destroy their work, the masters who came out of Naples, Athens and Toledo chose from one of them, a man whose name was Honorius, the son of Euclid, master of the Thebans. They gave the Theban Honorius the task of creating an illustrious compendium of magic, a work never seen before by human eyes. Upon its creation, copies were made for safekeeping, and these were given to men who swore an oath to pass them down only to those who had merit. One copy fell into the hands of a man destined to become a pope and so was born Le
Serpent Rouge, the Grimoire of Pope Honorius III, the finest distillation of our art – the most infernal grimoire ever written.

  ‘But now, the time has come for priest to give way to priestess, pope to popess! You are all acquainted with the tarot card le papesse. That is how you must think of me. For I will take the title of Pontifex Maximus and I alone will hold the missing key that opens the way to Hell. This Night of the Dead, I will place that key into the sacred lock and call forth the master of all demons.’ She looked around. ‘Who brings me the blood of le sacrifice humain?’

  A cowled man placed a large bowl on the altar.

  ‘The blood of the English Freemason who used Gaston De Mengel as a puppet will serve us well this night!’

  ‘Where are the cakes of light?’

  Another man brought forth a bowl and Rahn knew this must be the desecrated sacrament.

  She looked about again. ‘Who brings the Apocalypse of Saint John?’

  A tall, cowled figure came forth and offered her the blue manuscript from Bugarach. The madame took it and placed it on the altar.

  ‘And finally, who is the guardian of Le Serpent Rouge?’

  A rather portly figure shuffled forward, holding a red manuscript. When he removed his cowl a hush fell.

  ‘I give you Aleister Crowley!’ Madame Dénarnaud said with ebullience.

  There was the tremulous sound of murmuring voices and muted applause.

  Crowley had bushy eyebrows, a balding head and a bloated face. The geriatric Satanist looked happy with himself, as if he had just managed to escape from a hospital for the aged and mentally ill and was now going to have the time of his life. He placed the red book on the altar alongside the blue book and stood in the pentagram beside the madame – the witch and her warlock were perfectly matched.

  He raised a hand and perused the crowd with a modicum of drama. A signal that he was about to speak. ‘There is an inviolable occult law: just as Lucifer, the king of light, was incarnated six centuries before Christ in China, so shall Satanas the Prince of Darkness be given his chance to incarnate in a human vessel, Adolf Hitler.

  The conventicle repeated, ‘Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘This glorious event has been in preparation for eons!’ Crowley said. He took up the manuscript and began to read from it: ‘In the beginning was the sign, and the sign was with Sorat and Sorat was the sign! And he was with the sign and nothing was made without the sign. And the sign is the sign of death, for he is the king of death and he is the darkness of all men – but men understood him not! A whore was set apart by Sorat to unite with him and give testament to the darkness so that all might become sons of Sorat.’ He intoned: ‘We believe in the mother, the womb, the prostitute, and her name is the Whore of Babylon.’

  The congregation replied, ‘The Whore is the wife, the sister and the mother.’

  ‘We believe in the serpent, and his name is Sorat!’

  ‘Sorat is the law, Sorat in our will!’ the conventicle answered.

  ‘Excitacio ventorum est principium operandi in illa hora diei operis sacri et debet fieri extra domum longe a circulo ad duo stadia vel tria . . .’

  ‘Ad duo stadia vel tria.’

  The tethered Dobermans were straining at their chains, snarling, barking and growling.

  ‘The vessel of Satan,’ Madame Dénarnaud took over, ‘awaits his unification with a mighty spirit from the depths of dark space! The serpent that lives in the bowels of the earth runs from France to Germany over the spines of the mountains. Let it do so this night, from my soul’s womb to his mind’s genius! For I am the harlot that shaketh death and my whoredom is a sweet scent. I am like a seven-stringed instrument played by Satan, the invisible, the all-ruler. Let it begin!’

  Aleister Crowley kissed Le Serpent Rouge and simultaneously the old woman kissed the Apocalypse of Saint John. Then she turned to a page in the manuscript and looked up, a maddened smile on her features.

  She seemed puzzled, fascinated. ‘Men have died and killed to know this key! It is a sign. And it could not be simpler. Like the philosopher stone, it is contained in nature. In every twig and tree does live the shape of the two-horned beast.’

  ‘My God, we have to stop her!’ Rahn whispered to Eva.

  ‘I command you,’ said Aleister Crowley, reading from Le Serpent Rouge, ‘oh all ye demons dwelling in these parts, or in what part of the world soever ye may be, by whatsoever power may have been given you by God and our holy angels over this place, and by the powerful principality of the infernal abysses, as also by all your brethren, both general and special demons, whether dwelling in the east, west, south, or north, or in any side of the Earth, and, in like manner . . .’

  The crowd swayed and buzzed, trance-like, mesmerised.

  ‘Et debet prius,’ said Madame Dénarnaud, ‘esse bene pre-paratus de necessariis suis, de optimo vino de seven ensibus, de sibilo, de virgula coruli, de sigillis, de signo dei, de thure, de thuribulo, de candela virginea et sic de aliis ut prius patet . . .’

  The conventicle intoned, ‘Ut prius patet . . .’

  Aleister Crowley read: ‘I command all ye demons, by the power of the holy trinity of Hell, by the merits of the most holy and blessed Lilith and of all the dark saints! Sorat, Arepo, Tenet, Opera, Rotas! Rotas, Opera, Tenet, Arepo, Sorat!’

  The madame took the bowl of congealed blood and drank from it. Aleister Crowley did the same and after that, the bowl was passed around the congregation.

  ‘We offer you, Sorat,’ Crowley said, ‘this bloody sacrifice, and we ask, pray and entreat you, to send down your spirit into the whore here offered!”

  ‘STOP! What are you doing?’

  It was old Grassaud pushing through the crowd, gesticulating.

  Aleister Crowley’s face reddened with anger and he thrust out his hand to stop the abbé. ‘Do not enter the circle!’

  ‘I will do as I please. You do not frighten me, you old goat!’ Grassaud wheezed. ‘You are not authorised to conduct this ritual. The pope alone may do so!’

  The old madame said coolly, ‘Go back to Rome. Tell the pope and his mafia AGLA that they have been surpassed. Tell him the key to the gates of Hell has been snatched away from his gnarly grasp. Tell him that this night it has revealed the presence of the Prince of Evil, the origin of all darkness!’

  Grassaud yelled at the top of his voice: ‘Atah Gibbor Le’olam Adonnai!’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes . . . thou art mighty forever, oh Lucifer! But you’re forgetting that Sorat is more mighty than Lucifer and AGLA means nothing here,’ she said, ‘so shut up, old man, and go back to your bed. Leave me to my work.’

  ‘Your ritual will not succeed, woman,’ he said with authority. ‘There is no priest to direct the power of the spirit into your soul. This man isn’t a priest – he’s a necromantic pretender, a pompous fool!’

  The madame laughed. ‘What do I need a priest for when I am a priestess?’

  ‘When AA hears of this, you will have no tongue with which to swallow those words!’ Grassaud cried.

  ‘I have long since broken away with that association of fake angels. Their only desire is to lock Le Serpent Rouge away along with the key because they fear it. I do not fear it!’

  The old man shouted, ‘In that case, I will conjure Sorat myself, in the name of Jesus Christ to thwart you!’

  She was aghast. ‘What? No! You will not!’

  ‘I will bind him to keep him from your clutches!’

  ‘Get him out!’

  But Grassaud had already begun. ‘I conjure thee, Evil and Accursed Serpent, to appear at my will and pleasure, in this place, before this circle, without tarrying—’

  ‘Stop him, you fool!’ the madame shrieked at Aleister Crowley, who hesitated.

  ‘Come without companions, without grievance, without noise, deformity, or murmuring. I exorcise thee by the ineffable names of God, which I am unworthy to pronounce: come hither, come hither, come hither! Accomplish my will and desire, without wiles or falsehood. Otherwis
e Saint Michael, the invisible Archangel shall presently blast thee to the utmost depths of Hell. Come then, do my will!’

  ‘Swine! Pig!’ Madame Dénarnaud flew into a rage, gesturing wildly. ‘Remove him!’

  But all were afraid and hung back.

  ‘Why tarriest thou, and why delayest? What doest thou?’ Grassaud continued to spit out with vehemence. ‘Make ready, obey your master, in the name of the Lord, Bathat, Rachat, Abracm, Ens, Alchor, Aberer!’

  There came now a scream from Madame Dénarnaud, loud enough to curdle the blood, and she put her hands over her ears. ‘No! No! No! I alone will now call forth the divine master of the Dark Sun, and to the Devil with you! I will call the demon of aeons past! Come to me!’ She closed her eyes and swayed from side to side and moaned and groaned and turned her face to the vaulted rock ceiling. ‘Come to me here – from the bowels of the Earth! I command thee, come to your saint, impregnate your prostitute! Ecce formacionem seculi spiritus autem spiritum vocat!’

  ‘Ecce formacionem seculi spiritus autem spiritum vocat!’ The crowd repeated.

  ‘Behold the Pentacle of Solomon!’ the old man countered, bringing forth a pentacle from around his neck, which he pointed at the madame. ‘I have brought it into thy presence! Oh despicable spirit! I command thee by order of the great God, Adonay, Tetragrammaton, and Jesus!’ he bellowed.

  ‘The bowl!’ she cried, signalling to Crowley. ‘I will make the sign!’

  Crowley hurriedly brought the bloody bowl to her and old Grassaud rushed forward, grasping for it, and in the struggle the altar toppled, the bowl was catapulted to the ground and the books fell at the edge of the great fire. A scuffle broke out between the two old men; Crowley took hold of the old man’s ears while Grassaud scratched at his eyes.

  ‘I conjure thee by the . . . ineffable . . . ah you devil – let go of me! By the name of God . . .’ Grassaud said, between gasps, ‘Alpha, Omega . . . AGLA . . . AGLA!’

  The gallery erupted. Dogs snarled and people gestured and cried out. Some were objecting to the treatment meted out to old Grassaud while others were defending the old woman. These disagreements now escalated into pandemonium, replete with insults and blows. To Rahn it resembled a bar brawl. Crowley struggled to bring his face close to Grassaud’s and then bit the old man on the nose, so that Grassaud yelled and dropped to the ground, moaning and whimpering and holding his nose with one hand while the other pointed at Crowley. ‘You will pay for this!’