Ash: Return of the Beast

by Gary Tenuta

  She gave him a look that said ‘are you kidding?’ There was no way in hell she was passing this up. “After you, Sherlock.”

  ***

  The hooded figure, with arms raised high, called forth the demon.

  “Harok uzni hadahs. Harok uzni hadahs. Harok uzni hadahs! Lilit, eighth Offspring of the Old Ones! Demon! Succubus! Thou who dost invade the bodies of men to steal their seed! Come! Carry me to the eighth of nine and light the path for my return! Then we shall be as One! Harok uzni hadahs!”

  The eighth candle began vibrating furiously, its flame rising, flaring, flooding the room with a blasphemous blast of light.

  ***

  The petite young nurse Callahan gently wiped Cowl’s forehead with a cool, moist cloth. She had only seen him once before as a frenetic powerhouse of energy in a music video. It wasn’t her type of music but, she had to admit, he was one sexy specimen. Now, if it were not for the nearly imperceptible indications that he was still alive, he could have been mistaken for a corpse. She folded the wet cloth and was about to leave when she thought she heard him speak.

  She glanced at the monitor but it registered no change. She leaned in close to him, put her ear next to his mouth and in one sudden swipe he grabbed her arm. His eyes flew open, expressionless, glassy, staring straight at the ceiling. Callahan screamed and struggled to pull away but his grip tightened, squeezing into her flesh. Dr. Halverson heard the screams echoing down the corridor. He grabbed an orderly and they hurried toward the room.

  The orderly rushed in and pried Cowl’s fingers from Callahan’s arm and pulled her away from the bed.

  Dr. Halverson approached with caution.

  Cowl’s arm relaxed and fell to the bed. His eyelids fluttered and slowly closed. In a moment he reverted back into a calm state of unconsciousness.

  Halverson checked the patient’s vitals. Everything appeared normal. “Damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said. He turned to Nurse Callahan who was still cowering next to the orderly. She was badly shaken but otherwise unharmed. “You say he spoke to you?”

  She shook her head. “I––I thought so. Just a whisper, really.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I’m not sure. Sounded something like… ‘Lilith’.”

  ***

  Ravenwood followed Kane through the trapdoor, down the ladder, into the void and through the first door of the tunnel.

  Kane spotted the small light bulbs strung along the wire hanging from the overhead. He found the antiquated light switch with the red and green buttons. He pushed the green one and the old yellowed bulbs flickered and filled the tunnel with a dim, eerie glow.

  Ravenwood touched the badly decomposing brick wall. A chunk fell out and landed at her feet. “Creepy place. Wonder where it leads?”

  “I don’t know,” Kane said as they moved along. “But, if my internal compass is right, I’d say we’re heading straight for the house.”

  “You’re packing, of course.”

  “Of course. You?”

  “Never leave home without it.”

  “American Express?”

  “Glock-23.”

  “That’ll work.”

  They came to another door, stepped across the threshold and found themselves in the small enclosure at the end of the tunnel.

  ***

  The Doppelganger administered the final, horrendous act upon his helpless victim and recited the closing words of the ritual.

  Alashem-barah-alashem! Lilit, eighth Offspring of the Old Ones! Demon! Succubus! Thou who dost invade the bodies of men to steal their seed!––I give this soul to you! Aum-ha!

  The hooded figure rolled the lifeless body over onto its back. The man’s shirt was ripped open, his trousers crumpled into a wad at his ankles. The red welts of the branded symbols, seared into his flesh, were a work of art. The hooded figure took a moment to admire his handiwork and then simply vanished from the scene and reappeared inside the Inner Sanctum.

  ***

  Kane spotted the ladder and looked up.

  “Another trapdoor,” Ravenwood said. “We must be directly under the house.”

  “One way to find out,” Kane said. He started up the ladder but Ravenwood grabbed him by the sleeve and pulled him back.

  He tugged his arm away. “What the hell are you doing?”

  She raised a finger to her lips and pulled out her gun. “I thought I heard something,” she whispered. “Sounded like the floor creaked. Like someone’s moving around up there.”

  “You’re imagining things.”

  “Am I?”

  Kane decided to trust her instincts and drew his gun. They waited in silence for several minutes, listening.

  Nothing.

  Ravenwood holstered her gun and shrugged. “Okay, so I have a vivid imagination.”

  Kane groaned and moved up the ladder. When he reached the top he turned and looked down at Ravenwood. The anxiety on her face made him grin. She didn’t grin back. He reached up, pressed a hand against the trapdoor and pushed it open just a crack but it was too dark to see much of anything. He shined his light through the opening and glanced back at Ravenwood. He pushed the trapdoor open enough to pull himself through and scanned the room. “Clear,” he said.

  Ravenwood climbed up after him.

  Kane sniffed the air. “Smell something?”

  Ravenwood moved over beside him. “Yeah. Smells like…” She paused for a moment. “…like burnt candles.”

  Kane moved the flashlight around and noticed something odd near one corner of the room. A large portion of the carpet was rolled back. They walked toward it and stopped in their tracks. The beam from the flashlight illuminated the large Lucifer Seal painted on the floor. It was surrounded by nine brass candleholders, minus the candles. Eight were covered with drippings of white wax and one was still clean and untarnished.

  “Well, well,” Kane said. “What have we here?”

  Ravenwood knelt down and inspected the candleholders. She looked up at Kane. “The wax drippings are still soft. I was right. Someone was here.”

  Kane raised his gun. “Maybe still is here.”

  He wielded the flashlight around for another quick scan of the room and spotted the big oak desk and the lamp. He moved quickly to the lamp and switched it on.

  Now that they could see their surroundings, they were even less sure about what sort of room they were in.

  “Weird,” Kane said. “No windows, no doors. There must be some way to get in and out of here besides that tunnel. Someone was definitely in here just minutes ago. Where the hell could they go? And who the hell was it?”

  “And what the hell is that?” Ravenwood said.

  “What’s what?”

  She joined him in front of the desk and picked up the urn. “This.” She held it under the light of the desk lamp. The light glinted off the faceted edges of the strange ruby-like gem. She read the inscription below it. She turned to Kane, her narrowed eyes expressing something between disbelief and utter amazement. “Do you know what this is?”

  “I’m guessing it’s a cinerary urn.”

  “Not just any cinerary urn,” she said, handing it to him.

  He moved it around in the dim light until he could read the inscription. “Aleister Alexander Crowley. No way. Let’s see if he’s still in there.” He lifted the lid and peered inside, then tipped it and tapped it against his hand. “Nada. Empty.”

  “This has got to be the legendary long lost urn of Crowley’s ashes.”

  “Looks to me like they’re still lost.”

  “I’m betting they were here, in the urn, in this room.”

  “So, where’d they go?”

  “Probably used in a ceremonial ritual.”

  She explained the bizarre ritual to Kane.

  He rolled his eyes. “Christ. Just when I think I’ve heard it all. So what do you mean the urn was lost? What legend?”

  She gave him a Cliff-Notes version of the story behind the mysterious disappea
rance of the urn.

  “You mean it was just gone?”

  “Yes. According to the story, Germer dug all around the tree but the urn was gone. Vanished without a trace. No one ever knew what became of it.”

  “And you really think this is it?”

  “Recognize the design cut into that gemstone?”

  He took a closer look. “Jesus. It’s the same as the symbol branded onto the foreheads of the dead preachers. That complex version of the Lucifer Seal. Same thing that’s…” he swung the flashlight around “… painted on the floor over there.”

  Ravenwood was only half listening. Her full attention was focused on another item on the desk. She picked it up.

  Kane set the urn down and moved closer to her. “What is it?”

  “Incredible.”

  He moved around behind her and looked over her shoulder.

  “It’s a diary,” she said, thumbing through the pages. “It seems to be the diary of Michael Moorehouse, the son of the man who built this place. Looks like the young Mr. Moorehouse was another Crowley fanatic.”

  “No wonder this place gives me the creeps.” He grabbed the urn off the desk. “I say we confiscate this stuff and get the hell out of here.”

  She closed the diary and tucked it inside her jacket. “To the Bat Cave.”

  “Funny.”

  “I thought so.”

  CHAPTER 41

  One Hour Later,

  Kane’s Office…

  Kane sipped his coffee and listened intently as Ravenwood read to him from the diary.

  She closed it after reading the final entry and looked up. “So,” she said. “What do you think?”

  He downed the last drop from his cup and shook his head. “Guy was a certified nut case is what I think. And that bit about the urn being sent to that guy in New York and then being stolen by Moorehouse. That’s all true?”

  “Well, the part about the urn being sent to Germer in New York is true. And, as far as I know, the story about him burying it in his yard and then finding it gone, is true. How it disappeared and where it ended up has been a mystery all these years.” She cast a glance at the urn sitting on Kane’s desk. “Now we know. Mystery solved.” She shook her head. “Man, do I know some people who would love to get their hands on that little item. You put that thing up for auction on eBay and you’d see one hell of a bidding war, that’s for sure.”

  “Yeah, well, the only place that thing is going now is into the evidence locker. And what ever became of Moorehouse, anyway?”

  “I did a little research on that a few days ago. There wasn’t a lot of information. But according to some old newspaper articles, Moorehouse was found dead on the floor of the library inside the mansion.”

  “Starting to sound like a game of Clue. Miss Scarlet, in the library, with the candlestick. How’d he die?”

  “Death by mushroom, actually.”

  “Well, there’s a new one. Choked to death?”

  Ravenwood explained about the Soma, the Amanita Muscaria, that Moorehouse had mentioned in one of the diary entries. “Magic mushrooms,” she said. “Simple case of a massive overdose.”

  “Figures. All that stuff about the Messenger was obviously nothing but a drug induced hallucination.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

  “C’mon. You believe he actually had an encounter with some… some…” He floundered for the right word. “…some sort of a phantom?”

  “All I know is that the same drug has been used by shamans for centuries. The claim is that, under the influence of the Soma, they encounter a variety of otherworldly beings.”

  “Hallucinations.”

  Ravenwood shrugged. “Maybe.” She didn’t want to reveal her own personal experiences as a teenager after learning about such things from her mother. She’d never told her mother about the experimentation and she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell Kane. In any case, the conversation was cut short by the buzz from Kane’s desk phone.

  He picked up the call and scribbled something in his note pad. “You sure? But… damn it!” He slammed the phone down.

  Ravenwood sat back and folded her arms. “Let me guess. Number eight?”

  He groaned. “Yeah. Either that or we’ve got a goddamned copycat who just happened to have a Batman coin with the number eight on it. I mean how the hell––?” He picked up the phone again.

  “Who are you calling?”

  “The hospital. I want to make sure Cowl didn’t wake up and walk out of there like a goddamn zombie or something.”

  The call was short. He hung up the phone with a puzzled look.

  “He’s still there, yes?”

  “Yeah, he’s there all right. But apparently something weird happened. He was still unconscious…still is unconscious…but he grabbed the arm of an attending nurse and whispered what she thought was a name.”

  “A name?”

  “Yeah. Lilith.”

  Ravenwood’s eyebrows lifted. She reached into her briefcase and pulled out the drawings of the sigils. She laid the paper on Kane’s desk, turned it toward him and pointed to the eighth sigil. “Lilit.”

  “Shit.” He ripped a page from his notebook and handed it to her. “Here’s the address. You drive.”

  ***

  Mentally and emotionally drained from a tortured and sleepless night, the old pastor stared at the phone. His decision not to pray for Cowl’s death was not so much for the sake of Cowl but for the sake of his own soul which, as far as he knew, could already be damned to Hell anyway. Maybe the forgiveness he believed God had so mercifully bestowed upon him for his past deeds had been nothing but self-delusion. If it was true that confession is good for the soul then maybe––just maybe––some sense of relief, some thin hope of undeserved redemption could be gained by telling his son everything. All he had to do now was get up the nerve to make the call.

  ***

  The address brought Kane and Ravenwood to a low-rent, third-floor apartment in the south end of the city.

  Wheeler was at the scene talking with the landlord when they walked in. He waved them over and made the introductions. “This is Mr. Ramos, the landlord.”

  It was impossible to gauge the age of the balding landlord. Standing there in a rumpled, faded, short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt and baggy khaki trousers with a dried dirt smudge on one knee, he could have been forty or he could have been sixty. Kane shook the man’s hand. “You the one who called it in?”

  “Yeah. The lady in the apartment next door heard screams and odd noises coming from here and she called me. I came up to find out what was going on and this is what I found.” He nodded toward the body that was already bagged and tagged. “Weird shit. You never seen nothin’ like it.”

  “You’d be surprised,” Kane said. “What time did this happen? The screams and all.”

  “Couple hours ago.”

  Kane looked at his watch and then at Ravenwood. “That would have been about the same time as the incident with Cowl and the nurse at the hospital.”

  Ravenwood nodded. “And about the same time we were in the shed at Cowl’s place. And remember I thought I heard something when we reached the end of the tunnel under the room.”

  Kane turned back to Ramos. “What can you tell us about this guy? Name? Occupation? He didn’t happen to be a preacher did he?”

  “A preacher?” Ramos chuckled. “He worked for Lancaster Maintenance. He was a janitor. Name was Bodine. Harlan Bodine.”

  Kane was confused. “A janitor?”

  “Yeah. Or the lead janitor or something like that. He wasn’t the lowest guy on the totem pole. But basically, yeah. A janitor.”

  Kane flipped open his notepad and jotted something down. “Can you hang around here for a few minutes? I might have some more questions.”

  Ramos looked annoyed. “I’ve already told the other detective everything I know.”

  Kane scowled. “You got a fire to go to? A Wedding? A funeral? All of the above?”

 
“Uh… no.”

  “Good. Then stay put for a few minutes.”

  “Lieutenant?” It was Ravenwood’s voice coming from one of the bedrooms.

  “Check this out,” she said as he walked in. “Looks like our vic was planning a vacation.”

  On the bed was a large suitcase, partially packed. Several items of clothing, haphazardly folded, were lying next to it, apparently waiting to be packed with the others.

  Kane called Wheeler into the room. “Did you go through any of this stuff?”

  “No, sir. Didn’t want to mess things up until you got here.”

  “Check it out. See if there’s a plane ticket, a bus ticket, a brochure. Anything that might tell us where he was planning to go.” He turned to Ravenwood but she had vanished.

  “Lieutenant?” Ravenwood called from the other bedroom. “You’ll want to see this.”

  Kane joined her in the other bedroom. “What is it?”

  She pointed to the wall.

  “Son of a bitch,” Kane said, staring at the life-size poster of Rye Cowl tacked to the wall. “Mr. Ramos! Can you come here for a minute?”

  Kane nodded toward the poster when Ramos entered the room. “This Bodine fellow, he was a fan of this band?”

  Ramos shook his head. “No, but his son was. Every time Mr. Bodine was out, his son would play that crap so loud it disturbed the neighbors. I don’t how many times I had to come up here and tell him to knock it off.”

  “He has a son?” Kane asked. “Where is he?”

  “Dead.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Killed himself.”

  “When?”

  “About a year ago. Shot himself in the head.” He glanced toward the poster. “I’d shoot myself in the head, too, if I listened to that crap all day long. Kid was a loser, anyway. Always in trouble for something. Too bad, too, ‘cause Mr. Bodine seemed like a really nice guy. Went to work. Came home. Quiet type. Never bothered nobody.”

  “Hey Leiutenant!” It was Wheeler.

  Kane took a last look at the poster and moved back to the other bedroom. “Find something?”