Hugo stared at the new arrivals in what he had assumed was going to be yet another dubious upper class English gathering on the fringes of government and the intelligence community. He could understand why Crowley might be there, given the man’s connections amongst the London elite, but not young Brian.
Lucacz reacted forcefully. ‘It’s Mammon,’ he hissed. ‘He’s in the boy’s head. This is bad. We need Jonas Niemand.’
‘Can’t you help the kid?’
‘No. He’s doomed. Once that beast is inside him, he’ll consume him one way or another. Only Jonas can help him now.’
‘Then get him!’
‘You don’t just call on the Destroyer, the Angel of fucking Death! He appears at God’s express command to do his Will.’
The boy Brian looked coolly at the two Rothenians. ‘Seize them,’ he ordered the adults on the sofas. Though Marek Marcovic dithered, Maxwell Knight pulled a pistol and threatened Hugo, while two others of Crowley’s acolytes tried to restrain Lucacz. With a remarkable surge of strength, Lucacz hurled one across the room into a wall, and punched the other man unconscious. He grinned as he wrung his fist.
Crowley shouted impatiently. Brian scowled and raised a hand. Lucacz froze and slowly and horribly he went pale and as he did his body began to shrivel and decompose, as if years of decay had happened in a couple of minutes.
Hugo fell to his knees at the side of the corpse. He took and raised a bony hand and kissed it. ‘I love you, my dead boy,’ he said through tears. Then he turned on Brian. ‘What have you done to him?’ he cried.
‘Nothing,’ sneered the boy. ‘He’s dead. So I let him rot like dead things do. You could hardly complain that I killed him.’
‘Hey now! Hold on!’ called out Sir Eric. ‘I didn’t sign up for this sort of thing, Crowley.’
Crowley shot him a cold look. ‘You pledged yourself to Mammon the Insatiable, Eric. He resides in this boy’s head for now, and he will do what he has to do to raise his rule in this world. You know what he has to do to feed? Then be sure you’ll see many worse things than this tonight.’
Eric looked appalled. ‘I didn’t sign up for murder.’ he stuttered.
The boy Brian grinned. ‘Let me show you what you signed up for, foolish and greedy mortal.’
The apartment darkened, as if the electric light had been dimmed. When it brightened again they were no longer in a West End luxury apartment but in a stone chamber of great dimensions and huge shadows. Shafts of a greenish light penetrated the gloom from above and concentrated light on a stone table slick with moisture.
‘What is this place?’ Eric asked.
Brian sniggered. ‘A place long gone but still alive in my memory.’ The boy had lost his clothes but had in his hand an elaborate, feathered mask which he placed on his head. ‘Now, it’s time to feed,’ he laughed.
Crowley and two other acolytes, themselves now naked, laid hands on Hugo, and roughly stripped him, holding him over the stone table head up, which Hugo now found was slick with blood. Bloody fragments of young bodies were scattered around it.
Brian/Mammon had somehow acquired a fearfully sharp obsidian knife. He smiled behind his mask as he gloated. ‘Gonna make this meal last. First I’ll take your balls, one at a time, then your dick gets sliced off, and after that I’ll see how long you can last with your guts slashed open. I used to keep some kids alive for hours, screaming and spurting their life blood through the hole in their groin.’ He looked around and addressed his disciples. ‘This is no ordinary meal. This man already belongs to the people of the Dead. His life force blazes with the holy energy of Eden. Ask me and I’ll pump his youth and beauty into your old fat bodies. But first you’ll have to eat his genitals for me.’
Hugo struggled against the men holding him down. So this was the prophesied end that he had to meet to fulfil his destiny? Surely not. What benefit did the World Beyond gain from this obscene communion?
‘Good question,’ came a voice in reply to the silent question in his mind. It was Jonas Niemand.
Brian/Mammon seemed to hear the voice too. ‘Are you there, Accuser?’ he called out to the surrounding dark.
There was no answer.
Crowley peered around him. Hugo yelped and reared as the man gripped his testicles and pulled them sharply away from his groin in their sac. ‘Now lord, now’s the time,’ Crowley urged.
Brian/Mammon snickered. ‘Crowley, do you expect better luck now than when you tried the rite with those Italian children you kidnapped? Fool. That was just butchery. You have to draw their life force out through their torment and agony and feed on it.’
The boy leaped to Crowley’s side and placed the blade at Hugo’s scrotum. He grinned. ‘This is how you do it!’
‘No it bloody isn’t,’ said another naked boy who had appeared next to Brian. It was Jonas. He seized Brian’s wrist and forced him away from Hugo. ‘Drop that knife, Mammon, and get out of my friend Brian’s head.’
‘You can’t make me,’ Mammon grunted as he grappled with Jonas. And indeed it seemed that the pair were evenly matched, nor were any magical strategies evident in their combat, they grappled as boys do in playgrounds. But there was nothing playful about their fight. Jonas got on top of Brian/Mammon by managing to bring a knee sharply up into his balls. Brian screamed and bucked but Jonas managed to squirm on top of his belly and was able to pin him to the ground. Jonas grabbed the other boy’s cheeks and started shouting words in an unknown language into Brian’s face, as the other boy struggled to buck him off.
Soon the nature of Brian’s struggles changed as he began to choke. His jaws widened strangely and the blunt head of something resembling a black serpent emerged from his mouth. Jonas seized the creature’s throat and pulled it steadily out of Brian, holding the coiling snake tight in his hand as it emerged. ‘Gottya, ya bastard,’ Jonas grinned. ‘Now what the fuck to do with ya? Hugo, see to Brian.’
Their surroundings changed from that of a jungle temple back to that of a well-furnished West End apartment. Hugo stared into Brian’s face. The boy’s eyes were dilated but he was conscious and his jaws had returned to normal. ‘How do you feel, kid?’ Hugo asked.
‘Headache. Feel sick,’ Brian mumbled, then ‘where’s my clothes?’
‘Brian seems to have returned to himself,’ Hugo announced.
‘That’s good. But there’s something very wrong here,’ Jonas declared.
‘You don’t say,’ Hugo said tiredly.
‘Mammon shouldn’t have had that much power to resist me. He shouldn’t have been able to exorcise your boyfriend, who had the might of the Council of the Dead behind him. Yet he did these things. I had to call on the One Himself to master that piece of elemental shit. Mammon has had help, more help than those creepy Thelemites could offer.’ Jonas stared into the gleaming eyes of the serpent gripped in his hand. ‘So you bastard, tell me who it is who’s behind your scheming.’
‘Fuck off, Accuser.’ hissed the serpent.
‘Right then, you. First a bit of transformation.’ Jonas threw the serpent, twisting and hissing, into the air. It shifted and changed as it spun in the air to fall to the carpet on all fours. It was a naked boy again, a slim, dark and beautiful boy of Aztec appearance. Mammon stood shakily and caught sight of himself in a wall mirror. He looked horrified. ‘No, not this!’ he cried.
‘This is the prison I sentence you to, Mammon. The shape you’ll occupy if ever you come again into the daily world. It is the shape of the boy-emperor you once truly loved long ago, the only creature who ever touched your dark heart, the good and decent boy you nonetheless horribly mutilated as he screamed out to you for mercy.’
Mammon fell to his knees and wept. ‘And they call me cruel,’ he sobbed.
‘And in this torment you may find some redemption, foul elemental. For though it burns you like fire, the memory of this poor boy, his pain and betrayal, is the one thing that can teach you why your unbridled greed and lust is so very wrong.’
‘He had to die,’ moaned Mammon. ‘He wanted to overthrow my temples and drive out my priests.’
‘It was your final unforgiveable crime. The one that moved the Creator to send me to hurl you down. Now, Mammon, if you all-undeserving want mercy, you must tell me how it was you acquired such power in the daily world.’
The boy looked up, tears streaming down his cheeks. ‘It was one of your people, Accuser. He came into this world a year ago. There was something wrong about him. He was damaged and tainted. He wanted me to teach him about my mysteries, about pain, sex and lust - especially lust. He loved fucking my little ass when I manifested as a boy child.’
‘That’s not possible, Mammon. The Orders have no interest in the physical world and humanity, in fact they despise it.’
The elemental scoffed. ‘That so, Accuser? I notice they can’t keep you away from them.’
‘What was its name, you bastard!’
‘You people don’t have names do you? Probably a symptom of the creature’s derangement that he asked me to call him by one.’
‘Who the fuck was it!’
‘He called himself Tobias.’
***
Sir Eric Kirby had lived a life which was frequently unconventional, yet nonetheless his financial talents, friendships and social skills had raised him high in the British establishment: he was an MP, a knight of the realm, a cabinet minister in Churchill’s coalition government and confidant of many powerful people, including members of the royal family. But this present situation was rather more than he could cope with. He had gotten involved with Aleister Crowley initially through a mutual connection with King Maxim of Rothenia, but latterly through their interest in London’s sexual underworld, and further mutual connections within what was being called the wartime ‘intelligence community’. Now it seemed their association was entirely out of hand.
There was the dessicated corpse of a Rothenian youth on the very expensive and tasteful Axminster carpet of his Connaught Chambers flat, the symbol of his social success and the pride of his life. A child of apparently ten years of age was occupying his sofa, a boy of such a remarkable presence that he might have been a great emperor sitting in majesty. The boy’s power had reduced Crowley to abject fear, and he and several naked senior operatives of American and British intelligence were cowering along the skirting board of his lounge. The magical boy frowned at the men. ‘You are silly fools,’ he said, ‘and you have been duped by your own greed and lust for power over others. But you have also allowed a spirit of great evil into your world.’ He indicated another child, the dark boy cowering at his feet in obvious great distress. ‘This is the spirit called Mammon, who has consumed your Mr Crowley and had intended to consume you too and set up his bloody rule once more over men. You have done untold damage to your world by your greed and lust, and some of it will be difficult to repair.’
The child frowned. ‘Who and what I am is not your concern, but be aware that I am the agent in this world of the Creator God, whose existence it suits people like you to forget. This youth whose corpse lies here was a noble, loving boy, a youth whose character was stronger and greater than death, and so he was resurrected to fight and love again for the cause of good. Death has no power over such greatness.’
The child snapped his fingers. The withered lych at his feet swelled, his flesh took on warmth and colour and his chest expanded. Lucacz sat up and stretched. He grinned over at Jonas. ‘Fuck. Dying don’t get no easier second time around.’ Then he found himself crushed in the arms of Hugo von Tarlenheim. ‘Jesus, Posh Boy, take it easy! Don’t want to have to die yet again!’
The magical boy grinned. ‘So that’s one thing sorted. Now Mammon, hear my judgement.’
The Aztec boy howled and clung to his legs, kissing his feet frantically, ‘Mercy, great lord!’ he howled.
‘Mercy you will have, Mammon, though mercy is not what you have given anyone else. It is this. You will return to Eden and go once more amongst the elementals of that place and answer to the erelim who claim lordship there. But you will never leave it. Should you attempt to manifest in this world, only the shape of this murdered boy will appear to house you, your true love whom you killed horribly in fear of his greatness and goodness.
But my mercy is this. That boy lives still in the World Beyond, and the Dead have now set an Isle of Meeting amongst the Isles of the Blessed. That island will be open to you, and it is not beyond the mercy of God that a time may yet come when your repentance for your past and regret for that boy’s pure love is such that you will be given grace to see him walking in its woodland.’
Mammon looked up, stunned. ‘My lord Accuser,’ he said, ‘your mercy humbles me.’ He kissed the other boy’s feet once more, and faded from the room.
The disappearance of Mammon from the world seemed momentarily to clear Crowley’s intellects. ‘What? What?’ he stuttered. ‘The Accuser? You, the Horned One?’
‘That’s me, Mr Crowley.’
‘The great prince set over all angels? The spear in the hand of God?’
‘It seems you know me, Mr Crowley. Then you know what my appearance signifies.’
‘And you have despatched Great Mammon?’
‘Great no longer, for sure. Just a pale spirit gnawing on regrets and past errors. How could you ever be so foolish as to worship him?’
The old man made a helpless gesture. ‘His promises were so seductive, and the marvels he performed were so magnificent. He opened huge vistas of the Universe to his worshippers.’
The boy scoffed. ‘Fool. This was no god, just a spirit of lust running riot through men’s minds. Men, notice, not women. He seduced those whose whole life is about domination and lust. Crowley, there’s nothing to be done with you. Leave this place, and go play with your stupid Thelemites. Just know that all you worship is pointless and empty, and in that knowledge wander off into senescence and decay. Some men are not even worthy of judgement.’
The man stammered, ‘But I would worship you Great Accuser, Lord of Angels, Prince of Heaven!’
Jonas stood and made a gesture of immense frustration. ‘You complete idiot! You do not listen to a thing you hear! I am no God, I am but a servant. I need no worshippers, just friends like Posh Boy and Dead Boy here, good men working for others and out for a laugh. You see my power? It is greater than you can imagine, but it’s not to be lent to the likes of you. Go away. Get out of my sight. I have more important things to deal with than you.’
Crowley staggered to the apartment door, where one of his acolytes helped him robe and led him out.
Jonas returned to the sofa and meditated on the men opposite him. They were unable to meet his eyes. Eventually he spoke up. ‘The worst thing you have done, you men, is to allow evil powers to meddle in the everyday world, and the damage wasn’t done so much by Mammon but by this entity who calls himself Tobias, who turns out to have been Mammon’s enabler.’
‘What is he, Jonas?’ Hugo asked, intrigued.
The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t recognise the name, but Mammon recognised him as one of the choir of the erelim.’
‘Erelim?’ queried Lucacz, ‘They’re sort of super-angels, yes?’
Jonas scowled. ‘Gaah! They’re not angels at all, and not super-anything. They’re an Order, and sometimes they’re called seraphs by humans. Angels are attuned to your world of men, but seraphs belong outside the turning Universe. So in one sense they are greater in power than me and my people. They can do things I cannot.’
‘Oh?’ asked Hugo, intrigued, ‘like what, Jonas?’
‘Hmm, some really strange things, like leap cross the Universe in a blink, or travel in time, forwards and backwards. Oh! Now I wonder if this is an example of it? But who is this seraph calling himself Tobias? Well, call himself what he will, he is out to meddle in my world, and I’m not having it. You men, redeem yourself a little by telling me what you know of him: what he looks like when he manifests, and what he has said in your hearing.’
Sir Eric hesitantly raised an arm. ‘Lord Accuser, we none of us have met this seraphic being. What we heard of him was only through what Crowley said, and that was very limited. Apparently Tobias has come back to this time as part of a scheme of the Creator which is to let loose but then confound a monstrous Antichrist in a future Rothenia, where Elphbergs rule again, and produce a prince who was to be a Messiah who would ascend to the rule of all humanity. But instead of returning once his mission was over, Tobias decided to live on here in our time and experience a sensual life to learn first hand about perversion and sexual exploitation, so that in due course he would be well-placed to find and train his own Antichrist who would utterly destroy Rothenia and the Elphberg Messiah.
Captain Marek Markovic spoke up cautiously at this point. ‘This Tobias creature is curious about the Rothenia of here and now. We heard he did not like the plan among some British elements to restore a democratic Rothenian republic, which he suspected might be a vehicle for the restoration of the Elphberg monarchy. Rather than that he was willing for our agencies to support collaboration with the Nazi Protektorat. He believed Nazism would promote the sort of relentless order in the world his seraphic people favoured. But it was confusing to find he also supported the emerging communist partisans of Horvath, probably for the same reason.’
‘Yes,’ scowled Jonas. ‘He would want to support any movement in Rothenia which would suppress freedom and delay an Elphberg restoration. Treachery of the darkest sort. Treachery without reason, betrayal for its own sake.’
‘Then what can you do, Accuser?’ Eric said.
The boy shrugged, a look of mental agony briefly on his face. ‘I was not created for this sort of crisis, and the Tobias-thing is far more powerful than I am. I would so like to wipe the smug superior smile off his face, but this is one problem that has to go up the chain of command.
‘What, Him?’ marvelled Lucacz.
‘Yes,’ Jonas confirmed, and then he fell silent, as if something surprising had just occurred to him. He sprang off the sofa and padded over to Hugo. He clasped Hugo’s face between his hands and stared into his eyes. Then he let out a huge sigh, as if in relief.
‘Always we underestimate Him, but He’s there working away in the shadows. The Creator has already taken steps, gentlemen. Trust in him. Hugo and Lucacz, say your goodbyes. We’re going back to Rothenia. Now.’
Posted 25 January 2025