Chapter 4
Webster looked up from old handwritten manuscripts on his ornate mahogany desk. The doorbell chimed insistently. His full, sensuous mouth firmed with irritation. He clicked off the lighted magnifying glass he had been using and stood up. He stepped around a mound of old books, past an antique overstuffed sofa, crossed the thick Oriental rug to the sliding double doors that led to the entrance way of his turn-of-the-century house. He could see only a distorted image through the stained glass windows in the front door. He turned the gorgon's head brass doorknob and pulled the door open.
Before him, smiling prettily, stood Frank Kaiser's daughter—the breathtakingly lovely girl who had behaved so extraordinarily in the pentagram the night before, at the party. She wore a frilly yellow dress that matched her long, golden hair. She had that neat, freshly scrubbed look people admire and value so much. But she wore no bra or slip. Her nipples poked out against the loose-knit, translucent acetate, showing smudges of pink. She did seem to be wearing pantyhose.
Webster glanced down the walk to the street. No car at the curb. He said, "Miss Kaiser ... ?"
She nodded. Her expression shaded into worry. "Yes. Mr. Webster? I got your address from my father's address book. You don't have a phone."
"No, I don't. It's an intrusive monster." He frowned. "May I help you? I intended calling this evening—I walk to a store to make the few absolutely necessary calls I must make—ahh, to find out how you were."
"That's why I came. I have to talk to you about what happened to me!" She bit her lower lip. She seemed on the verge of crying.
"Well ... certainly. Come in." He looked again at the street—up and down the quiet block in the older section of Long Beach. "Are you alone?"
She nodded and quickly slipped inside. She continued on into his book-littered study where he had been working.
Webster frowned and shut the door. He followed her. "How did you get here?"
"Cab."
He puffed his lean, sallow cheeks. He idly scratched his neatly trimmed beard. "That must have cost twenty dollars."
She was standing before the tall, glass-doored bookcase beside the fireplace, intently scanning the ancient, leather-bound tomes. She asked, "Where's the book you used?"
"I don't keep it down here. It's very valuable."
"You only have one copy?"
He laughed. "I may have the original. I have a Xerox copy, of course." He pointed to a thick, stapled sheaf of copy paper on his desk. "I have a feeling about the book. I actually think it's dangerous."
She nodded quickly. "I do, too! That's why I want to see it ... and talk to you about that spell."
"A Summoning, not a spell, technically speaking." He sat in the comfortable old swivel chair behind his desk. "How do you feel? The last I saw of you last night your father was carrying you away and you were limp as a rag."
"Oh, I'm fine ... physically." She blushed and smiled weakly. She wandered around the high-ceilinged room. She fingered the heavy green brocade draperies. She stared at the ornately framed occult paintings on the dark walls. "But my head is in a different place."
Webster had noticed a subtle, intangible differentness about her. Something vaguely false about her ... as if—as if a ninety-year-old woman were masquerading as a teenager. Her eyes disturbed him. There seemed to be chilling glitter in their depths. A masked glitter.
He frowned. Imagination. "Miss Kaiser ... that was a very graphic scene that happened in the pentagram. It appeared that you were being ... assaulted ... by an invisible being."
She sat on the antique sofa. "I know ... I was! He ... It whispered in my mind and did awful things to me ... and raped me."
Webster almost smiled ... and realized his reaction was perhaps evidence of disbelief in the occult and supernatural. He had almost smiled —he had dismissed her as a hysterical teenage girl, sexually frustrated, full of emotional storms. He asked, "How do you mean—raped you?"
She flushed and didn't know what to do with her hands. She lowered her eyes. "I—I felt him enter me. It hurt terribly. And Daddy had a doctor come by earlier this morning and examine me, and he said my hymen had been torn open."
Webster coughed and scowled. "What did this invisible creature say to you? We couldn't hear a thing ... on the outside."
"Dirty things. And about Lucifer and like that."
Webster nodded. He was still of a mind that her performance, and that of Frank Kaiser the night before, had been an elaborate, well-rehearsed hoax. Very well done. But yet ...
He said, "If that Summoning had been performed according to the prescribed ritual and instructions—But last night it was a game, a joke. The conditions weren't authentic at all. The preparations were a mockery of—"
"BUT IT HAPPENED! SOME KIND OF MONSTER FROM HELL TOOK POSSESSION OF ME!" She collapsed into a sobbing heap against the musty old cushions.
Webster was shaken. This girl was convincing, yet there still lingered a tinge of doubt about her. Was she acting now? "Miss Kaiser ... I don't understand what you want of me." He was acutely uncomfortable seeing her crying so heartbrokenly. He wondered if he should go to her and comfort her. Yet he resisted that—he wasn't at ease with unstable, unconventional young women. He wished to keep well clear of Donna Kaiser. He wished he weren't alone with her.
She sat up and took a hanky from a bulging yellow plastic purse. Several crumpled twenty dollar bills nearly spilled from the purse. She mastered her sobs very quickly. "I c-came to find out if ... if you can recite the—the Summoning backward or something and sort of wipe out what happened."
"No—if it was a successful Summoning of Lucifer, or one of his cohorts, it would require an altogether different ritual and incantation to ..." Webster licked his fat lips. "You said something took possession of you? In what sense?"
"I don't know. I have weird thoughts and impulses. I find myself doing things I don't want to do ... It scares me. It's like having someone else in my brain."
"Miss Kaiser, it's very difficult to believe that you were genuinely in contact with the supernatural last night."
"I'm not lying!" She stood, angry. "Some kind of demon fucked me and—" She caught herself. "I want to see that old book! I want to see that spell."
"It's written in 9th Century Latin on discolored parchment and the ink is faded. I can't let you even touch the book. I shouldn't have risked taking it to your father's party last night, but he wanted authenticity ... so I took it along. I don't like being used like that. I doubt if I'll ever see you or him again." Webster pulled the Xerox copy of the book from the litter of papers on his desk. "You can look at this copy if you like." He held it out.
"Is that the only copy you have?"
"Yes. And I can't lend it to you."
"Does anyone else have a copy?"
"No, not to my knowledge."
"How did you get possession of it?"
"I found it in a copper chest in an ancient cellar vault in Germany ten years ago. The vault was part of an 18th Century lodge in Bavaria I partially inherited from my mother. I had to fly over to meet the other heirs and arrange with them to sell the property. I don't think the vault had been opened for a hundred years, and the chest was at least a thousand years old. I have the chest in the basement. It's worth about six thousand dollars in itself."
"Do any other scholars know of the book?"
"No! I wouldn't trust those vultures."
"You're a fool, Webster."
He looked sharply at her. The voice that had come from her mouth had been harsh, cynical, somehow masculine. Her eyes—A creeping chill shivered his back. He swallowed. She smiled icily. She spun and picked up her purse. She walked quickly to the open doors. She left the room.
Webster leaned back in his chair. Then he frowned, cocking his head. She hadn't left the house! He heard her footsteps on the stairway landing leading to the rooms upstairs. What the hell? He rose and strode angrily after her. When he reached the top of the carpeted stairs he saw her emerge from the guest room and enter the bathroom.
She smiled innocently. "The body has to piss." She closed the paneled, varnished door.
Webster snorted. He noticed his bedroom door ajar. She had been in there, too. Simply looking for the bathroom? He entered his room and checked it. Nothing had been disturbed that he could see. He glanced at the locked antique cabinet by the window. The book was there in the bottom inside drawer, wrapped in velvet in a foam-lined metal box. He was resolved to keep it there, except for rare moments of research where the photo copy would not serve. Webster closed the door of his room, listened to rustling in the bathroom, then crossed to the head of the stairs. He wasn't happy. That girl was acting strangely. Talking like a whore. He wanted her out of his house as soon as possible, even if he had to be rude. She was more unstable than he had suspected.
Webster went downstairs to his study. He stood waiting, listening. Finally the upstairs toilet flushed. He wasn't sure if he could hear footsteps on the stairs or not. He strained to hear. A muted clumping overhead—she was in his bedroom! She was after the book! He ran to the stairs and took the steps three at a time. His bedroom door was open. He saw her kneeling before the cabinet—lovely long blonde hair, yellow dress, tanned calf showing. He yelled, "Get away from there! What the hell do you think you're up to?" He strode angrily toward her.
She turned. Her corrupt blue eyes stopped him as he was about to seize her arm and yank her away. The submerged glitter was unmasked. Subtle lines and muscle tensions altered her soft, girl's face. He stared down into Hell. He was frozen, astonished, afraid.
She said harshly, "The book and the copy must be destroyed."
He managed to shake his head. "No. Get out of my house."
"Destroy the book and you may have this body to enjoy however you wish. I'll make it do anything."
Webster's gaze was drawn to her tempting breasts. But her young face was changed—and the old, evil eyes ...
He shook his head again. He asked, "Why do you want the book destroyed?"
"It gives too much power over us. You, for instance, with practice, could command all the dark forces. You could interfere with plans and systems and operations begun eons ago. You would upset the structure that is bringing Satan his victory."
"God is dead?"
"God is dying. We are returning."
"I don't believe this."
"A student of the occult and you do not believe. Yes, you are a fool."
"Maybe, but not fool enough to let you get your insane hands on that book. Get out of my house!"
"In time. After your soul is given over to Them."
Then he saw the small, deadly automatic in her right hand, her open purse on the floor. The muzzle of the gun swung toward him. She twisted on her haunches.
Webster didn't understand. Then he did. He went cold. "Who are you?"
"He who was summoned." She shot him four times.
The first .22 slug tore through his brown vest, buried itself in his stomach and flattened against his spinal column. The second cracked two ribs and lodged in his left lung below and to the left of his thudding heart. He was staggering backward, falling, screaming, when the third slug caught him under the chin behind his beard and ripped up through his head into the gray matter of his right lobe. He fell heavily, unconscious, dying, and the fourth, carefully aimed bullet smashed through his chest to his heart. The organ went into fibrillation, squirted high pressure blood into rent tissues, and then stopped.
She dropped the gun back into her purse. She tried to open the cabinet and couldn't. She calmly stood up, walked around the body and the spreading red stain in the blue throw rug across which he had fallen, and left the bedroom. She went downstairs to the kitchen and found a meat cleaver and a strong steel carving knife. She returned to the bedroom and forced the antique cabinet's door. She forced open the drawers until she found the metal box that contained the book. She pried open the box, unwrapped the priceless book and opened it to a page near the front. She read it and laughed. She squatted beside Webster's body. She closed her hellish blue eyes and threw her head back. She cried, "Asteroth, Asmodeus, I beg you to accept the sacrifice of this man which I now offer to you, so that I may receive the things that I ask."
She used the long knife to cut away the body's clothes. Webster's corpse lay twisted, white, still, oozing blood from the ragged, discolored bullet holes. The beard was soaked with blood. The eyes stared at the carved left foot of the 19th Century bed.
"I give you a soul, mighty Astaroth. I request powers. I feed this vessel." She savagely cut open the belly from sternum to pubes. She hacked into the chest cavity and cut free the ruptured heart. She held it with both hands and ate it raw, tearing gobbets of red flesh with her bloody teeth. She stared fixedly at the book which lay open on the floor beside her. Spatters of blood stained its parchment pages.
When she had finished the heart, she took up the knife and cut free the testicles and penis. "I honor thee, majestic Asmodeus. I give you a soul. I request powers. I feed my host." She ate the testicles and penis. Blood dripped on her frilly yellow dress. She ignored it. When she had swallowed the final mouthful, she intoned, "I worship thee, indomitable Lucifage Rofocale. I give you a soul. I request powers."
She pulled handfuls of slippery, ropy white entrails from the gory abdomen. She arranged them in an intricate design on the ruined body—a horned cross. "I do your bidding. I do your bidding. I do your bidding. I request powers." She bowed her head for a moment, then she took a piece of Webster's clothing and wiped the cabinet where she had touched and gripped.
She took up the book and her purse and the knives and went downstairs to the study. There was a little-used fireplace in one corner of the room. She took manuscripts and papers from the desk. She placed the cleaver and knife in the flames, and started a fire. She fed the fire—page by page—with the book and with the Xerox copy. She grinned as the fire consumed the ancient knowledge. Finally, even the dry leather binding of the book had been eaten by the flames. She used an antique brass poker to fragment the ashes even farther. She wiped the handle of the poker with her soiled, stained dress. She looked down at her dress—at the brown spots—and she shrugged. She found her purse and left the old house.