Ripper (15 page)

The smoke from the pentagram candles could have been tires burning.

Human tallow,
Nick thought, and glanced at Chan.

Eric shook his head and lowered his gun.

"Air fresh enough for you, sir?" Craven asked.

The Erotic Witch

Bowen Island, British Columbia 

3:50
P.M.

"Mom. Telephone."

Katt's voice echoed down the hall of the ramshackle pioneer house clinging to the slope of the island south of Snug Cove. Beyond the multipaned windows beside Luna's desk, veiled by the torrent of dismal rain that lashed the rugged coast, boats plowed Queen Charlotte Channel between here and Lighthouse Park. The room looked east across English Bay toward Stanley Park and the city, with West Vancouver to the left and Point Grey to the right. A twenty-minute ferry ride put you on the Mainland.

"Mom. It's long distance."

Luna's desk was inlaid with a black pentagram. Books and papers cluttered the surface around a half-written novel. The novel was from the point of view of a burning Salem witch, warning her modern sisters through a communal dream. This was poetic license, since Salem witches were hanged. The books and papers provided imagery: alchemy, palmistry, and reincarnation; Sybil Leek, Shirley MacLaine, yoga, and astral projection; spiritualism, voodoo, astrology, and the Tarot; ghosts, omens, talismans, and ritual Magick; channeling, crystal gazing, charms, and ESP; phrenology, cartomancy, numerology, and Runes; telepathy, levitation, and teacup leaves; alomancy, precognition, and New Age mystic fads. As she wrote, skirt hiked up, Luna played with herself.

"Mom. Are you coming?"

Almost, Katt.

Luna Darke, the "Erotic Witch" to her fans, was a compulsive mother and an oversexed vamp. She was a woman men fucked on the sly but would never marry, afraid she'd boff their best friend as soon as their back was turned. As with most hypersexual people, the cause was child abuse: raped by her father before she was five. Her mother knew, but cast a blind eye.

Darke—not her real name—was pregnant by thirteen. Over the next four years she had three lads. Her boyfriend was a vindictive man who caught her screwing around, the punishment being he disappeared with their family. Luna— not her real name either—hadn't seen them since. That same year, an ectopic pregnancy required an operation that left her barren. The teenager suffered a nervous breakdown and had to be confined.

"Mom!" Katt yelled. "Shake a leg!"

Luna's skirt fell to her knees as she stood up. To CanLit critics, her novels of occult erotica were "fused with Darke sexuality," the result of secretly playing with herself in public while she observed. On the bus, in the park, researching in libraries, one hand filled her notebook while the other put a smile on her face. Always ready for the muse, Luna went bare underneath.

The Erotic Witch practiced
Wicca,
the "craft of the wise," enhanced by any black art that tickled her fancy. Broomsticks, bubbling cauldrons, black pointed hats, and pacts with the Devil were foreign to her faith, a religion that worshiped the ancient gods of wind, rain, rivers, fire, earth, and trees. Over this pagan pantheon reigned nature's king and queen: he the Horned God of the hunt, she the Moon Goddess of fertility.

Luna—for the moon—had gone through many "horned gods."

The bigger the horn the better, so her latest was Lou Bolt.

When they fucked, she liked to fuck in front of other women.

It was a father/mother kink with her.

The room in which Luna wrote was her coven and sanctuary. It had a Druid corner with a papier-mache Stonehenge, stocked with oak and mistletoe reaped by a golden sickle onto a white linen cloth. There was a photo of Lindow Man, sacrificed by Druids, and recently uncovered in a British bog. An ethereal painting of Graves's
White Goddess
backed the altar, flanked by the "tree alphabet" and passages copied from Eliot's "The Waste Land." Near the door was a collage shaped like a mandala, concentric snippets from the
I Ching,
Egyptian/Tibetan
Books of the Dead,
the
Key of Solomon,
the Hebrew
Kahbala . . .
Lunar knowledge was Luna Darke's passion.

She opened the door decorated with an Evil Eye.

"Mom," Katt said, exasperated. "What took you so long?"

"Communing with the muse, Katarina."

The fourteen-year-old rolled her eyes and held out the phone.

Luna Darke had a secret that went back fourteen years. Back to 1978 when Nona Stone—her real name—left that Maryland breakdown clinic and hitchhiked to Boston. She'd spent the next day hanging around the city's maternity wards, shopping hospital nurseries until she found the perfect child. A cute-as-a-button baby girl, one day old.

The maternity ward was open during daily visiting hours. The beads around the newborn's neck gave her the mother's name. Phoning the hospital and claiming to be a relative obtained further information. The mother was nursing the infant when Nona knocked on the door to her room.

"Mrs. Baxter?"

"Yes?"

"My name's Lenore Dodd."

"Are you a nurse?"

Nona smiled. "I'm studying nutrition. One of our assignments is to interview new mothers. Would you give me an hour once the baby's home?" She held up a research outline, complete with graphs and charts. "You might benefit from what I've learned."

The mother said, "What's to lose? Give me a call."

Two weeks later Nona phoned the Baxter home. The mother, weary from walking her baby all night with a bout of colic, listened to her suggestions for home remedies. Within the hour, Nona was at her door.

Sipping tea in the kitchen, they talked about Pablum and Dr. Spock. When the baby cried in her crib, the mother went to comfort her and pick her up. Entering the nursery she was struck on the back of the head, the blow stunning her long enough for Nona to tie her securely and stuff a gag in her mouth. Panic-stricken, she came around to find the imposter packing a bag with baby clothes, followed by the infant who was zippered in on top.

Baby and baby-snatcher vanished out the door.

Hands still tied, the mother ran crying to the next-door neighbor's for help. "She's taken my baby! She's taken my baby!" she mumbled through the gag. The street was deserted, the kidnapper gone.

The upshot was another mother lost her family.

Her precious baby.

Whom Luna raised as Katt.

Katt passed her "mom" the phone and retreated to her room. Depeche Mode's "Route 66" could be heard through the door.

"Luna?"

"Yes."

"Elvira Franklen. Have I called at a bad time?"

"For fifty thousand dollars I'll drop anything."

"Just rang to say both planes leave Coal Harbour tomorrow at two. Thunderbird Charters. Big totem sign by the sea. Bowen Island to Horseshoe Bay, Highway 1 to Stanley Park, left at the Westin Bayshore and right on the waterfront road."

"I know the dock. I'm already packed."

"Make sure you bring your thinking cap. You'll have competition. The Mounties are sending Inspector Zinc Chandler to sleuth the prize."

"We'll see," Luna said. "I'll be there by two."

"Now if only the weather behaves, at least until we land."

"It was a dark and stormy night . . ." Luna said, and hung up.

Billy Idol's rock the "Cradle of Love" rocked Katt's room. Luna knocked, opened the door, and stood on the threshold. The walls were papered with hundreds of pictures cut from magazines: Benetton ads, one with a white wolf licking a black lamb, Smirnoff ads comparing a breaking wave to the calm sea, sexy bare-chested men in Jordache and Versace jeans. There were posters of Costner, Carrere, and Schenken-berg, of U2, the Mode, and Public Enemy. Hats hung from the bedposts and clothes littered the floor. Katt stood bopping in front of the mirror, mastering a casual pose. Parental presence crashed the scene.

"Mom, you're supposed to knock." "I did. You'll get tinnitus."

"Is Ms. Black Sabbath speaking? Ms. Zeppelin and Deep Purple?"

"Katt, I was in diapers when they were big."

"You wanta believe, Mom. Don't be a moo."

"A moo? You call your mother?"

"You like poo-stain better?"

"Where'd I go wrong?" Eyes toward the sky.

"Other way, Mom." Katt pointed down.

The kid was one of those fortunates who can wear anything. On her, a potato sack with gumboots made a statement. Most of her clothes were hand-me-downs salvaged from rummage sales, which, by adding this to that, she recycled as chic. Today Katt wore baggy jeans and a white T-shirt, with a man's charcoal pinstripe vest on top. Black octagon glasses perched on the tip of her nose, while atop her head was a black Mad Hatter's hat. A Tarot card—the Hierophant—was stuck in the band.

"I'll be gone two nights. You're sure that's okay?"

"Mom, I'm here alone each time you go see The Man."

"One night. Never two. Don't want
Home Alone."

"Accept I'm an adult. Another year and I can
drive."

"A year and a half."

"Whatever, Mom."

"No parties. No boys. No one in my room."

"Cross my heart," Katt said, making the Catholic sign.

"How'd you get so conservative?"

"I wonder, Mom?"

Luna closed the door on the Beastie Boys's "Shake Your Rump." She put the hall between her and Katt's cacophony. In her room, she cleared the desk, revealing the pentagram. On it, she spread her Tarot cards in the Ancient Celtic Method of Divination.

The Queen of Swords. Her Significator. A strong independent woman. From the suit pertaining to matters of power and position.

Will Lou and I triumph to win the prize this weekend?
She concentrated on the question as she shuffled the deck, cut the pack into three piles, and dealt with her left hand.

First Card faceup on the Significator. "This covers her," said aloud. Showing the general atmosphere relevant to the question. The Wheel of Fortune. Ever turning to unfold fate.

Second Card faceup across the First. "This crosses her," said aloud. Showing opposing forces, for evil or good. The Lovers. Isolation ends through bonds of honor and trust.

Third Card faceup above the Significator. "This crowns her," said aloud. Showing what she hoped would result from the question. The World. Attainment of wealth and prosperity.

Luna smiled. The cards were falling in place.

Fourth Card faceup below the Significator. "This is beneath her," said aloud. Showing her past experience relevant to the question. The Queen of Rods, reversed. Infidelity and deceit.

Fifth Card faceup left of the Significator. "This is behind her," said aloud. Showing the influence just passed or passing now. The Moon. Darkness magnifies fears and dangers.

Sixth Card faceup right of the Significator. "This is before her," said aloud. Showing the influence operating in the near future. The Devil. Our most destructive impulses are unleashed.

As Luna dealt Cards Seven, Eight, Nine, and Ten, she mulled over what Franklen said on the phone.
Make sure you bring your thinking cap. You'll have competition. The Mounties are sending Inspector Zinc Chandler to sleuth the prize.

Fat chance,
Luna thought, thinking back five years. Wasn't he that cop shot in the head in Hong Kong? Hardly a match for her and Lou Bolt combined, channeling their joint brain power through the muse of sex.

Luna wished she'd asked Franklen who else was coming.

With luck, there might be pussy to join in their
Wicca
games.

House of Horrors, Room of Death

Cannon Beach, Oregon 

4:00
P.M.

Alexis Hunt 

423 Madrona Way 

Cannon Beach, Oregon 97110

June 15, 1990

Wiseman & Long, Publishers 

500 Fifth Avenue 

New York, N.Y. 10110 

Dear Sirs:

Re: HOUSE OF HORRORS: 

THE CASE OF H.H. HOLMES

What Jack the Ripper was to Britain last century, H.H. Holmes was to the States. He was America's first serial killer.

Holmes was the alias of Herman Webster Mudgett, a handsome man with a waxed mustache whose charm was catnip to women. 1888, the year of the Ripper, saw him working as a druggist in a Chicago pharmacy on 63rd Street. Opposite the store was a large vacant lot, which Holmes purchased to build a hotel. He planned to profit from the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

"Holmes's Castle" was completed in 1891. It was a three-story Gothic folly of 100 rooms, festooned with battlements, bay windows, and turrets. Holmes built his madhatter's mansion in a stop-start way, hiring and firing different crews for different sections. The end result was a crazy-quilt maze of absurdities. There were rooms without doors, and doors that opened on solid brick walls. One elevator had no shaft, one shaft no elevator. There were false ceilings, trap doors, and hidden stairways. Several greased chutes plunged to the cellar.

Guests of the hotel began to disappear. Most of those who vanished were young women. When Holmes was arrested for insurance fraud in 1894, Chicago police searched the premises. What they found was a house of horrors.

Every room had a peephole so Holmes could watch the women undress. The cellar was divided into torture chambers. One had a dissecting table overhung with surgical instruments. Another was asbestos-lined with a gas jet to blowtorch those within. A third was equipped with a rack. Bones were scattered about the floor and there was a lime pit surrounded by vats of acid. A giant stove served as a crematorium.

Holmes recounted twenty-seven murders in his memoirs. He seduced female guests on the third floor, chloroforming each before dropping her into an airtight room he called "the vault." The room was sealed with a glass lid so he could watch the woman awake, panic, and claw the walls. Lethal gas was pumped in through a hole in the ceiling so she would die a horrible choking death. Lassoing the body by the neck and hoisting it up, Holmes dispatched the corpse to the cellar down one of the greased chutes. There he dissected the woman and burned her remains, saving choice "specimens" for experiments in his "lab." Sometimes he'd use the asbestos room for a change, or butcher the woman alive and screaming in a soundproof cell.