by Rick Dakan
“Not exactly,” he said. “I do have one observation, though, that I feel I must pass on. As I mentioned earlier, most modern magical practices, of which the mass-market Necronomicon is a typical example, rely on a careful fusion of personal optimism and empowerment mixed with a slight frisson of the forbidden and dangerous. They are almost all, despite their reputation, fundamentally positive philosophies of one sort or another. These pages and Mr. Tyree’s Cthulhu Manifesto point in a much darker, much more nihilistic direction. His writings and indeed the original Necronomicon are not hopeful books, nor do they portray a supernatural world that offers even the smallest comfort or guidance to mankind. I for one, if you will forgive my editorializing, find this world view not only distressing but even amoral. I would hazard to guess that any man who willingly devoted himself to such a world view was not someone who had humanity’s best interests or highest meaning at heart.”
I didn’t know how to respond to this warning. To some degree he was putting into words what Conrad and maybe even I had been thinking for some time: was it possible that Shelby had gone over the edge from eccentric to sociopath? If you asked me to bet I’d have said no, but with each passing day my doubts grew deeper and deeper, and now that Sinclair had uncovered this connection to a stolen copy of the original Necronomicon, I might have had to change my bet. This was unexplored territory for all of us. All of us except for Shelby, who was blazing the trail. The question was, could we pull him and his followers back from the edge, or would we get sucked over with them?
Chapter 16
Conrad seemed peeved that I was calling him, and from his hushed tones I gathered he was in the middle of something, probably work-related. But I was eager to get back in his good graces and show that I was doing my part to resolve the Shelby situation (in some as yet to be determined way), so I launched into a quick summary of what Sinclair had told me before he could brush me off. As soon as I finished, his tone changed completely and he agreed to come by my home at once. Twenty minutes later we were sitting at my dining room table again as I reiterated everything Sinclair had told me in much greater detail. He grew more and more agitated as he heard this story, looking at me with wide eyes. “So the woman who calls herself Kym is the connection. She’s got a Caribbean accent of some kind. If she’s connected to this Haitian drug lord somehow… ”
“I thought Rambam said her family was from the Bahamas,” I said, although I’d already made the same leap Conrad was making.
“We don’t know that for sure,” Conrad countered, leaning forward. “Or maybe they are but they have ties to Haiti. It would make sense, though, wouldn’t it? It would explain why Kym and Shelby have so much money to spend on this Cthulhu stuff even though their bank accounts are both basically empty. It would explain why they have this incredibly rare ancient book in their possession.”
“And of course we should not forget the important role voodoun plays in Haitian society,” I added. “Kym might have grown up with a very different attitude towards the occult. Hell, the Necronomicon might have been bedtime reading in her house for all we know.”
“That’s a good point,” said Conrad, nodding and chewing on his bottom lip. “So maybe her family or whatever is into all this magic mumbo jumbo, and we know that Shelby always had a soft spot for weird shit. He’s at a vulnerable place after being practically run out of town, and then he meets this woman in New York. Later he tells us he met her in Providence at Lovecraft’s grave or some baloney story, but we know that’s a crock. And she or someone in her family has the original book, the Necronomicon, and she shows it to him and that sets them off.”
“To me that sounds like a very plausible scenario,” I said. “It explains both the textual differences between the pages I saw and those in the mass-market book as well as providing an explanation for how Shelby got the pages in the first place. But we’re guessing at a lot of this stuff.”
“But it’s a place to start!” said Conrad. He stood up and began pacing around my small living room. “Something to build on. Now at least we know where Shelby’s getting his ideas from. If we can find out more about that original book, maybe it will help us crack their facade and snap Cara and the others out of whatever spell he’s put them under.” I wasn’t sure if Conrad meant “spell” literally or not.
Conrad and I talked around the same set of facts, guesses, and conclusions for the next hour, ignoring for the moment whatever unspoken differences we’d developed since my participation in Kym’s ritual. I still didn’t know what to make of Sinclair’s assertion that Shelby had pages from the real live Necronomicon. Indeed, I still wasn’t sure I believed the book even existed. But once I explained Sinclair’s research to him, Conrad felt very sure, and the more we talked it over, the more the scenario he’d come up with made sense. It explained why Kym and Shelby had money that didn’t show up in any of the records a private eye could check. It explained where Shelby’s sudden fascination with Cthulhu had come from, and it explained why he’d wanted me to be his go-between when it came to buying up old Lovecraft texts and collectibles. Sinclair had said many people had tried to steal the Necronomicon over the years, and if we could make a connection between Kym and Shelby and the last known location of the mysterious book, then so could others.
But having this new insight and knowing what to do about it were two different things. Was Shelby really the dangerous nihilist that Sinclair warned about? There was no way of knowing for sure until we got on the inside. With Cara’s renewed invitation to join providing I blew off Conrad, I had a potential in. We decided that it would be best to put forth the idea that Conrad and I had had a falling out over my participation in the house party. Conrad seemed to suspect that Shelby might be watching us as closely as we were watching him, and even hinted that he might be using some extraordinary means to do so. We would split up then (an idea he pushed for very hard and which didn’t seem to bother him at all), with me trying to join the cult and him continuing to put whatever pressure he could on them from the outside. When I asked him what he meant by “putting on pressure,” he was vague, except to say that he didn’t think Sarasota at large would approve of Shelby’s Cthulhu worship once they found out what was really going on.
We left it at that, with my job being to do nothing more than wait for Cara to contact me again and Conrad going off to do whatever it was he was going to do. There was a palpable tension between us now, as there had been ever since I came out of Kym’s ritual at the Hippo House, but my relationship with Conrad, as close as it was, was not one that involved a lot of discussion about our feelings towards one another. Of course, I couldn’t remember a time when there’d ever been any serious tension between us, so it I didn’t have a lot of precedent to work with. Still, his suppressed anger or discomfort or whatever it was unsettled me.
As Conrad stood in my doorway, about to leave, he turned to me and said, “Rick, this is an important moment for us. We can do the right thing here. We can help Cara and maybe if we’re lucky help Shelby too. But we need to keep focused, right? Keep focused on saving them, not being seduced by them, right?”
“Yeah, Conrad. I agree. I’m focused.”
He stared at me with an intensity and seriousness I’d never seen in him before. He really was worried about Cara, and his grim outlook was growing contagious. Was I taking this matter serious enough? I thought I was, but I didn’t burn with whatever fire was lighting Conrad’s eyes at that moment. “I hope you are. I’m not sure, but I hope that you are.” Then he turned and left.
The call from Cara came late at night, after the lights were out but before I’d fallen asleep.
“Hello, Rick,” she said as I picked up the phone. “Were you dreaming?”
“Cara? No I wasn’t asleep yet. What’s up?”
“We wanted to know if you’d thought any more about what I told you.”
“About what? Getting a cup of coffee? I’d like to talk with you.”
“I mean about Conrad.” Her voic
e was level and smooth and warm. “I know you two were always close, but I’m afraid he’s becoming rather unbearable lately.”
“What do you mean?”
“Always hanging around outside the house. Always leaving strange messages for me taped to the door. He really doesn’t understand what it is we’re doing here.”
“I don’t either.”
“But you want to understand, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. And I did.
“That’s the difference between you two. And I can help you understand. I can get Shelby to see you and show you. If that’s what you want.”
That was what I wanted, although the way she said it, it sounded less like an informative chat and more like an indoctrination. “Can we talk about this over that coffee?”
“We could, yes. But things are becoming rather busy for me. It would be easier, it would be better, if you could come here.”
“Inside the compound?”
“Yes, of course. It would be so good to see you and to show you what we’re doing here. It’s not something one can explain in a coffee shop. Not at all. And Shelby said he will see you, on two conditions.”
“What? What conditions?”
“You can’t bring Conrad or tell him anything about what happens or have any other dealings with him relating to our church. He’s been nothing but trouble for us lately.”
“OK. We haven’t really been getting along lately anyway. That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Other than that, Shelby would like your help preparing a second Cthulhu Manifesto. Your skills as a writer and editor would help us a lot. Shelby has wonderful insights and observations, but he sometimes has a hard time organizing material. It took him months and months to write the manifesto.”
“Would I be helping him work from the original texts?” I asked, fishing for information on the Necronomicon, some sort of confirmation of what Sinclair had said.
“I’m not sure what you mean exactly, but I suppose so. You mean Lovecraft’s stories?”
“Those, yeah, and whatever else he’s drawing his inspiration from. Older books and stuff.” I was floundering here, but I didn’t want to come out and say the “N” word.
“He’ll discuss the details with you I’m sure when you meet. Does this mean you’re willing?”
“I’ll… I’ll need to think about it. It sounds good, but let me get back to you.”
“Of course, take your time. But the sooner you decide, the sooner we can begin.” Did she mean me and her or me and the cult or her and the cult?
“Is there a number I can call you back at?”
“This is a friend’s phone, so no. But I’ll e-mail you and you can e-mail me back when you have your answer.”
“OK, I’ll let you know soon.”
“Sweet dreams.” And she hung up. I didn’t fall asleep for a long, long time.
I spent the next day avoiding work. Cara’s e-mail came around noon, and I e-mailed her back to say I was still thinking things over. Of course I planned on accepting her invitation, but I wanted to talk it through with Conrad first and make sure he would be available to back me up on the day if things went wrong. But he wasn’t returning my calls. I checked some local blogs and Web sites to see if there was anything about the manifesto anywhere, but I found no mention of it. Nor had the Weekly Voice published the promised follow-up story about Shelby that they’d hinted at on their blog. That night however, things changed. I got a call right around 7:00 p.m. and looking at the caller ID, I saw it was Conrad’s number. I was surprised and excited, glad to get a chance to fill him in.
“Conrad, finally,” I said.
“Rick, is Conrad there?” It was Lauren on the other end of the line, and she sounded pissed off.
“Lauren? No, I haven’t seen him in a few days.” That was the truth anyway. I had no interest in getting involved in whatever issues they were having.
“Did you watch channel 7 news this evening?” she asked.
“No, of course not. I can’t stand local news.”
“Well, you should watch it again tonight at 11:00. There’s a story about that damn church I helped your friend set up, and it’s going to bite me on the butt when I get into the office tomorrow morning,” said Lauren, continuing to sound pissed off.
“What story? What happened?”
“Some parents found a copy of that stupid manifesto comic book in their son’s book bag and he’s saying he got it from a friend at school. So now they’re threatening to sue the school and whoever gave the manifesto to a kid in the first place and once they trace the thing back to Shelby, I’m sure they’re going to want to sue him too. And quite frankly, that’s something I don’t need or want in my life right now.”
“Jesus… And you said Conrad’s not home?”
“I don’t know where the heck Conrad is. It’s been… he’s not picking up his cell.” I could tell that there was a deeper issue here, but Lauren was not the kind of person to air dirty laundry in front of me, especially since she probably assumed I’d be on my best friend’s side in any such dispute. “So if you talk to him in the next hour or so, tell him to call me. Unless you happen to have a number for Shelby.”
“No one has a number for Shelby. That’s part of the problem.”
“That’s only the smallest part of the problem. I should never have let him suck me into this nonsense. My partners at the firm are not amused by any of it.”
“I’ll bet not,” I said. Her firm was not the kind of place that went after flashy clients and controversial cases — they did mostly contracts, probate, and real estate law.
“So if you talk to Shelby by any chance before I do, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Try and convince him to hire a lawyer who actually likes this kind of garbage.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“All right,” she said, sounding resigned. “Thanks, Rick. Sorry to bother you.”
I watched the 11:00 p.m. local news that night and while the Cthulhu Manifesto story wasn’t the lead, they did tease it in the opening and come to it right after the first commercial break. The story was pretty much as Lauren had described it to me on the phone. William and Audrey Garrance had found a copy of the Cthulhu Manifesto in their sixteen-year-old son’s book bag. Being decent, churchgoing folk, they’d been very upset at the discovery. As it turned out, their priest had warned them that this particularly vile comic book was circulating among area teens, and that they should be on the lookout for it. A church warning parishioners about his evil ways? I’m sure Shelby was thrilled.
“Our son is a good kid,” Audrey Garrance told the reporter. “He had no idea what he was getting into when he picked up that book.”
“It’s not the kind of thing they should allow in public schools,” her husband added.
The story cut to a picture of the reporter, a twenty-something, dark-haired man squeezed into a suit and holding up a copy of the “comic book” version of the Cthulhu Manifesto. “A free giveaway from a local New Age group calling itself the Starry Wisdom Church, the so-called Cthulhu Manifesto is being called by many parents and religious leaders an anti-God tract that inspires demon worship and interest in the occult. Several Sarasota County schools have already issued statements today banning the comics from school property.”
They then cut back to the angry parents. “This kind of material is offensive on every level, and there’s no way people should be handing it out to kids, in school or out of school,” said William Garrance.
Then the reporter was back, saying, “The Garrances are considering all their legal options, but speculation is that they might file a lawsuit either against the school or against the group that produced and distributed the comic book.”
That was it. A short little piece, but shocking to me nonetheless. I couldn’t imagine that Shelby ever thought he’d get sued over his comic, nor could I figure out what they might sue him for. There was no profanity in the thing, n
ot anything approaching explicit sex or nudity. There were just some mentions of a sort of hippie-like free love or guilt-free carnality, but they were couched in very dense, philosophical language and not at all salacious. I assumed the source of the outrage was the much more blatant anti-faith and anti-religion rhetoric, which didn’t mince words at all. I could see how the religious parents might not like it, but how could a school ban it without also banning books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, for example? Not that anyone was asking me, of course. Not yet anyway.
I called Conrad’s cell when the piece ended, but it went right to voice mail and I didn’t want to call his home number that late. With any luck, he was there and getting yelled at by Lauren instead of out in his car across the street from Shelby’s compound.
Chapter 17
In a town where scandal usually involved shady real estate developments and the occasional massive corporate tax fraud, anything with the word “cult” attached to it was bound to become a gravity well for more interest and press than it possibly deserved. The Herald-Tribune had a piece on it in the next day’s paper, which referenced the art show event and Shelby’s legal troubles from the year before. It was only a couple of column inches, but it was enough to fuel the flames of the Garrances’ anger. Once they realized that Shelby was behind the Starry Wisdom Church and the Cthulhu Manifesto, they hit the roof and immediately announced plans to form a citizen’s action committee to look into Shelby Tyree and all his nefarious doings.
I traded e-mails with Cara about the local television news story. She hadn’t seen it or heard about it, but she saw a video had been posted online, and we both expressed our own sarcastic outrage over the idea that anyone would feel actual outrage over something like the manifesto. I played up to her indignation, nurturing our connection with shared antipathy towards the community’s conservative reaction. Except on the inside I found myself strangely sympathetic towards the Garrances’ position. While I didn’t think their son reading anything would scar him for life in any way or endanger his soul, I couldn’t say the same about Cara. It seemed she had in fact been seduced by Shelby’s words and promises and God only knows what else was going on behind that fence. And while the manifesto seemed harmless enough to me on its face, the fact that it was likely to have been cribbed from the fabled Necronomicon meant that it could in fact be very dangerous. Did the Garrances really feel any different seeing the manifesto than I did when I saw Cara’s Elder Sign tattoo?
