Devil's Eye (39 page)

He imagined his General by now had aggravated his war wound with his pacing and was limping back to his desk.

“
Chris,” the General said more evenly. “Let’s get back on track here.”

“
Yes, sir,” was all he could muster. But he was determined to pursue what for him was no longer a theory or fantasy.

Chapter 39

As Colonel Caine sped towards George Washington University Hospital in the waning light over Washington, the sun was hovering in late afternoon over the Golden Gate Bridge on the West Coast.

Much had changed in the Haight
‐
Ashbury District of San Francisco since the late 1960’s when youthful hippies saturated the area with a peaceful, placid drift through life in drug induced euphoria. As the fever of the times subsided and the area became gentrified, some wishing to maintain that self
‐
indulgence and new converts joining in it, needed a defensible rationale for their licentiousness. Anton Dupre provided it with the Temple of Satan.

The Temple was in a non
‐
descript storefront along Haight Street, mostly ignored by passersby who equated it with any number of unusual attention seeking fads and trends peculiar to the city.

Members of the Temple of Satan were waiting for the sun to disappear over the Pacific so they could gather for their morbid rites. Often, when spectacular layers of clouds, saturated with dark purple and pink, veiled its descent, Dupre would discourse that their Master felt particular favor as supplicants entered into the domain of night.

The vapid looks of a group of men and women entering the Temple indicated each was susceptible to cult
‐
like manipulations in which Dupre excelled. Now and again a number of the curious had joined following local publicity about the Temple of Satan. They soon drifted away when they realized Dupre did not form his sect as a publicity stunt, but actually believed in deviant powers.

“
We follow the Left Hand Path,” he had declared to a skeptical reporter. “We don’t actually worship Satan. We merely see him as a symbol of carnal values. We revere natural forces, forces that no one can control.”

“
But the so
‐
called Left Hand Path is practice of the black arts,” the reporter countered. “Black Magic. Isn’t that evoking evil powers?”

Anton Dupre smiled and replied, “No. You must really understand what we do to understand it.”

That seemed enough for the reporter, who wrote Dupre off as a crackpot.

Believers had gathered in the front area of the storefront. Its glass façade was blacked out with a one
‐
way tint and the interior was outlined with black draperies adorning the walls. Black velvet robes with red piping were neatly hanging in rows along one wall. Members draped the robes over their shoulders and began the ritual by lighting several large pipes filled with marijuana and passing them ceremoniously among themselves. This would prepare them to enter the next room—the Temple.

Half a dozen sconces with long black candles lit the periphery of the Temple. The sconces were thin black metal worked into the shape of elongated goat face silhouettes. Along the walls were red painted credenzas with macabre plaster skulls and gargoyles. Interspersed among them were handwritten scrolls, mimicking medieval script. In the middle of each credenza was an incense burner evoking a subtle smell of sulfur, and around each was arrayed a number of silver tinted metal chalices.

In the middle of the Temple room was a conference table wrapped in black padded felt. On it lay a voluptuous nude woman with long blonde hair draped casually over her breasts. She seemed oblivious to her surroundings. Between her slightly spread thighs was a large decanter filled with a dark elixir. At the head of the conference table, now an altar, was Anton Dupre, ready to start the ceremony. His robe was similar, but had a high collar distinguishing him from the other supplicants. His robe accentuated his long, black hair tied in a ponytail. Dupre had exaggerated his eye brows with makeup—an upward sweep reminiscent of horns—while a slim goatee accented his chin. Elaborately groomed sideburns curved like a ram’s horn on the sides of his face. Black shirt and slacks, with patent leather shoes and contrasting red socks completed his vestments.

Their celebration centered on recitation of the Black Mass, and ritualistic satanic cantos composed by their leader.

For each ceremony Dupre would visit strip clubs in the North Beach District, an area near the waterfront known for its bawdy ambiance. His demeanor did not indicate that he would be interested in young women, but his close scrutiny of the dancers was not for personal tastes. He was hoping to procure another beautiful girl as an altar for his satanic ritual.

Members of his Temple included women, but they were generally not the kind who would draw admiring and lascivious interest when the Black Mass was performed on their nude bodies. Candy Knight’s shift was ending and after some friendly prodding by Dupre—who had generously stuck twenty
‐
dollar bills into her garter during her performance and his friendly persistence afterwards, along with a one
‐
thousand dollar promise of payment—she agreed.

“
Why me?” she asked as much out of curiosity as self
‐
flattery, while they sat at a small table next to the stage with another dancer performing.

“
Because you’re natural,” the procurer replied, looking over her well endowed, sinewy body barely dressed in her sequined dance costume. “We need a nubile natural look as you’re lying on our altar. Implants are so tasteless,” he said prissily.

She smiled and felt comfortable near this well
‐
groomed, mature man with a smell of perfume all his own wafting in the dark, neon bordered show lounge. “Will you want a dance?”

“
No, not really. All you need to do is be there,” he assured. “You just relax on a covered table. We put some candles around you, and have our ceremony. The believers do everything. It’s just a ceremony.” He smiled. “Now, it’s not kinky. We’re very serious. We practice the Left Hand Path.”

“
What’s that?”

“
Just a ceremony,” he replied and urged that they hurry along before the sun set.

As Candy Knight slipped out of her jeans and halter top near the altar, Dupre offered her a drink. “To get a little buzz,” he said. The drink was laced with a benzodiazepine compound that soon rendered her semi
‐
conscious and compliant. He helped her climb onto the altar and lay on her back, straightening and slightly spreading her legs and stretching her hands along the curvaceous sides of her body.

“
How are you doing?” Dupre asked solicitously, as he draped his own robe over his shoulders with a practiced flourish.

She mumbled something unintelligible.

He knew from previous experience that now was the time to draw the ceremonial blood. He quickly retrieved a hypodermic needle from a credenza drawer behind him, pressed the plunger, and pricked her right breast. She winced a little, but seemed unaffected. The devil worshiper quickly drew the plunger back and filled the needle’s chamber with several milliliters of blood.

Dupre smiled to himself. He was a good judge of natural tits. Too bad for her if she had lied and he pierced a saline implant. There’d be hell to pay, he remembered. For purification, the infernal powers would have demanded that the living altar be destroyed. He squirted the blood into a ceremonial decanter and placed it between Candy’s slightly spread thighs. Then he pierced her left breast and drew another sample. She tried to lift her head to see what was pricking her, but felt too dizzy to move. When he reverently emptied the second draw into the decanter he retrieved a bottle of wine—deliberately altar wine—from the credenza and filled the rest of the decanter.

He opened the door to the adjoining room, where the sweet, heavy smell of marijuana dominated the air. “Enter the realm!” he summoned.

Members of the Temple of Satan filed in and surrounded the altar, gazing in laid back interest at the nude body on the conference table. Anton Dupre signaled to a member to distribute the goblets while he devoutly placed a cross, fixed upside down in its stand, at the head of Candy Knight.

He took the decanter and poured a measure of the liquid into a chalice of each of the faithful. Raising his own, he took a drink, followed by the others.

“
Unholy spirit I invoke!” he intoned. “Come forth and manifest thyself within this body!”

The unholy congregation took two swallows of their drinks.

“
Bard of Revelation, I invoke you! Bard of Revelation, I summon you! Bard of Revelation, I conjure you!” At each incantation the members took another mouthful of the wine mixed with the exotic dancer’s blood.

Members were exhibiting varying degrees of euphoria, swaying in place, stroking the body on the table and taking sips on their own without waiting for the next salute. At some point Candy Knight moaned when someone stroked her between her legs and Anton Dupre called out with his drink in his outstretched hand: “Whore of Babylon, I invoke you! Whore of Babylon I summon you! Whore of Babylon, I conjure you!”

Members again swallowed the elixir at each phrase.

“
Manifest yourself upon us as you do the Beast!” Anton Dupre chanted. He repeated the command three times and ceremoniously filled emptied goblets as members fell deeper into an hypnotic rapture. Some of the initiated began to stroke the nude dancer’s body more vigorously while they rhythmically swayed back and forth.

Dupre then stood over Candy Knight with his chalice in hand and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards in conveniently broken pauses: “
Nema. Lihve morf su reviled tub noit at pemet otni ton su dael d
‐
na… su tse naiga…
.” Dupre looked around him.

“
Su tse naiga! Su tse naiga! Su tse naiga!”
his followers picked up the cadence.

“
Against us! Against us! Against us! No other power can array against us!”

Frustration, rage, hate, despondency, cynicism, inferiority, lust, disappointment, loneliness, weakness, fantasy, even sociopathology of individual believers, whose singular human frailties had overcome their lives, fueled by intoxicants and released emotions, now intermingled and combined to give their Temple a palpable sensation of throbbing energy as they chanted.

Anton Dupre continued his blasphemous cadence: “
No e
‐
htrea sa ti ni Lehh! No e
‐
trea sa ti ni Lehh!”
he shouted loudly, perverting further the prayer by declaring hell instead of heaven as the realm of God’s will.

***

While Anton Dupre and members of his Temple of Satan invoked infernal forces, Victor Sherwyck was hosting a dinner party at his mansion near Mount Vernon. Benefactors of the Hope Diamond Exhibit and Gem Hall improvements at the National Museum of Natural History, together with honored guests from government and society sat around a large, exquisitely set table in his dining hall.

Sherwyck had made some appropriately somber remarks about the most recent accident claiming the life of the Vice President and that it had been too late to cancel the dinner. He urged everyone bow their heads in his memory. “I expect, we’ll pray together at the State Funeral,” he said without emotion.

At a particular moment, Sherwyck’s body began trembling and he leaned back in his chair in a swoon. He looked blankly with eyes rolled upward.

“
Is he all right?” a socialite across from him asked with a worried look on her face.

“
Is he having a seizure? Shall we call an ambulance?” a gentleman in a black tie near him inquired.

“
It’s all right! It’s all right!” Mrs. Knowlton, who had been seated next to him, assured. “He just needs a little air.” She loosened Sherwyck’s tie and asked someone for a glass of water.

“
He’s just fine,” she said.

Guests settled down, murmuring among themselves. How could Mrs. Knowlton presume about his health? Mr. Knowlton stood up with a wine glass in his hand. “Let’s all drink to Mr. Sherwyck’s good health.”

“
Hear, hear,” resounded in the dining room amid the clinking of glasses.

Victor Sherwyck’s face broke into a longing smile. He felt the enveloping aura of an unknown, but kindred spirit.