"Excuse me, Doctor. How's the girl? Kathy Marsten?"
The doctor was Puerto Rican, frail, and walked with a limp. He had a full head of thick black hair and large, brown eyes that weren't yet calloused over by the pain one encounters in a New York City hospital. He was a young man. The tag on his white smock said his name was Rivera. He looked somewhat surprised to find a dwarf standing in front of him.
"Who are you?"
"My name's Frederickson."
The eyes narrowed. "I've seen your picture. They call you Mongo. Ex-circus performer, college professor, private-"
"I asked you how the girl was."
"Are you a relative?"
"No. Friend of the family. I brought her in."
He hesitated, then led me to a small alcove at the end of the corridor. I didn't like the look of the way he walked and held his head: too sad, a little desperate.
"My name is Rivera," he said. "Juan Rivera."
"I saw the name tag, Doctor."
"Kathy is dying."
Just like that. I passed my hand over my eyes. "Of what?"
Rivera shrugged his shoulders. It was an odd gesture, filled with helplessness and bitter irony. "We don't know," he said, his eyes clouding. "There's no sign of smoke inhalation, which, of course, was the first thing we looked for. Since then we've run every conceivable test. Nothing. There's no sign of physical injury. She's just. . dying. All the machines can tell us is that her vital signs are dropping at an alarming rate. If the drop continues at its present rate, Kathy Marsten will be dead in two to three days."
"She hasn't regained consciousness?"
"No. She's in a deep coma."
"Can't you operate?"
Juan Rivera's laugh was short, sharp, bitter, belied by the anguish in his eyes. "Operate on what? Don't you understand? Modern medicine says there's nothing wrong with that girl. She's merely dying."
Rivera swallowed hard. "There must be something in her background: an allergy, some obscure hereditary disease. That information is vital." He suddenly reached into his hip pocket and drew out his wallet. "You're a private detective. I want to hire you to find some relative of Kathy's that knows something about her medical history."
I held up my hand. "No thanks. I only take on one client at a time."
Rivera looked puzzled. "You won't help?"
"The girl hired me to find something for her. I figure that covers finding a way to save her life. Do you still have the gown she was wearing when I brought her in?"
"The one with the pictures?"
"Right. I wonder if you'd give it to me."
"Why?"
"I'd rather not say right now, Dr. Rivera. I think the symbols on that gown mean something. They could provide a clue to what's wrong with Kathy."
"They're designs," he said somewhat impatiently. "A child's nightgown. What can it have to do with Kathy's illness?"
"Maybe nothing. But I won't know for sure unless you give it to me."
"Hypnosis."
"Hypnosis?! C'mon, Garth. You're reaching."
"Trauma, then. After all, she did watch her parents burn to death."
"Maybe. She was unconscious when I found her."
"God knows what else she was forced to watch."
"And take part in," I added.
"Assuming she did see her parents die, don't you think that-along with everything else-might not be enough to shock a girl to death?"
"I don't know, Garth. You're the one with all the explanations."
"God, Mongo, you don't believe that stuff Daniel told you?!"
"I believe the Marstens believed. And Daniel."
"You're right, Mongo. They are occult symbols."
I watched Dr. Uranus Jones as she continued to finger the satin gown, examining every inch of it. Uranus was a handsome women in her early fifties-good-looking enough to have carried on a string of affairs with a procession of lab assistants twenty years her junior, or so rumor had it. Her gray-streaked blond hair was drawn back into a ponytail, which made her look younger.
The walls of her university office were covered with astronomical charts, many of which she had designed herself. It was an appropriate decor for the office of one of the world's most prominent astronomers. But I wasn't there to discuss astronomy.
Uranus had a rather interesting dual career. As far as I knew, I was the only one of Uranus' colleagues at the university who knew that Uranus was also a top astrologer and medium, with a near legendary reputation in the New York occult underground.
"What do they mean?"
"They look like symbols for the ascending order of demons," she said quietly.
"What does it mean as far as the Marstens are concerned?"
Uranus took a long time to answer. "My guess is that the Marstens were witches practicing the black side of their craft. I'd say they were into demonology and Satanism, and they were trying to summon up a demon. Probably Belial, judging from the symbols on this gown. From what you've told me, I'd speculate that the Marstens were using a ritual that rebounded on them. The rebound killed them."
"Rebound?"
"The evil. It rebounded and killed them. They weren't able to control the power released by the ritual. That's the inherent danger of ceremonial magic."
"What 'power'?"
"The power of Belial. I assume that's who they were trying to summon. He killed them before they could exercise the necessary control."
I studied Uranus in an attempt to see if she was joking. There wasn't a trace of a smile on her face. "Do you believe that, Uranus?"
She avoided my eyes. "I'm not a ceremonial magician, Mongo."
"That's not an answer."
"It wasn't meant to be. You asked about the symbols on the robe, and I'm responding in the context of ceremonial magic. I'm describing to you a system of belief. It's up to you to decide whether that system could have anything to do with the fact that Kathy Marsten is dying. It's your responsibility to choose what avenue to pursue, and, from what I understand, you don't have much time."
I wasn't sure there was a choice. According to Dr. Juan Rivera, the practitioners of the system called medicine had just about played out their string. I risked nothing but making a fool out of myself. Kathy had considerably more to lose. There was a sudden ringing in my ears.
"All right. Within the context of ceremonial magic, why is Kathy dying?"
Uranus looked at me for a long time, then said: "Belial is claiming a bride."
"Come again."
"The gown: It means that the child was to be a part of the ritual. My guess is that her parents were offering her up to Belial in exchange for whatever it was they wanted. He killed her parents, and now he's taking her."
"You're saying that Kathy is possessed?" "Within the context of ceremonial magic, yes. And she will have to be exorcised if you hope to save her. To do that, you will need to know the exact steps in the ritual the Marstens were using. Needless to say, that's not something you're likely to find in the public library. And I don't mean that to sound flippant. Assuming that such a ritual does exist, it would have taken the Marstens years to research from some of the rarest manuscripts in the world."
The ringing in my ears was growing louder. I shook my head in an attempt to clear it. It didn't do any good. "God, Uranus," I whispered, "this is the twentieth century. I only have a little time. How can I justify using it to chase. . demons?"
"You can't, Mongo. Not in your belief system. Because demons don't exist in your belief system. But they did in the Marstens', and Kathy Marsten is dying."