Ash Return of the Beast

CHAPTER 13



Three Months Earlier…

Although Cowl now counted the Necronomicon amongst his prized possessions, he’d scarcely given it a second thought since the night he’d discovered it. Solving the riddle in the diary remained his singular obsession. He surmised the strange verse had something to do with the Bible but of all the books in his collection a Bible was not among them. He slammed his fist on the desk. Shit! Who would have thought I’d ever be in need of a f*cking Bible! He lit a cigarette and wracked his brain. Where could I get my hands on a… The internet! He leaped from the chair and left the Inner Sanctum. A few minutes later he returned with his laptop. A quick keyword search brought up exactly what he needed:

Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. – Revelation, 13:18

He reached for the diary and flipped through the pages until he came to the riddle:

My number is no secret.

The secret is in reverse.

It is encoded

In chapter and in verse.

Let he who has wisdom

Discover the sacred key.

Only then can he become

The embodiment of me.

It seemed like it should be so simple. Of course the number is no secret. Six hundred, three score and six. It’s six-hundred and sixty-f*cking-six! Everybody knows that. So what the hell am I looking for? The secret is in reverse. What the hell does that mean? What secret? Then he had an idea. Wait a minute. Numerology? It occurred to him that maybe the alphanumeric values of some of the key words would reveal some clue. But what are the key words? Wisdom? Number? Beast? Six-hundred-three-score-and-six? Or maybe the words, ‘six-six-six’? He didn’t know, but he liked the idea. At this point anything was worth a try.

He wrote the alphabet and numbered each letter consecutively: A1, B2, C3, and so on, ending with the letter Z as 26. He knew enough about numerology to know it was important to reduce the multi-digit numbers like 666, down to a single-digit value. It was simply a matter of adding the three 6’s to get 18. Then add the 1 and the 8 to arrive at the single-digit value of 9.

He applied the numerology to each word or combination of words that seemed as if they might be the key words. Over and over he tried but nothing jumped out as any sort of an answer to the riddle. It was a time-consuming task and he was becoming intensely frustrated with one failed attempt after another. Then it occurred to him that maybe the second line in the riddle might be the real key to the whole thing. The secret is in reverse!

He tried reversing the entire numerical sequence of the alphabet. Now with A as 26 and Z as 1, he recalculated the words he suspected might be key words but still nothing made sense. Jesus Christ! He slammed down the lid of his laptop, shoved it across the desk and stormed out of the Inner Sanctum.

Up in his bedroom he threw himself onto the bed like a child having a tantrum.

He could hear the wind gusting and a driving rain was pelting the roof like an endless barrage of tiny bullets. He stared blankly at the ceiling for several minutes listening to the battle raging outside. Then he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed a joint. He lit it up and inhaled deeply. A few more tokes and the desired effect took hold.

Within minutes his eyelids grew heavy. He crushed out the joint and let his head sink into the pillow. The sounds of the battle receded into the background as he drifted off into a mildly chaotic sleep.

Visions of numbers danced in his head, forward and backward and forward again. The words of the riddle soon joined the dance, twisting and turning like snakes in the grass. Then one line lit up like a neon sign. It flashed over and over in his mind:

It is encoded in chapter and in verse.

His eyes snapped open. “The chapter number and the verse number. Shit! I didn’t even think about that!” He tried to recall the number of the chapter and the verse where the number of the Beast was mentioned but he couldn’t remember. “Damn it!”

He sat up quickly and swung his legs over the side of the bed but the rapid movement made his head swim. He paused a moment to steady himself and then rose to his feet. Bleary-eyed, he stumbled his way back down the stairs and into the Inner Sanctum.

He flipped open the laptop and navigated back to the web page where he’d found the information about the specific chapter and verse. Okay… Chapter thirteen, verse eighteen. Now what the hell do I do with it? Need something to write with––

He opened the desk drawer and found a pencil and a note pad. After several minutes of frantically manipulating the numbers 13 and 18 every way he could think of––adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying, reversing the sequences––his frenzied scribbling came to a sudden halt. He froze, wide-eyed, staring at the paper.

“Holy shit! I did it!”

Indeed, the solution to the riddle turned out to be deceptively simple:

13 x 18 = 234

The secret is in reverse.

Reversing the 234 to 432 and adding them together was the key:

234 + 432 = 666

So there it was, the number of the Beast, staring him in the face.

It’s been said that when one stares into the eyes of the Beast, seeking to possess the forbidden secrets, the Beast stares back, seeking to possess one’s very soul. Rye Cowl had just put one foot into the mouth of the Beast and it was about to swallow him whole.

He gleefully circled the number with his pencil, over and over, each turn of the lead punctuated by a self-congratulatory chuckle. The chuckling quickly escalated into a full-blown frenzy of laughter. One would have thought he’d gone completely mad. He hadn’t, of course––not completely––not yet. However, unbeknownst to him, there was a dark and hideous thing slowly and silently creeping into his subconscious. Something unearthly and ancient was waking from a deep sleep, stretching its long fingers outward, reaching up from the abyss, driven by its own dumb, instinctual yearning to caress the soul of the young man whose laughter had now reached a howling crescendo. The celebration was accompanied by a rolling explosion of thunder that shook the neighborhood and reverberated across the dark and clouded sky above Moorehouse Manor.

“Congratulations,” came an unexpected voice.

Cowl spun around. What––?

Then he saw the apparition of the Messenger forming in the corner of the room.

“I did it!” Cowl said, jumping out of his chair. “I solved the riddle!”

“You seem surprised,” the Messenger said.

“Well, I––”

“I told you. It’s your destiny.”

Cowl nodded. “Yeah, about that––”

“You might want to resume your seat.”

“What?”

“Sit down and listen. It’s time you learned who you really are.”

“What do you mean, who I really am?”

“There’s much more to who you are than you know.”

Cowl returned to the chair, confused. “What are you talking about?”

“You see,” the Messenger began, “William Bentley Moorehouse––the man for whom this home was built according to his own design––was born in Warwickshire, England, in 1875, the same place and the same year as Aleister Crowley. They were, in fact, neighbors and William became Aleister’s best friend as they were growing up. The Moorehouse clan can be traced back to the time of the Druids. To this day, William’s family still practices many of the Druid rites and customs back in the old country. It was William’s tales of the Druid ways that first introduced the young Crowley to the mysteries of Magick.”

“Druids? Heard of them. Don’t really know much about them. Sounds cool, though. But what does this––?”

“The Druids were magicians and diviners. Their history reaches back into the mists of time, many thousands of years.”

“Yeah, okay. But I still don’t get what this has to do with me.”

“Patience. If I may continue––”

Cowl sat back and listened.

“The Moorehouse family left England and came to America when William was 12 years old. William’s departure caused Crowley to suffer a deep depression. He mourned William’s absence for several months but they kept in touch by letter for many years and Crowley never forgot his beloved childhood friend.”

Cowl’s patience was wearing thin. “Okay, that’s sad and all––and I’d send him a Hallmark card if I could––but I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with me.”

“There’s more to the story. William Bentley Moorehouse married a woman named Rose. They had a son, Michael, whose diary is there on the desk beside you. Now, Michael never married but he did have an insatiable penchant for prostitutes. One of those prostitutes––a woman by the name of Virginia Duckworth––”

Cowl leaned forward. “Wait… what?”

“Listen to me. This prostitute––Virginia Duckworth––gave birth to a son she named Alex. Michael was, indeed, the father of the boy although he denied it and Virginia could never prove it. So she raised Alex by herself and young Alex kept the Duckworth name. Are you following this?”

Cowl nodded, listening intently.

“Alex Duckworth grew up, married and sired a son of his own. His son’s name was Charles. Charles Michael Duckworth––your father.”

Cowl’s eyes grew wide but his expression seemed otherwise blank as if the Messenger had just spoken in a foreign tongue. He shook his head. “What did you just say?”

“Let me put it to you another way. William Bentley Moorehouse was your great-great-grandfather.”

Cowl sat straight up. “What? You gotta be shittin’ me.” He shook his head, trying to absorb the shocking revelation. “But, wait a minute. If all this is true, then why did you first pick Michael Moorehouse as the Chosen One?”

“It was all a game, a ruse perpetrated upon Michael by the spirit of Crowley. Crowley despised Michael and Michael had to be eliminated anyway, so you could take your rightful place as the owner of the Manor. Because you, Rye Cowl, are the true Chosen One.”

Cowl slumped back into the chair and stared at the Messenger. “This is a hell of a lot to take in, I hope you know.”

“Oh, but there is even more to learn about your new home here and about your great-great-grandfather.”

Cowl was overwhelmed but fascinated at the same time. “Okay. Lay it on me.”

The Messenger explained that by the time William Bentley Moorehouse had designed and built the manor, he had long abandoned the Druid practices of his earlier years and had joined something called the Mystic Order of the Old Ones.

“The Old Ones?”

“A mystical order that followed the teachings of the Necronomicon.”

Cowl’s face lit up. “The book I found in the shed.”

“Indeed.”

“But why hide it in the garden shed, of all places?”

“Under the circumstances,” the Messenger explained, “it was a good place to keep it hidden and yet make it accessible for use during the ceremonies and rituals that were held right here in this room––the Inner Sanctum.”

“Here? Right here? What kind of––?”

The Messenger moved ghost-like across the room. “This way,” he said, beckoning Cowl.

Cowl got up and followed until the Messenger stopped directly in front of a tall bookcase.

“Okay, I give up,” Cowl said with a puzzled look. “What’re we doing here?”

“Grab hold of the right edge of the bookcase and swing it toward you.”

“What, another secret room?”

The Messenger’s reply was a simple nod toward the bookcase.

Cowl swung the heavy bookcase outward. A slight musty smell followed.

Behind the bookcase was a large walk-in wardrobe. On one side of the space was a row of hooded robes––eleven white and one black––all neatly draped over crimson, velvet-covered hangers. On the opposite side were shelves containing a variety of strange objects: red glass goblets encased in ornate metal holders; candles of various shapes and sizes; a silver dagger; a string of beads; a wooden flute; some copper bowls; something that looked like a very old clock but with odd symbols in place of numbers; three small, leather-bound books and other paraphernalia the likes of which Cowl had never seen in his life.

“These,” the Messenger said, “belonged to William, your great-great grandfather. He had become an adept of the highest order, a master of the magickal arts. The Inner Sanctum was built to serve as a secret room for the rituals he performed, sometimes alone and sometimes with the members of his branch of the Order of the Old Ones. That was the reason for the tunnel. The tunnel was how the members of his group could come and go in the middle of the night without being observed by the neighbors. William’s remarkable success as a trial lawyer was due as much to his use of magickal workings as it was to his innate abilities and knowledge of the law––perhaps even more so.”

“No shit? Did his son, Michael, know about any of this?”

“Only toward the end of his father’s life. William didn’t trust his own son. In fact, he blackmailed Michael into silence once Michael became aware of his father’s secret. He told Michael he would not bequeath to him the house or even a penny of his fortune unless he swore to keep the secret. Michael did keep the secret, of course––not so much for the house, obviously, but mostly for the money.”

“And Mrs. Moorehouse, Michael’s mother. What happened to her?”

“Ah, yes, Mrs. Moorehouse. Poor thing. She died a year before her husband, William, passed away.”

“Died? How?”

“She knew what her husband was into and she didn’t like it. Loathed it, actually. She threatened to expose him. But of course that couldn’t be allowed to happen.”

“So what did happen?”

“Mrs. Moorehouse had an unfortunate accident. Tumbled down the stairs right here in her own home. Broke her neck. Very sad.”

“Pretty convenient accident.”

“Indeed.”

“Hmm… So, all this stuff… It’s all mine now, is that right?”

“It belongs to you now, yes.”

Cowl brushed his hands across the row of hooded robes. He grinned and reached for the black one. “Well, then, let’s see how this baby fits, shall we?”

He slipped into the robe and turned to the Messenger. “So, how do I look?”

“Like it was meant to be, of course.”

Cowl laughed and brought the hood up over his head. Instantly, his body convulsed with a spasmodic shudder as if he’d stuck his finger into a high voltage socket. Mercifully, it was over in a split second. He ripped the hood off his head and stumbled backward, his eyes wild with terror. Spittle was dripping from his lips and drizzling down his chin. He wiped his face with his sleeve and cursed. “Jesus Christ! What the hell was that?”

An amused chuckle issued from the Messenger. “Call it a confirmation.”

“A confirmation! Of what, for Christ’s sake?”

“The Old Ones are pleased. Your initiation has begun.”