Night of the Pentagram Read online

  She knew she had come completely unglued, but she didn’t know how to make Bryce understand. She would track him down later and apologize, and hopefully by then she would be calm enough to try to make him understand how much the goat freaked her out. But how would she explain this feeling of not knowing whether it was a dream or reality? Goddamned Morphenol. She wished she’d never agreed to take the stuff. All it was doing was making things worse. She didn’t know how much more of it she could take.

  Two near accidents in one day, the falling rocks on the outside steps and the car nearly driving off a cliff when Bryce swerved to avoid hitting the goat. There wasn’t much more her nerves could take. She paced the length of her room, feeling like a trapped animal. She couldn’t stay here. She would only drive herself crazier. Much as she didn’t want to run into any of the other guests, she wanted nothing more right now than a good stiff drink. She picked up her sandals and slipped them back on her feet and headed back downstairs again.

  Dakota was in the drawing room pouring over her astrology books.

  “Hiya. What was all that commotion about?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Dakota eyed her askance. “You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Not a ghost, a goat.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Elizabeth said and headed for the liquor bottles on the sideboard. The ice bucket was empty. She poured tree fingers of vodka into a glass and tossed it back, immediately making a face.

  “Come over here and talk to me. You seem really upset about something.”

  Elizabeth let out an exasperated sigh. “I am, but I’m not ready to talk about it yet.”

  “Okay. Whenever you’re ready, I’m here for you. I finished your birth chart. But take a look at this.” Dakota flipped over the cover of a book.

  Elizabeth thought she was losing her mind. It was the book she had found in her suitcase the day she arrived, The Rites of Satan.

  “That’s the book someone put in my suitcase. Where did you find that?”

  “In the bookcase. Have you read it? It’s Roland de Winters diary.”

  “It’s what?”

  “Yeah, check it out. The man was into some sick stuff, kids, animals, you name it. Still no mention of what happened to Madelyn de Winter though, but here’s a picture of her.” Dakota took a black and white photograph that she was using as a bookmark out of the book. “She’s the one in the middle holding the little boy,” Dakota said.

  Elizabeth barely glanced at it before looking away. “That stuff gives me the creeps. This whole house gives me the creeps. I just want to get this therapy over with and get out of here.”

  Dakota started flipping through the pages. “He describes in full detail how he and his buddies tied up a young girl to an altar and then slit her throat and drank her blood. Can you believe it?”

  “Stop,” Elizabeth said, “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “He says there is a secret ritual room, right here in the house. I wonder if I could find it.”

  “Why on earth would you want to find it?”

  “Why not? I bet none of this is true. He probably made it all up, trying to make himself out to be some powerful warlock or something.”

  “Can we change the subject?” Elizabeth said. “I really don’t want to talk about Roland de Winter right now.”

  “Fine,” Dakota said, setting the book aside. “So what is it you want to talk about?”

  “Nothing, I –“

  “Come on, you’re upset about something. You can tell me. You know you can trust me.”

  “Have you ever used LSD?”

  Dakota laughed. “You don’t beat around the bush, do you?” Dakota flipped her long blond hair over her shoulder, glancing about the room as if looking for somewhere to escape to.

  “Sure,” she said, “I’ve dropped acid once or twice. I think anyone who is interested in expanding their consciousness in this day and age has tried it at least once. In San Francisco they practically hand it out for free at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. I guess you’re not considered a real hippie until you’ve tripped out at least once. But it’s not my scene. I prefer to keep my channels clear and focused, can you dig it? I much prefer trying to reach higher states of consciousness by more body-friendly, natural techniques, like yoga or meditation.”

  “What is it like?”

  “Acid? Oh, I don’t know. Strange, wonderful, eye opening. Have you ever been to a nightclub where there was a psychedelic light show, you know, all the swirling designs and kaleidoscopic patterns projected against the band? You don’t have to close your eyes, though. Sometimes you can experience things like that on acid with your eyes open.”

  Elizabeth’s fingers picked at her lower lip. “So you see things that aren’t there?”

  “Yes and no. Some people do. You see things from a different perspective. You don’t see things that aren’t there. I didn’t, anyway. I guess it depends on a number of things, your own constitution, how strong the dosage was. But things you do see can look different, giant spiders for instance. Somebody’s always seeing giant spiders. I mean, giant spiders don’t exist so they aren’t really there. It might be a real spider all right, and chances are you can step on it and squash it and then…poof…no more giant spider. It’s the difference between knowing that a thing is real and a thing that couldn’t possibly exist. For instance, I knew this one cat who thought someone was chasing after him with a chainsaw. Everyone kept telling him no one had a chainsaw. It took them forever to figure out what he was hearing was actually a blender. Someone was in the kitchen making margaritas and every time they turned the blender on high this cat would totally freak out.”

  “Then what purpose does it serve?” Elizabeth asked. “It’s not like grass or booze which people take to relax. Why would someone take something like that if it’s only purpose is to plays tricks with your mind?”

  “Try telling that to those guys at the AA group that meets upstairs at our bookstore. Drink enough booze over a long period of time and you’ll see things. People trip out on booze all the time. Ever heard of seeing pink elephants? It’s the same thing, and I’m not talking about the ones in the movie Dumbo. Alcohol withdrawal is some serious business. I think booze causes more damage to your brain than just about any other drug that I can think of, but what do I know, huh?”

  “But why do people take that stuff? Where did it come from even?”

  “Well, there are your natural psychedelics like peyote buttons and ergot. Ever heard of magic mushrooms? Books about the use of psychotropic plants to induce altered states of awareness are required reading for hippies. But LSD is a synthetic, invented by some doctor in Europe, Switzerland I think.”

  “Switzerland?”

  “I think it was originally intended for psychiatric treatment, you know, for schizophrenics and people like that. But then people found out how it could really mess with your mind, and then everybody jumped on the band wagon, students, college professors, hell even the government is supposed to be conducting top secret experiments on war criminals to determine its effects on interrogation, one of those so called truth drugs. If everybody knows about it I guess it’s not so top secret anymore.” Dakota gave a little laugh at her joke. “They say the communists have been using it for years for mind control on their spies and stuff.”

  Betty…

  Elizabeth’s mind was spinning with possibilities. LSD was invented in Switzerland. Dr. Abernathy conducted his experiments on Morphenol in Switzerland. LSD caused the user to experience shifts in perception. Morphenol was causing shifts in her perception. What if there was no such thing as Morphenol? What if what Dr. Abernathy was giving her actually was LSD?

  …wake up.

  “Do you think Morphenol could be a form of LSD? I mean, Morphenol is supposed to be some kind of truth drug, isn’t it?”

  “Morphenol? What is Morphenol?”

  Elizabeth looked at Dakot
a, incredulous. “Morphenol, the drug Dr. Abernathy gives us for dream recall.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t do this to me, Dakota.”

  “I’m not doing anything, baby. I’m just trying to understand what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about the drug Dr. Abernathy gives us as part of his dream therapy,”

  Dakota shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it. Are you sure you don’t mean Morphine? Has Abernathy got you on Morphine? Maybe that’s what’s wrong with you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me other than the fact that everyone here is fucking with my mind. Sticking things in my suitcase, telling me someone is one thing when they are actually something else, pushing rocks on me and then denying it happened. Between that and the drugs I feel like I’m losing my mind. I came here to get better, not to get worse.”

  “Drugs?” said Dakota. “What drugs?”

  “Morphenol!”

  “Baby, you should hear yourself.”

  “Stop calling me ‘baby’,” Elizabeth lashed out. “I’m not a baby, not yours or anyone else’s. I’m a grown woman and there is nothing wrong with my brain. All the things that have happened to me have been deliberate attempts to frighten me, to make me seem unbalanced. And the Morphenol, you know full well what I am talking about. The doctor gives it to everyone. We discussed it in group therapy yesterday. You told me yourself it was doing wonderful things for you, for God’s sake. Everyone seems to think it’s the greatest thing since white bread. Everyone except Chet, Chet’s the only person who has the sense to stand up to Dr. Abernathy. ”

  How could Dakota remain so calm? Elizabeth was practically yelling at her and the girl didn’t bat an eye. That’s what you do to crazy people, isn’t it? You just stare at them and nod politely and let them have their little rant.

  Dakota said, “I may be the last friend you have here. No, don’t look away. I want you to listen to me. Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that I’m the one having troubling remembering things.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to launch into another tirade, but Dakota interrupted, firm, gazing hard into her eyes. She lifted Elizabeth’s hands in hers.

  “Just for the moment pretend that I’m having a touch of amnesia. Maybe I have been taking this drug all along and I’m the one who can’t remember, okay? Now, tell me what it is, tell me everything you know about it.”

  Elizabeth explained to her, as patiently as she could, how Morphenol worked on the subconscious level, how it was supposed to facilitate dream recall and destroy barriers between the unconscious and the conscious mind. “Dr. Abernathy developed it with his partners when he was a student in Switzerland. Chet told me he thinks Dr. Abernathy may have been involved in work with some doctors from Germany. He implied that they were Nazi war criminals.”

  “Those are some pretty wild accusations,” Dakota said. “But consider the source. Chet’s walking a pretty thin wire himself.”

  “I just don’t know who to trust anymore. I don’t know who to believe. I’m angry and I’m frightened and….and I want to get out of here.”

  “Maybe Abernathy has got you on some kind of drug that I’m not aware of. No, just listen to me for a moment. Maybe he has. Not this Morphenol or whatever you call it, but something else. Maybe he just made up all this talk of dream therapy to get you to take the stuff, and maybe it’s got you so messed up you can’t think you’re way out of this.”

  “I wish that was true,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t go on feeling the way I do. I didn’t have this problem until I came here. All I had were blackouts, loss of memory, nothing like this.”

  “Maybe there’s a way we can figure out what this stuff really is,” Dakota said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, all these things you’re telling me do sound an awful lot like LSD. Maybe he’s giving you something that’s making you trip out of your mind. If I can figure out a way to get into his office, I can try to find your records and see what kind of dope he’s giving you.”

  “That sounds dangerous.”

  “What’s the worst he can do? Kick me out of the program? If he’s so much of a quack that he’s slipping you acid, I’m happy to get out of here before he gets me on it too.”

  “You would do that for me?”

  “Of course. I’m a kleptomaniac, remember? The harder something is to get, the more I want it. It will be fun. I’ll see if I can break into his office tonight after everyone’s asleep.”

  Elizabeth liked the idea. She still couldn’t believe Dakota’s claim that she didn’t know anything about Morphenol, but if she was willing to take a risk to try to find out what it was that the doctor was giving her, she was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

  “So,” Dakota said, pulling out the charts she had drawn up for Elizabeth, “I’ve finished your chart, and I’ve got to tell you some of this stuff is pretty far out.”

  “I’m not sure I want to hear it.”

  “I think you should. Maybe this will help you put things into perspective.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Okay, so we know your sun is in Gemini, right? That’s your birth sign, your sun sign. Your ascendant is on the twelfth house, right here on the cusp, and your moon is right here, in this little sliver between the beginning of the twelfth house and the ending of Gemini.”

  Dakota pointed to the tiny sliver on the chart. The crescent moon symbol was wedged in the tiny angle created by the lines of Gemini and the Twelfth house.

  “The moon rules the subconscious,” Dakota explained, “and the twelfth house is associated with deceptions, secrets, unknown enemies, places of confinement, prisons, hospitals, institutions…”

  Elizabeth looked at Dakota, eyes wide in disbelief.

  “Your moon is in a psychologically vulnerable position here. It indicates that you are sensitive, emotional, artistic, a dreamer. None of that is bad. It’s a very common indicator among actors and other artists, but also people who are prone to psychic sensitivities.”

  “You’re telling me I’m psychic?”

  “Not at all. Usually this indicates that people with this factor in their charts are deeply involved with the hidden aspects of the mind, everything from psychology to parapsychology.”

  “What is parapsychology?”

  “It means, the occult, Elizabeth.”

  “But I’m not involved in the occult. That’s what I have been trying to say all along. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s sick and disgusting and it frightens me.”

  “Elizabeth, this whole twelfth house thing is deep. It’s very tricky. I guess it’s hard to comprehend from a layman’s point of view, but these factors here, your sun, your moon, both in Gemini, the sign of the twins and placed in the twelfth house…well, it’s indicative of some very deep and very powerful psychological disturbances.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that there may be a dissociated personality that part of you is unaware of.”

  “Say it in plain English.”

  “It means, in all probability, that you may have a split personality.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I wish I was.”

  “Take your astrology and your acid trips and shove them up your ass.”

  “Nice, real nice. I’m only trying to help.”

  “What kind of help is that? Hi, I’m your friendly neighborhood astrologer; let’s see what the stars have in store for you today. Oh, look, you’re crazy, in fact, you’re both crazy, because guess what, there are two of you?”

  “Well you don’t have to react like that.”

  “How in the hell am I supposed to react?”

  “How about showing a little appreciation instead of playing the crazy card all the time? You think this is all about you, don’t you? I’ve got news for you, there are other people here and we hurt just as deeply as you, maybe more.”


  “Now you sound like Jewel,” Elizabeth said.

  “Yeah, well maybe she has a point.” Dakota slammed one of her books shut and swept up her charts and dumped them into her tote bag.

  Elizabeth sat in silence. She knew she needed to try to get a grip, but there was nothing for her to hold on to. She felt like she was drowning in a sea of insanity with no way to keep her head above the surface. And to make matters worse she had shoved away the only friends she had.