by Rex Baron
It was indeed a holy war, a clash of good and evil. The forces of darkness amassed in the great body of warriors, the combined anger and pain of countless unavenged deaths, of those who had fallen in battle or been slaughtered in the name of valor.
On the opposing side stood the few, determined to keep alive what little good still remained, regardless of the cost to themselves.
Lexi viewed the confrontation as an absurdity of inequity. What chance would this pitiful gaggle of doddering stalwarts have against the numberless, murdering throng? And yet, Miss Auriel's sword, which by now had become a cross bearing the body of Christ, gave forth a piercing golden light that momentarily blinded the encroaching army, rendering them confused and disorganized.
“We have no recourse but to fight,” shouted the American, “not to the annihilation of our bodies, but until our Souls have absorbed all the evil in the world, taken it unto ourselves and cleansed it in the purifying vertical light streaming through us from above. It is not by countless armies we shall conquer, but by a single and unanimous word.”
Lexi sat bolt upright in bed, and gasping for breath, noticed that it was four o'clock by the bedside clock. She could still see Miss Auriel in her mind's eye, offering herself up as a sacrifice, a savior dutifully carrying out the promise of her faith, pledging herself to sure destruction, as peacefully as if she were carrying out the routine chores of an uneventful day. She had the serenity of one who understood that death had already been conquered and the true conflict lay at a higher level. The outcome was not merely the life or death of the body, but the eternal life or death of the Soul.
Chapter Seventeen
England
The morning found the meadow outside Lexi's cottage littered with tree branches and scraps of metal, shattered fragments blown in by the nocturnal storm, creating an eerie resemblance to the open battlefield she had seen in her dream. An ominous presence remained, even though the damp field rolled off harmlessly in every direction. It seemed a field of death, scattered with invisible corpses and discarded weapons, jettisoned from some other time and space, still charged with their deadly purpose.
Lexi turned away from the view out her window and rubbed the flanks of her body through her thin robe to warm herself against the chill the thought had sent through her. She passed the engraving that stared down ominously from the mantle as she padded barefoot into the kitchen to pour a cup of tea. She rummaged through her disorganized morning mind, like someone in a hurry looking for a missing sock in a cluttered drawer. She struggled to think of someone to whom she could lend the print without raising suspicion. She confronted the engraving from a foot or so away and stared cautiously into it, as if the evil of murder represented and the heinous Hand of Glory might in some way affect her and draw her into its mesmerizing scene. She could not wait to be rid of the thing.
The Hand of Glory was a puzzlement to her. She must find out its purpose and know why Helen had ventured so hazardous and brazen a risk to steal it from the coven that night in the forest.
Finally, it occurred to her that the answer to this question, and that of the custodianship of the print, both appeared to be solved by a single and obvious choice: Ellen Auriel.
In the best scenario, the American would simply accept the responsibility of taking the etching into her charge and look after it like a valuable foundling, no questions asked. The plain American woman in the tweed suit was, after all, an art lover and a self-proclaimed historian, Lexi reminded herself. She also appeared to have, if not a working knowledge of the occult, at least a suitably extensive library on the subject that might hold the answer to the power held in the unsettling Hand of Glory.
Her surprising appearance in the dream, standing guard over England, seemed more than a coincidence. It was an omen that Lexi dared not ignore.
At two o'clock, Lexi called at the flat of her eccentric new friend. Miss Auriel answered the door, dressed in a heavy tweed suit as if expecting visitors. She blinked in surprise to see just who that visitor was.
“I hope I've not come at an inopportune time,” Lexi said.
“No, not at all,” her host replied, having acquired the English talent for being completely agreeable while still conveying a note of disapproval at having, in some unspoken way, been put out. “I was just in from the market and was settling in for a cup of tea. Will you join me?”
Lexi nodded, and was shown into the cluttered little sitting room with the hooked rug on the floor.
“I shan't take too much of your time,” Lexi said, “but I brought something for you to look at and wondered if I might ask a small favor.”
Miss Auriel busied herself with fetching another cup and saucer from the pantry sideboard so that she might hear the request without agreeing to anything. Carefully, she poured the tea and looked up in mild interest as Lexi unrolled the engraving.
“I should like it if you would look after this little picture for me, for a short while,” she said, trying to appear casual and offhanded. “It's only that the Brangwin cottage, where I'm living, has such poor locks on the doors, and I'm afraid everyone in the town knows where the key is hidden. There is almost no point in locking the door at all,” she explained with a nervous laugh.
Ellen's face did not reflect Lexi’s light-heartedness. Instead, she stared at the engraving, analyzing its contents and recording it in her mind.
“Is it as valuable as all that?” she asked flatly, foregoing the customary British delicacy of never speaking about money.
Lexi's body tightened. She tried to calm her fluttering hands in her lap.
“Not at all. It's only that it doesn't belong to me, and I should hate to have anything happen to it while it was under my roof.”
Miss Auriel eyed her nervousness coolly, appraising the value of the print in direct proportion to the anxiety of her visitor.
“It belongs to my cousin in Cornwall,” Lexi added, hoping to add verification to her flimsy story.
“Of course, my dear, I should be more than happy to look after it for you, at least until you find more suitable lodgings or have the locks redone on the cottage.” She smiled graciously, but the smile contained in it a knowingness, as if, in her agreement, she had signed a pact of secrecy as well.
Lexi put down her teacup and sighed with relief. She would be more than glad to not have the thing leering at her from one corner or other of the cottage, or lurking under the bed like a witch's cat, plotting its part in some diabolical enchantment. She would be free of it and could sleep the night away in uninterrupted peace.
Suddenly, she remembered her dream and stared at the hostess, studying her in a new light, trying to envision her as she had seen her, sword in hand as the champion of good.
“Is something wrong?' Miss Auriel asked, responding coolly to the penetrating gaze.
“No, nothing,” Lexi said, turning her eyes discreetly to the intricacy of the hooked rug.
“But I do sense there is something you wanted to tell me about, or needed to ask, that is troubling you.” The librarian's piercing eyes followed Lexi's small actions from over the rim of the teacup, waiting for her reply, like a predator gauging the reflexes of flight or fight, irrevocably programmed by nature into its prey.
Lexi got to the point.
“You seem well-versed in matters of art, at least you seemed so with regard to my painting the other day. Is there anything you find unusual about this print?”
Her hostess did not hesitate to answer. She had made her appraisal within a moment of having seen the engraving and replied with great assuredness.
“Two things,” she said, drawing herself up with authority. “The fact that it is supposed to represent a murder plot that historically is placed in the fourteenth century, and yet, not only the clothing that the perpetrators are wearing, but also the way in which they appear to be casting the death wax images, implies that the engraving was done in the early sixteenth century, and reflects more the styles and practices of magic of that muc
h later period.” She smiled knowingly at her guest, and took a tiny swallow of her tea, more for the dramatic pause than the need for refreshment. “Then, of course, there is the presence of the infernal hand, or the Hand of Glory, as it is often called.”
Lexi's hand rattled her cup against the saucer, which Miss Auriel took as a subtle sounding of confirmation that she had, indeed, struck at the core of this seemingly casual conversation.
“Oh yes,” Ellen continued. “It might easily be overlooked by one who is not familiar with it, but once you understand its significance, it could never escape your attention.”
Lexi nodded her involuntary agreement.
“I presume that is what you wanted to ask,” Miss Auriel stated with certainty. “Now, the question is why, and what possible association you might have with such a thing of horror.”
“What is it for? I mean, what would one practicing some sort of magic use it for?” Lexi asked.
The American woman leaned forward and lowered her voice, as if the picture itself might overhear, as she extolled the frightening legacy of the infernal hand. Made from the severed limb of a hanged felon, and carrying in its palm a candle fashioned from wax purloined from funerals of damned souls or shaped from the tallow of human flesh, this talisman, for untold centuries, had possessed the property to call up the forces of darkness and light their way to the threshold of the sorcerer who dared call their name.
Ellen broke her trance-like concentration and leaned back in her chair. “Why do you want to know about such dreadful things?” she asked.
“I've seen something like that before,” Lexi admitted tentatively.
Miss Auriel nearly leapt to her feet.
“You mean you've actually seen one in practice?”
“No, I only said that I saw one, like the one in the picture. I held the wretched thing in my lap for nearly an hour.”
Lexi recounted the story of how Helen had stolen the hand from the German coven. All the while, her new friend sat open-mouthed, nodding at intervals and making little grunting sounds of agreement as the story progressed. When Lexi had finished, her hostess rose and paced the room nervously, obviously mulling over something in her head. After a long moment she turned to Lexi.
“I have been considering the consequences of exchanging one truth for another. I feel this is in no small way a coincidence. For you see, by coming to me and telling of the existence of this thing of horror, then I, in turn, must tell you about the need of knowing the whereabouts of such a thing. If I tell you this small thing, then you are committed to know the whole truth and thereby become inextricably involved. It may be a far greater sacrifice than you bargained for.”
Lexi stared up at her speechless. Ellen took her by the shoulders and stared down at her intensely.
“You must tell me where it is. It is vital that we know into whose hands it has fallen.”
Lexi nodded her head in silence. She somehow knew when she acted as accomplice in stealing the hand that she had been blown onto a course bound for destruction. The only way to put things right was to try and undo the ungodly thing that she had helped perpetrate. It was no coincidence that she had been steered toward this peculiar woman in the tweed suit, who she had seen in the dream world as protector of England. In her she would put her trust, and hope that it was not too late to stop Helen in her voracious quest for power.
Chapter Eighteen
Germany
“He slapped me,” Kurt shouted to the gray clouds, rolling unopposed across the somber sky. “The little man had the audacity to slap my face.”
Helen listened from a distance of a few yards away. She cradled in her arms a small wooden case that contained two thousand tiny wax figures. She walked along the open field behind Kurt's country house, poking in the ground with a sharp stick and dropping one of the small wax pellets into each hole it created. She walked in straight lines, straddling the furrows of earth, planting her crop of human seeds, confident that the harvest of young manhood would be bountiful.
Kurt wandered at a distance, jabbing at the ground with irregular, violent strokes.
“The arrogant little fool has crossed the line. He has gone irretrievably mad,” he shouted, not entirely concerned whether his angry diatribe reached Helen's ears.
He had been insulted by Hitler, the Fuhrer. The tiny man, whom Kurt had used as a trained Medium to further his own goal of shaping a new world based on the legacy of the Thule forefathers, had overstepped his bounds. He had begun to see himself as the true and only visionary of the New Order. They had argued over the demoralizing defeat on the Eastern Front in February, and the failure of the armies at the siege of Leningrad. Hitler insisted that as the reincarnated soul of Napoleon, he could out-maneuver any army and would use his divine gift of strategy to win ultimate world dominion.
Kurt had pounded the table of the Fuhrer's office with desperate frustration. The army was failing, nearly two thirds of it had been decimated. The only answer now were the soldiers of the astral plane that he had spent so long in painstakingly preparing. All he need do was sow the seeds and an army of invincibles, unlike anything the modern military mind had known, would arise. They could attack and destroy on the unseen planes of the inner psyche. There was not a man, woman or child who could not be reached and controlled on the astral realm, silently and effortlessly, while they slept.
But now the deluded little fool and his cohorts had decided they knew better. They had turned the fight into a squabbling question of racial superiority amongst the tiny nations of the middle European states. Lithuanians were now purer than Slavs, and Slavs superior to Estonians. It was an endless bickering, comparing noses and hair color, striving to approximate the highly prized features and coloring of the preferred Nordic type. They had all seemed to have forgotten the reason for this aspiration toward kinship with their northern brothers, who were said to be descended directly from the Thule Fathers, the true source of wisdom and power. The myth of racial supremacy, created to gain the confidence of the masses, had backfired and they had come to believe in the superiority of individual men.
Kurt had demanded that they channel their energy and resources away from the temporal world with its feeble, faltering armies, and return the power to the forces of Magic, upon which the New Order had been built. Kurt had shouted at the diminutive man, angering him, causing him to strike him hard across the face.
He had stormed from the Chancellor's office, determined to save the Reich, even if it meant going against the directives of the High Command.
Now he muttered to himself as he covered over the furrows of earth that Helen had seeded with the macabre little pellets of human wax. He decided, after Hitler had slapped him, that he could once again control the New Order by winning a great victory over the allies, but this time, on his terms, and this time, with his own army of invincibles. He would show all the bureaucrats and fools that he had been right, and they would once again hail him as the greatest living Magician in the world.
The time for attack had been set for the night of the Wesak full moon in the spring, but he could not wait. It was only a matter of weeks until that time, but he had heard the Thule fathers calling out to him in a dream, telling him that he must act now.
Helen listened to his muttering from a distance. She had become accustomed to his constant running dialogue with himself, playing back in his mind the confrontations with those he feared opposed him in the High Command. She had heard him in the night, shouting orders in his sleep or repeating information, committing it to memory as if he were listening to distant voices, angels or some saints of heaven or hell, guiding him, shaping his increasingly agitated mind to their will.
She had come to believe that he had been taken over by some dark and primeval entity, which had found its way into his blood through some pre-Atlantian link. It now had access to his mind, reshaping his thoughts and even his physical body into a host vessel, able to carry out its long awaited plan of aggression. She had seen the cha
nges in Kurt's face, just as she had seen them in the Fuhrer when he spoke. He shifted from the splendid fury of one possessed by an inexhaustible electrical energy, which filled the body with the light of wisdom, to the demeanor of a tired and less than ordinary man. It was as if none of them could keep control of this primordial force of power. It would seem to be visited upon them like a miracle, affording them the clear vision of the new and necessary world, only to short circuit and distort into confusion and the irrational ravings of a lunatic, plagued with the fear of usurpers and assassins on every side.
Helen watched Kurt as he grumbled in argument with himself and realized that she now held little faith in him or his ideals of the world inherited from the Thule. All she could believe in was her own power and her ability to survive in the world. She had faith in the power of the unseen army that she had created, and knew that it alone was invincible. She would align herself with that power and knew she would be all right.
“I am not about to fail,” she told herself, as she scratched at the earth with the stick. She had clawed her way from the tent towns of the migrant fruit pickers of California, changed her name and her life. She had come too far to be led astray by a pack of maniacs or the paranoid ravings of the man she loved, but now knew was insane. She watched him stumbling over the furrows that she traced in the earth and sighed with despair.
The unseen army was indeed the only hope now of maintaining what she had fought for and earned. Kurt was correct in that estimation, and she would use his fanatical power and his body as the conduit to command the armies to an ultimate victory.
The sky clouded over with the approach of twilight. The long shadows cast by their bodies paled and faded in the diminishing light, as if the substance of them had alchemically altered to a less substantial form like ether, blending into the soft gray colors of the early evening landscape.
