wytchcroft

Pt 1: A Study in Shadow

It was a murky but otherwise unremarkable Wednesday evening, in the March of a year best labelled 'Vintage 1882', that the Great Fabrizi looked up from the desk in his richly draped and half darkened cocoon of a study, and peered through his spectacles into the eyes of inevitable doom. “Ah,” he said, nodding almost imperceptibly to the bringer of his demise, “it has come then at last, to this...” it was not a question. Nevertheless, having shimmered into existence as if solidifying out of the very shadows of the room, the Aetheric Assassin returned the nod politely and said, “even so.”

Slowly, for he wished to enjoy every sensation of skin, blood pulse, tendon and muscle while he was still able, and being no doubt privately astonished to discover he was neither driven from his wits, insensible nor even very much a-tremble, the famous Magician rose from his desk. He gestured again with his head, this time toward the crystal radio in its imposing mahogany and ivory cabinet and which was still, and without irony, playing a selection of light musical pieces courtesy of the Royal Alexandria Palace.

“I will admit, had I had any say in the matter, that I would have chosen perhaps a graver musical accompaniment to my execution. However, I am not one to complain and certainly your mode of transport,” once more the directive nod, “is uniquely impressive – astonishing really, and worthy of respect.”

“Thank you,” said the Aetheric Assassin politely.

The Great Fabrizi regarded him fully then, noting with candour that his assailant seemed somewhat unprepossessing, one might have taken him for a serious minded clerk or a junior at a well reputed bank. The intruder was, in a dour sort of way, quite dapper. His dun coloured hair was slicked back and he sported a clean collar and cuffs. He wore a tie, not overly severe, and gazed steadily but mildly with a pair of liquid blue eyes. In contrast to the dramatic whiskers of the Magician, the moustache on the face of the Aetheric Assassin was as a neat and as cold as a wrought iron gate. All in all, he lacked only a little in gloss but then this season’s fashion could well be for the matt finish and of course all was in contrast when seen in a room with the Great Fabrizi, the famous Magician who even at home was robed in his ornate oriental jacket, his heavy jewelled rings and his extravagant and entirely artificial beard.

The Aetheric Assassin in turn took this as a compliment, smoothing the sides of his waistcoat a little self consciously and pointing out that, considering his trade, to be inconspicuous was a definite advantage. Not only that, but, given the remarkable nature of his manifestations, a professional and sober appearance carried a certain calming weight that, he hoped, mitigated a little from the terror of the moment.

“I may be the tool of a very final kind of justice – or retribution, if you prefer to think of it that way sir,” the Aetheric Assassin had seen something flash behind his victim’s spectacles, “but let it not be said that I am cruel. Implacable as fate – but not so cruel as nature.”

“Indeed. And my friend you are something of the philosopher.”

“Naturally, for I have studied with Alchemists and sat at the feet of Brahmin in mountains veiled from mortal sight.”

“Of course, forgive me if I offended you – I would not wish to...”

“I am not the sort to offend so easily, Sir, be assured. I cannot say as much for my employers – but then it is not my position to question the matter.”

“No, no, that would indeed be a breach of conduct.”

Strange, thought the Great Fabrizi; why - we could be two gentlemen discussing business at a club, or perhaps a Gentleman and his batman discussing the particulars of a forthcoming weekend.

“In any case,” Fabrizi heard himself say, “I can see why they chose you, it is a remarkable gift you have.”

The Aetheric Assassin gave the Magician a queer look then shrugged, “No, I cannot truthfully claim as much – what you see is but the result of long and diligent study, the fruits of my education.” He paused then for a moment before adding, “And may I say, that remarkable or not, my ability, that is my manifestation, does not seem to have surprised you as much as I might have expected.”

“Ah. Well, the truth is I was not entirely unprepared for a ... visitation.”

“You knew I was coming?”

“Let’s say I had concluded that you would arrive and that my speculations as to the manner of your appearing were not too wide of the mark.”

For the Aetheric Assassin this was a new experience. “Then it is you that has a remarkable gift – pray elucidate as to the nature of your reasoning.”
His curiosity piqued, the Assassin made no objection as Fabrizi poured himself a measure of brandy and proceeded to light a cigarette. Blue smoke floated to the ceiling in a ruminate cloud.

“As to that,” the Magician said finally, and running a thoughtful finger through his magnificent black beard, “it is not so fantastic a trick either. I am the last of the circle, the last victim; you have not stinted nor failed in your task at any point. There were seven of us and now none remain save I.”

“That is so.”

“Let us ask ourselves then, as indeed I have already done, what common features there may be in each case of sudden Magician death. Certainly it must be granted that the exact cause has been mysterious but each has been ascribed to a different if generally natural condition, the only exception being that of Swenson, he is held to have electrocuted himself in his laboratory.”

“Indeed he did not.”

“I realise that. Indeed I had already discounted the coroner’s verdict. But to the central matter – what is the common factor? That each of the murdered magicians was listening to the radio at the time of their unexpected demise - with again, the one exception. Leaving that aside for the time, I felt sure that the rest constituted a pattern. And I was faced with a choice – to lead the rest of my life, not merely in radio silence but with a necessarily morbid fear of each and every wireless. Pfff! I could do no such thing - it is against the very marrow in my bones. Therefore you were able to travel here via the conductive medium of the BBC light orchestra.”

Impressed, the Aetheric Assassin applauded silently. “All is as you say. I must congratulate you on both your objectivity and your perspicacity, nay I should go further and say that for all the public has gained in the way of a theatrical showman of considerable versatility and acknowledged technical prowess, the Yard, it would seem, has lost a potential Detective of no mean intellect. ”

“For that I must thank you,” replied the Great Fabrizi, with a becoming modesty of expression. “And in turn I must ask you a question – how was it managed in the case of Quiller? Quiller it was, or so I have been told, that ordered every radio removed from his house yet died there still.”

The Aetheric Assassin’s brow furrowed at the effort of remembrance. “Oh, yes, now in that circumstance I had to fall back on a childish ruse and then proceed via the fortuitous avenue of the telephone connection.”

“I see, yes, the picture is quite clear in my mind. Thank you.” The Great Fabrizi drew heavily on his cigarette and then asked, “And you say that your spirit deportment is a skill, that you were taught?”

“Say? I make no claim, it is a fact.”

The Magician again apologised for any accidental offense. “And could you yourself train another in turn, would that be possible d’you suppose?”

“I have never considered the idea. Yes, I believe so, yes.”

Cautious now, the Assassin was considering the magician with watchful eyes. Fabrizi gestured to the sideboard and the brandy filled bottle. The Assassin demurred. “A spirit without spirits eh?” Fabrizi chuckled.

The Assassin nodded but without humour. “The two kinds do not so easily mix” he said. “I could of course become solid enough to drink but... no; it would be an inconvenience later.”

“I see.”

“And you talk of teaching, you would do well to remember the task I am pledged to carry out, it would be wise to remember that to the most high court of the realm spiritual you are but a criminal, guilty of the most heinous crimes, of mocking and decrying and ridiculing those very powers that have now set me on.”

“And you in turn should realise that your appearance is the very proof that would have stifled and silenced my ignorant tongue which, in error, sought only to expose what I believed with all mistaken honesty to be the parlour tricks of the fraudulent and the wicked abuse by the clever of the simpleminded.”

The Aetheric Assassin held up a neatly gloved hand in warning. “Sir, I am not your judge, I am the executioner.”

“Ah...” The Magician blew further thoughtful smoke. “But what an age, what an age of wonders we are in! We have seen the wild oceans tamed, trackless deserts crossed, forbidding mountains conquered – we have gazed with naked eyes at the stars and the deep seas. With manufactured wings and with monstrous balloons we have taken to the very sky itself - and we have called forth elemental forces and bid them light our homes. With the movement of a finger and the cranking of a handle I can converse with another over a distance of leagues and I can sit here and marvel at music that seems to come from the very spheres themselves - even if it is a little light for my tastes. And there is us – oh brave New World that has such people in’t! Imagine man, the great mingling of arts scientific and hermetic that we could achieve here.
Teach me of Aetheric bodies, reveal to me the mystery of your coming and going – and I will open to you the world of lenses, smoke and mirrors, the power of light and shadows, generators and batteries, miracles photographic, parabolic and energetic, static and plasmatic, yea - all the hidden disciplines with which I am familiar.”

Under such a barrage the Aetheric Assassin began to look a trifle flustered, but yet his voice was steady and serious in tone. “There are, Sir, as with most things in life, risks attendant.”

“Bah! Risks, risks? Great Heavens Sir, what do men such as ourselves care of risk, what men of such times as these, men of England and her Glorious Empire!” Fabrizi was pacing the room now, with wide and elegantly slippered feet and gesticulating with an excited and no doubt customary theatricality. “Consider; if all men lived without risk – why I would not even have the gum necessary to affix my beard!” And here, pointedly, the Great Fabrizi tore his stage whiskers from off his chin and waved them angrily at the Assassin. “What men, I ask you, what gentlemen, what Magicians?”

The Assassin said nothing and Fabrizi calmed down, sipping once more from his glass he noted; “leastways not you, since as we see here, you have put aside risk and triumphed over materialism , prey have no doubt that I would do likewise.”

The face of the Aetheric Assassin, already pale, seemed almost to glow now, to shine whitely with its own stark illumination. “I have not triumphed.”

“What? How can you say”-

Faster than the suddenly bewildered Magician could follow, the Aetheric Assassin strode one, two! and face to face and one, two! quite through and out again to spin on his heels and regard the shaken Fabrizi.

There was silence, a long solemn moment of silence and then with a ragged hiss the Magician began once more to open his mouth and breathe. He flailed wildly for his brandy and gulped a measure. “You must...” he gulped again, “You must forgive – only, I thought you must have killed me you see, for a moment I thought...” It was a hard effort the man made then, gathering up both his wits and his character. “My apologies, Sir.”

“You are not dead,” said the Aetheric Assassin, “Nor indeed am I – but one of us, one of us is manifestly a ghost.”

His eyes bulging like those in the head of a beaten hound and his hair damp with a cold sweat, the Great Fabrizi nodded. “And that – that is the risk?” he asked, fearful at last.

“For a measure of time in a place where time is not measured by any clock of material man, I studied and with due diligence, at the feet of my master.” The voice of the Aetheric Assassin rang like a bell from a distant ship, clear and hard but far off. “And I learned from him to remove the shackle of flesh and to slide between the planes - to become a creature not of flesh and blood and bone but of Aether, of spirit form. Such a freedom, a gift that many men might hunger for – a true adventure, an experience that cannot be articulated in the language of a lowly planet like this one, this world of man and machine. And so I crossed the threshold, the veil was rent and I was beyond.”

The Great Fabrizi nodded, his gaze locked with that of the Assassin whose watery blues eyes seemed to have frozen, to have hardened into chips of ice, sharp as knives.

“There is a secret to knowing how to pass through... it is a heavy secret and a hard one. Yes I leaned that secret and carry it with me still. I could give you that secret perhaps, yes, I could give it you. But there is another secret – the secret of how to return, fully and completely in the measured time of man, and to walk once more, with a sure foot, the lands of Earth. That secret is bright as a sunrise and light as a kiss from a girl in the spring of her life. And that secret I cannot give you – for that secret I do not have.”

The Great Fabrizi said nothing.

Abruptly, the Assassin broke his gaze and turned away. “You talk of risk... I tell you the freedom of the spirit is but a Liberté Diabolique.” The stranger gave a heavy sigh. “In the end even that was taken from me – for what am I now but a functionary, to be summoned and ordered and set forth.” Slowly he turned and faced the Magician once more and said again, “You talk of risk...”

And now it was the turn of the Great Fabrizi to summon up his power, to stand at full height and to speak with utmost persuasion. “No Sir, I talk of salvation.”

This was clearly a surprise to the Assassin. He ran a hand over his hair, yet it needed no such care for every strand was in place. In stance and manner he approximated his appearance upon arrival, but it was just that – an approximation. The Great Fabrizi recognised as much.

“We were seven as you know,” the Magician was aping perhaps his visitor’s slightly tangential method of speech, “yes, a circle of seven. And as one we were pledged to entertain our audience with the very best of our skills and knowledge... our magic. This we did, even as we ruthlessly exposed those we saw as misleading the gullible public – Occultist charlatans, quack Psychics and the like, and in so doing we fell prey to forces we did not, could not, fully comprehend... and thus to our end. Well so be it, but what do we leave behind? More, let me tell you, than simply a few dusty books, a wand and a false-bottomed chest! You gave me some small compliment earlier when I explained to you my thought processes surrounding the death of my colleagues and compatriots – well Sir, I say, it should be obvious we were no club for intellectual pygmies! Why, Quiller was wise enough to jettison his radios - and Swenson, Swenson had a laboratory in which he was working to develop a shield against you! With but a little more time I doubt not but that he would have succeeded for, like me, he was at heart a scientist and engineer.”

Having, to his mind, softened up his opponent with a rain of hard blows, the Great Fabrizi changed tack, “come,” he said softly, kindly, “come I have something you must see.” The Magician motioned with an outstretched arm to the ostentatious line of curtains that ran the length of the study’s west wall under a decorative lambrequin of mock-medieval design. “If you are as intrepid as you claim, then crossing the threshold there will be no effort at all. Come.”

And without looking behind, Fabrizi turned and walked between the heavy muslin drapes and through a small door into the concealed room beyond.

end of pt one

thanks to alex, alicia, and stosha for the insp!
hope this chapter affords some small amusement...