“Yes. But I wasn’t running around tapping three times for yes and twice for no or participating in any such ridiculousness!” Bartholomew said.
The library was quiet. Liam might have gone on the computer at home, but if the book that Bartholomew was referring to did still exist, he might be able to get it at the library. And with no one there, it seemed a comfortable place for his strange investigation.
It was extremely slow that afternoon. He had his pick of computers.
Bartholomew sat by him, talking as they went from site to site, starting with the Fox sisters and spiritualism.
The ghost pointed to an old picture on a page of three children—quite innocent and grim in appearance. Liam read, “‘When the Fox girls were children, they lived in a house with a reputation for being haunted. They soon found the attention they wanted when they spoke about the situation, and convinced the world that the house was indeed haunted, that there were taps and lights and all manner of manifestations within their home. The girls became mediums, and had the world fooled. When they were older, one of them recanted and proved how she could make a tapping sound with her toes. The girls’ words meant nothing—spiritualism had taken hold across the known world, and with it, man’s belief in the occult and paranormal in all varieties.’” Liam looked at Bartholomew, frowning. “All right. This all became a ‘movement.’ All kinds of people began to believe that mediums could allow them to talk to dead relatives. The Fox sisters were more or less proven to have invented the entire thing. But it didn’t stop people from believing—or pushing it all further?”
Bartholomew looked at Liam and shrugged. “The point is, the whole spiritualism thing went wild. And with that, ‘witchcraft’ came to the fore again—and Satanism.”
“I can’t believe that Cutter Merlin was a Satanist,” he murmured. “Or even that he was afraid of Satanists.” But he thought about the afternoon when he had found Cutter Merlin. Cutter had been holding the book, a reliquary—and a sawed-off shotgun. Cutter had wanted to be prepared.
And he had died anyway.
Liam keyed in a different series of words that included Key West, Satanism and books.
He scanned another site quickly. “A ship called the Queen Caroline wrecked off Key West in the 1840s, and a large majority of her cargo was salvaged by a local character, Peter Edwards, a man known for his love of magic and his reputation for using occult practices. As a young man, he was feared for his abilities to ‘curse’ his fellow Southerners, thus helping the South’s defeat in the Civil War. Edwards was a staunch Unionist. While many in the area were suspected of abetting Southern ships during the blockade, Pete was known to report any possible activity of Southern ships to the Union military. It was an uneasy time in Key West, since Key West was part of the state of Florida, which had seceded from the Union, but with the Union firmly holding both forts in Key West. The activity at the forts is believed to have been effective in preventing numerous blockade runners from bringing needed supplies to the South, and Peter Edwards was credited with supplying the officers at the forts with valuable information. Historians suspect that his alliance with the Federals caused a great deal of hatred among his fellow citizens, and so his reputation for the practice of ‘black magic.’”
“There. That’s him. The Pete Edwards prowling the Key West cemetery,” Bartholomew said.
“Makes no sense,” Liam murmured.
“Here,” Liam noted, pointing to another reference. He moved onward. “The end of the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ was as strange in Key West as all else. Old hatreds died quickly. Northern soldiers went home, and little of what was suffered in areas of the Deep South was felt in Key West. Peter Edwards soon began a practice of magic again for the purpose of entertainment. It’s during this time when he told friends that he had turned to his book—the book he had salvaged from the Queen Caroline—to make amends for whatever deaths he might have brought about during the war. He was living for a long time in peace and harmony and the eccentricity known to exist in many a conch when another visitor headed down to Key West, Abel Crowley, a man who claimed to be related to the notorious Aleister Crowley.”
“Aleister Crowley,” Liam murmured. Sadly, he remembered his days of studying rock bands who had been obsessed with Aleister Crowley better than some of Crowley’s history. But he knew that Crowley had practiced black magic, supposedly worshipped Satan and, according to some, offered up human sacrifices in his pursuit of dark arts. During his time, he had been known as “the wickedest man alive.”
In retrospect, he might have been nothing more than an extreme exhibitionist, rebelling against the Victorian society into which he had been born, Liam thought. Give a man enough money, enough time, boredom and curiosity, and he might delve into anything.