by Gary Tenuta
Inside the shed, he closed the door and was about to turn off the light and climb back down through the trapdoor when a rat leaped out of a large can on a shelf above the lawnmower. The can tumbled to the floor. Cowl jumped and fell backward against a shovel that was hanging on the wall. “Jesus H. Christ!” He spun around, grabbed the shovel and was ready to do battle but the creature was long gone. “Fuck!” He threw the shovel on the floor and it knocked a plank loose. Shit! He maneuvered the board back into place with his foot. As he did so, the plank next to it moved. He got down on his hands and knees and was sliding the boards back into place when he caught a glimpse of something under the flooring. He lifted the boards away. What the hell is this?
An object about the size of a large shoebox was resting snuggly in the space once covered by the boards. A third board came up with little effort. Tossing it aside, he reached in, brushed the wisps of cobweb away, and retrieved the item.
It was a plain-looking copper box, tarnished with age. The lid was fastened shut with a padlock and a corroded hasp. He tilted the box. Something jostled inside. He tilted it the other direction. Again something moved. The back and forth movement of whatever was inside the box was very slight. Whatever it is, he figured, it must be nearly as long and wide as the box itself.
He rattled the lock a few times but it wouldn’t open. He jumped to his feet and rummaged around looking for a hacksaw or, better yet, a pair of bolt cutters. Come on. Come on. Gotta be something here… He spied a rusty hacksaw hanging on the wall and grabbed it. It took a few minutes but the rusty old blade did the job. He twisted the lock out from the hasp, tossed it aside and lifted the lid.
The object inside was a large book. The heavy tome was covered in thick black leather, worn at the edges as if handled by someone a great many times in some ancient past. The gold leafing on the embossed title was cracked and faded. Cowl lolled his head, staring at the title, trying to figure out how to pronounce the strange word:
NECRONOMICON
As he ran his fingers across the gilded letters he was unaware that he had awakened something: something ancient, something hideous, loathsome, dangerous. Some morsel of madness, now aroused and aware, uncurled from its dormant sleep and slithered into the dark recesses of Cowl’s subconscious where it took root… and waited.
CHAPTER 12
Three Months Later…
Special Agent Ravenwood tried to catch her breath. She was trembling with fear as she dropped to her knees cowering in a corner of a cold, dark, unfamiliar place, cavernous in size and empty save for the high walls of a confusing labyrinth through which she’d been running… running for her life.
Death was coming. She could feel it, smell it. It was getting closer. It knew where she was hiding.
Suddenly it appeared before her, huge in stature, towering fifteen, twenty feet into the darkness. Her body went limp. She slumped to the cold floor, gazing upward at the awesome figure. But it wasn’t the horrible beast she had expected. It was fearsome and frightening yet it had the appearance of an angel, not the loathsome demon she had imagined. But this dark angel cast no light. It was draped in shadowy folds, its huge wings ashen and aged yet she could see they possessed a terrible strength.
Ravenwood suddenly felt faint. She knew her time had come. Why now? Why like this?
The angelic beast raised its great wings, stirring the air into a rushing torrent of wind, twisting, howling, winding its way through the unholy labyrinth. Ravenwood’s long black hair whipped around wildly, stinging her face and momentarily blinding her. She struggled to stand but the force of the wind pushed her backward along the floor and slammed her against the wall.
Panicked and confused, shielding her watering eyes from the onslaught of the torrent, she glanced up. A strange symbol was forming upon the chest of the creature. As the symbol continued to take shape, the wind subsided and the creature itself dissipated like a vapor, until it was gone. Only the symbol remained, suspended high in the air.
She rose cautiously to her feet, her eyes fixed on the symbol. The strange shape glowed red, like neon, burning itself into her subconscious.
As she stood there, mesmerized by the sight, the symbol dropped from the heights and crashed to the floor. It shattered into a thousand glowing shards. The shards morphed into tiny red creatures like little serpents of molten lava. She screamed and jumped back and the hideous things slithered away, disappearing into the cracks in the walls.
Ravenwood awoke, terrified, and sat bolt upright in bed. Her heart was pounding. The sheets were soaked with sweat. Finally, convinced it was only a dream, she eased out a slow, cautious breath. The tension in her shoulders relaxed. She reached over to the nightstand, turned on the lamp and leaned back against the black satin pillow. She stared blankly at the wall across the room for several moments.
A dark angel? She shook her head, trying to make sense of it all. She had a knack for deciphering her own dreams but this one had her completely baffled. Eventually she gave up and drifted back into sleep.
A moment later her eyes snapped open. The symbol! She jumped out of bed, threw on her robe, stumbled across the room and grabbed her briefcase.
She took out the drawings of the symbols that had been found branded onto the chests of the dead preachers. The symbol she saw in her dream was etched into her memory. It didn’t match any of the symbols on the paper but it was similar enough that she knew there was a connection. Dark angels…fallen angels… Something, some piece of forgotten information, was inching its way forward through her own labyrinth of gray matter. Then it hit her. Oh, my god. Of course. The Necronomicon!
CHAPTER 13
Three Months Earlier…
Although Cowl now counted the Necronomicon amongst his prized possessions, he’d scarcely given it a second thought since the night he’d discovered it. Solving the riddle in the diary remained his singular obsession. He surmised the strange verse had something to do with the Bible but of all the books in his collection a Bible was not among them. He slammed his fist on the desk. Shit! Who would have thought I’d ever be in need of a fucking Bible! He lit a cigarette and wracked his brain. Where could I get my hands on a… The internet! He leaped from the chair and left the Inner Sanctum. A few minutes later he returned with his laptop. A quick keyword search brought up exactly what he needed:
Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. – Revelation, 13:18
He reached for the diary and flipped through the pages until he came to the riddle:
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.
It seemed like it should be so simple. Of course the number is no secret. Six hundred, three score and six. It’s six-hundred and sixty-fucking-six! Everybody knows that. So what the hell am I looking for? The secret is in reverse. What the hell does that mean? What secret? Then he had an idea. Wait a minute. Numerology? It occurred to him that maybe the alphanumeric values of some of the key words would reveal some clue. But what are the key words? Wisdom? Number? Beast? Six-hundred-three-score-and-six? Or maybe the words, ‘six-six-six’? He didn’t know, but he liked the idea. At this point anything was worth a try.
He wrote the alphabet and numbered each letter consecutively: A1, B2, C3, and so on, ending with the letter Z as 26. He knew enough about numerology to know it was important to reduce the multi-digit numbers like 666, down to a single-digit value. It was simply a matter of adding the three 6’s to get 18. Then add the 1 and the 8 to arrive at the single-digit value of 9.
He applied the numerology to each word or combination of words that seemed as if they might be the key words. Over and over he tried but nothing jumped out as any sort of an
answer to the riddle. It was a time-consuming task and he was becoming intensely frustrated with one failed attempt after another. Then it occurred to him that maybe the second line in the riddle might be the real key to the whole thing. The secret is in reverse!
He tried reversing the entire numerical sequence of the alphabet. Now with A as 26 and Z as 1, he recalculated the words he suspected might be key words but still nothing made sense. Jesus Christ! He slammed down the lid of his laptop, shoved it across the desk and stormed out of the Inner Sanctum.
Up in his bedroom he threw himself onto the bed like a child having a tantrum.
He could hear the wind gusting and a driving rain was pelting the roof like an endless barrage of tiny bullets. He stared blankly at the ceiling for several minutes listening to the battle raging outside. Then he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a joint. He lit it up and inhaled deeply. A few more tokes and the desired effect took hold.
Within minutes his eyelids grew heavy. He crushed out the joint and let his head sink into the pillow. The sounds of the battle receded into the background as he drifted off into a mildly chaotic sleep.
Visions of numbers danced in his head, forward and backward and forward again. The words of the riddle soon joined the dance, twisting and turning like snakes in the grass. Then one line lit up like a neon sign. It flashed over and over in his mind:
It is encoded in chapter and in verse.
His eyes snapped open. “The chapter number and the verse number. Shit! I didn’t even think about that!” He tried to recall the number of the chapter and the verse where the number of the Beast was mentioned but he couldn’t remember. “Damn it!”
He sat up quickly and swung his legs over the side of the bed but the rapid movement made his head swim. He paused a moment to steady himself and then rose to his feet. Bleary-eyed, he stumbled his way back down the stairs and into the Inner Sanctum.
He flipped open the laptop and navigated back to the web page where he’d found the information about the specific chapter and verse. Okay… Chapter thirteen, verse eighteen. Now what the hell do I do with it? Need something to write with––
He opened the desk drawer and found a pencil and a note pad. After several minutes of frantically manipulating the numbers 13 and 18 every way he could think of––adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, reversing the sequences––his frenzied scribbling came to a sudden halt. He froze, wide-eyed, staring at the paper.
“Holy shit! I did it!”
Indeed, the solution to the riddle turned out to be deceptively simple:
13 x 18 = 234
The secret is in reverse.
Reversing the 234 to 432 and adding them together was the key:
234 + 432 = 666
So there it was, the number of the Beast, staring him in the face.
It’s been said that when one stares into the eyes of the Beast, seeking to possess the forbidden secrets, the Beast stares back, seeking to possess one’s very soul. Rye Cowl had just put one foot into the mouth of the Beast and it was about to swallow him whole.
He gleefully circled the number with his pencil, over and over, each turn of the lead punctuated by a self-congratulatory chuckle. The chuckling quickly escalated into a full-blown frenzy of laughter. One would have thought he’d gone completely mad. He hadn’t, of course––not completely––not yet. However, unbeknownst to him, there was a dark and hideous thing slowly and silently creeping into his subconscious. Something unearthly and ancient was waking from a deep sleep, stretching its long fingers outward, reaching up from the abyss, driven by its own dumb, instinctual yearning to caress the soul of the young man whose laughter had now reached a howling crescendo. The celebration was accompanied by a rolling explosion of thunder that shook the neighborhood and reverberated across the dark and clouded sky above Moorehouse Manor.
“Congratulations,” came an unexpected voice.
Cowl spun around. What––?
Then he saw the apparition of the Messenger forming in the corner of the room.
“I did it!” Cowl said, jumping out of his chair. “I solved the riddle!”
“You seem surprised,” the Messenger said.
“Well, I––”
“I told you. It’s your destiny.”
Cowl nodded. “Yeah, about that––”
“You might want to resume your seat.”
“What?”
“Sit down and listen. It’s time you learned who you really are.”
“What do you mean, who I really am?”
“There’s much more to who you are than you know.”
Cowl returned to the chair, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“You see,” the Messenger began, “William Bentley Moorehouse––the man for whom this home was built according to his own design––was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1875, the same place and the same year as Aleister Crowley. They were, in fact, neighbors and William became Aleister’s best friend as they were growing up. The Moorehouse clan can be traced back to the time of the Druids. To this day, William’s family still practices many of the Druid rites and customs back in the old country. It was William’s tales of the Druid ways that first introduced the young Crowley to the mysteries of Magick.”
“Druids? Heard of them. Don’t really know much about them. Sounds cool, though. But what does this––?”
“The Druids were magicians and diviners. Their history reaches back into the mists of time, many thousands of years.”
“Yeah, okay. But I still don’t get what this has to do with me.”
“Patience. If I may continue––”
Cowl sat back and listened.
“The Moorehouse family left England and came to America when William was 12 years old. William’s departure caused Crowley to suffer a deep depression. He mourned William’s absence for several months but they kept in touch by letter for many years and Crowley never forgot his beloved childhood friend.”
Cowl’s patience was wearing thin. “Okay, that’s sad and all––and I’d send him a Hallmark card if I could––but I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”
“There’s more to the story. William Bentley Moorehouse married a woman named Rose. They had a son, Michael, whose diary is there on the desk beside you. Now, Michael never married but he did have an insatiable penchant for prostitutes. One of those prostitutes––a woman by the name of Virginia Duckworth––”
Cowl leaned forward. “Wait… what?”
“Listen to me. This prostitute––Virginia Duckworth––gave birth to a son she named Alex. Michael was, indeed, the father of the boy although he denied it and Virginia could never prove it. So she raised Alex by herself and young Alex kept the Duckworth name. Are you following this?”
Cowl nodded, listening intently.
“Alex Duckworth grew up, married and sired a son of his own. His son’s name was Charles. Charles Michael Duckworth––your father.”
Cowl’s eyes grew wide but his expression seemed otherwise blank as if the Messenger had just spoken in a foreign tongue. He shook his head. “What did you just say?”
“Let me put it to you another way. William Bentley Moorehouse was your great-great-grandfather.”
Cowl sat straight up. “What? You gotta be shittin’ me.” He shook his head, trying to absorb the shocking revelation. “But, wait a minute. If all this is true, then why did you first pick Michael Moorehouse as the Chosen One?”
“It was all a game, a ruse perpetrated upon Michael by the spirit of Crowley. Crowley despised Michael and Michael had to be eliminated anyway, so you could take your rightful place as the owner of the Manor. Because you, Rye Cowl, are the true Chosen One.”
Cowl slumped back into the chair and stared at the Messenger. “This is a hell of a lot to take in, I hope you know.”
“Oh, but there is even more to learn about your new home here and about your great-great-grandfather.”
Cowl was ov
erwhelmed but fascinated at the same time. “Okay. Lay it on me.”
The Messenger explained that by the time William Bentley Moorehouse had designed and built the manor, he had long abandoned the Druid practices of his earlier years and had joined something called the Mystic Order of the Old Ones.
“The Old Ones?”
“A mystical order that followed the teachings of the Necronomicon.”
Cowl’s face lit up. “The book I found in the shed.”
“Indeed.”
“But why hide it in the garden shed, of all places?”
“Under the circumstances,” the Messenger explained, “it was a good place to keep it hidden and yet make it accessible for use during the ceremonies and rituals that were held right here in this room––the Inner Sanctum.”
“Here? Right here? What kind of––?”
The Messenger moved ghost-like across the room. “This way,” he said, beckoning Cowl.
Cowl got up and followed until the Messenger stopped directly in front of a tall bookcase.
“Okay, I give up,” Cowl said with a puzzled look. “What’re we doing here?”
“Grab hold of the right edge of the bookcase and swing it toward you.”
“What, another secret room?”
The Messenger’s reply was a simple nod toward the bookcase.
Cowl swung the heavy bookcase outward. A slight musty smell followed.
Behind the bookcase was a large walk-in wardrobe. On one side of the space was a row of hooded robes––eleven white and one black––all neatly draped over crimson, velvet-covered hangers. On the opposite side were shelves containing a variety of strange objects: red glass goblets encased in ornate metal holders; candles of various shapes and sizes; a silver dagger; a string of beads; a wooden flute; some copper bowls; something that looked like a very old clock but with odd symbols in place of numbers; three small, leather-bound books and other paraphernalia the likes of which Cowl had never seen in his life.
