Jack of Ravens

by Mark Chadbourn

  ‘Those men keep staring at me,’ Niamh said, puzzled. ‘Are my clothes not correct for this time and place?’

  ‘They’re perfect,’ Tom said. ‘You’d better start getting used to it.’

  ‘Church?’ When he didn’t respond, her hand sought out his and gave it a warm squeeze.

  ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’

  ‘Where do you want to go next?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Tom pulled a collection of flyers from his haversack. ‘I like the look of this San Francisco.’ He studied the information, as he had done many times over the past week.

  ‘One place is as good as the next,’ Church said.

  The door swung open and an intense young man of around eighteen stepped in hesitantly. He had a sensitive face emphasised by large brown eyes that took in detail quickly.

  The barman bristled. ‘I told you—’

  ‘I’m just looking for someone,’ the teenager interjected.

  ‘I know who you’re looking for, and you won’t find her in here. Or any of her kind.’

  The teen opened his mouth to protest, then resigned himself to an exasperated silence.

  One of the men chuckled as he checked his cards. ‘You had J. Edgar Hoover round yet about those Little Green Men?’

  The teenager’s cheeks flushed. ‘It wasn’t Little Green Men.’

  ‘Aliens killed Kennedy!’ Another of the card-players brayed with laughter.

  The teenager stalked over to their table. ‘You can laugh all you want. There was a conspiracy.’

  The men continued to mock loudly. Niamh leaned into Church and whispered, ‘Who is Kennedy?’

  ‘Used to be the president. Assassinated last month in Dallas. A lot of people who didn’t have a voice loved him. A lot of people with conservative views hated him.’

  ‘It was the same in the Court of Alexander of Scotland,’ Tom said. ‘Politics and conspiracy go hand in hand.’

  ‘They arrested one man for killing Kennedy,’ Church explained. ‘Lee Harvey Oswald. But lots of other people thought Oswald was set up, that other people had a hand in the murder.’

  ‘Who?’ Niamh struggled to grasp what Church was saying.

  ‘Criminals like the Mafia. The government’s own agencies. Political protestors. Businessmen. Renegade politicians and military types. In my time, it’s become a kind of … myth.’ Church shrugged.

  ‘Why would anyone want to kill their king? Unless it was for sacrificial purposes—’

  The teenager was growing more passionate. ‘There is evidence! My dad worked at the Kodak labs when they brought in the Zapruder film of the assassination. It definitely showed a guy with a spider on the back of his neck making a signal …’ The table fell silent. The teen looked from face to face until the card-players all burst out laughing as one.

  ‘How come LBJ hasn’t got the exterminators in?’ one of the men said through tears of laughter.

  ‘Because there’s been a cover-up.’ The teen was red-faced with anger. ‘When Life magazine borrowed the film to copy it they said they damaged it. Six frames were cut out and it was spliced back together. They were the frames with the spider-guy in them.’

  As the jeering rose up again, the teen turned on his heel and marched out. Church followed a moment later.

  The teen was sitting in an old pick-up on the dirt road. The Beatles were on the radio singing ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and the youth was beating the rhythm on the steering wheel.

  Church leaned into the passenger window. ‘I heard what you were saying in the bar.’

  ‘Hey, you’re English. Like these guys.’

  ‘My name’s Jack Churchill. Church to my friends.’

  ‘Gabriel Adams. Gabe. So what – you come to laugh at me, too?’

  ‘I’ve seen them.’

  Gabe’s eyes grew wide. He snatched a cardboard box from under his seat. Inside were newspaper clippings, sketches, maps and pages of detailed notes. ‘JFK couldn’t have been shot by a lone gunman. It’s impossible. And I can prove it.’

  Church stopped him getting out the sheaf of papers. ‘I just wanted to say stay away from the spider-people. They’re dangerous. Don’t waste your life chasing this kind of stuff. Enjoy yourself.’

  Gabe looked hurt. ‘You don’t want to hear my theory?’

  Church’s attention was caught by a blaze rising up away through the trees. Gabe blanched when he saw it.

  ‘What is it?’ Church asked.

  ‘I don’t know … I think … Marcy?’ Gabe turned the ignition.

  Church hesitated, then got in. ‘Trouble?’

  Gabe’s pale face revealed the answer as he gunned the pick-up in the direction of the fire.

  2

  Church could smell the thick, tarry smoke long before Gabe crashed the truck through vegetation into a field next to the woods. A twelve-foot-high cross blazed brightly against the night sky.

  Eight men stood around in white robes and hoods. At the feet of the Ku Klux Klansmen sprawled a woman of Gabe’s age, a noose tied around her neck. One of the men held the other end like a dog leash. She was mixed race with long hair tied up in bunches. Her eyes were wide with terror.

  Gabe brought the pick-up to a juddering halt. ‘That’s Marcy,’ he said. He was shaking.

  One of the Klansmen raised a shotgun and called out, ‘You want to back off, boys. This ain’t for you.’

  Gabe had frozen. Church released the handbrake and jammed his foot on top of Gabe’s on the accelerator. Dirt sprayed in a fountain behind them as the pick-up lurched forward. Church dragged Gabe down as the shotgun blast frosted the window.

  ‘They’re going to kill us,’ Gabe said, but he kept the pick-up racing towards the Klansmen.

  The Klansmen scattered as the pick-up rammed the base of the burning cross. It crashed down on the man with the shotgun, the impact killing him before his robes ignited.

  Church jumped out to retrieve the shotgun. One barrel was still loaded. He brandished it at the remaining Klansmen while Gabe raced out to pull the noose from Marcy’s neck. Crying and coughing, she rubbed at the sore flesh as Gabe helped her into the pick-up, with Church close behind.

  One of the Klansmen threw himself onto the side of the vehicle to try to wrestle the shotgun from Church. As he forced his upper body through the passenger window, the gun discharged, killing the Klansman instantly. He slumped limply halfway through the window just as Gabe prepared to reverse the truck away at speed.

  ‘I know you, Gabriel Adams,’ one of the Klansmen yelled in a thick Southern accent. ‘You want to get out of town before sun-up, or we’re gonna pay your momma a visit.’

  ‘Your kind don’t belong here,’ another yelled. ‘Consorting with niggers. Knew you were no good the minute you and your momma set foot here.’

  As they sped away, Gabe yelled, ‘Dump that damn body!’

  ‘I need to check something,’ Church replied. ‘Just keep driving for now.’

  Church told Gabe to pull the truck over when they were a couple of miles away. Marcy had already recovered from her ordeal, and her fear had given way to a cold anger. Church pushed the dead Klansman back through the window onto the side of the road and jumped out. He stripped off the Klansman’s robes and searched his body for any sign of a spider. There was none, which Church found even more disturbing. He returned to the pick-up where Gabe was hugging Marcy tightly.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘If we hadn’t seen the fire—’

  ‘They dragged me out of the house, Gabe. They beat my momma with sticks but they came for me.’

  ‘I know the Klan lynched a lot of men, but girls …?’ Church said.

  ‘They did it ’cause I’m dating a white boy,’ Marcy said bitterly.

  ‘But look at you, Marcy,’ Gabe said. ‘You’re nearly white yourself—’

  Marcy glared at him. ‘What are you saying? I’m black – black in their eyes, black in mine. Having some white mixed in there doesn’t mean they�
�ll suddenly leave me alone ’cause I’m normal.’

  Gabe flushed. ‘That’s not what I meant—’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Marcy hugged Gabe, and then Church. ‘And thanks for risking your neck, whoever you are. You saved my life.’

  Church was touched by her response. He had acted on instinct, and now the adrenalin rush had gone he was surprised by how quickly and decisively he had responded when he saw the gun.

  ‘We can’t stay here after this,’ Gabe said bitterly. ‘They’ll come after my mom, and yours.’

  ‘I don’t want to run away from them. They’ll think they’ve won,’ she said.

  ‘We can’t fight them,’ Gabe said.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ Church interjected, ‘but maybe you could hit the road just for a while, until it’s calmed down here.’

  Gabe took Marcy’s hand. ‘It’s for the best. For our moms.’

  ‘You can come with my friends and me if you want,’ Church said. ‘We don’t know where we’re going or what we’re doing. But on the plus side, we’ve got some cash to see us through for a while.’

  ‘We could go to Dallas,’ Gabe said thoughtfully. ‘I need to see for myself where the president died.’ He glanced at Church and added, ‘I want to prove that spider-guy is real.’

  Church felt sorry for the teenager. The road Gabe was about to walk wouldn’t end happily.

  3

  Dallas, 1964

  Dallas was like a bad hangover, even weeks after the assassination. In shops and bars and in the streets, people felt guilty, as if they had been personally responsible for the president’s death.

  Gabe got nowhere with his investigation, as Church had expected and secretly hoped, but it was clear Gabe wasn’t going to give up easily. Church saw something of himself in the teenager’s innocence and unfocused desire for justice, but they were echoes from long ago, before things had started to go so badly wrong.

  On February 9, they stood outside a TV store in downtown Dallas watching the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show on the sets piled high in the window display.

  ‘I wish I could hear them,’ Gabe said. ‘I reckon they’re really going to shake things up.’

  ‘You could be right.’ Church smiled wryly to himself.

  ‘I can’t believe they let them on Ed Sullivan.’

  ‘You, me and seventy-four million others.’ Church watched Gabe’s face light up with a simple joy and felt like an elder brother. So why the obsession with JFK?’

  Gabe fell silent for a moment. ‘My dad died a couple of days after he worked on the film of the assassination. Hit and run. They never caught the driver.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I remember how excited he was when he told me what he’d seen. And how angry when those frames got cut out. It was a big deal to him.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m just trying to make sense of stuff. These days nothing makes sense at all.’

  4

  In April, Marcy persuaded Gabe that he wouldn’t find anything else in Dallas and if he still wanted to dig for information, they should head east, to New York first, and then to Washington if he could find anything concrete to pursue.

  Church was surprised by Tom’s developing affinity for American culture and the music of the times. In the damp-ridden apartment they found for themselves in Queens, he installed a record player on which he would listen to Paul Revere and the Raiders and the Beau Brummels at full volume until the neighbours banged on the walls. He went to clubs on his own, and developed a wide network of eccentric friends. Church began to understand that for Tom, the ultimate outsider cut off from his own time and race by what had been done to him at the Court of the Final Word, this was finally somewhere he could feel at home. In the end they were all trying to forget the past and lose themselves in the present.

  As the days grew longer and the leaves started to appear on the trees in the park, Tom returned one afternoon and told Church there was someone he needed to meet.

  ‘A psychologist,’ Tom said, ‘by the name of Timothy Leary. He evangelises about a drug called LSD. He believes it can unlock areas of consciousness, and set off a big evolutionary leap for mankind.’

  ‘I’ve heard of him,’ Church said. ‘Nixon called him “the most dangerous man in America”.’

  Tom snorted. ‘He has a research centre in a mansion. Good work is being done.’

  ‘What have you been doing with him?’ Church asked.

  ‘None of your business.’ Tom pulled out a screwed-up magazine article. ‘This is what he said about his first drug trip: “I could look back and see my body on the bed. I relived my life, and re-experienced many events I had forgotten … The discovery that the human brain possesses an infinity of potentialities and can operate at unexpected space-time dimensions left me feeling exhilarated, awed, and quite convinced that I had awakened from a long ontological sleep. A profound transcendent experience should leave in its wake a changed man and a changed life.” ’

  Church realised what Tom was proposing. ‘You want me to drop acid with Timothy Leary? To get my memory back?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hear me out – not just for that,’ Tom said. ‘Leary’s research has given him some perception of the structure of reality—’

  ‘It’s over, Tom – you’ve got to understand that. I’m not fighting this war any more. Every time I get involved people close to me die. Next time it could be you, or Niamh … Somebody else can do the heavy lifting now.’

  Tom folded the article carefully and returned it to his pocket. ‘He’s seen the spiders,’ he said quietly.

  ‘And don’t go dragging Gabe into all that. He deserves some kind of life before it all goes pear-shaped. If he ignores the Army of the Ten Billion Spiders, they’ll ignore him—’

  ‘You think that’s how it works?’ Tom said sharply. ‘And what kind of philosophy are you promoting there? Look after yourself and everyone else be damned?’

  ‘Why not? I haven’t done any good. What’s the point in carrying on, tell me that?’

  Niamh and Marcy walked in laughing, but their high spirits ebbed away when they felt the tense atmosphere.

  ‘Then I’ll just take Gabe,’ Tom said slyly.

  Church glared at him. ‘I’ll come. Just to make sure you don’t screw up someone else’s life.’

  5

  ‘LSD will, in the very near future, liberate minds and create a free society.’ The Most Dangerous Man in America had the look of a genial college professor as he sat cross-legged on a cushion in his airy study in the sprawling Millbrook Mansion. His greying hair was swept back from a tanned face and he was dressed all in white with an Indian motif embroidered in red around the collar.

  ‘You’re convinced of that?’ Church asked.

  ‘A sceptic.’ Leary smiled without offence. ‘It will, unless the Establishment prevents it.’

  Tom eyed Church suspiciously. ‘Let’s not get into an argument,’ he cautioned. Beside him, Gabe listened intently.

  ‘There is no inherent danger in hallucinogens if they are treated with a sacred and respectful attitude,’ Leary said. ‘That is, they should not be used for hedonistic purposes. Let us not forget that psychedelics have been utilised for sacred purposes in all major religions throughout history, including early Christian rites.’

  Gabe looked shocked.

  ‘The drug is only a tool to contact the Godhead,’ Leary continued. ‘A catalyst. It has no inherent value beyond its ability to trigger that part of the brain, which we all have, that is responsible for spiritual experience. From that perspective, one’s view, intention, attitude, personality and mood are just as important in achieving the right state.’

  ‘So in the wrong hands psychedelics can be dangerous,’ Church translated.

  ‘The same as anything. But for someone who wishes to transform spiritually, hallucinogens can be a catalyst. They can lead to an understanding of your own destiny, and insight into the basic spiritual realities. This is
what the ancient Greeks called gnosis—’

  Church had a flash of a deeper connection stretching across the centuries, of the Universe itself giving him information to shape his path. ‘That’s the same thing John Dee was talking about,’ Church said to Tom.

  ‘John Dee?’ Leary interjected. ‘You mentioning his name is a very weird coincidence.’

  ‘Yeah, there seem to be a lot of those going around,’ Church said.

  ‘I was on a trip to North Africa with my wife Rosemary, and a friend, Brian Barritt,’ Leary said. ‘We took acid in the desert at Bou Saada, and Brian had a vision of a cowled man in a cloud of dust – a dust devil. He heard the name “Doctor John Dee”, and an image of a giant scroll took over his mind, followed by visions of golden vessels with the faces of Egyptian gods. Weird, but true.’

  ‘What’s Gnosticism got to do with it?’

  ‘Everything. My life, and my understanding of everything I see around me, changed just over three years ago when I first took psilocybin mushrooms in Cuernavaca in Mexico.’ Leary closed his eyes and let his head drop backwards. ‘You understand the mystery religions of ancient cultures? Every one had outer mysteries, which consisted of myths that were common knowledge – the stories of the gods and the like – and rituals that were open to everyone. And then there were the inner mysteries, which consisted of a sacred secret known only to those who had undergone a powerful rite of initiation. During my initiation I learned what that secret was, the one all ancient seers understood fully. The secret that is at the core of Gnosticism.’

  Church could see why Leary annoyed as many people as he inspired. He had a taste for showmanship that often meant his message was lost.

  ‘So what’s the big secret?’ Church prompted.

  ‘That we’re all living in hell.’ Tom’s voice rang with echoes of the Court of the Final Word.

  ‘At the heart of it is the nature of evil,’ Leary said. ‘If you believe there is a creator-god, why did he introduce evil into the world? The orthodox Christians found the answer. They put the blame for evil on mankind, particularly Eve, who allowed evil into the world when she accepted knowledge in the form of the apple from the snake in the Garden of Eden. The Gnostics took a different approach. They are, essentially, dualists: two sides, two faces, two worlds, two great opposing powers.’