The last day I sought the truth.
August 8, 1973, recording. The rush of passing cars. Chattering passersby. A call for a taxi.
Maggie: You recording?
Me: Yeah, pretty cool, right? Easier than taking notes.
Maggie: Unless you run out of batteries or tape.
Me: Got extras right here.
The slap of my hand patting my satchel.
Maggie: You sure this is the right place?
Me: The papers reported this address back in ’71. The superintendent found a child’s corpse hidden in the basement walls. The police suspected Redcap and his coven of killing him.
Maggie: Whoa, Richie-Rich, you didn’t tell me we’re checking out a murder scene.
Me: It’s not related. Redcap’s people had a solid alibi.
Squirreclass="underline" Yeah, alibis don’t mean shit, man.
Me: The body was found behind a wall that hadn’t been touched for fifteen years.
Squirreclass="underline" Right, man, but it was the body of a kid only a week dead.
Maggie: What? Are you joking? You’re joking.
Squirreclass="underline" I ain’t joking. You guys paid me for information. I’m giving you information.
Maggie: It’s not like there’s a dead body in there now, right?
Me: No, of course not.
Squirreclass="underline" Not that you know of.
Maggie: Guess there’s only one way to find out, huh, boys?
Maggie hustled up the stoop and then unlocked the door with the key the superintendent had rented us for fifty dollars cash. The sight of her waiting in the open doorway filled me with hope and confidence that answers awaited us on the other side of the threshold. I walked into the foyer and Squirrel followed me. I had paid him to help us because he’d sold drugs to Redcap’s Coven of the Right Stars, which seemingly dissolved sometime in the winter of 1973, and though he hadn’t taken part in their rituals, he knew more about them than anyone else I’d found.
We entered Redcap’s old apartment. Never occupied for long since he left it, the place carried a bad reputation. The super complained he couldn’t clean it up right no matter what he did, and its tenants all “wigged out and broke their lease or ran off in the middle of the night.”
The rooms themselves created an oppressive, claustrophobic feeling. The air tasted acrid and thick with stale cigarette smoke, incense, candles, marijuana — and a stronger, elemental odor that lingered despite the super’s attempts to erase evidence of the place’s past.
Me: Look at those marks on the wall.
Maggie: Where? I don’t see them.
Me: Tilt your head so the light hits them.
Maggie: Oh, wow! That’s freaky.
Me: They’re occult symbols. I know them from witchcraft books Dennis left in our room.
Squirreclass="underline" Super needs to slap a few more coats of paint on here if he wants to rent this place.
Me: Must be at least four coats already. See how thick it is by the window frames?
Maggie: Maybe someone redrew the symbols?
Me: Nah. The paint just hasn’t covered them up. Probably didn’t use primer.
Squirreclass="underline" Yeah, right, primer. ’Cause that would work.
Maggie: Hey, what’s under this old rug? See those scratches in the floorboards?
Me: Here, help me roll it up.
Scuffing and huffing sounds. Irregular footsteps. The thud of a carpet roll against a wall.
Me: Holy shit. It’s scratched into the wood.
Maggie: What the hell is it?
Squirreclass="underline" Hey, don’t mess with that. Seriously, man, take some pictures and let’s get out of here.
Me: I’ve read about this in Dennis’s books. It’s a ritual circle.
Maggie: That’s no circle. That’s — I don’t know, Salvador Dali’s geometry homework maybe.
Me: There are different kinds for different rituals. Not all of them are actual circles.
Maggie: What’s it for?
Me: It protects the witches.
Maggie: From what?
Squirreclass="underline" Trust me, sister, you don’t want to know.
Me: Why, Squirrel? You ever see Redcap’s coven do a ritual?
Squirreclass="underline" Yeah, man, I saw them do all kinds of crazy shit, orgies, rituals, you name it, but I don’t want to talk about it. You paid me to show you around the place, not give a lecture.
Me: I’ll pay more for the extra information.
Squirreclass="underline" You couldn’t pay me enough. I want to forget that stuff.
Me: Aw, c’mon, you brought us this far. Don’t leave us hanging.
Squirreclass="underline" I said no. You done up here? I’ll take you downstairs.
My photos of Redcap’s apartment had faded and yellowed over the years in the shoe box. I snapped them on a Kodak Instamatic discarded a long time ago though a package of flash cubes for it remained in the box. The images show the room well enough. Later, when I returned the building keys to the super, I asked about his efforts to paint the walls or buff the floor smooth. He bitched that nothing worked, but the landlord still rode his ass to clean the place and rent it. He wanted to replace the plaster with fresh drywall, rip up the floorboards and put down new ones, but, as he put it, the “cheap-ass landlord won’t unpucker his purse, you know?”
The dark symbols ghosted under coats of off-white paint looked like a messy blend of runes, constellation maps, pictographs, and mathematical signs. The floor markings sketched a riot of intertwined geometric patterns, accented by curving arcs that cut tangents with the straight lines. Symbols like those on the walls filled the spaces in-between. Blank spots in the pattern hinted at where Redcap and his acolytes had stood during their rites.
Where Dennis had once stood with them.
What appealed to him about that life, I never grasped.
He tried to explain it to me the night before he left home for good.
“There’s a vast universe out there,” he’d said, his lips pursing as he puffed on a joint. “Worlds that make ours look like a dust speck. Places most people would lose their shit over after one peek. It’s the truth, though, you know? It’s real. Puts the sorry crap we worry about on this big blue marble in perspective. And let me tell you, nothing matters. Get me? Nothing. We don’t matter. The world doesn’t matter. Nixon, the draft, Vietnam, OPEC, the Rolling Stones, Johnny Carson on the boob tube, the damn Berlin Wall, and all the starving kids in Africa. None of it matters. None of this belongs to us. You remember the wasps’ nest in the shed last summer? We’re the wasps. There are things out there like Dad with his bug spray. Nobody cared about the wasps until one stung Mom, right? Then, whoosh!” Dennis mimed spraying an invisible canister, exhaling a stream of pot smoke, filling our room with a skunky stink. “Wasp extinction. The real lords of the shed reasserted their claim. You get it? The Earth is a shed, little brother. Redcap’s magic lets us see what lies beyond it to other worlds and things sleeping in voids, oblivious to our existence— for now. It’s utterly cosmic and totally terrifying. But it’s one-hundred percent the realest shit I’ve ever known. If everyone in the world saw it, we’d give up all the petty crap and enjoy life while we can, one big party groove. We don’t realize how good we’ve got it — and it won’t last long.”
His words as best I remember them. I didn’t take him as seriously as I should’ve.
It sounded like lyrics from the psychedelic music he loved. I pictured the other worlds as scenes from the album covers in his record collection. Colorful, wild, bright. Unreal. Imagined. Desirable.
How wrong I was.
When we finished in the apartment, Squirrel took us to the cellar.
Most of the tenants had removed their stored belongings after the murder investigation, and the super discouraged newcomers from using the dank, musty space. A furnace occupied a large chunk of it, but the owner had never rebuilt the wall that had hidden the dead child, leaving plumbing and electrical conduit exposed. Scraps of old mortar on the floor showed where it had once stood, the outline of a desecrated grave.