The Triforium Page 14

  “Begin the ceremony!” Hecuba screeched, her vocal chords now very tight from the influence of her ghost melding into all of her organs.

  Artemisia ran up before the stone eye with a sermon that Hecuba had compiled for the occasion. It consisted of excerpts from the Pyramid Text and the Egyptian Book of the Dead modified by Artemisia for the occasion.

  A gong was rung and the ladies of the coven formed a circle around Hecuba, Artemisia, and Butterfield with his guards, and, of course, Butterfield’s ghost.

  A drum began to slowly beat as Artemisia commenced with her recitation.

  “He has taken the hearts of the gods;

  He has eaten the Red,

  He has swallowed the Green.

  Our Lord is nourished on organs,

  He is satisfied, living on their hearts and their magic.

  Their magic is in his belly.

  He hath swallowed the knowledge of every god.

  The lifetime of our lord is eternity,

  His limit is everlasting

  He is Mega Therion!

  Prince Chioa Khan!

  The Great Beast of Revelations!

  The Baphomet, 666!

  Count Svareff!

  Lord Boleskine!

  Aleister Crowley’s ghost!”

  With this, the ladies in the circle began to move counter-clockwise. Their arms outstretched, they thrust their breasts forward and began to shimmy as they recited,

  “Abracadabra! Abracadabra! Abracadabra!”

  Artemisia shrieked with rapture,

  “Clouds darken the sky,

  The stars rain down,

  The constellations stagger,

  The bones of the hell- hounds tremble,

  The immortals are silent,

  When they see our master’s ghost,

  As a god living on his father’s

  Feeding on his mothers

  Our lord of wisdom.

  Who cooks them in his evening kettles

  It is he who eats their magic

  Devours their souls.

  The great ones are for his morning portion,

  The middle-sized ones are for his evening portion,

  The little ones are for his night portion

  Old men and their old women are for his incense-burning.

  It is the ‘Great-Ones-North-of-the-Sky’

  Who set for him the fire to the kettles containing them,

  With the legs of their oldest ones as fuel.”

  The gong rang again. “Abracadabra! Abracadabra! Abracadabra!” shouted the women from the moving circle.

  “We also sing praise to our Lady of Slaughter, our Lady of the Bright Red Linen,” Hecuba announced, as she held her arms skyward as an act of invocation.

  “Abracadabra! Abracadabra! Abracadabra!” was repeated with even more intensity, and, as it was, a blue swirling pinwheel of light formed within the pupil of the carved stone eye, the Wedjat eye, expanding in size as it spun.

  The circle was moving in a frenzy of passion. The shouting was now hysterical. The flames of the torches shot upward, as strange images danced deep within them. Suddenly, there was a flash of blue and the form of a man hovered above them, above the Wedjat eye. He was attired in a long black nightshirt with a matching triangular black turban. Embroidered upon the face of the turban was a silver star radiating light

  “Good. Good. I am pleased,” he announced as he watched the semi-nude women move past him one by one in their ceremonial circle.

  Artemisia stepped closer to the eye and to the ghost of Aleister Crowley. As she did, it became apparent to Butterfield’s ghost that she and, in fact, all of the rest of these women could actually see Crowley’s spirit. Butterfield’s ghost had noticed during the course of his detainment that the WITCHes’ eyes were growing larger and larger and more ghostly blue.

  Artemisia stepped before Crowley’s specter and greeted him with outstretched arms and wiggling breasts.

  “Hail Prince Chioa Khan, the Great Beast of Revelations, the Baphomet, our prophet, the ghost of Aleister Crowley!”

  “Abracadabra! Abracadabra! Abracadabra!” shouted all the women in the room.

  The ghost of Crowley scowled. He turned his head toward Hecuba and said, “No, not this flabby one again. Something younger. Something prettier.”

  Hecuba grabbed the sermon from Artemisia’s hands and abruptly motioned her to take her place within the circle. She then walked over to one of the women there and gestured at her. The ghost of Crowley lowered his head in assent. Hecuba grabbed the girl about her shoulders and pulled her into the middle of the circle. She then thrust the paper into her hands and ordered her to take over the reading.

  “From the Egyptian Book of the Dead my lord magus.”

  “I am the blue egg of the Great Cackler.

  I am the egg of the world.

  I was asleep inside a mound of dirt,

  now I rise from a buried egg.

  I live,

  I say, I live.

  I smell the air.

  I sniff the air.

  I walk with my toes in the dirt.

  I give my family duck meat to eat.

  I guard the fledgling in the nest.

  What food there is for man in the sky, blue sky.

  A swallow darts and circles.

  I am the egg. I smell the air.”

  “Oh that was splendid. Simply splendid!” interrupted Crowley’s ghost.

  “Now wiggle your tits for me.”

  When she did so, he intoned, “Good. Good.” Then he turned his face to Hecuba.

  “Well, okay. What do you want? And what is that?” The ghost of Crowley pointed at Butterfield and his ghost.

  “That is why we summoned you my lord,” Hecuba rasped, then quickly added, “Oh Great Beast 666.”

  She then wiggled her tits. Aleister Crowley’s ghost nodded approvingly.

  “How unusual. Never seen the like of this. So why did you capture it? I assume it’s male?”

  “Yes my lord magus. He’s male. Not much of one, but I agree he is unusual. We’ve been thinking. If we could figure how he got like that—” Her voice was becoming almost robotic and her face was beginning to twitch. She began to babble incomprehensibly.

  Artemisia ran over to her with a secret bottle of Lucifer’s Delight, which she had stashed away. Hecuba frowned at her, but still put the bottle to her mouth and took a few pulls. She waited a few minutes for the wormwood to take effect. The room stood quiet. Even the ghost of Aleister Crowley watched attentively.

  “Better?” he asked with a bemused smile.

  “Better,” she said, as she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “We were hoping that, my lord, that you might help us with him. We want to know how he got that way. We figure that if we could do the same thing to ourselves, we’d be able to function without drinking this stuff all the time.” Hecuba held up the bottle of Lucifer’s Delight.

  “Well, I rather enjoyed it while I was corporeal but I understand your point. But how do you imagine that I’m going to be of any help?”

  “Oh Mega Therion, if you could talk to his ghost, perhaps he would reveal how he came to be above this Wallace Butterfield’s head?”

  “Talk to his ghost? Why you silly cow. He’s just a pupa. He hasn’t been born yet. You try talking to a fetus and you can summon me again if it talks back. Till then, leave me alone.”

  “Oh master!” Hecuba was frantic. “For so many centuries our people have been afflicted for—”

  “Wait!” The ghost of Crowley held up a hand to silence Hecuba. “Why is it doing that?”

  “Doing what my lord?”

  “That thing with its eyes?”


  Hecuba moved in front of Butterfield and stared into his eyes. She saw nothing. She wanted to turn to the ghost of Crowley and tell him that, but she was too afraid.

  “No, no, not the fleshy thing. Look up, or do you have too much wormwood coursing through your brain?”

  Hecuba did as she was commanded and saw what she had first missed. Butterfield’s ghost was opening and closing his eyes in a deliberate and exaggerated fashion. She kept staring at his eyes. Then she announced, “Damn, his ghost has managed to get control over his eye lids. It’s code. Morse code, Lord Magus. I was in communications in the Navy. I spent some time with a signal lamp. He’s closing his eyes like they’re the sliding shutters on the lamp.”

  Crowley’s ghost laughed with glee. “Oh what a clever young’un! So, what’s he saying?”

  Butterfield’s ghost hadn’t been asleep during those endless boring years when Wallace and his dad were monkeying around with radiotelegraphy. He had to listen to countless conversations with the most inane people on the planet by way of a telegraph key. Now it had paid off.

  “Dash dot dash … that’s K … dot dot … is an I … dot dash dot dot … makes an L … dot dash dot dot … that’s another L … dot dot dot dot … for an H … dot dot … I … and dash dash … which makes the letter M. He’s spelling “Kill him!” Hecuba shouted.

  “Oh, what joy!” Crowley clapped his ghostly hands together repeatedly. “We must oblige him.”

  “Yes, my lord but how do we find out how he got like this?”

  “Sekhmet will rejoice in having a human sacrifice. It’s been ages since she has had one. After the festivities, I’ll talk directly to this Butterfield’s spirit. That’s the best way of finding out what has happened here. So, let’s get the meat on the barbecue!”

  Butterfield had been shaking and groaning throughout the ceremony. The site of the ghostly apparition of Aleister Crowley had almost done him in. If his guards hadn’t held him up, he would have swooned. But the talk of sacrificing him to Sekhmet was the last straw. He began to scream through his duct tape gag and thrash about as his bladder finally let go. A puddle of urine formed at his feet. His ghost was humiliated. Once again stuff was coming out of a sack. He couldn’t wait till he was rid of Wallace Butterfield.

  “How shall we make this offering Count Svareff, Lord Boleskine, Great Prince Chioa Khan?”

  “Why at the oldest structure in London, Cleopatra’s Needle, of course, and as soon as possible. Tonight at moonrise!”

  “It shall be done my lord!” Hecuba shouted.

  “No, it shall not! We are not going to start burning men like they used to burn us!” a voice shouted back from the street door.

  The entire coven turned and looked towards the musicians’ entrance. There was Maeva carrying a twelve-bottle box of Green Man’s Own.

  “Here sisters, take this. Drink up. Please! You don’t know what you are doing.”

  “They listen to me now Maeva,” Hecuba pointed out with a malicious grin.

  Maeva lowered the box of liquor to the floor, walked quickly toward Hecuba yelling, “This is my organization. I’ve subsidized it and I’m the president! You’re out. You self-contained bitch! The sisterhood is done with you. Let the evil in your head keep you company.”

  “Oh the great parachute magnate speaks. Well listen, honey, we’ve had a revolution around here. It is you who are out! Your boyfriend is ours now.”

  All the other women in the room mimicked her menacing laugh. Even the ghost of Aleister Crowley joined in.

  “Take her sisters!” Hecuba cried, and, as the witches wrapped Maeva up in duct tape, added, “There will be no mercy or pity for your boyfriend, honey. He burns tonight.

  Butterfield’s guards let him fall to the floor. They ran over to the Wedjat eye and grabbed the torches from the wall. Holding their firebrands high, they joined in the shouting of the coven, “No mercy! No pity! Wallace Butterfield burns tonight!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Emma

  At the time, Emma didn’t know that it would prove to be a blessing that she had left her mother’s heels behind when she and Maeva had been escorted from the Abbey. But bare feet gave her traction on the sidewalk and she had needed that. A couple of the coven’s sisters had seen her lurking in the hallway when they had grabbed hold of Maeva, and they went directly after her. But though these women had some athletic ability, they couldn’t catch up to a determined and very frightened fourteen-year-old girl running for her life.

  Emma managed to outpace them as she ran down White Horse Street. As she darted onto Piccadilly, they began to cry after her, calling her sister and encouraging her to come back with them. However, these entreaties didn’t slacken Emma’s long stride, they increased it. Emma never looked back once. She wouldn’t throw away a second of time for that purpose. She instinctually knew that whatever Maeva’s fate might be; hers was going to be the same.

  After about a mile into the run, she heard what she assumed was the last of the pursuing witches scream, “We know where you live!” Still, Emma kept her pace. She sprinted around Wellington’s Arch, onto Knightsbridge and then down the Brompton Road. As she started to weave her way through the shoppers gathered in front of Harrods’s Department Store, her lungs gave out. It was a sickening sensation. Emma tried to puke but was too winded to do it. Her legs went wobbly. She had to lean against the building to catch her breath. Now, for the first time, she looked back. Though there was no sign that she was still being dogged by one of her pursuers, it was possible. Perhaps they were coming for her in a car? She didn’t know. There would be no point in trying to run anymore if they did. Emma was spent. It was clear that the only safety to be found for her was by following the crowd of shoppers going into the department store.

  She didn’t mind being pushed and jostled by the throng of people that were here for the sale or who had just come to gawk at luxury items surrounded by a motif of neo-pharaonic opulence. It felt safe to be enveloped by them. They were like fleshy armor, multiple legs and arms swinging and moving and directing her towards the central escalator. Which was just in front of her. Customers were ascending or descending through the seven floors of the department store. Between the escalators was a large golden statue, Tutankhamen like. It was holding massive candles. Emma moved passively onto one of the escalator treads and began to rise upward. Overhead, in the high ceiling was a depiction of the ancient Egyptian gods among stars of the zodiac. The walls supporting this ceiling appeared to be made of sandstone and were inscribed with images from temples and tombs. Emma could see illuminated columns, crafted to look like gigantic stalks of papyrus, grass from the banks of the River Nile. Regarding her from the walls were golden sphinxes, resting in carved niches.

  “Mine is a heart of carnelian,

  Crimson as murder on a holy day.”

  The words now echoed through Emma’s head.

  “Mine is a heart of corneal,

  The gnarled roots of a dogwood and the bursting of flowers.

  I am the broken wax seal on my lover’s letters.”

  She could feel the pull of the coven.

  “I am the phoenix,

  The fiery sun, consuming and resuming myself.

  I will what I will.

  Mine is a heart of carnelian,

  Blood red as the crest of a phoenix.”

  There was another statue of a golden pharaoh just up ahead of her, where the escalator ended. She felt that she was being taken to it. There she would surrender herself. She would find a pay phone, call her sisters and have them come and collect her for whatever purpose they had in store for her.

  Then, as she stepped off the escalator into Harrods’ Egyptian room, a tall woman in a crisp black skirt stepped in front of her.

  “I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far but we do have a dress code.” Sh
e said as she pointed down to Emma’s bare feet.

  The floor manager had snapped her out of her trance. Perhaps saved her life? Going down the escalator was a lot different than going up in it. For one thing, she had gotten her breath back and for another it got her thinking about the first building that she had been thrown out of this day. There was something that old Tom Parr had said to her. “He’s the one who puts everything right.” She now had a plan.

  ***

  Emma hid herself amongst the bushes near the Blue Bridge that spanned the lake in St James’ Park. She waited there well into the night, passing the time, watching the London Eye make its rotation above the Royal Horse Guard parade ground. Occasionally, she thought of just phoning home or going to the police. But she remembered the threat about knowing where she lived, and Emma guessed that the witches might all too easily bring the police under their control. So, she decided to remain concealed, determined to give her idea a chance.

  Big Ben struck two long before Emma felt that it was safe enough to leave cover. The Abbey was not far away and could be seen from the park. Emma studied it for a while. She was pretty sure that it was empty of all visitors, but she had no idea who else or what else might still be lurking inside.

  As she crept towards the building she wondered how on earth she was going to gain access. The only logical choice was to begin with a door.

  To Emma’s surprise, she didn’t have to put much of her weight against the large central door leading into the Abbey to move it open just enough for her to poke her head in. The North Transept was softly lit, having just enough light for her to discern what things were but not enough light to provide any detail. Emma kept her head positioned halfway through the door and watched. She was sure that with the door unlocked, there had to be security about. Guards would have to be everywhere. As her eyes slowly became adapted to the light, she spotted one of them. At first she thought that he was a statue standing in front of the High Altar. He didn’t even appear to be moving. She was scared already and this man, behaving more like a mannequin than a human being, was unnerving. But many stranger things had already happened this day and she had managed to pull through them, so Emma decided to give her luck another try. As quietly as she could, she tiptoed into the Abbey and made a wide circle behind him. Safe so far, she pushed her luck a little further and began to slink towards Poets’ Corner. It was odd; she could hear the soft chatter of voices all about her. She felt the hair going up on the back of her neck as she realized that the ghosts were talking to one another from their crypts, as she might talk to one of her girlfriends at a sleepover.