“Aorista,” Faye muttered, and pushed the book away. A ritual that does not end. The young deacon’s account made her eyes hurt, despite its obvious overstatement. It depressed her, though; much of it was probably true. She thought about the convolutions of madness and realized that it was all the same through the ages, then and now, a rite of changing masks over the same face.
She looked up Prelate in the same text:
PRELATE [also prelates, or mastrum]: The liturgical leaders of activistic sects, predominant among the aorists. Prelates were thought to be reincarnatible, psychic, and wise. They were also inexplicably wealthy, supposedly financing their aorist activities through treasure granted via Satan or apostate demons. One prelate, apprehended near Paris in 1399, confessed to inquisitors: “He bestows treasure upon the faithful.” He, in this case, was not Satan but a demon called Gaziel, a lower demon said to preside over underground treasure, namely gold. Soldiers of the Holy Office found a fortune in gold and currency buried in the prelate’s chateau. Additionally, prelates were said to be clairvoyant, and possessed the ability to trance-channel at will.
Next, Faye looked up Baalzephon:
BAALZEPHON: A demon of higher orders. He reigns over fertility, passion, and creativity. European sects, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, according to the Church registry, knew Baalzephon as the “Father of the Earth,” or “He who stands closest to the earth,” and is said, due to this proximity, to encourage his worshipers to incarnation rites. Baalzephon’s appearance is not known. His sign is the triad, or trine, of black stars.
Lame, Faye thought. She needed details. This grim stuff was actually starting to get interesting. Next she looked up the name in a much older text translated from French, called Demonomanie Pharmacopae. It read, simply:
BAALZEPHON: An incubus.
Chapter 17
Faye nearly gasped when she stepped into Jack’s office at 9 p.m.; he looked wrung out, and his looks did not improve when she explained what her day’s research had divulged. His own disclosures of the latest murder did not surprise her. She knew quite a bit now about the protocol of the aorist sects. Earlier, TSD had verified Karla Panzram’s graphological conclusions; the latents from the Barrington murder were different from the Black murder, which meant that two killers were executing the same modi. Faye easily translated the Latin left on the walclass="underline" Pater terrae, per me terram ambula meant “Father of the Earth, walk the earth through me.”
“It’s a specific reference to the demon they’re worshiping,” she told him now. “His name is—”
“Baalzephon,” he muttered when he spotted the name highlighted several times in the material she’d photocopied.
“An incubus,” she added.
“What the hell is an incubus?”
“A male sex-spirit or incarnate. It comes from the Latin incubare, which means to lie down upon, or to lie with. Incubi were said to have sexual relations with sleeping women, supposedly using sexual pleasure to incline a woman away from Christianity toward evil. Satanic incarnation was a chief belief among aorist covens for about five hundred years. Sufficient supplication and ritual homage was thought to bring the devils closer to the earth. Sacrifice was considered the best way to achieve a complete incarnation, the full bringing of a devil into the coven’s midst, which they called onmiddan. Think of it as an objectification of a spiritual realm, the putting of flesh upon spirit. That’s what incarnate means in Latin. To make flesh.”
“In other words these psychos thought that cutting people up on altars would bring real devils into their presence?”
“For a time, yes, but not necessarily on altars. The aorists’ rituals were occulic, which means interstitial. In fact, the impresa for Baalzephon — the triad of black stars — was thought to be an actual occulus.”
“You’re losing me, Faye,” Jack complained.
“An occulus — a doorway. The impresa was—”
“What’s an impresa!” Jack half shouted.
Faye half smiled. “The emblem, the triangle that the killers left on the walls. It was supposed to be a gap between the domain of the demons and the real world. The deacon’s story indicates this pretty clearly; not only did the two surrogates become incarnations of incubi, but the girl, after she was sacrificed, disappeared through the impresa on the church floor.”