The Hidden Masters
and
The Unspeakable Evil
Jack Barrow
Winged Feet Productions
Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, England
The Hidden Masters and the Unspeakable Evil
second edition
by
Jack Barrow
Smashwords Edition
Published by Winged Feet Productions,
Hemel Hempstead, England.
Copyright Jack Barrow 2011
First published in paperback by Winged Feet Production, 2006
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
ISBN: 978-0-9515329-8-0
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
The moral right of Jack Barrow to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted.
All characters, organisations and entities in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, organisations or entities, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
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Winged Feet Ltd.,
developed from an idea by Matt Hatton
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Dispatches
Thanks go to:
Sue and Deidre
and to all those people who have never complained
about me talking about this project over all this time.
To
all the readers out there who have kept me going
through times of difficult distribution,
misleading listings, too much admin
and not enough wine.
Here's to more great readers.
Chapter 3 – Ritual Mechanicians
Chapter 7 – Illuminating Experiences
Chapter 10 – The Taste of Dragons
Chapter 11 – Elementals, My Dear Wayne
Chapter 12 – Creatures of the Night
Chapter 15 – The Return of The Devil’s Legs
Chapter 16 – Just The One Then
Chapter 17 – Mission Improbable
Chapter 18 – Dubious Infidelity
Chapter 21 – Escape To New York
Chapter 22 – How Many Magicians Does It Take?
Chapter 23 – My Number Which Is 300
Chapter 25 – Trouser Negotiations
In sheer terror Geoff bit down hard on his meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of the god Pan. He would have closed his eyes as the enormous double-decker bus bore down on him, but he couldn’t because his eyes were painted on. Meanwhile, the engine of the twelfth-scale biplane screamed as it carried him toward an almost certain and horrible death. It was at this very point that just one thought occupied Geoff’s mind: ‘Why does this sort of thing only ever happen to me when I get involved with these guys?’
The guys in question were magicians, but not just any old magicians, mind you. They were master magicians, or if you were in the know—which would mean that you had to be pretty well informed in these matters—you would know them to be hidden masters. Being hidden meant that their true status was hidden from the gaze of the people around them. You could say that they were anonymous. Now most hidden masters are believed to be from the Far East, such as The Secret Chiefs or The Hidden Tibetan Masters; but our heroes were The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, and they were legendary—if you were in the know.
It had all started earlier that week on a normal Tuesday night in Nigel’s ex-council house in Hemel Hempstead. Nigel, a member of the legendary trio, was middle-aged with a stubble beard and rather long straggly fair hair. On this particular Tuesday night he was just in the process of preparing his evening meal, while listening to the story on The Archers about how the village game-keeper had beaten up the local drug dealer.
Just as the intricacies of country life down on the farm began to unfold, Nigel’s oracular eye began to twitch and sure enough his phone rang. Taking the call he cursed the timing as he still had to cook his poached eggs on toast with baked beans and be ready for his guests to arrive at eight o’clock that evening. Meanwhile, he had to keep track of the badger-shooting scandal prompted by the current outbreak of bovine tuberculosis.
"Hello?"
"… …"
"Oh hi Geoff, how's things?"
"… … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … … … …"
"Really?"
"…"
"Good grief!"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Your model village?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … … … …"
"Casinos?"
"… … …"
"Cowboys?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Vegas?"
"… … …"
"Blackpool!"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Indians? What, with war paint and all that?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Chain Mart! You mean the little everything-shop where you buy your beer?"
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … …"
"Uh huh."
"… … … … …"
"Uh huh."
"…"
"… …"
"… … …"
"… … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … … …"
"Are you stoned?"
* * *
It was a Tuesday night, not because Tuesday nights are special in any intrinsic way—because as any magician worth his salt knows, nothing holds intrinsic value—including Tuesday nights. No, this was a Tuesday night because this was when The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, would meet. You see, they were the inner circle of a group of practising ritual magicians who, unbeknownst to the community around them, gathered to discuss their art each week.
So if it was the night of their meeting, where were the two remaining hidden masters—along with the other members of their apparently diabolical circle? Well, over recent weeks, in fact months or more, they had found that their meetings had become less and less well attended and for some time now there had only been the three of them. You see, being a hidden master can be as much a disadvantage as an advantage, in that it is possible to be so well hidden that you seem to be a completely ordinary individual. In which case, if you decide to have a magical group at your house on a Tuesday night—which can be a bit of a pain if you do the washing up afterwards, not to mention the extra vacuuming—it can be very difficult for people to realise you are a hidden master at all. So the group run by The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, was now down to just three regular members. To put it simply, the other members didn’t turn up much. Not that they didn’t turn up at all, they turned up when there was something to turn up to. To anyone in the know, and you know who you are, people would turn up for sabbats, but not for esbats, which seems to be the way of the world.
* * *
Now those of you in the know will be aware that a sabbat is an occasion when magical practitioners come together to perform their arts. In modern parlance the term sabbat is often used to describe a meeting of witches to celebrate one of the eight seasonal festivals, while the esbat is the occasion when witches gather at the full moon.
Our heroes, on the other hand, don’t necessarily celebrate the eight festivals, lacking the strong connection to the seasons that witches have. Of course that does not preclude them from doing so, but they don’t keep the festivals as religiously as witches.
The point is that The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, are not witches, no matter what you might think. You see, magicians and witches are fundamentally different. Witchcraft is, perhaps, closer to being a religion, complete with a goddess and sometimes a god, and stuff like that. There are many and varied groups and individual perspectives within modern witchcraft, but many of them feature a deity of some sort.
However, being a magician (for our heroes at least), is more about a collection of ideas, perhaps akin to Daoism, Buddhism, SubGenius or Zen. To our heroes, magic is a tool that aids them in personal development, a way of working with their strengths and weaknesses or just enabling them to get on in life. The Three Hidden Masters prefer to have no truck with the worship of deities, apart from when they suspend their disbelief during the performance of a ritual. Even then they rarely worship that which they have conjured. It could be said that the distinction between a magician and a witch is like the difference between philosophy and theology.
The difference, then, is one of supplication, or lack of it. A worshipper should be humble and reverent when dealing with a deity. However, a magician takes a position of authority and command. Our heroes are rarely humble, preferring to see themselves as in control, and they are not necessarily reverent. In fact, at times, they are downright irreverent.
So, as you see, our heroes use the term sabbat and esbat in the traditional form as described by scholars during the early years of the Twentieth Century. The sabbat is any occasion when they perform their magic, while the esbat is any other session when they get together to plan rituals, get drunk and generally fall over.
* * *
So if Nigel is one of The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, you might ask where at that moment were the remaining members? Well, as we speak or, in fact, as I write and you read, a rather nondescript Japanese saloon car was making its way up the nearby M1 motorway, which is one way you might get from Bricket Wood to Hemel Hempstead. Of course the fact that the car was Japanese really has nothing to do with our tale. What may turn out to be more important is that this particular nondescript Japanese car was just about a ‘runner’, which I suppose makes it just that little bit descript if you like.
The car was not so much a runner that it was an old banger. It was the sort of nondescript car you might end up with if you had a mate who would get you another motor if you needed one quickly and you were not too fussy about what you drove. Such a runner would get you from A to B, in reasonable comfort—for comfort is a relative thing—for a year or so, until it died suddenly. Thus, you would find yourself needing another motor, prompting a visit to your aforementioned mate who could get you such things. So the infinite cycle of the second-hand car unfolds.
Driving this Japanese car was one Clint Jones, former submariner in the Royal Navy. He was a man without the look of an ex-submariner, for he was perhaps six feet tall or even more. Of course, I don’t know exactly what an ex-submariner is supposed to look like, but one might imagine that being very tall in a submarine would lead to some entertaining stories of foreheads bruised on compartment bulkheads. However, if such stories exist, they have never been told.
Having dealt with the maniacs joining the M1 from the M25—for as anyone in the know is aware, the M25 has more than its fair share of maniacs—Clint came into Hemel Hempstead, through the industrial estate, and eventually rounded the corner into Masons Road. As he parked outside the house of Nigel Hammond, he saw his friend Wayne Baldwin, a stout, heavily bearded master magician coming around the corner from the next street where he lived.
At this point, I suppose you might think the fact that the road was named Masons Road would have some bearing on our story, what with all this talk of magicians meeting in secret and the like, but in fact, they have nothing to do with the events that follow. Masons, or Freemasons to give them their proper title, have sometimes been associated with occult practices due to their historic use of rituals and ceremony. It has even been suggested that they go back to The Order of the Rosy Cross or even The Knights Templar. In fact, none of these organisations have anything to do with The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood. On the other hand, it could be argued that our heroes are more closely related to the Theosophists, a mystical society dating back to the mid-Victorian period with their belief in Hidden Tibetan Masters and ideas of reincarnation. However, the truth of the matter is that the only connection our heroes have with reincarnation is via the infinite cycle of the second-hand car.
The only reason our heroes are described as meeting in Masons Road is because this is, in fact, a true story and this is where Nigel lives. Could this be a coincidence? Most definitely, but let’s not get into all that coincidence stuff right now.
* * *
So the trio was once again complete. In much the same way as any other week, they gathered in the sitting room of the ex-council house with a stock of cold lager and a bottle of dark rum. On other occasions, it might have been a large bottle of vodka, whiskey, gin, or even occasionally strong white cider if they were feeling a bit broke. The nature of the intoxicant was unimportant so long as it was suitably intoxicating. You see our heroes found the altered states of consciousness invoked by intoxicants of all sorts went well with the sort of magic that they practised.
The various drinks, along with tobacco, cigarette papers and other paraphernalia, sat upon a large chest painted with images from tarot cards, which served as a coffee table. To protect the paintwork from damage there was a scattering of CDs used as coasters; the sort of junk mail CDs you end up with if Internet Service Providers get to hear that you have a computer or perhaps once saw one. Here, then, they considered how they should go about shaping the Universe this week.
“So what news is there?” began Wayne to the sound of cans hissing open as he reached behind himself, blatantly scratching his arse.
Wayne spoke with the classic Received Pronunciation of the English upper middle classes. This was slightly misleading, as the family background of all three hidden masters was very ordinary indeed. The only connection Wayne had with anything other than the working class was through his education. You see, back in the sixties, Wayne passed his Eleven Plus exam with flying colours; however, the achievement was not completely free of the whiff of scandal. But with such a high pass—by fair means or foul—he gained entry into a very good Grammar School where he not only picked up a good education but also an accent quite similar to the Received Pronunciation of post-war BBC presenters. You know the sort of accent: every ‘T’ crossed and every ‘I’ dotted, with more enunciation that you could shake a big dictionary at. Unfortunately, though, there were occasions when his manners revealed his origins all too clearly.
“News? Not much,” was the reply from Clint, calling from the kitchen.
“I was just speaking to Geoff,” said Nigel. “He phoned me during The Archers again! He’s behaving very strangely lately.”
Wayne took a swig from his can. “Exactly what are you saying? The Wicked Wizard of the North? How on earth could he become any stranger?”
“Oh, he was wittering on about something to do with casinos, Blackpool and Las Vegas.”
“Blackpool and Las Vegas in the same sentence. Man, that’s a seriously unreal concept.” Clint walked in with a plastic jug of water and three small glasses. “Anyone for grog?”
Although Clint had spent quite a few years in the Royal Navy, on leaving he had fallen in with the remains of the hippie movement. As such, he was a strange combination of military engineer training and the anti-establishment outlook of the sixties, complete with the full range of hippy slang, mannerisms, and other interests including a taste for floral prints and clashing colours.
“No thank you. I prefer my rum plain,” replied Wayne. He was the sort to drink anything straight and when he had to have a mixer, such as in a gin and tonic, his drinks were renowned for their bite.
Nigel tilted his head to one side for a moment as he thought. “I think I’ve got some Coke left over in the fridge. I’ll have a Cubre Libra.”
Clint frowned at Nigel as he sat himself down in the corner. “You mean rum and coke.” He spoke in a softly irritated voice. “Shouldn’t it be white rum for a Cubre Libra?” he asked.
“Not strictly,” interrupted Wayne. “Opinions differ. Sources list the Cubre Libre as being made from dark or light rum. However, all sources suggest it should have a shot of lime juice to finish it off. Even the spelling of the name is in dispute. I remember when I was in Cuba I…”
Nigel interrupted Wayne to answer Clint. “Well, beggars can’t be choosers—besides, Wayne keeps buying this cheap stuff from the Co-op so I’m not going to turn down a free drink.” He paused for a moment to ensure he had their attention. “Anyway, I was saying, Geoff was going on about the everything-shop.” Nigel’s gaze seemed to wander as he tried to remember. “Not the Co-op but … Chain Mart or something. He was talking gibberish!”
“Well, I am aware he has been a trifle eccentric at times, but he usually makes sense,” responded Wayne in Geoff’s defence. “However, I do not think it would be fair to accuse him of talking gibberish.”
“Oh no, this was different. He was going on about plans to build casinos in Blackpool and make it the Las Vegas of the North.”
There was a spray of watered rum across the room that settled onto the carpet and the painted chest. “Hey, sorry about that,” Clint wiped a dribble of grog from his chin “but man, that’s really flaky!”
As Clint used wads of kitchen paper to wipe up the mess, Nigel explained to the others how he had deduced from Geoff and stories on the radio that there really was a plan to build casinos in Blackpool. The rum on the carpet didn’t really need cleaning up because they knew that this carpet was a particularly malevolent beast. It had a complex and not very attractive pattern and was known to eat most things that were dropped onto it. This included anything dark, from about the size of a nugget up to a small dinner plate. Generally, they suspected that Nigel’s carpet was in the habit of getting just as wasted as they were.
“And what has the Chain Mart got to do with casinos and Las Vegas in Blackpool?” asked Clint, having recovered from the shock of the idea.
“I don’t really know. He was going on about how he had discovered something very strange about the model village where he works, something about Cowboys and Indians.” Even though Nigel had only been speaking to Geoff an hour before, he sounded vague, but vague was often what Nigel was all about. “He also said he thought the Chain Mart was involved somehow. I think he was hoping we could help him out.”
“Cowboys and Indians?” asked Clint as he picked up a packet of rolling tobacco and papers to roll a joint.
“Indigenous Tribal American Peoples,” corrected Wayne.
Nigel continued, “I didn’t really understand it, I always thought Blackpool’s model village was based in the English post-war ‘way back when nostalgia was great’ period.”
“I believe ‘Yesterwhen’ is Geoff’s favoured term,” said Wayne.
“Yesterwhen?” asked Clint.
Nigel looked at Wayne, “That’s right, when factory workers dressed in brown warehouse coats and flat caps. When fat butchers wore striped aprons and carried great big meat cleavers.”
“What has all this got to do with Cowboys and Indians?” asked Clint.
“Well, Geoff said that strange figures were appearing amongst his models,” explained Nigel, leaning back on the sofa as he sipped his rum and coke, gazing into some distant part of the back of his mind.
“Sure, Cowboys and Indians would be a bit crazy in a Yesterwhen village,” said Clint.
Nigel continued to recount his conversation with Geoff, even though his attention was clearly elsewhere. “He reckoned there was other stuff going on too.”
“What sort of stuff?” asked Clint, giving Wayne a knowing look as Nigel drifted off.
“I don’t know,” replied Nigel dreamily, “he was very vague and a bit excitable.”
“That sounds like Geoff—he is obviously in his excitable phase,” suggested Wayne.
“…crocodiles of school children, two by two, in uniforms with shorts and satchels snaking through the streets,” said Nigel to nobody in particular, his consciousness not fully in the room.
“Crocodiles?” Wayne looked confused.
Nigel was clearly in some sort of a trance. “…and ice-cream sold from tricycles with umbrellas.”
“Tricycles?” replied Wayne.
Suddenly, Nigel snapped out of it. “I think I can feel a reading coming on. We may be able to find out what he’s up to.”
“Reading?” continued Wayne, more out of habit than anything else.
So out came the tarot cards.
* * *
Now some magicians, tellers of fortunes, scholars of the mysteries, or whatever you want to call them, will tell you that Tarot cards are sacred plaques which should be treated with reverence and wrapped in silk of the deepest purple. But not Nigel. As a magician he was most definitely of the school of the pragmatist. He had owned his cards for perhaps twenty years and he still kept them in the same cardboard box they had come in. In fact, they were his second set of cards. He had put his first set aside after a couple of years, as he felt they were becoming difficult to shuffle what with the wear and tear. ‘Like shuffling toast’ was what he said at the time. So he bought a duplicate set from a fellow magician who was selling them cheap and put the new ones in the old box. The box had slowly disintegrated over the years. He had repaired it many times with sticky tape to the point that it was now quite difficult to open with all the layers of dried and yellowed tape flaking off inside and out. But it had once been a nice box, with a slip-over lid and an image of ‘The World’ card on the top, so he wanted to keep it. Therefore, perhaps, his tape-encrusted cardboard box had gained more magical significance than any square of pretentious purple silk could ever have. But that is perhaps the nature of the Pragmatist School of Magic.
It seemed to have escaped his attention that this set of cards was now far older and more worn than the discarded toast set had ever been, but like many things in the world of the magician it was a subjective experience, and he didn’t give a toss anyway.
* * *
Shuffling the cards, Nigel drew ten and laid them on the table in the spread called the Celtic Cross. This was the only spread Nigel knew. It had always served him well and he didn’t see why he should bother learning another one.
Now the exact details of the reading cannot be described here, not because there is any special magical or sacred prohibition on revealing such information, but because I know where I want the story to go and it’s just a bit too complicated. Basically, I can’t be bothered to work out an exact set of cards that would include all the details. The reading would have to cover casinos, model villages, plans to turn Blackpool into Las Vegas, and everything-shops just down the road where you go for an emergency packet of fags—that’s cigarettes to any Americans reading this. Don’t get the wrong idea about the Wicked Wizard of The North!
So that’s what the reading revealed. It also turned out that the Wicked Wizard of The North—being the model maker at the local model village and a Hidden Master himself—had been exploring the idea of the model village as his own personal voodoo set.
By the way, he wasn’t really wicked; it’s just that wizards who come from far away, on some point on the compass, tend to get a prefix of some sort and he had been given the obvious one. Thus, he was labelled Wicked. He’d had the title for some years now (and nobody quite knew where it had come from.
The reading also revealed that whoever was behind the plan to make Blackpool the Las Vegas of the North was secretly intending to turn it into a seedy, tacky and depraved town.
“It all sounds a bit unreal!” declared Clint, as Nigel finished the reading. “How can putting a casino in Blackpool make it seedy and tacky?” It seemed Clint failed to see the irony of the question.
“Lord only knows,” said Wayne, not very seriously before wringing the last little bit of goodness out of the joint. “He need not be rational; after all, he is a magician.”
“And wicked!” added Nigel.
* * *
Now, it is a known fact—if there can be a fact about such woolly-minded nonsense—that a magician does not necessarily need to be rational, for much of what a magician does deals with the irrational. Anyone who is completely rational would be considered a scientist, or at least living within the scientific paradigm. Magicians sometimes think in terms of paradigms or models, usually used to describe a particular model of reality. You see, magicians are of the opinion that there is no such thing as truth, and therefore no such thing as reality. Both truth and reality are subjective and magicians, such as our heroes, are quite big on subjectivity. The idea is that reality conforms to the way you see it, or at least seems to. This has been described as the idea of the observer-oriented universe. This has also been described as utter rubbish, particularly by the Grumpy Wizard of the West, but he is part of another story entirely.
* * *
“Hold on,” added Nigel just before he put the cards away, “there’s something else here, some other entity at work.”
“Entity?” quizzed Clint.
“Yeah, some dark force or something.”
“Force?” enquired Wayne.
“Yeah, he’s stumbled across something, or something has stumbled across him.” Nigel looked at the other two. “This may be why he needs our help.” He paused, more for effect than anything else. “He may not be completely in control of the situation.”
Both Wayne and Clint were about to say something about Geoff’s potential state of mind. You see, Geoff had once played with his own sanity in an attempt to get out of a particularly stressful job and may have ended up with more than he bargained for. When practicing magic, be careful what you ask for!
“I know, I know,” continued Nigel. “What I mean is… I think his village might have been hijacked by something.”
“Oh man!” complained Clint. “You mean a dark force from the other side has risen up to conquer Britain’s decaying northern holiday resorts? That’s too much!”
“Do you have any idea what it is?” asked Wayne.
“No, not really, but it’s more serious than I first thought, and it’s powerful.”
“Oh, that’s bad!” exclaimed Clint.
“I think he may need some support here,” continued Nigel.
“No, this sucks! What next—will Darth Vader return to conquer Skegness?” asked Clint sarcastically.
“Well, they do have rather good sea defences,” replied Wayne, “or, at least, I understand them to be considerably superior to those in Scarborough.”
“And it’s so bracing,” added Nigel.
“Look! We’re not saving the Universe again!” urged Clint. “It was a really bad trip last time!”
“Well, I think we may need to go up there. He is, after all, a mate,” pointed out Nigel.
“No, this is all fucked up, man!” continued Clint. “Last time, we nearly got burned!”
“Well, if we are going to save the Universe, then we really ought to do so at the weekend,” insisted Wayne.
It was obvious that Nigel and Wayne were just going to ignore Clint’s protestations.
Clint relented. “In which case we’re gonna have to split by Sunday night,” he declared, “because I’ve got to be back at work on Monday morning!”
Friday night came around and, after finishing work, two of our heroes met up again in the ex-council house in Masons Road. Clint brought the little bit descript Japanese car around and they started to load up with what they expected to need for the weekend.
With Clint’s help, Nigel lugged the large chest, painted with images from tarot cards, into the boot of the car. It was a tight fit as the boot already contained a substantial box, about half the size of the chest. This box had a well-worn imitation crocodile skin finish, and was to Clint what the large chest was to Nigel. The lid of Clint’s box bore a faded circular emblem of a small green creature complete with pointy ears and a smirking expression, for this had once been the box for an ancient Goblin vacuum cleaner. However, it no longer contained a Goblin, as it now stored Clint’s magical equipment.
In these boxes, magicians store such things as a wand or three or four, a few athames (to the uninitiated: the magical knife), a disk or pentangle and a couple of cups or chalices. These are the basic magical weapons of a magician, and all three of our heroes had at least one of each. These so-called magical weapons represent the four elements so beloved of readers of tarot, astrologers and other such scholars of the mysteries.
The wand represents the magician’s force of will and therefore symbolises the element fire. The athame represents the magician’s intellect and ability to reason, thus symbolising the element air. The pentangle or disk symbolises the element earth, as it represents material things and everyday matters, while the chalice symbolises water, which is like the fluidity of our feelings and emotions.
Between them they also had other paraphernalia such as altar cloths, censers, candles and candle sticks, robes for covering themselves up in, cords for tying around their paunches and for hanging things on, as well as a multitude of miscellaneous bits and pieces. This kit had been collected over the years, some made by them, some bought at occult symposia or other events, some stolen from nameless sources and some of even more dubious origin.
Nigel’s tarot-painted chest also contained many papers. These were the records of the various magical groups and secret orders which some or all of them had been involved in over the years. Lately, they had found that they had become so prolific with their record-keeping that they’d just had to start a filing system. The days of the old-fashioned grimoire or Book of Shadows were long gone for this trio. They now had files for this ritual and that, files for rituals pending, lists of things to do, miscellaneous files of rituals that didn’t fit in anywhere else, and even items designated with the mystical characters NTBCO.
It had occurred to them that, at some point, they could fall foul of some establishment witch-hunt. Should any magician’s equipment and records fall into the hands of the authorities they might just end up being accused of some heinous abuse or fetish. If it happened to these magicians, they were likely to be accused of the terrible and perverted crime of bureaucracy.
As they squeezed the boxes into the boot, Wayne came strolling around the corner with a carrier bag in one hand and his magical equipment under the other arm. Wayne was a bit more economic with his kit. Instead of a large heavy chest, he had gone for the travelling option, being the founder of the Gnomic Order Of Nomadic Magicians And Drinkers, which showed his age a bit. The sum total of his magical equipment fitted rather cleverly into a violin case, and all without the use of any enchantments for extra-dimensional spaces or that sort of rigmarole.
In the carrier bag was something for the weekend, mainly consisting of a bottle of dark rum, a box of after-dinner mints and various other intoxicants he had been able to lay his hands on.
After the necessary ablutions, they climbed into the little bit descript Japanese car and, turning out of Masons Road, drove along Wood Lane End. They passed The Banks where, except for this very moment, there was an almost perpetual traffic jam, and turned right at the lights beneath the imposing edifice of the Dixons headquarters.
Soon they were on the M1 heading north. Next stop Blackpool, 220 miles away.
“Does the old dude know we’re coming up?” asked Clint.
“I telephoned him last night,” replied Wayne, “I suggested he tell Brenda we were planning a Gentleman’s Retreat for the weekend, saying we would drop in on him sometime.”
“How did he take that?” asked Nigel.
“He seemed quite happy. However, the questionable matter is how Brenda takes it,” replied Wayne as Clint pushed a cassette of collected rock classics into the player. The gaps in their conversation were suddenly peppered with phrases about evil in the air and thunder in the sky.
“Yeah, but it is a bit far to go for an impromptu cuppa,” suggested Nigel.
Wayne’s head began to nod to the music. “Exactly what are you suggesting? Do you think she will suspect something is amiss?” This was one of the moments when Wayne seemed to emphasise his diction.
A reference to being gone when the morning comes issued from the tape player.
“No man, not a thing,” interjected Clint, nodding in time to the music, “how could she suspect anything with three master magicians descending for the weekend, fully tooled up for a battle with the powers of darkness!”
The stereo spoke of being damned.
“Then he should socialise more—that way we might not have to visit him so often,” concluded Wayne.
“What do you mean socialise more?” said Nigel to Wayne. “When was the last time you visited him? God, you’re as bad as he is. I’ll tell you what—I swear your elastic’s getting shorter as the years go by.”
* * *
On the subject of elastic, for some years now The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, had cherished a theory about astral travel which goes a bit like this.
Many people say that it is possible to leave one’s body and travel on the astral plane to visit other places while the practitioner’s body stays put. There is also an idea that there is a silver astral cord which connects the astrally projected presence back to their body. However, there are differing ideas of how this works, and about whether it is possible to visit places that exist in reality. The question is always one of verification.
If you choose to examine the issue, the point is this. Let’s say you travel, or project, onto the astral plane and go around to the chip shop in Queen’s Square, which is a short hop from where two of our heroes live. There you see your friend Pete buying a chicken and mushroom pie and a portion of chips with a can of Coke. Quickly you return to your body and phone Pete up (assuming they haven’t yet invented mobile phones that work on the astral plane). Would it turn out that he had really been at the chip shop buying pie and chips once with a side order of Coke? In other words, do the things you witness while travelling on the astral plane really correspond with what, for the sake of argument, we have to call the real world? Furthermore, if this is the case, can horny single male magicians visit the bedrooms of women they fancy and… well, let’s not get into all that just now. (Try to stop shivering, girls, it’s never worked so far.)
This is a philosophical debate, which is a bit odd in itself because the old pie and chips experiment is probably quite easy to set up, so it ought to have been resolved by now. However, none of our heroes had ever met anyone who had successfully identified someone buying pie and chips once, with or without a side order of Coke. On the few occasions when they had heard of someone who had tried this sort of experiment the results had been less than clear. For example it turned out that the character Pete, who I have just made up for the purposes of this illustration, was in the habit of buying pie and chips on most nights. Thus it would have been a good guess that he was going to be in the chip shop anyway.
Of course, a specialist in the philosophy of science such as the Grumpy Wizard of the West might suggest that this is all nonsense. You see, his perspective would suggest that the fictitious character, Pete, is likely to be so fat, having undoubtedly eaten all the pies, that he is the first person anyone would see when approaching the chip shop from either the astral plane or anywhere else. Actually he wouldn’t say that, but what he might say is far less likely to be amusing.
What is really needed is something so unlikely and easily verifiable that there can be no mistake. So imagine you astrally projected around to Queen’s Square—apparently so named because she opened it in her coronation year of 1952, though I don’t suppose she remembers—and found Fat Pete being arrested for having broken into the Post Office to get some money to buy pie and chips. During your astral vision, there was a reporter photographing the event for the local paper which came out the following Thursday, with Fat Pete the Post Office burglar all over the front page. Then you might say that this was all so unlikely that it had to be verifiable. In this case, you could go up to the Grumpy Wizard of the West and say “Ahhhaaaaaaaa!” But then again, he’s not known as the Grumpy Wizard of the West for nothing, and even then he might try to wriggle out of it. You see, the Grumpy Wizard of the West is one of those magicians who does not actually believe in magic.
Anyway, that’s the sort of argument you will hear in the debate on astral travel when you talk to many magicians, witches, scholars of the mysteries and the like. On the other hand, there will be those who will resist all attempts at debate on such matters, and will never examine an issue in case they discover something they don’t like.
However, our heroes saw the old astral travel debate in a completely different way, for they had come up with another explanation. They had noticed that amongst their magician friends there was often an unbreakable bond to the place where they lived. Usually this bond would go deeper, attaching them to a particular location in their home, namely a favourite chair—often with a good view of the TV—known as the ‘god spot’.
The concept of the god spot, or more pointedly the concept of godhood, comes from the idea that magicians are considered to be the centre of their universe, surrounded by an ever-shifting sea of possibilities. The magus commands the universe and those who inhabit it, in a similar way to that in which the Christian God is said to command us. (Of course, all this talk of magic is okay but I’m sorry, I just can’t bring myself to believe in God!)
Now, The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, had this theory that the bond attaching the magician to his god spot was where the idea of the astral cord had come from, and any idea of astral travel was just a development of that concept. On the occasions when they had observed magicians abroad in the world, such as visiting friends far away, they had noticed that there seemed to be some sort of pull on the magician which tugged him back towards home at the earliest possible opportunity.
After all this philosophising, and the odd bottle of dark rum, our heroes had concluded that the much-debated practice of astral travel, along with the idea of the silver cord, had come from this truth that they had observed. The travelling magician is attached by a length of silver elastic, which connects him to his god spot and, inevitably, returns him there before too much time has passed.
* * *
Having resolved the mystery of astral travel our heroes progressed along the M1 to Junction 19, where they began the long haul up the M6. Picking up the Friday night rush towards the North, they drove through the expanse of Birmingham, in the heart of England’s Midlands, passing within sight of Fort Dunlop, the imposing edifice of the former headquarters and factory of the Dunlop Company. They passed through Spaghetti Junction, the once legendary interchange. At the time it was built, when mass transport was a largely new phenomenon, people feared that they might get carried off to destinations unknown simply by gazing for too long at a wrong turn. (There has to be the possibility of a metaphor for a magical experience here but, as we need to get on to Blackpool or at least Knutsford, we will have to leave that one for another story.)
The traffic steadily increased and, with the onset of the evening darkness and rain, our heroes eventually passed through the Black Country and the Potteries, and into the North. Eventually they approached Junction 19 of the M6 and, as something microscopic took place deep within the mysteries of the engine, the little bit descript Japanese car began to make some rather unfortunate noises.
Of course, a reader could be excused, at this point, for assuming that there is something intrinsic to this story about the nature of motorway junctions with the number 19, but that reader would be wrong. The truth of the matter, if there is such a thing as truth, is that I have already decided that the next part of our story will take place on this particular stretch of the M6. Therefore it just so happened that it turned out to be just before Junction 19. You see, as has been said before, nothing holds intrinsic value, including Tuesday nights and motorway junctions with the designation 19. What might be concluded about all this Junction 19 nonsense is that it is an example of the holistic nature of the universe. Perhaps all motorway, highway, and autobahn junctions with the designation 19 are in some cosmic way linked by a sort of interchange family relationship… err… or something.
However, the fact that Clint’s little bit descript Japanese car began to make unfortunate noises just as they arrived in the neighbourhood of Junction 19 is one piece of cosmic significance that completely escaped our heroes. The complaints of the engine mingled with the swish of the windscreen wipers, the wash of spray from passing vehicles in the darkness, plus the gentle strains of a Hammond organ on the stereo saying that into this world we’re thrown.
As they passed within a spit of a hamlet called Lower Peover—which should have been reason enough for this part of our story to take place in this location, just because it’s a great name—they began to get alarmed at the sound of intermittent misfirings coming from the car.
Meanwhile the tape player told some girl that she had got to love her man.
“What was that?” asked Wayne with some concern in his voice.
“I don’t know,” replied Clint.
“Sounds like the engine,” added Nigel unhelpfully as the girl was told that the world on her depended, whoever she was.
By this time the traffic had developed to the point where it was a continuous stream of close vehicles, not dissimilar to a liquid running through a pipe. If there was a difference, it was that a liquid isn’t made up of thousands of individual particles, each with its own agenda, mixed with a touch of insanity and a sprinkling of testosterone.
Revealing its secrets, the stereo described riders on the storm.
The little bit descript Japanese particle amongst all the British, French, Italian, German, and other Far Eastern particles was currently in the outside lane, as it had been making good progress. But at this point it was beginning to slow. As they passed under two bridges in rapid succession, the now continuous rain stopped for fractions of a second with the shelter afforded seeming to emphasise just how bad the weather was. Through the rear view mirror, the lines of headlights, diffused by the droplets of rain on the rear window, merged into one large blur with the reflections on the road and spray from the tyres.
Apparently there was a dog without a bone and an actor out on loan but none of our heroes really understood this, probably as they tended not to be on drugs while they were driving.
“Man, this is a bitch. I don’t want to get heavy, but I think we’re losing power.” Clint was obviously concerned.
The traffic was now beginning to pass them slowly in the two lanes between them and the hard shoulder, making it difficult to move over. A queue of irate drivers began to build up behind them.
The storm outside mingled with the sounds of storm and rain on the stereo.
“Can you see what’s behind us so I can pull over?” asked Clint. “I can’t see a thing!”
“Just a moment, not yet,” replied Wayne from the back seat.
Both he and Nigel were straining to see what was coming up on the inside, but with all the rain and glare from headlights it was difficult to see.
“This is a bummer. We’re slowing down. I’m gonna have to move over soon.”
“Okay…” said Nigel, briefly pausing before continuing to speak.
Completely misunderstanding Nigel, Clint pulled across towards the middle lane only to swerve back, as he narrowly avoided a motorcycle passing them on the inside.
“…hold on… not just yet,” finished Nigel as he watched the motorcyclist disappear ahead of them, gesticulating wildly, completely unaware that The Doors were singing about his brethren as he sped into the distance. “Sorry about that,” finished Nigel.
“Get it together, Nigel!” declared Clint as he skidded back into the outside lane.
Passing under another bridge, Clint thought for a moment that he had a clearer view of what was behind him. He gripped the steering wheel tightly. The engine by now was very intermittent, with all sorts of microscopic events taking place under the bonnet, sounding like it was going to cut out at any moment.
Wayne spoke up enthusiastically over the misfiring engine and the music on the stereo, now just repeating the phrase “riders on the storm” as they loped forward with the engine misfiring frequently. “Look. Services!” He pointed toward a sign indicating services in half a mile.
Clint brought the car over into the middle lane as a small truck narrowly missed them on the inside, with horns going off all around.
“Be careful of that truck,” added Wayne.
Seeing a gap, Clint took his chance and swerved right across the inside lane and straight onto the hard shoulder as an elderly Volkswagen Beetle passed dangerously close to them. Trying to take advantage of what momentum they had, he jammed his foot on the clutch. The microscopic goings-on finally got their way and the engine died completely. Clint gripped the steering wheel tighter, as though it would make the car coast further, hopefully into the service station.
The tape rumbled on with tinkles of music like rain and peals of distant thunder.
Passing under another bridge with the wall uncomfortably near to the passenger door, Clint carefully steered them down the slip road and towards the services. Everything in the car stopped working including the wipers and the lights.
“I thought we were gonna get wiped out there!” exclaimed Clint.
Thinking he could look out, Nigel clicked the window switch ineffectually but soon realised that all the electrics had gone off. Without a window winder they might as well have been welded shut. As they coasted forward they were unable to tell the sound of the rain on the windscreen from that coming from the stereo. (Of course I know the music should have stopped by now, what with the electrics being off, but they are magicians and it is for effect after all!) “Bloody technology!” This was a bit ironic coming from Nigel, since he worked with computers, but to be perfectly honest he didn’t really understand them and he suspected that many people he worked with secretly suffered from the same problem. Opening the door slightly, he was able to stick his head out into the rain and guide Clint into the car park.
Narrowly avoiding a concrete post, carefully placed to stop lorries—and cars with their doors open—from entering the car park, they coasted to a halt ending up perfectly placed in one of the white-painted parking bays. The music of The Doors tinkled away into silence. Clint relaxed back into his seat, slowly uncurling his fingers from the steering wheel. Nigel took a deep breath as he closed the door, brushing his matted hair away from his glasses.
Finally, Wayne piped up, “I say, do you think we might be able to find a drink here?”
Chapter 3 – Ritual Mechanicians
Inside the crowded motorway services at Knutsford, The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, sat around three cups of coffee and three doughnuts. Nigel’s hair steamed gently as it dried off in the warmth of the café. The sound of The Girl from Ipanema wafted gently above their heads in a version almost, but not quite, specifically designed to induce madness.
“What do you propose we do now?” asked Wayne.
“Well, I left my tools at home, so I could get all the gear in the boot,” replied Clint.
“That was a spectacular idea,” responded Wayne with a sarcastic tone.
Clint glanced at Wayne with an irritated look, but didn’t have time to say anything as Nigel spoke. “I’ve got a multi-tool.”
“’Scuse me, can I borrow your sugar?” asked a burly caricature of a truck driver. He sat down at the opposite table with a copy of Steven Hawking’s A brief History of Time and a folded copy of The Sun newspaper.
Wayne passed the sugar to the truck driver who proceeded to pour a long stream of its contents into his steaming mug of tea.
“A multi-tool?” quizzed Clint.
“Oh yes,” replied Wayne enthusiastically, “rather clever brushed steel devices similar to a Swiss Army Knife, except that they have spanners and scissors and contraptions attached. They are awfully good.”
“I had a Swiss Army Knife once,” said Clint, “it was made in China.”
“That would be a Chinese Swiss Army Knife then,” responded Wayne.
“That’s what I used to call it.”
“Can I look at it?” asked Wayne of Nigel.
“No, that’s a bit personal. Piss off!” replied Nigel.
The truck driver glanced across at them briefly over the rim of his mug.
“I think he means the multi-tool,” said Clint.
“Oh yeah, sorry,” said Nigel in response “It’s in with my stuff for the weekend.”
“Surely not in with your magical equipment?” asked Wayne with a mock tone of shock.
“No, with my spare t-shirts and clean underwear and stuff.”
Clint raised his eyebrows at Nigel. “You brought clean underwear! I bet you won’t use it.”
“There speaks a true festival goer,” replied Nigel. “You know how it is, take spare clothes with all the right intentions, then get wasted and fall asleep fully clothed. You’ll go home in the clothes you came out in.”
“That all depends what we come up against this weekend,” interjected Wayne. “I remember the last time we saved the universe, I nearly…”
“Too much information!” interrupted Nigel before Wayne could say anymore.
Clearly, Wayne’s grammar school education, which he sometimes claimed was fee paying, had only influenced his accent and had not affected his sense of vulgarity, or rather lack of it.
“We could try to suss out what’s wrong with the car,” said Clint, bringing the subject back on topic. “The way it happened so suddenly, it sounds like electrics.”
“On the other hand, it could be mechanical,” added Wayne.
“Or fuel,” continued Nigel.
“Well, that would just about cover all the options,” responded Clint, completely unimpressed. “I suppose I should check it out.”
Clint was definitely the most mechanical of the trio, not that he did much of that sort of thing these days, preferring to trust to the infinite cycle of the second-hand car. Having been in the Royal Navy as an engineer, he had experience of all sorts of machines from the huge Deltic diesel engines, used in locomotives and ships, right through to some of the first nuclear power plants in submarines. These days he drove a road sweeper for a living, described as having more instruments than the Starship Enterprise.
“I think we should enchant to get it started,” said Nigel hopefully.
Clint looked scornfully at Nigel. “No way, man, you can’t do a ritual to repair a car!”
Nigel continued. “Well, if it’s an electrical fault, and a wire has just come loose, then surely a microscopic or quantum level of change might be enough to make a contact.” The truck driver raised an eyebrow, glancing up from Stephen Hawking as he took a longer look at the trio.
“I think you’re a bit out on the edge there,” responded Clint.
“We could draw a sigil in the oil on the top of the engine and perform an enchantment,” added Nigel, becoming enthused.
“Let’s have a look at that multi-tool of yours,” replied Clint, trying to ignore Nigel’s madness, “and who said there’s oil on my engine?”
Nigel was, by now, scrawling a phrase on the back of the till receipt that read ‘Get us to Blackpool’. He crossed out all the letters that occurred a second or third time in the phrase and was quickly left with ‘GETUSOBLACKP’.
“Look, dudes,” continued Clint, “you two are weirding me out! I can’t believe you are even thinking about this!” Clint’s complaint was tempered by an attempt to avoid raising his voice. Looking about, he checked that there was nobody paying any attention to them.
Wayne looked on silently for a moment then added, “Perhaps it would be a good idea to add something pertaining to getting us home again?”
Nigel stopped and gazed into the distance for a moment, as he was inclined to do. Some though that at these times he was consulting his inner oracle, while others suggested he was listening to the voices; others believed it was down to indigestion. “No I don’t think so. Once we’re there we’ll be fine. We’ll get back okay,” he replied with confidence.
“I think, perhaps, I can detect a Ten-inch Pianist coming on,” said Wayne with a note of concern, but without any care for people who might overhear the statement.
The truck driver glanced up briefly from his book and frowned.
* * *
The Ten-inch Pianist was a term The Three Hidden Masters used for a particular way a magical working could go awry. The idea came from the joke about the man who walked into a pub and put a tiny man and a piano on the bar. When the barman asked for some explanation the customer explained how he met a Genie who gave him his wish for a ten-inch penis, but the genie misheard him. It’s an old joke, but it serves a purpose. So the Ten-inch Pianist is used to describe acts of magic where the magician gets exactly what is asked for, rather than what is desired.
The fact that the truck driver and a couple of other people in the café thought they heard Wayne say ‘ten-inch penis’ was completely missed by our three heroes.
* * *
Nigel tore off and discarded the part of the till receipt with the original phrase, so he had just the string of letters remaining. Then, on a separate scrap of paper, he started to draw a diagram made up of each of the letters in the string. This left him with a jumble of letters, some large, some small, some upright, some inverted, which people in the know will recognise as a sigil. Those of you not yet in the know can think of this as a magickal symbol. He discarded the original piece of receipt, with the string of letters, into the ashtray and held up the finished sigil.
“Okay, orrff we jolly well go,” he declared.
As The Three Hidden Masters, two from Hemel Hempstead and one from Bricket Wood, got up, they nearly bumped into the truck driver as he stood up to make his way towards the toilets. Stepping back carefully, the truck driver let them go in front of him, making a mental note to avoid any contact with them again.