Like most temples, the 8th Street Bookstore was a small, secular front for a much larger occult operation. It was the only shop on the row with links to Tammany Hall, and it’d been largely self-sustaining after Greenwich began to attract artists and literary figures during the interwar period. Since the 40s, fiction magazines had become an entertainment mainstay, and the 8th Street Bookstore’s thorough selection made even the largest news stands look sparse. Rare publications were collected and sold to enthusiasts of the obscure, and it was said that on a good day, a buyer could find Californian scifi fanzines on the shelves. The bookstore was, in every sense of the word, legitimate. It was also the sole gateway to the upper stories—a unified facility stretching across the entire block where cultists could rest, take sanctuary to pay their debts, and review tasks from the gods for Greenwich and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’Holbach was approaching the bookstore with the Zombie at his heels when a gaunt, starved man stepped out of the shade of a shop with an awkward twitch, like a marionette. He was wearing a black Anglican cassock and paused directly in the Baron’s path, blinking at d’Holbach through small, Franklin-style bifocals with lustrous copper frames. A mess of dirty blond hair spilled off his head, truly messy, contradicting the neatness and beauty of his costume and giving him the atmosphere of an insane uncle, once important but nearly impotent with dementia—a man whose servants waited in ambush each morning, simply to ensure he didn’t leave the house indecently exposed to both heavens and earth.
As recognition caught up to him, the Baron was confident that they’d only managed to shield the world from this man and could do nothing else. “No threats,” he warned the Zombie. “I think I know who this is.” Those suspicions were confirmed when a group of anxious bodyguards in expensive suits caught up with the twitching gentleman.
“Atheist,” the man hailed lazily, throwing his head back at a weird angle as if listening to the sky. He made a noise halfway between a hum and a moan. “Dee-hole-bach!”
“Do we know you?” the Zombie asked.
“Meister Schuler,” one of the minders said. “Please. It’s lunchtime.”
Schuler adjusted his glasses down his nose, then up again to exactly the same spot, as if he were adjusting to bring the Zombie into view. “I see the favorite pet.” He gave a complicated gesture at the Zombie, who stepped back out of its swaying path. “There’s the man who owns the Atheist dog.” He closed his eyes and listened. “I am here!” he shouted suddenly.
The Zombie grinned. “Who are you?”
“The master scholar,” Schuler muttered to himself. “I can hear you…”
The Baron knew about Meister Schuler, and he’d long-prepared this moment in his head. He stepped forward, invoking their contractual rights like a magic spell. “Meister Schuler, we have permission from the High Oracle of New York to pass unheeded through all territories in the city. If you don’t believe us, call Tammany. They’ll verify our free passage.”
Schuler’s eyes opened. He seemed disappointed, but hearing the official title of High Oracle made him straighten, as if a sea of distractions were drawn away by the tide. “Of course, I’m sorry. Baron d’Holbach and his Zombie, continue on!” He bowed deeply, and after he rose, his minders took him by the wrists and gently led him back to the shade beside the walk. “Some other day,” he called out to them, “they say, some other day!”
After getting out of earshot, the Zombie asked. “Have we met him before?”
“No, but I know him by his symptoms. He’s North America’s oldest Diviner, its Wizard—whatever you want to call him.”
Once every few decades, an Oracle with a god complex wished to hear every task on Earth—to hear the voices of the gods everywhere and at all times. That was at minimum one to two tasks per second, if not far more. Inevitably, the mental onslaught of alien information drove them insane, but it also gave them access to a lot of subtle knowledge about the occult.
“Ah, so that’s New York’s holy man,” the Zombie said. “That’d explain his minders. They wouldn’t want to lose him.”
“They couldn’t lose him,” the Baron replied. “He’s stable. Skilled. Prestigious. Given his age, it’d even take you a while to kill him.”
“Probably,” the Zombie agreed cheerily.
The Baron stared at Meister Schuler’s back, staggering along the sidewalk near the end of the block. “I just wish we knew why he was on a leash in Lower Manhattan though. It feels like a message.”
The Zombie peered in the same direction, watching as Schuler’s minders guided him towards a small restaurant. “If he wanted us to know something, he would’ve told us. I’ve known a few Wizards. Not one of them can shut up.”
“Maybe.” The Baron turned to face the Zombie. “Lucidity wasn’t in the cards today by the looks of it, so there must be a compelling reason to have him out in public.”
“New York is investigating something then,” the Zombie suggested.
“No. Kill that line of thought. They’re not investigating the Cat. Meister Schuler is important, but if New York knew the stakes? They’d deploy an army. At best, Schuler’s presence is about intimidation, not investigation. They’re showing off a weapon.”
“To who?”
“Impossible to say.” He looked the Zombie straight in the eye. “Don’t even assume you know why he’s here. The worst thing we can do is start with a conclusion and match the evidence to fit. Just stay on your toes. New York is feeling restless.”
The gaunt figure of Meister Schuler finally relented, and he let his minders ferry him into an expensive deli famous for its sandwiches and Greek salads. It was hard to believe he was still a Cosa Nostra hitman. Maybe the insanity helped.
“Should we go in?” the Zombie asked.
“Yeah.” The Baron walked past the front of the 8th Street Bookstore, and the Zombie fell in behind him. The shelves behind the windows were shallow and deep, with pulp magazines tilted and overlapping in tidy patterns like fish scales. Browsing was done by title alone, not sampling. The arrangement made it easy to see where a patron had opened a cover to sneak a few sentences. A small colored marker sign was taped up: “YOU READ, YOU BUY”
Past the storefront shelves, the Baron could see a large number of secular customers, minding their own business, and a couple of clear cultists, watching d’Holbach with practiced scowls. “The door guards see us,” the Baron said. “I’ll greet them.”
The Zombie chuckled. “I’ll grin menacingly.”
One of the cultists was faking an interest in the magazines and his faux browsing was messing up the display. Baron d’Holbach pulled open the front door and immediately waved to him with a couple of fingers. “A good day to you, sir.”
The cultist was short, very young, and thick body hair could be seen edging around the collar of his shirt. He scowled at the Baron. “Atheist. I know your face.”
The Baron sighed. Idiots loved to waste his time. “Nevermind, you’re dismissed.” He waved at the other, taller cultist, who was working the cash register. “We’re here to speak with the Oracle of Greenwich Village.”
The short cultist at the magazines wasn’t letting this go. “Hey! You’re not welcome in New York. Not here.”
The Zombie had been idling behind the Baron, but now his interest was piqued. “Do you think your opinion matters?” A smile split his face like a knife wound out for a leisurely stroll.
“We have permission,” the Baron said, dismissing his interlocutor.
The cashier joined the conversation. “What’s happening here?”
The first cultist jabbed a finger towards the Zombie, “This prick is trying to intimidate me.”
The register wrangler saw who he was talking about and his eyes went wide. “You should be intimidated—“
“What?” The shorter man sneered. “Fuck him, this is our turf.”
“No, fuck you, Osman. That’s the Zombie!”
Young Osman’s face screwed up. “What, like the movie?”
“Come on, Baron.” The cashier started towards the back, away from the short, confused cultist. “I’ll teach that asshole about the Pact in a second.”
“What the hell, Porter?” Osman called after them. Nobody responded, and he was soon obscured by higher shelves stacked with well-arranged hardcovers and haphazard piles of paperbacks. Their destination was beside the restroom at the back of the shop.
“Sorry about that,” said Porter.
“It’s fine,” the Baron said. “Did your temple receive a letter from the High Oracle?”
“Yeah, you’re checked in.” Porter pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked a door marked Employees Only. “Head upstairs, the Greenwich Oracle should be in his chair.”
“Is he expecting me?”
“He knows you’re in town.” He opened the door and ushered the Baron and the Zombie inside. “It’s just the neophytes who don’t know up from down.”
“Is that Osman’s son?” the Baron asked.
“Yeah, General’s boy,” Porter replied.
“Make sure he learns.” The Baron glanced at the Zombie. “For his safety.”
“Tsch. Already planning on it.”
Porter closed the door behind them, and they climbed up the carpeted stairway, narrow and steep. It was an architectural no man’s land between the shop and the temple, closer to a pitched ladder than a true staircase, providing little more than a functional connection between the secular world below and the occult chambers above. Time and traffic had ground the fibers until they were fraying and thin, and the steps creaked audibly.
“That’s the only entrance?” the Zombie asked. “How do people leave at night?”
“They don’t,” the Baron said. “Half the apartments up here are for cultists to board until someone can let them out in the morning.”
“Seems like a fire hazard.”
“Did you look at the outside of the row?” They reached the top of the stairs, and the Baron ran up against a thin white door. “There’re at least thirty fire escapes on this block.”
“Is this the place you spent all that time on the phone asking about?”
“I’d hoped we might stay here for free.” The Baron shrugged down at the Zombie, who’d paused on the step below him while he worked the door’s stiff handle.
“Nah.” His companion frowned. “I couldn’t stand being cooped up here all night. I’d get bored.”
“That’s why I opted for the Biltmore.” The Baron opened the door and stepped out into a single cavernous room, three stories high and stretching the entire length of the rowhouse—at least half a kilometer of open air.
“Hmm,” the Zombie judged. “Nicer than it looks from the street.”
It was a warm auditorium of ruddy brick walls and heavy crimson carpets. The skeletal supports of the original buildings still hung in space, and the chamber’s inconsistent ceiling rested on a series of towering steel columns connected by suspended I-beams. Tapestries, curtains and other beautiful sheets of cloth were hung from the high bars in careful formation, filling the high chamber with ranks and rows like feudal heraldry. The elevation of the floor changed multiple times. Stairs and ramps linked aisles to aisles.
The vast space was lit from above and below. Bright, morning blue descended through ridged skylights, while ensconced lamps painted the red brick walls from below in buttery yellow. The combined hues flooded through the entire chamber, resulting in a space that was simultaneously airy and cozy, a magic trick achieved without the need for divine intervention.
Dozens of tables, pews, couches, desks, and chairs were scattered about—at least ten different floor plans straddled the space with haphazard, even arbitrary borders. Black mesh stairwells crawled up the broad walls at regular intervals, leading up towards ancient doors. The original three stories were preserved as apartments on both sides of the row, and there were several dozen full rooms where people could stay. Many of them contained sanctuaries—individual rooms set aside for occult functionality.
A few groups of people were seated together at tables or on couches. Several more were alone—reading, thinking and napping. Quiet voices could be heard murmuring in the distance. All other noises were muted by the cloth overhead.
“Oracle?” the Baron shouted. He shut the door behind himself and went for the nearest rise. They were leaving the bookstore behind and climbing over a shoe shop. At the far end of the temple chamber, they could see a young Irish man seated at a tremendous steel desk. He was dressed in a style lifted from the last century, wearing a fine shirt and suspenders like an accountant or clerk.
The young man waved. “Over here!”
They descended off the shoe shop and followed an undulating carpet road up to the desk at the head of the 8th Street Temple. The Oracle was toe-headed and pinch-faced like he’d been eating lemons, but he smiled well enough and his thick glasses made his fresh eyes appear larger.
“Good morning, Oracle!” the Baron called out.
The young man came around the desk and stepped forward to shake d’Holbach’s hand. “Morning, sirs! I’m Maurice Clare, the Oracle of Greenwich. Judging from your fine appearance, I’m guessing you’re the Philosopher, and the man behind you is the Golem?”
“The Zombie now,” the Zombie said.
“Of course! How can I help you, gentlemen?” Maurice asked.
The Baron glanced around. “I have a couple of quick questions. Does everyone dodging from the harbor arrive here?” It was a long shot, but Nagy might’ve made it back to a temple before he perished, and they needed a good idea where he might’ve landed if he’d wished himself into debt.
Maurice pursed his lips. “Not the whole harbor. New York is too big. The government took count in 1950—we were twelve million strong and growing, more populous than most countries. That’s twelve thousand cultists at least, not to mention all the visiting vassals, the organized crime…”
“Right,” the Baron said, “just making sure.”
Maurice hardly noticed the Baron’s acquiescence to the truth. “There’s a bunch of warehouse temples, though we’re looking for more locations like the bookstore here.”
“Of course,” the Baron agreed, following the Oracle’s gaze upwards. “It’s lovely.”
“It’s necessary.” Maurice’s eyes traced the brickwork, stopping at the skylights along the ridge of the row. “We just haven’t found a good place to hide a temple in a skyscraper, and nobody wants to build a second temple in the local underground.”
That actually caught the Baron’s attention. “You have a first one? Underground?”
“Oh yes. In the abandoned City Hall station.”
The Baron was impressed. The New York underground was notoriously poor for temple construction. Secular intrusion was almost impossible to prevent, and it was an absolute requirement from the gods that only cultists could walk on sacred grounds. Sanctuaries in particular were massive violations of the natural order and had to remain hidden from the public eye. The Baron and the Zombie were the only known exceptions to this rule. They weren’t cultists in any literal sense of the word, but they were allowed to enter without risking the sanctity of the location. “I hadn’t heard about any underground temple,” the Baron prompted, curious if Maurice would provide any more details about its construction.
The Oracle smiled proudly. “It’s been about 7 years now. We acquired the old station during the war, and Tammany pushed to make it a temple. Most of the other Oracles had their doubts, but one of the sanctuaries picked up a ten-year debtor in 47. We knew it was working then.” Maurice skedaddled around his desk, returning to his well-cushioned wooden chair. “We don’t need to stand around. Please, take a seat. Relax.”
“I am relaxed,” the Zombie said.
The Baron chose the chair directly across from the Oracle. A framed photograph of a pretty young woman faced outwards to impress visitors, but nothing else personal was in view. Spread out across the desktop was a single bound volume of vellum, open to a half-blank page where the Oracle could write out in elegant calligraphy the tasks he received from the gods. His fountain pen and inkwell were straight at hand, and judging by the lightest bite of alcohol in the air, he’d been writing before they came in.
The Zombie stood behind the Baron like a sentinel, slowly rocking on his heels.
Once everyone was settled, Maurice spoke up. “My father used to say, you treat the devil politely. You have to show respect, even if there’s evil at hand.”
“Especially if there’s evil at hand,” the Baron said. He tended to let insults about his atheism go, especially when there was nothing to win by taking offense.
“Think nothing of it. The High Oracle called us this morning. Our temples are your temples for the duration of your stay. You said you had a couple of questions?”
“Yes, well…” The Baron was here to figure out if there was a task that might’ve attracted Nagy to New York City, but he couldn’t ask about Nagy himself. Plausible deniability would be key to all his interactions with New York. “We’re here to look into some recent tasks,” he said. “Could you tell us about everything big that was announced or completed in the last month?”
“What do you mean, big?” Maurice asked.
“The kind of task that Oracles might’ve heard in other states.”
“Ah—there’s been several so far. A couple murders, maybe five saved lives, the formation of an Off-Off-Broadway troupe here in the Village.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, one of the bigger ones was to cause a SoHo art gallery to default on their loan—”
“That was big?” the Baron asked.
“Apparently it required a lot of extremely difficult electronic fraud. Langley was the only cult that had the resources to pick it up. We negotiated a token price for working in our territory and they took care of it. Big prestige.”
“Anything else?” Routine murders, pedestrian salvations and art projects weren’t the kind of tasks that Nagy would’ve crossed oceans to participate in.
“Yeah. Two others. One was to sneak a bomb onto a domestic plane—not to detonate it, just to make sure it was there to ground the plane and make a fuss. I think Langley picked that one up as well. The other was to scuttle a cargo ship in the harbor. That was outsourced to some dock workers, but the task had a body count.”
Alarm bells rang in the Baron’s head. “They completed it?”
“Yeah. Thursday night. The Port Authority has been working in shifts to dredge up the debris since it happened. I think four cultists died. Tammany Hall managed to spin their casualties as part of some diesel explosion that sank the vessel.”
The Baron wove his fingers together and rested them in his lap, pondering what a body count might mean. He’d start with the fundamentals and work through the logic.
The system of prestige began with a simple conceit. The Oracles wished to hear the gods, and in turn, the gods assigned tasks through the Oracles, offering a reward for their completion. The bigger the task, the bigger the prestige. Since greater tasks were more difficult and required more resources, the gods announced them across wider regions, often speaking to many Oracles at once. The gods divided their prestige equally across those who completed the task, but about two-thirds of tasks were phrased in such a way that only one person could officially complete it, even if hundreds were necessary to finish it.
These narrow rewards encouraged ruthless competition, murder, and deceit. Rival cults could steal hard-earned prestige by showing up at the right place and time to pull the proverbial trigger. This practice went by many names, but one of the most common to date was “sniping,” a metaphor invoking the assassination that it often involved.
There was a body count, a sunk boat, and Nagy was a trained killer. If he’d come to the United States for any task, this was it. “Do you know why they died?” d’Holbach asked.
Maurice shrugged, showing the perfect lack of care that any leader needed when their missions led to death and destruction. “They were killed by the explosives they used to scuttle the ship. The Port Authority couldn’t even collect whole bodies.”
“Their corpses might’ve been blown up,” the Zombie suggested.
d’Holbach agreed. There was no way to know if the dock workers had died before the cargo ship was scuttled. Nagy might’ve plugged a few before going down. Scratch that—if he was there, he’d absolutely killed someone before dying himself.
Maurice frowned. “Were you speaking with Meister Schuler outside?”
“We met him, yes,” said d’Holbach.
“Are you working with him?”
“No. What was he here for?”
“He was asking if anyone had been talking about the ship scuttle before Thursday.”
“Did anyone?”
“Not here, but he’s been going from temple to temple all morning. He also said the same thing—that their corpses might’ve been blown up. Were the workers killed before the ship went down?”
“Maybe.” The Baron leaned back. “It’s not really important. We’re just fishing for opportunities. I don’t plan on sticking my nose in Schuler’s business, not with a completed task like that.” The Baron was selling bullshit, but Maurice bought it without question.
“Yeah, he’s nuts. Nobody really wants to work with him.” The Greenwich Oracle rubbed an eye. “Smart as a whip though. He kept guessing how I’d finish my sentences. It was uncanny.”
“He’s very skilled. The last Diviner in North America didn’t fare so well.”
“We bought his house,” the Zombie said.
Maurice concentrated for a second. “Are you talking about Andrew Jackson Davis?”
“That’s the man. After the wish crippled him, he moved to Boston and started taking phenobarbital and paraldehyde so he could write. He finished almost thirty books on spiritualism, most of them too far gone to be relevant. I’m not sure he even remembered the system of prestige. He’d sink into these awful trances and just babble tasks for hours in an empty room.”
“You met him?”
“In 1900. He was in his early 70s.” The Baron made an idle pass at his pockets to find a cigar. Nothing. He promised himself that he’d buy one as soon as they left the temple. “The only thing he could really remember was the Fall of Truth. He still moaned about Elizabeth.”
“Who?” Maurice asked.
“The Apostate,” the Zombie interjected.
“Fascinating.” The Oracle of Greenwich scratched his throat. “You said he took phenobarbital? Paraldehyde? What for?”
“He suffered from seizures. It’s the way the so-called gods talk,” the Baron said. “It’s too much to handle physically.”
“What do you mean? They don’t actually talk.”
“Right. The task is made and the knowledge is just in your head.”
Maurice nodded. “Yes. It’s like I remember hearing something.”
“Now humor me here. Assume for a moment that you don’t have a soul, and that your memory is all in your brain.” The Baron tapped his forehead. “This means every task received causes a change up here. Synapses get shuffled around. Chemistry gets mixed up and moved. Your brain is edited, understand?”
“Meister Schuler’s brain is edited a few times every second then,” Maurice said.
“Exactly.”
“I never get sick though.” Maurice looked over at the record book on the table. “I spend a lot of time working here. If it’s really brain editing, the gods are great editors.”
“I’m sure they are,” the Baron said, “but they’re not perfect.”
Maurice balked a little. “Well—”
The Zombie interrupted, “The Falls prove they’re imperfect.” He tapped his chest with the flat of his fist. “I’m here for a reason.”
“They still don’t make me ill,” Maurice noted.
The Baron tapped a temple with a finger. “That’s because your brain is able to follow neurological rules most of the time. Stuff fires together, it wires together. Hebbian theory.”
“It… what?” Maurice asked.
“I mean that the brain is self-organizing, and it changes slowly based on interactions and input. You live in the world, and you react to it sensibly.” The Baron shifted in his chair. “Schuler’s brain doesn’t get to self-organize. He’s being rebuilt multiple times a second, and all the changes are at odds with the reality that he experienced just seconds ago. I think he’s just well-practiced at rationalizing the invasive thoughts. Maybe he compartmentalizes. It’s like he can ignore the changes.”
“Mr. Jackson Davis couldn’t do that, though?”
“Not without medicine. Not without depressed brain function. If he was stressed, he’d go into convulsions. Hearing all those tasks took their toll.”
The Zombie smiled wistfully. “I scared the hell out of him.”
The Baron rolled his eyes. “Loud noises scared him.”
“I showed him a penny knife.”
“Don’t ask,” the Baron told the Greenwich Oracle.
“This is all assuming that we don’t have souls, of course,” Maurice noted.
The Baron carefully suppressed the urge to shrug. “I don’t think it’s much of an assumption, but I’m not here to argue against dualism. I don’t know how you’d reconcile Schuler’s behavior with a soul theory though.”
Maurice frowned. “Psychology, maybe?”
“One science substituted for another?” Psychology was a lesser science in the Baron’s view, as it remained agnostic to so much else that had already been learned.
“I don’t know. This isn’t my area of expertise. I’m a man who knows the rules and the prices and writes down the jobs.” Maurice smiled. “Why something happens isn’t my business.”
“Ah, I understand.” The Baron rose from his chair. “Well, thank you for your help.”
“Are you leaving already?” Maurice asked. He was obviously enjoying the Baron’s conversation and was probably looking for a way to invite himself to lunch.
The Baron grinned congenially. While he was often polite, he couldn’t abide the Oracle’s prideful ignorance, and there’d be an argument if he stayed. As far as he was concerned, knowing the facts was everyone’s business. If the Oracle of Greenwich believed otherwise in order to protect his beliefs, this would be the limit of their friendship.
The Baron had many acquaintances and few true friends.
“We’ll be heading to the Biltmore to check in,” the Baron said.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question first?” Maurice asked. “It’s really an opinion I want.”
“Wait,” the Zombie said. He raised a hand.
“I don’t mind,” the Baron said.
“Quiet!” the Zombie yelled.
The Baron turned. “What is it?”
“Someone’s sprinting—”
The door to the entrance along the far wall flew open, rattling as if it’d been kicked, and the cashier exploded into the temple chamber with the short, hairy neophyte in his draft.
“What the hell?” Maurice asked.
“Those are the boys from downstairs,” the Baron said.
“Porter and Osman,” Maurice said. “They’re the gatekeepers on shift. One second.” Maurice stood up and shouted through cupped hands. “What’s the emergency?”
Porter stopped two buildings away in the chamber and shouted back. “Sanctuary call! There may be a man bleeding out in the temple!”
Author’s Note:
Sometimes, men arrive from far afield, bloodied and perishing.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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