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ombard Street had changed. Last time I was there was in the ’70s, and it was a run down, groady shambles, full of businesses hanging on by a thread. Now it was rather desolate. Baltimore City called it Jonestown, and hoped for the best.
I walked down Baltimore Street, past the Shot Tower and main Post Office, until I came to Lloyd Street, and the oldest Synagogue in Maryland. Rabbi Ezra ben Ezra was waiting on the steps. His white shirt was rumpled, his black pants were shiny in the seat, and his yarmulke was an antique. He was missing the top of his left ear, and two small fingers from his left hand. An Egyptian machine gun had done that, in the Gaza Strip.
“Thank you for coming!” he said, and got my hand in a grip like a pipe wrench.
“I’m flattered to have you think of me. You’re the foremost scholar of Kaballa today.”
“Meh,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand, “I know some Torah, some Law, some history and some legends, people want to make a big deal out of that, let them. I’m only touching the surface.”
He unlocked the side door, and we went in. The building was rarely used, and there was a museum in the basement that opened for occasional tours. “This is the oldest schule in Maryland.” he said, “A very holy place, I thought it would be good for there to be study here again, and so, I moved my office here. I found a storage room, all full of dust and cobwebs, with ritual objects that needed to be cleaned and revered again. I opened a cabinet, and there was this book, here, this one on the table.”
He indicated a large volume, a quarto, with a binding of what looked like beef jerky, black iron hinges and a lock with an elaborate keyhole.
“I feared that there was something unclean, and so it is, because it’s bound in human skin.” He pointed to the lock. “This is a deception, there never was a key to it, this little hole on the side admits a plain pin or wire, and throws back the bolt, but it would discourage casual peeking.”
“Where did it come from, Rabbi?”
“It was brought from Prague, to save it from the Nazis, but it must have originally been written in Spain or Portugal. It’s in Ladino, old Ladino, and I’ve found references to the New World, so it should date from around 1500, by your goyishe reckoning.
“The Jews have wandered, far and long, very long, and each land they dwell in adds to our body of belief, not that we needed any more demons and such, we had plenty of our own from Zion, and I thought I knew almost all of them.
“The Dybbuk, the Nephilim Giants, so many of night horrors, a pogrom should not be enough to frighten a Jew?” He laughed.
“But in this very bad book, there is a section on a demon I never heard anything about in all my years of study, and as you were so kind to say, I have had some undeserved praise for my scholarship from time to time.
“His seal is there, chants and blasphemous rites to please him are recorded, and the uses a necromancer might put him to.”
I rubbed my chin. “What’s this one called?” I asked.
“Wrantegar,” he said.
I began to suspect something, but I kept my peace.
“I spoke with a very old scholar in Yemen,” ben Ezra went on, “learned man of nearly a hundred years, yes, a sorcerer, but a man of deep study. This Internet is a wonder, once I would have had to undertake a long journey to consult with him, but now, pfffft, he’s there!”
Ben Ezra held out a humidor, and I took a cigar, we punched them and lit them up. They were very good.
“He told me that his Grandfather had told him of Wrantegar, that once, his Grandfather, upon whom be peace, said the demon had been no more than a ghost, but then, about a hundred years ago, it had reawakened, and was building power.
“Very bad men had used Wrantegar for their own ends, and offered it sacrifice and worship, making it stronger.
“I have been a mystic and a student for many years. Never before had I been told by any man of faith and wisdom that a demon had actually been invoked and used to accomplish some task.”
“What task was that?” I asked him.
“The demon was used to kill a man.”
“Yes, that would be a job for a demon.”
I promised to consult my sources, and get back to him.
We smoked and talked for a while, had a glass of tea, then I went back to the subway, and the Park’nRide.
Driving up the Expressway, I had a lot on my mind. |
I was sitting at my computer, searching for Wrantegar in increasingly obscure databases, when Lisa came in, kicked off her shoes and after giving me a quick peck on the forehead, padded into the bedroom. I got up, and went in, she was on the bed, half curled up, almost huddled.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“I hurt. I’m tired, and I hurt“, she told me.
“Undress,” I said “I’ll be right back.”
I got a tube of muscle rub, the dollar store kind that works so well. When I returned to the bedroom, Lisa was nude, I spread out a big blue terrycloth towel for her to lie on, I noticed that her ribs were showing, her shoulder blades were sticking out like a famine victim’s, and her arms were broomsticks.
“You’re not eating, Lisa.” I said.
“No appetite.” she told me, as I massaged the cream into her shoulders, which were as hard as wood, “Oh, that feels so good!“, she mumbled.
I went over her from neck to toes, carefully rubbed her arms and hands, and fetched a vibrator. That made her purr, and she melted like solder in a furnace. I massaged more of it into her feet, worked her heels the way she liked, then threw a cover over her. I took her in my arms, and she snuggled like a kitten.
“You need a rest,” I told her, “A long rest—have you been to the Doctor?”
“Actually yes, he gave me a vitamin shot, and told me the same thing.”
“You should eat something.”
“I’m so hungry I could eat a live rat.” she said, smiling, “Send for a pizza?’
“Sure.” I had the place down the street on speed dial, and I was a good tipper, it would be here in a jiffy, loaded down, too. I held her until the doorbell rang, paid for the pie, and brought it into the bedroom.
Lisa surprised me by ripping out two slices and beginning to munch while I went to wash my hands. She did away with half of it, belched, groaned and rolled on her back. I covered her again. She was asleep in a few minutes.
I went back to the computer, and I was surprised to find a hit on the screen.
It was an obscure German site, but I read German, so I was able to get through it.
“Wrantegar, also Hrantegoth, a ghostly demon of the night, said to favor colder climates and crave sacrifices of blood and pain. This fiend was sometimes named in witch confessions as one who could whisper secrets on dark, cold nights, but was also drawn to Spain by some unknown connection to the mountains.”
I read on.
“Some occultists claim that Crowley contacted this fiend in 1911, and was terrified by its manifestation. Others say that it somehow began to increase in power, especially on the East Coast of the United States . . . .”
That fool had actually brought it back. Nourished it, flattered and worshiped it. Allowed it to batten on the horrors of the two World Wars. Given it a refuge.
Rhan-Tegoth, the horror of the Arctic wastes.
I went to bed, and held Lisa in my arms. That helped me to sleep, but sleep came late and was a doubtful guest.
Lisa slept the clock around. I spent the time on my computer.
Rabbi ben Ezra had scanned me some of the documents he’d found, tucked into that book, along with the chapters on Wrantegar. Even frozen to his ivory throne in the remote arctic, Rhan-Tegoth, in the manner of all the Great Old Ones, had not been entirely dormant, he’d experienced brief episodes of consciousness, and been able to project his power, even his phantom, astral self into the world, seeking release.
These are patient things, and as time went by, the thing grew its power and knowledge, as once it had drawn the horrid Gnoph-keh into its service. Some humans will be foolish enough to bargain with the Powers, or try to use them, even though anyone with even a bit of knowledge realizes that these things use people like lab animals, or livestock.
I poured myself a drink—I was proud of how much I’d cut back. Sometimes days went by without a single drop, but I wanted to have one now.
One. No more. Regular size shot glass, not a half gallon soda cup from the convenience store.
One, just to show that I had power over alcohol.
So I sipped it, puffing on a cigar and thinking about the book.
Rhan-Tegoth had been forgotten for more than a generation, since all the fuss when that fool Rogers brought it back from the Arctic and set it up in his waxwork gallery. After his disappearance, Rogers’ collection dispersed like smoke. Rhan-Tegoth had been part of the collection, revived by sacrifice and worship, but imprisoned by Rogers’ shadowy assistant, Orabonna.
Then, gone, lost in the turmoil of the World Wars, the Cold War and the terrorist outbreak, the fall of Communism and all the rest of the Twentieth Century’s rannygazoo. The Great Old Ones love turmoil, it feeds them, and makes it possible to accomplish things in the world of men that would normally be impossible, or at least, difficult. Somewhere in all that chaos, like Amelia Ehrehart, Raoul Wallenburg and the Amber Room, Rhan-Tegoth had gone missing, gone, but not forgotten, and not gone for good.
I sent an email to the good Rabbi, asking for another meeting. He replied with a date and a time, and that was agreeable enough. Except, things began to happen.
***
I got a call from the detective who’d handled the case of Jacob Wockenfuss.
“There’s another strange one on ice, the Coroner’s not happy.”
“What’s so odd?”
“The guy was a fugitive—but get this, he escaped from the Angola pen in Louisiana, in 1952. He was doing life for murder.”
“So?”
“He was fifty three when he escaped, and the body appears to be a man about that age. If record keeping wasn’t so sloppy in Louisiana, he’d have been dropped long ago. His name was Alois Pettibone, he was a voodoo man, and a knife artist, they figured he killed a dozen people or more over the years, then his luck ran out, and he went off to the Farm. Two years later, he was missing at roll call, and the bulletins went out, but nothing until he shows up dead in our town, a pain in the ass to the last.”
“How can I help?”
“Oh, just tell me one thing, why did he have a dime tied to his ankle?”
“Voodoo. The Mercury Dime was considered a symbol of St. Expedee, that’s the spirit that gets things done in a hurry, and putting his medal on your ankle helped you get away from bad luck.”
“Well, that settles that for me. Funny, though, they were going to do the post on the skinny bastard, got him laid out on the gurney, Coroner puts the Stryker saw on the cart, and he sits up straight and lets go with a Hell of a yell, I know they do that sometimes, but it’s unnerving, to say the least. He was looking at me with that cloudy wall eye, like he was still alive.”
I got off the phone, and sat down. I wanted another drink, but wasn’t going to have it.
Lisa came home, kicked off her shoes and kissed me.
“I quit my job,” she said.
“Good,” I said, “It was killing you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Finally gonna write that book?”
“Yep. Give me a hand with research?”
“Sure thing, I have to do something to pay my rent.”
Lisa and I had been living together for three months, and I couldn’t remember when she wasn’t here.
“I have a project on, right now. Remember that trip to Baltimore?”
“When you went to see the Rabbi?”
“That’s the one.”
“So what’s the rumpus?”
“The usual, demons, black magic, evil old books . . . .”
“Oh, that,” she said brightly, “I thought it was something dangerous, mysterious and occult.“ |
We went down to Baltimore a week later, Lisa wanted to see the National Aquarium and do a little shopping at the Inner Harbor so I stopped in to see the Rabbi on the way. He made us some tea, and we sat around the table with the book on it.
“My sources have identified this book,” he said. “It’s the Grimoire of Samuel of Toledo, a noted Magus of his day. He died in 1521, in exile. He spent his last years in Alexandria, after the Expulsion. Samuel was a very bad sort of man, and he lived by working spells and casting horoscopes. He died under mysterious circumstances.”
“We managed to get some details on your demon, Rabbi.” Lisa said, crisply, “You’re dealing with Rhan-Tegoth, a sort of second string entity, related to Cthulhu.
“This one ruled a small empire in what is the Canadian Northwest, North of the Yukon, by the Arctic Sea. He became dormant, his empire withered away, and the cold came, it was a warmer climate, then, which left him frozen on his ivory throne in a fantastic stone city, far from humans.
“In 1908, some native hunters stumbled on the ruins, found some artifacts, and sold them. That came to the attention of a showman named Rogers, and he took an expedition out of Fort Morton, up the Noatak River and into the city. He had a strange man named Orabonna with him, a half-caste Filipino pirate, and a crew of ruffians to do the heavy lifting. They managed to haul the creature out of his throne room, get it on a sledge and float it down the river—five men died doing this—then ship it to London.
“Rogers ran a wax museum, and he had the thing on display for a while, then disappeared, which left Orabonna in charge. Orabonna eventually sold it to the Royal Ontario Museum as an Eskimo idol, but doubts as to its authenticity were raised. It was put into storage and lost.”
“How, may I ask, does a ten foot tall monster get lost?” the Rabbi asked, puzzled.
“Probably with a lot of help and some greased palms.” I told him.
“This I can understand, some gelt in the right place, all of a sudden, miracles!” ben Ezra laughed.
“So far, the present whereabouts of the thing are unknown,” I said, “but we’ll keep digging.”
The sea creatures in the aquarium weren’t an easy sight for us, that day.
Orabonna turned out to be an interesting subject. After closing up and selling the museum inventory, he returned to Manila, where he managed to land in Billibid Prison behind a large and complex robbery scheme. After his release, he vanished into the interior, then reappeared with the Japanese Occupation forces. Someone knifed him in 1944. Resistance fighters denied knowing anything about it.
The mystery was never solved, as if anyone really cared. Rhan-Tegoth remained on the wing.
Lisa was busy on her book by then, and the good Rabbi was losing interest.
“This does no good to my studies,” he said, “It is not Torah, Law or even Midrash, it’s just evil lore. The book, I’m sending that off to Jerusalem, to a group that studies such things, they can do with the filthy thing as they wish.”
That’s where it stopped, for three months.
The first body was found on Gold Street, not an unusual place to find a corpse, but the condition of these remains was remarkable. Jamal “TeeDee” Bethea had been a big, burly specimen in life, tipping the scales at the City Jail at 315 on his last visit, but his mauled and mutilated corpse weighed barely 175, missing large hunks of flesh and all of its blood, not to mention some ghastly chemical burns and hundreds of deep punctures.
The homicide squad put it down to his having been asked embarrassing questions by someone, and in his typical, wrong headed fashion, refusing to answer.
When a quartet of winos were found similarly bashed about under the bridge on Falls Road about a month later, the investigation heated up.
It became an incandescent red-ball case when a prominent lawyer and a District Court judge were discovered in an SUV in a secluded place off East Biddle Street, drained, dead and decorated with bloody polka dots. They were married, but not to each other.
Now as a typically mild greenhouse winter set in, the Monumental City, Charm City, the City that Usta Read, but don’ no mo’ had something to shiver about when the sun sank below the horizon. I followed the papers.
Lisa managed to get a contact of hers from times past to obtain a copy of one autopsy photo. We burned it in the hibachi on the balcony. Runtigath, Wrantigar, Hurantegoth, whatever you might call the thing, it was taking its meals alfresco. And very, very rare.
There are few places the internet doesn’t reach, somehow, and a certain place on the Southern coast of Brazil was not one of them. To say much more would violate a confidence. It took six days, but a message eventually appeared:
“Rhan-Tegoth can be tracked by use of the Z Light, his footsteps will fluoresce under it, a particularly garish Magenta. The Mao Chant can drive him to dormancy, but destroying him is a practical impossibility.
“Good Luck, come to see us soon.” |
Not too many people know about the Z Light. It was an invention from long before the time of Man, and had been in use for thousands of years before the last of the great non human civilizations had vanished and the age of creatures we might know had begun.
The one I had was a feeble version of the instrument that had once been the pride of the Serpent Men of Valusia’s sorcerer-scientists. Some of my materials were flawed to say the least. But mine would emit Z Light Rays, just the same, even if it couldn’t achieve the effects possible with the devices of the remote past.
Lisa insisted on coming along when I drove down to the Biddle Street crime scene.
The light worked. Hideous pink spoor, so ugly I won’t even try to describe it, marched to where a few bits of yellow crime scene tape still fluttered, and led right back to the same spot on the paved road.
“Somebody drove him here.” Lisa said, awestruck. “He has human help.”
“Of course he does,” I told her, “These things have worshipers and minions, people who think they can use them for their own advantage. They get a short term payoff, but then they get thrown out of the sleigh.”
“Just like working for a corporation,” Lisa said. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand, lover, the place gives me the creeps.”
We didn’t talk on the way back to York. We didn’t have to, being together was enough. Real love is like that.
I was back in New York three days later.
“Prague is the city of the Golem,” Rabbi Cohen said thoughtfully. “Some say the clay that it was made from is still in a coffin in the attic of the New-Old Synagogue. I’m surprised that ben Ezra didn’t mention that.”
“I’m wondering where this Grimoire went, the Rabbi is pretty cagey about who he sent it too,” I said.
“And it’s in Ladino, you say? Lovely language, that, not like Yiddish, it’s a liquid speech, there are many wonderful love songs in Ladino, oy, can you imagine a Yiddish love song? Comic songs, ribald songs, no tongue is earthier than Yiddish, but not so good for a gentle love song.
“Ladino is mostly spoken in the Balkans, some in Italy, Spanish and Portuguese Jews went east to the Ottoman Empire when the expulsion came, and the Inquisition was so eager. So a Spanish magician might well have written in that language, not wanting to blaspheme against our faith and put such matters into Hebrew.”
New York bustled outside, but the Rabbi wore a mink hat and knee breeches. We might have been in the 1700s, in his book-lined study.
“These are very deep waters, my friend,” the Rabbi said, “And I fear this will not be good for the Jews.”
Lisa and I took in a musical, ate a good meal, and took a late train back. |
I scanned the Baltimore paper. By now, the media was screaming for blood, a search was on for a new Police Commissioner, and the reporters were calling this the work of “The Mangler.” The FBI had sent a VICAP team, cops were working seven days a week on 12 hour shifts, and not one particle of progress had been made. The latest appearance of this killer had involved a house full of Syrians, charming souls who had several tons of TNT stored in their basement. Baltimore was infamous as a staging area and hideout for terrorists because it was close to Washington and not much inclined to spend time and money searching for fugitives and stockpiles of contraband that never got used in the city itself. Not with a drug trade that had been out of control since the 1980’s, a shrinking police force and a vanishing tax base.
Another article, six weeks later noted the horrible demise of seven pit bull dogs in a notorious crack dealer’s house in East Baltimore. Lisa and I drove by the half destroyed row home, and the Z light clearly showed the totally alien footprints.
We detoured down Lombard Street. I had an idea, something that should at least be eliminated. And of course, the ghastly magenta tracks appeared thick and fresh, leading up to the side door of the Lloyd Street Synagogue.
“Well, now you know where the damned thing is.” Lisa said.
“And I know who brought it here, but why?” I said, totally mystified.
“What can be done about it?” Lisa asked me, “You said these things can’t be destroyed.”
“It was dormant for a long time, Lisa, even one of these creatures needs time to recover from being what amounts to dead for several thousand years.”
“And when it recovers?”
“It’ll start rebuilding it’s empire, gathering worshipers, demanding human and animal sacrifices, with Cthulhu dormant under the sea, this thing is one of the few Great Old Ones free to act in this dimension, and on this planet.”
“We have to do something!” Lisa snapped.
“Yes, but the right something,” I told her.
So, it was back to the Big Apple. and Rabbi Samuel Cohen.
“We know of these things, these ancient things when we were slaves in Egypt. When we wandered in Canaan, we knew them as demons of the desert. We knew of Nyerlathotep in the land of Egypt, of Nitocris and her mirror, of the Treader of the Dust, when our people built the tombs of the nobles. When the Sages and learned Rabbis of Israel were in Europe, during our exile from the Holy Land, and in the lands of the Muslims, the Turks, we met these things again, so we know that they are powerful, evil and contrary to the will of God. How a man of such scholarship as Ezra ben Ezra could traffic with the Powers escapes me!“ |
“He’s gotten hold of Rhan-Tegoth, I don’t know how, and why escapes me, too,” I said.
“Do you know the legend of the Golem?”
“Yes, the animated clay figure.”
“Ben Ezra is an angry man, he sees our people being attacked, our influence eroding, our place in the world slipping away—such a man, being a great scholar and a powerful mystic of Kaballah, well, such a man might want to make a golem, just like the great Rabbi did in Prague, to keep the gentiles from harming us, even to get revenge.”
“He can’t control it.”
“I know. And I think this is contrary to the Will of God, this heathen idol brought to life by impious sacrifice—it must stop!”
“Stopping it won’t be easy.”
“So what is? We do the Will of God because it is the Will of God, not because it’s easy.”
“I think we may have to confront ben Ezra. We might get him to see reason.”
“If any man will see reason, it will be Ezra ben Ezra. He is a man of reason, or was, at least, before this.”
That was how we ended up in the basement of the old synagogue, four Rabbis, Rhan-Tegoth and me.
The monster was in an open crate, sitting up, completely inert as far as I could tell. as ugly a bit of life as you could ever stand to see. Several globular structures, a lot of tentacles, and what I took to be a head of sorts, with two closed eyes. It had legs, and clawed feet, perhaps arms hidden in the tangle of tentacles and barbels.
I didn’t get too close to it.
“How did you find this horror, Ezra?” Rabbi Singer asked, “And why?”
“The old book,” ben Ezra said, “there’s a formula to find the creature’s body, remember, it was stolen from the museum in Canada.
“I became curious, and, behold, the creature was in one of the old storage places, not six blocks from here!”
“Imagine that,” I said, “And this book just happens to be here, what a coinkydink.”
“I know,” ben Ezra said, “this was not by chance.”
“No,” Rabbi Cohen said, “Chance did not enter into this. This monster’s will brought the book and its body into the presence of one of the few people knowledgeable enough to work the formula and find the body.”
Everyone was very quiet for a while.
“Ezra, Ezra, don’t you see, this thing has used you?”
“No! I have used it!” ben Ezra snarled, “Just like the Golem of Prague, I have used it to punish evildoers, to make things safe for our people.”
“And how does killing the judge and her lover make us safer?” the third Rabbi, a hulking man named Breyer, asked.
“They had perverted the courts!” ben Ezra said, “They made cases come out to suit people with money, which meant that drug dealers were set free, and honest people were cheated! Is it not our duty to mend the world?”
Breyer stroked his inky beard.
“And you think that Wrantegath will mend the world? Rather, this thing will rend the world, Ezra, when it recovers its power.”
“I can control it!”
“Hah!” Cohen spat, “This monster from the depths of time, you can control? Make it do good things, pick flowers for the sick, play with the children? Ezra, this thing has made you a fool!”
“A fool? I’m a fool?” ben Ezra was as red as a bucket of blood on the slaughterhouse floor, quivering with rage, pointing at us with one thick, shaking index finger, his other hand a desperate fist. “No! I can control this thing, make it our avenger, our champion, make us feared!”
“And God wants this?” Breyer asked sadly, “You don’t remember what happens when the goyim fear us? This thing will bring a pogrom upon us, Ezra, and worse, it will feast upon this, grow strong, and overthrow the whole work of mankind!”
“Saul is right.” Rabbi Singer said, “This is a wicked thing, and must be done away with, quietly, mind, very quietly.”
Ben Ezra had been working his way closer to the horror in its open crate. I was about to tell him to step away. I didn’t like the idea of a powerful magician in reach of one of the Great Old Ones. Especially when he was angry and afraid.
“We were slaves in Egypt,” ben Ezra said, “but why is it that there is no other record of this, only in Torah?” He paused, and touched his nose. “Because that part of history was wiped out, that’s why, the time of Nitocris and the Black Pharaoh! Moses fled into the desert, after he saw the depth of evil in the court, and there he gained power from our one, true God, power to return, to defy the rule of the monster, to bring the plagues and set us free. This was done with magic! Good magic, the kind you and I are able to work with our knowledge of secret things. So, I will use this creature for good, to guard and to avenge!”
“No!” Rabbi Breyer said in a flat, determined voice, “Ezra, you will not!”
Rhan-Tegoth opened his eyes at that. Deep eyes, those were, full of knowledge and malice. Now, full of triumph. His tentacles snapped out like signal whips, caught Ezra ben Ezra in their ghastly, writhing toils, and drew him into the crate.
What happened next, I try never to remember, Ezra ben Ezra paid for his sins, in a fashion so horrible I refuse to describe it. That brief moment of distraction, and the fiend was loose, it had destroyed the one man who held it bound. Its bestial legs straightened as it rose from the squatting attitude it had assumed in the box. It made a hissing, roaring sound, like a volcano venting deadly gas. The tentacles writhed with the violence of kelp in a tempest as it expelled the macerated body of ben Ezra, spat him out like a prize fighter might a piece of steak sucked dry of nourishment, when he was trying to make weight for a bout.
“Be quiet, you dirty schmuck!” Saul Breyer said, as he made a complex gesture with his hands, very rapidly, “You killed a good and learned man, is that not enough?”
Rhan-Tegoth froze into a statue again. I was politely shown to the door, thanked for my help and sent on my way.
Lisa was already in bed when I got home. I didn’t wake her.
And I didn’t sleep. |
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