by Gary Tenuta
My number is no secret.
The secret is in reverse.
It is encoded
In chapter and in verse.
Let he who has wisdom
Discover the sacred key.
Only then can he become
The embodiment of me.
Cowl read every detail in the diary and reflected on his own experiences and his own personal infatuation with Crowley. He became convinced that his moving into Moorehouse Manor was no mere coincidence. Fate, he was certain, had brought him to this very moment. His discovery of the hidden room behind the bookcase was one thing. But the idea that he was the one destined to become the host for the essence of Crowley’s spirit excited him nearly to the point of nausea. But how? he wondered. Will I have to drink the Soma? The thought frightened him. He knew even less about the magical elixir than Moorehouse had known. And what about the Messenger? Had it been real? It seemed too weird to be true. A moment of doubt crept in. Maybe the Messenger was nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination. No, it had to be real. Too many details in the whole friggin’ story for it to be one sick-o’s imagination. Germer receiving the urn and burying it... Moorehouse digging it up and bringing it back here to the house... The house that I, of all people, bought and moved into. It’s all real. It’s gotta be real. But the damned riddle. The key to the whole thing is in that damned riddle. Shit!
He read the words of the riddle over and over until his eyes grew tired. The night was descending heavily and he was unable to bear the weight of it much longer. He soon gave in to a deep sleep right there in the lap of the old Moorehouse chair that seemed to caress him, protecting him, rocking him, mothering him like some ancient benevolent keeper of precious souls.
Moments later he was awakened by the sound of someone speaking his name. His eyes snapped open. He sat up in the chair and looked around. “What the––? Who’s there?”
CHAPTER 6
Three Months Later…
Ravenwood’s car pulled up next to the police cruisers parked along the drive that meandered through the impeccably manicured lawns of the Greenwood Cemetery. She stepped out and saw Kane with a group of officers. They were standing over a body that was lying between two upright gravestones.
“Number four?” she asked, approaching Kane.
Kane looked up. “Took you long enough. I called you an hour ago.”
“I was having my nails done.” It wasn’t true but his attitude pissed her off.
He ignored the comment. “Yeah, number four. Coin number ‘four’, too. Poor bastard. A Baptist this time.”
“Any surprises?”
“Nope. Same, down to the last detail. And, of course, nobody saw nothin’.”
Ravenwood nodded. “Check the calendar today?”
“What?”
“The calendar. If you check the dates when these four men died you’ll see we may have another piece to add to our puzzle.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think we have a pattern here. Their deaths have all occurred exactly nine days apart.”
“No shit?” Kane gave it some thought. “Interesting. But what’s it mean?”
“Well, for one thing it means we can probably expect to find another one nine days from now.”
“I see your point. I guess that would be useful information if we knew where the next incident would occur or who the next victim would be. But there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the where or the who. We can assume it’ll be another preacher but that isn’t much help. And how long is this gonna go on? Until every last preacher in the city is dead?”
“If we’re lucky there’ll only be nine. Remember the coins.”
“Oh, only nine. Well, that’s a relief. What the hell is it with this guy and all of this nine shit?”
“You haven’t heard the half of it.”
“You got something else?
“Oh yeah. You’re gonna love this.”
“What is it?”
“Not here. Can we meet back at your office?”
Kane looked at his watch. “It’s almost noon. What about we meet at Roxy’s on Pike street. You know the place?”
“Roxy’s? The topless joint?
“What’s the matter? Too much competition?”
Ravenwood shook her head. “You really are unbelievable.”
“Believe that.”
***
Ravenwood walked into Roxy’s and was immediately blinded by the darkness. She removed her sunglasses but it made little difference. When her eyes adjusted to the ambiance she saw Kane sitting at a table near the back of what apparently doubled as a dance floor at night.
He looked up and waved her over.
“So,” she said, taking a seat at the table, “is this your hangout?”
“Not really. Been here once or twice.”
A well-endowed waitress bounced her way over to their table. “Hi Lieutenant!” she chirped. “Your usual? Tuna on rye, again?”
Ravenwood looked at him. “Once or twice, huh?”
“Whatever.” He turned to the waitress. “Cindy, this is Special Agent Ravenwood. She and I will both have the tuna on rye.”
Cindy looked wide-eyed at Ravenwood. “Wow, really? You’re an FBI agent?”
Ravenwood nodded.
“Wow!” the waitress said. “How cool is that!”
“Cindy,” Kane said. “The sandwiches?”
“Okay, Lieutenant. Sorry. Coming right up.”
Ravenwood watched Kane watching Cindy walk away. She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and handed it to him. “Here,” she said.
“What’s this for?”
“You were drooling.”
“Funny.”
Ravenwood grinned. The man was both deplorable and yet oddly appealing at the same time. Despite the caveman persona that seemed to dominate his personality she was beginning to see the Teddy Bear was never really buried all that far beneath the surface.
“Okay,” he said, “what’s with the nine-day thing? You said there was something else.”
She reached into her briefcase, pulled out her laptop and powered it up. “This is interesting,” she said as she pulled up a black and white line-art rendering of two symbols. She turned the laptop so Kane could view the image on the screen.
She pointed to the image at the top. “This is the same symbol that is branded into the foreheads of our victims.”
“I see that,” Kane said. “So what is it? And what is that one below it?”
“Hang on. I’ll get to that. At first glance I thought the outside border of the symbol was an octagon, an eight-sided polygon, you know? But then I noticed it actually has nine sides, not eight. This is a very unusual geometric form. I didn’t even know what it was called. Turns out it’s called a nonagon and apparently it’s impossible to create a nine-sided polygon in which each of the nine sides are exactly the same length.”
“They look the same length to me,” Kane said, squinting at the image.
“That’s what I thought, too. But we did a complete analysis of the this thing and found that six of the sides are of identical length and the remaining three sides all have identical lengths, too, but they’re slightly longer than the individual lengths of each of the six sides. Are you following me?”
“Yeah, I get what you’re saying. But, so what?”
Ravenwood explained that she’d decided to measure the angles from the center point of the design out to the ends of each of the nine sides. She found that the three longer sides yielded angles of 42 degrees and each of the six shorter sides yielded angles of 39 degrees. She then showed him the following math:
42 x 3 = 126
39 x 6 = 234
“Now look at this,” she said, demonstrating how each of the products reduced to 9 by a method borrowed from numerology. “It’s called cross-adding.”
1+2+6 = 9
2+3+4 = 9
“Nine is a very intriguing number,” she told him. “I won’t
bore you with the details but I will tell you this. You’re familiar with the number 666 from the book of Revelation, right?”
Kane nodded. “Yeah. The number of the Beast. What about it?”
“What is the sum of three sixes?”
“Eighteen.”
“And the sum of one plus eight?”
“Nine.”
“Exactly.”
Kane looked at her. “So what are you saying? This design is the Mark of the Beast?”
“Well, actually, yes. And no.”
“That’s what I like. A straight answer.”
“Hang on. Your question brings us to the second symbol.”
Kane studied it for a moment. “Looks like a stripped down version of the top symbol.”
“Yes and no, again. The second symbol is actually the original. And it’s not a case of it being stripped down so much as it’s a case of the top symbol being an elaborate modification of the original.”
“Slow down, Einstein. You’re close to losing me here. What do you mean by the original? The original what?”
“That stripped down symbol, as you called it, is known as the Lucifer Seal.”
“The Lucifer Seal? So I was right. The Mark of the Beast.”
Ravenwood shook her head. “Not exactly. At least I don’t think so. Then again, who knows what the mark of the beast really is? But here’s the deal. What I do know is that this symbol is what you might call high magick. Very, very obscure and buried so deep within the tradition that only the highest of initiates in the Dark Arts would even know it exists.”
Kane eyed her with a look of surprise. “Really,” he said. The tone of his voice oozed with curiosity. “And so you just happen to know this… how?”
“I have my sources.”
“You mean your sorcerers.”
Ravenwood grinned. “My, Lieutenant. That was very clever.”
“I thought so.”
“Actually, I found the information in an ancient book. Very rare. From the middle ages, in fact. It’s called Liber Malus, the Book of Evil. Only two copies are known to exist but a persistent rumor has circulated for decades that a third copy was once in the possession of Aleister Crowley.”
“And who, dare I ask, is Aleister Crowley?”
“Who was Aleister Crowley.”
“That’s what I’m asking you.”
“No. You said ‘is’. I’m saying ‘was’. He’s long dead.”
Kane rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. All right, then. Who the hell was he?”
Ravenwood briefed Kane on the life and times of the infamous master of the occult. She could have told him much more because she knew enough about Crowley to fill a book. But, having learned the limits of Kane’s tolerance for anything even approaching an academic level, she just gave him the essential ingredients of the story. Much to her surprise, he actually seemed to be listening with some interest.
He gave a bemused look. “You mean his own mother called him the Beast?”
“Yup. And apparently he didn’t mind because in later years he even referred to himself as the Beast. Took considerable delight in it, actually.”
“Strange man.”
“Very.”
The waitress brought the sandwiches. “Here you go,” she said. “Two tunas on rye. I had them put extra mayo on yours, Lieutenant. Just the way you like it. Enjoy.”
Ravenwood looked at Kane. “Only been here a couple times my ass.”
Kane took a bite of the sandwich and muttered a confession. “Couple times too many, maybe. But I’m telling you the sandwiches are great. Try it. You’ll like it.”
The brief interlude gave Kane a few minutes to try wrapping his brain around what Ravenwood had told him. He was way out of his element with this stuff. Still, as weird as it all seemed, he had to admit he was beginning to find it fascinating. He turned again to the drawing of the Lucifer Seal. “This,” he said, pointing to the vertical and horizontal lines inside the image of the original symbol, “ this looks like a cross. Is that what it’s supposed to be?”
“That’s right. Hey, Lieutenant, you’re starting to catch on.”
He scoffed. “I don’t know about that. What the hell is a cross doing in the middle of a symbol that has some connection to Satan?”
“Lucifer,” she corrected him. “It’s called the Lucifer Seal.”
“Satan, Lucifer. Lucifer, Satan. What the hell’s the difference?”
“Well, depending on what branch of mystical belief system you subscribe to, it does make a difference. But to answer your question, the cross represents death, resurrection and transformation.”
“Like the Jesus story. I mean, if you believe in that stuff.”
“I take it you don’t?”
“My dad… I mean, my adoptive dad––”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“Your dad, what?”
“I said forget it!”
The harsh tone of his voice threw her for a moment. The Teddy Bear’s got Daddy issues. Interesting. Wonder what that’s all about? “Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to––”
Kane sat back in his chair. “Yeah, well…” His voice became more relaxed. “Where were we?”
Man, talk about Jekyll and Hyde. “Um… Oh. The cross. It represents death, resurrection and transformation.”
“Yeah. Which brings me back to my question. If the cross represents Jesus then why is it in the middle of a symbol called the Lucifer Seal?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
“Okay,” she said, reluctantly. How am I going to explain this one? “The short answer is this. There’s a school of thought, a kind of philosophical perspective, according to which Jesus and Lucifer are one and the same. Or it might be more accurate to say they’re two sides of the same coin, so to speak.”
Kane looked at her as if he hadn’t heard correctly.
She gave a little laugh and nodded. “Like I said, it’s complicated. I don’t even want to get into it. We don’t need to go down that road right now.”
Kane agreed. “Yeah, you’re probably right. So, then, what’s the deal with the other symbol? The more complex one. What are all those additional lines for? Do they mean something?”
“I think we should go on the assumption that they do mean something. I doubt that it’s just some kind of random adornment. There’s a distinct symmetry to the design created by those lines. I’m working on it. I think if I can figure out what the lines represent it will get us that much closer to understanding our killer.”
She shut down the computer, packed it into the case and glanced at her watch. “I have to go. I’ll let you know when I get something on that symbol.” She stood up and straightened the front her short, black skirt. “Oh, yes,” she said as she started to leave, “and, thanks for the sandwich. It wasn’t bad.” She tossed her hair, put on her sunglasses and smiled. “Had better, actually. But it wasn’t bad.”
Kane leaned back, folded his arms and watched her walk away. He hated the fact that she was so goddamn attractive.
When Ravenwood got to the door she stopped a moment and beckoned for Cindy, the waitress. The two of them exchanged a few words but Kane couldn’t make out what they were saying. Ravenwood left and Cindy bounced over to Kane’s table.
“What was that all about?” he asked.
“The lady told me to tell you that if you don’t leave me a really big tip she’ll cast a spell on you. She sounded serious. What is she––like a witch or something?”
Kane laughed. It was the first really good, honest laugh he’d had in a long time. “Yeah, “ he said, slipping a twenty under his empty plate. “She’s a witch, all right.” He couldn’t help wondering if maybe Ravenwood had already cast the spell and he was falling under it. The idea was absurd and he knew it. The fuck am I thinking? She’s FBI, for Christ’s sake.
CHAPTER 7
Three Months Earlier…
Cowl
rubbed his eyes and squinted into the darkness. He was certain a voice had called his name. “Who’s there?” he asked again. “Is someone there?”
He started to rise from the chair but froze in mid-stance when he saw a shadowy figure begin to form in the far corner of the room. With a death-grip on the arms of the chair, he slowly lowered himself back down.
“You seem surprised, Rye Cowl,” the figure spoke. The voice was low, resonant, with an oddly hollow sound. “You should have been expecting me. We’ve been expecting you. Your ‘someday’ is closer than you realize.”
Cowl’s brow narrowed. “What? Who are you? How did you––?” Then, in an instant, he knew what was happening. “You’re… the Messenger?”
“I am.”
“But how? I mean––”
“The mescaline?”
“Yeah. I didn’t take––”
“It wasn’t necessary. I would have appeared to Mr. Moorehouse whether he was intoxicated with the drug or not. I come and go at the whim of my Master.”
“Your master? Who is your master?”
“In due time, Mr. Cowl. In due time. Right now you only need to know you’ve been chosen.”
“Chosen?”
“You’ve read the diary.”
“Yes, but––”
“Then you should be quite aware of what I mean.”
“But Michael Moorehouse was chosen, too.”
“Yes, and he failed. You will not.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s your destiny.”
“But what about the riddle? I’ve read it over and over. It makes no sense. I can’t figure it out.”
“You will.”
“But how? Will I have to drink the Soma?”
“You will do what ever you need to do.”
“But I don’t understand. If you’re so sure I’m the one––that this is my destiny, as you put it––then why should I have to prove myself by solving the riddle?”
