There were maybe twenty idle cultists in the temple of the Greenwich Oracle. They stood up one at a time or in pairs and started towards Porter and Osman.
“A wounded dodger?” the Baron asked Maurice. “Were there any violent operations this morning?”
Maurice frowned. “The outstanding tasks are all safe. Excuse me.” A shout to Porter, “I’m on my way!”
“Do you want any help?” the Baron asked.
“Ah—yeah, actually, I’d appreciate it.” Maurice adjusted his suspender straps. “There are too many rooms to search.” He started off towards Porter, and the Baron and the Zombie jogged after him.
“What’s the news?” Maurice asked when Porter was in earshot.
Porter threw a thumb over at Osman. “He took the call.”
Osman spoke without confidence. “It was from the East River Docks. They said someone, um, dodged a gunshot wound, um, twenty minutes ago?”
“Dodged with a gunshot wound,” Porter said. “With!”
“But he’s in the temple, right?” Osman asked.
Porter moaned.
The Zombie walked around behind Osman. “Who made you a cultist?”
Osman swept about. “What?”
“Was it your father? The General? Did you turn twenty-one recently?”
Osman must’ve learned a bit about the Zombie in the last few minutes. He watched the Zombie’s bare hands like they were decorated with daggers.
The Zombie wriggled his fingers and reached out for Osman’s right shoulder. The neophyte quivered slightly, torn between the urge to retreat and the prey’s instinct which told him that if he ran, the predator would spring.
The Zombie whispered sweetly, “A boy made of glass, asking stupid questions…”
“Please, don’t haze the neophyte,” Maurice said.
The Zombie laughed at Osman and the Oracle. “What’s the rush? This is the closest temple to the docks, isn’t it? If the dodger is here, why isn’t he calling out for help?”
“I don’t know yet,” Maurice replied.
Several of the other cultists arrived. Most were dressed low-class—tank tops, jeans, and brightly colored daddy-o’s. One of them was like a beatnik who’d cribbed his look off a movie rather than from an actual beat poet. They listened attentively, trying to figure out the fuss and exchanging brief comments.
“Maybe it’s because he’s a corpse,” the Zombie offered.
The Baron decided to curb the Zombie’s enthusiasm. “We’ll still need to look. It’s the decent thing to do.”
The Zombie snorted. “When did I ever care about decency?”
The last stragglers of New York cultists bunched up beside Maurice. The man dressed like a beatnik said, “What’s happening, man?”
“There’s a wounded dodger,” Maurice told them.
The beatnik slapped a greaser in a blue daddy-o on the shoulder. “Told you.”
The Baron made a subtle gesture at the Zombie, tapping himself twice on the chest with two fingers. It meant “follow my example,” and it was only used when it was actually important that the Zombie fall in line. This dodge could give them insight into local factions, their conflicts, the outstanding blood feuds—everything and anything about local politics would be useful at this stage. They needed to fill in the fine details or they’d never find any suspects for Nagy’s killer.
The Zombie didn’t hide his disappointment, but Maurice seemed to read his exasperation as boredom more than anything. “Fine. I’ll help,” the Zombie said.
“Thank you, both of you,” Maurice said. “Porter, split up the crowd. Check the west apartments.” The Oracle looked up at the steep stairwells crawling along the walls. “We need all hands on the third floor. I’ll work the east side, and we’ll meet up in the middle.”
“Young Osman, come with me,” the Baron suggested. This boy was the son of the General of the New York cult, and it’d be smart to butter him up for the future.
“What?” the neophyte asked the Baron. “Why?”
“The Zombie is going to sprint, and we’re going to stay out of his way.”
Osman was immediately relieved. He’d puffed up like a rooster when he’d recognized the Baron down in the bookstore, but a blasphemous atheist was infinitely preferable to the company of a monster. “Where are we going?” the young man asked.
“We’ll take the apartments near the Oracle’s desk, east side. The Zombie can run down and start at the other end. Just like Maurice said, we’ll all meet in the middle.”
“I’ll hurry this up,” the Zombie said. Without much windup, he took off, sprinting in dress shoes for the far corner of the chamber at the very end of the row.
“I’ll start here and work towards the Zombie,” Maurice suggested.
“Sounds good,” the Baron said. “Osman, let’s go.”
d’Holbach and Osman marched quickly towards the stairwell to the left of the Oracle’s desk. It was at the southeast end of the rowhouse; since it was very close to the dodge point at the docks, there was a strong chance the dodger would end up there.
Once they were well out of earshot, the Baron said to Osman, “Do you know why I wanted you to come with me?”
“No, sir,” Osman said.
“My title is Baron. I’m not a knight.” They reached the foot of the stairswell. Each one was a repurposed fire escape—no ladders and high railings—which hit three apartment doors on the way up the brick wall. “I planned on giving you some friendly advice. Would you like that, Osman?
“Yes, Baron,” Osman said.
“Good.” They started clambering up the black-painted metal; shoes clanged on the steep mesh steps. “This is the right time to learn. You’re young. You’ll say stupid things to dangerous people, and they’ll forgive you because you’re too ignorant to know better.” The Baron half-pulled himself upwards with the railing.
“If you’re talking about my greeting in the bookstore, I’m sorry, Baron,” Osman said.
The Baron paused, looking down. “That’s kind of you, but first piece of advice—don’t apologize until someone demands it. Not unless it’s tradition. Being a cultist is a lot like being a criminal, Osman. Did you know that?” He started climbing again.
“No, Baron. My dad said it was like being a Freemason.”
“It is for your father. It might not be for you.” They passed the second story door. Up and up. “Once they have you finishing tasks, you’ll understand. Second piece of advice—just learn from your mistakes the first time. Someday they won’t accept ignorance as an excuse.”
“I understand.”
“Oh, and third piece—don’t tell powerful men where they are and aren’t welcome. You might as well learn that one now. On a bad day, the Zombie might’ve hurt you.”
“I’m sorry, really. I’d seen a picture of you in Tammany, and I’d heard about Salem.”
The Baron paused and looked down at Osman. “Were you at the fire?” The question was rhetorical. Salem had nearly burned to the ground in 1914, and the neophyte couldn’t be older than twenty-five at most.
“No, sir,” he said. “I mean, Baron.”
“Then it’s nothing you need to worry about.” The Baron started upwards one final time. To the side, in the open air, the hanging tapestries seemed to close the space up. Three stories over the floor, lines of sight were obscured, not opened. The great weaves were almost in reach. They reminded the Baron of the low hanging boughs in a dark grove. One could hide between them.
They reached the third story door. Osman was breathing a little heavier, but the Baron was no worse for wear. He put his hand on the door. “Before we go in, I have a question. Have you ever seen a dead body?”
Osman’s eyes opened wide. “You think the man is dead?”
The Baron sighed. “So you haven’t?”
“No, Baron. I’ve never seen a corpse.”
The Baron rubbed his forehead. “So you’re a gatekeeper because they don’t know what to do with you.”
Osman winced and opened his mouth to object, but a second thought brought his ambitions down, and he sagged. “Yes, Baron. I’m afraid so.”
At least the young Osman seemed to know how poor his position fared in the occult space around them. “Did anybody even tell you about the sanctuaries?”
“A little.”
“Do you know how someone dodges then?”
“They make a wish, and then they end up in the temple?”
The Baron squinted at Osman. It was a sad state of affairs in New York City, but he supposed it was their proximity to Tammany Hall itself that created the problem. Osman was part of the New York cult nobility. They didn’t go out into the field for years, sometimes never did, and they were paid for easy temple jobs with prestige tithed from other people. Osman was a child of vast nepotism, a useless cultist who showed up and expected that someday he’d have enough prestige to ensure a place in the hereafter. The worst part was, he would.
“Do you often work with your father?” the Baron asked. “General Osman?”
“He lives in Tammany Hall,” Osman said. “I don’t see him much.”
“He hasn’t paid anybody to teach you in his place?”
“No, Baron. He said I shouldn’t have to work much.”
“I see. Well, I hope your father forgives me, because I’m going to teach you something today.” The Baron opened the door. Behind the brick wall was a fairly large New York apartment lit by windows with the curtains drawn. Hardwood floors creaked underneath the Baron’s feet, and the air carried a hint of old lemon cleaner. Nobody had been staying here for a while. There was a staleness to everything, as if it’d all settled years ago and needed to air out. “So let’s start at the beginning. Have you ever made a wish, neophyte Osman?”
“No, Baron,” Osman said. “Porter tells me I’m supposed to save my prestige.”
“For the wish to go to the gods? For the afterlife.”
“Yes.” Osman followed the Baron into the apartment.
There’d be a few rooms that’d form the sanctuaries. Probably the bedrooms. There was little furniture in the main room, just a long couch and a table with two chairs. Folded blankets and sheets were laid out on the table, in case someone needed to sleep in the apartment. In a little kitchen alcove, a spotless oven waited to be used for the first time.
“If you make a wish, it costs you prestige,” the Baron said. “The bigger the wish, the more it takes to make it come true. Are you with me so far?”
“I know this much, yeah.”
“Good. What happens when you make a wish that you can’t afford?” The Baron opened up a bedroom door. The room was pitch black and chilly, but there was nobody inside. There wasn’t even a bed. There was just a heavy throw rug in the middle of the floor.
“The wish doesn’t come true?” Osman ventured.
“No. If you have prestige, any at all, you can make a wish, and it might be granted.” The Baron let go of the handle and the door very slowly shut itself. It was best not to force anything when it came to a sanctuary. There was no confirmed case of a magic door severing a hand from a man’s arm, but the urban legends were plausible enough to make even Baron d’Holbach careful. “Did you see that room?”
“Yes. That’s a sanctuary, right?”
“That’s right. They’re abnormal, anomalous. The cultists say they’re holy, but I think they’re just spatially strange. It’s like the door opens on disconnected spaces.”
“Which means?” Osman asked.
“I’m saying that one door opens onto several copies of the same room.”
“Ah, okay.” That was something Osman could vaguely understand.
The Baron went to another door. There were four off the main room, excluding the bathroom which was already open. “Listen, the so-called gods value two things. The first is the prestige they grant, and the second is human life.” He opened another door onto an empty, cold room.
“Life?” Osman asked. “Like human sacrifice?”
“With some limitations. They’re not interested in killing you. They just want to exact a toll equal to the favor of granting your wish. Have you ever heard the others talk about prestige in units of time?”
“I have.”
“So prestige and time are interchangeable. If you can’t pay with prestige, they’ll take some of your time.”
“So they make you older?” Osman peered into the open, chilly room. “And I guess they put you in one of these weird rooms to do it?”
“That’s close, but not quite right.” The room shut itself behind the Baron. “I’m not going to argue metaphysics with you, but here’s the official story. The gods claim there is free will. Do you know what this means for your future?”
“No, Baron.”
“It means that history isn’t predetermined. It also means that you have no set lifespan. The gods can’t subtract years from a future that doesn’t exist yet.” The Baron went to a third bedroom. “Not that I believe this is the truth, mind you, but I’m the Atheist, right?”
“Maurice calls you the Philosopher,” Osman said quietly.
“A much better title, I agree, but it’s still meant with disdain. Or at least it was when it was coined.” The Baron opened a third door onto an empty room. “The gods are clever. They want to grant your wish at the moment you make it, but they also want some of your life, and there’s nothing they can take from the future. So what could they do? How could they exact their pound of flesh?”
“I don’t know, Baron.”
The Baron approached the fourth bedroom door, and the last room in the apartment that could be a sanctuary. “The gods need you to wait, Osman. That’s the only way you can pay the time they’re owed.” He hesitated before opening up the sanctuary. Osman might not be ready for a corpse, and this was the most likely spot to find one, though it wasn’t guaranteed.
“So you go into a sanctuary and wait until your debt is paid?” Osman asked.
“Yes. Days, weeks, even years. You wait.”
“Huh. Do the gods feed you?”
For once, the young man was using his brain. The Baron smiled. “Thankfully, no. You don’t have to eat, drink, or use the restroom. You don’t even have to worry about going crazy. The gods start you out in a torpor. You can wait half-asleep while you grow old. But you’re still not quite getting it. I don’t think anyone ever does until they’re told.”
“Get what?” Osman asked. “This doesn’t seem that hard to understand.”
“The gods want to grant you the wish the moment you make it, but you have to wait before it is granted. You can’t wait afterwards, so what do they do with you? How do they make it work out?”
“They… can’t?” Osman asked uncertainly.
“They can because they cheat. These sanctuaries are more than hidden away. They’re nowhere in this world until it’s time for the door to open, and nobody can be found in a room until their wait is finished. Do you understand now?”
“No, Baron.”
“Then I’ll spell it out plainly. When you go into debt, the gods place you in a sanctuary in the past, and you’re trapped there, aging until you catch up to the present when your wish was made.”
“So it’s time travel?” Osman was skeptical. “Like the H. G. Wells book?”
“Like the book, but simpler. People in sanctuaries can’t see the past. That’s what the sanctuaries are for, you see? The gods abhor a paradox. They’re just looking to make you age a little, and storing you in the past is the easiest way.”
“Why don’t they just change your age? Why mess with time?”
The Baron frowned. Osman was clearly thinking of time travel as an incredibly complex thing. He was imagining men shaking hands with themselves and destroying the universe. He was raised on stories of arbitrary travel with arbitrary rules. He didn’t have the advantage of a philosophical mind. The Baron had learned about the sanctuaries from a position of profound ignorance with few assumptions, and all he’d discovered was that the gods were excellent at keeping their mysteries. There was no time travel model to speak of because nothing about their time travel could be modeled. It underdetermined many sets of possible rules.
Compared with that, the task of making someone artificially old was vastly more complex. Every cell in the human body would have to be changed immediately, ravaged in perfect mimicry of time and entropy. It wasn’t worth the effort when the debtor could be moved back and allowed to age naturally in a controlled environment.
“Just trust me,” the Baron said, “the gods are lazy, and it’s simpler this way. It may not sound like it, but this is reliable and fair. Making you older wouldn’t be as clean.”
“Huh. Can you die in a sanctuary then?” Osman asked. “Of old age, I mean?”
“Of old age, disease, and injury, yes. And if you die before your debts are paid in full, you earn nothing. Your wish doesn’t come true if you aren’t alive to receive it.”
“That’s terrible.”
“It is. But before I open this door, I want to tell you something important. When someone deliberately wishes for more than they can afford in order to escape to a temple, that’s called dodging. They’re ripped away because they deliberately accrued debt. Unfortunately, the smallest unit of debt allowed is equivalent to twelve hours of life.”
“Twelve hours… oh.” Osman looked down at his shoes. “Oh shit.”
“It’s a disaster when someone dodges while wounded. It’s a foolish thing, or at least something very desperate. There’s a very real chance that someone bled out behind this door hours ago. Are you okay with seeing that?”
“I don’t know, Baron.”
“Then look away while I open the door.”
Osman turned his head. Baron d’Holbach opened the door.
“You can look,” the Baron said. “It’s empty.”
Osman shuddered. “Thank God.”
The Baron rubbed his clean-shaven scalp. “Maybe,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Nevermind.” Nobody had quite figured out the pattern for finding people in sanctuaries. It was almost probabilistic, which had implications for the physics of sanctuaries. He wasn’t about to break that notion down with Osman however. “Let’s get out of here.”
He opened the front door onto the fire escape landing.
“Baron?” called up Porter.
“I’m up here!” the Baron shouted down. “Nothing inside these.”
“The Zombie says he found the dead man!”
“Fantastic,” the Baron said, and meant it. The Zombie’s presence would discourage anyone from moving or removing the body before d’Holbach had a chance to look it over.
He and Osman clambered down the stairwell, shoes ringing out, then jogged silently along the aisle towards the corner at the other end of the building. The Zombie came out of the far apartment and leaned dangerously far over the railing, waving with both arms.
“Don’t fall!” the Baron shouted at him. “You could break through the floor!”
The Zombie stepped back and laughed loud enough to be heard echoing off the far wall despite the reams of hanging decorations.
The Oracle met them along the way. “The Zombie’s got it.”
“We heard. Is the man dead?” the Baron asked him.
“Apparently. You know as much as I do.”
They reached the base of the stairwell below the Zombie, where a few of the New York cultists were already gathered. “Any orders boss?” asked the beatnik look-a-like.
Maurice snapped his fingers and pointed. “You and you, get down to Tammany Hall. We’ve got a body to dispose of.”
The cultists started off immediately.
“Dispose?” Osman asked. “What if he had a wife?”
“She’ll learn later,” Maurice said curtly. “Get downstairs and greet anybody from Tammany that shows up. Do your job.”
“Yes, sir!” Osman ran off after the others.
Maurice started his way up the stairwell and d’Holbach followed immediately.
“Osman’s father wants him to be dead weight?” the Baron asked the Oracle.
“That’s right,” Maurice said, audibly unhappy with the idea. “The General can afford to pamper the kid, and I can afford to take care of him.”
“That’s miserable.”
“No, that’s royalty.”
They reached the third story, where the Zombie ushered them indoors with a tip of his bowler. “My friends, I present to you, one dead asshole.”
Just beyond the vestibule to the apartment, the nearest sanctuary door was propped open with a chair, and the Zombie had drawn back the curtains to let in more light. They could see a prostrate figure, lying at the entrance in a pool of black, dried blood. He’d been clawing at the wooden door panels while he bled out.
“Damn,” Maurice said. “Messy.”
The Baron skirted around the Oracle, approaching the dead man. “Small-time Mafia?” Baron d’Holbach asked, stopping beside the Zombie to inspect the corpse.
“Absolutely,” the Zombie said. “He’s got a shitty revolver in his jeans, left pocket.”
The Baron knelt close to the head of the corpse, looking him over. He was dressed like a dock worker in spring; his rolled up sleeves revealed thick, sunburned arms coated in old Navy Reserve tattoos. His newsie cap was stuck in the blood by his head; his right cheek was mashed into the hardwood floor. His short, black hair and thick mustache were in the style worn by Italian immigrants, but whether or not he was Sicilian was hard to tell. He was heavily tanned.
Maurice was waiting several steps back. “Looks like he came up out of the torpor.”
“A man in mortal pain doesn’t sleep.” The Zombie pointed to the middle of the dead man’s back. “The bullet didn’t pass through either. Frangible. An autopsy would dig up nothing but fragments. Very professional. Useless as ID.”
“Do you have any idea what wish he used to dodge?” Maurice asked.
“Penny wish, I think.” The Zombie grinned broadly, pulling out a small, grimy penny out of his pants pocket. “Found it with his blood on it, which means he thought it through. He was already shot, and still chose to run with a wish.” The Zombie kneeled beside the Baron “But you can’t make good decisions when you’ve been hit center of mass, can you? You panic and overthink it, and you die. Or you choose to die. Either way, there’s no escape.”
The Baron grunted. The penny wish was an ancient trick. A cultist was given a minimal amount of prestige to carry around with him—a unit sometimes called the half-day. If he had zero prestige, he couldn’t make any wishes until he received more.
The cultist then put a penny in his left pocket. When it became necessary to escape—to dodge to the temple—the cultist wished that the penny was in his right pocket instead. While teleportation was generally perceived as incredibly expensive, it was reasonable to imagine that the penny had always been in the other pocket or was moved by sleight of hand, so this wish was valued at a deep discount of a single day.
The wish cost twenty four hours, and the cultist had spent half upfront. The remaining debt was only twelve hours—the shortest possible time to wait in a sanctuary. It was still too long for someone like the dock worker with a bullet in his chest.
“Maybe he recognized the assassins,” Maurice said thoughtfully. “He might’ve had a good reason to try his luck with a dodge.”
The Baron frowned. “I don’t know. This corpse doesn’t tell us much about anything.”
The Zombie shrugged. “No wallet, only a billfold. Yes, I checked.”
“Do you know where he worked?” the Baron asked Maurice.
“This guy? No idea. I’m not even sure if he was working his real job on a Saturday. He was at the East River Docks though. Why do you ask?”
“Mostly curious.”
Maurice frowned at the dead man. “Are you thinking of looking for the killer? New York might put up a bounty.”
“I don’t know,” the Baron lied. “If I figure anything out, I’ll tell Tammany Hall.”
“Good,” Maurice said. “They’re going to be pissed.”
The Baron stood up and turned to face the Oracle. “If you’re looking for our help, you could do us a favor,” he added.
“What’s that?”
“If you get a name or cult attached to this corpse, you could leave me a message at the Biltmore. My room is under the name Ray Dufraine. I don’t know if the man here is important, but it might help everyone out if we keep trading info.”
“You’d owe me a favor back,” Maurice said.
“Of course.”
“Then it’s a deal,” Maurice said, offering to shake on it.
The Baron gripped the Oracle’s hand—heavy, an ex-laborer’s meaty paw—and he gave it two brief shakes before releasing it. “Thanks for your help, and I’m sorry about your loss. If we stumble across anything, we’ll be in touch.”
“You’re welcome.” He pinched the bridge of his nose just below his glasses. “It smells like blood in here. Are you good to go?.”
“Yes, Oracle,” the Baron replied.
Maurice turned towards the door, and the Baron and Zombie followed him out of the apartment and down the metal mesh stairs. Footsteps echoed off the far brick walls. When they reached the floor of the chamber, he turned to them. “Oh, I almost forgot to ask you.”
They walked down the aisle to the open temple door. “What is it?”
“We were talking about Schuler and Jackson Davis, and I was wondering, why don’t Diviners wish away the gift? If their sensitivity makes them crazy or gives them seizures, why stick with it? Why don’t they go back, if they can cure their madness?”
The Baron paused in the doorway. “You want to know their motivation?”
“I suppose I do.”
“It’s the same reason that flagellants whip themselves, Maurice. Suffering makes them holy. It makes them special. I think they stick with it because the struggle gives them meaning. Without it, there’s no purpose to their lives.”
“That’s grim,” Maurice said.
“It’s existentialism,” the Baron said. The Zombie darted around him and started down the steps, dress shoes tapping rapidly on the wood. “We’ll be heading out now. I hope you don’t have any trouble disposing of the corpse.”
“We won’t.” Maurice took a deep breath. “I’ve missed a task while talking with you already. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to work.”
The Baron nodded, thinking the same thing. It was time to go from here to the docks—to see if this death could bear any relevant info for their case.
They exchanged their goodbyes, and the Baron followed the Zombie down and out through a bookstore filled with people browsing magazines and paperbacks. These readers were looking for a moment’s entertainment, while a murdered man laid over them, quiet and still. What a strange world it could be, containing both trifles and graves.
The young Osman was standing at the front window. He waved miserably at the passing Baron, and d’Holbach waved back with a heart full of pity for the living and the dead.
Author’s Note:
Trifles and graves, equally fleeting.
As always, thank you to the beta readers for helping with this chapter!
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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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