The noise of the prison yard did nothing to block out the music in his head. Claw tried covering his ears with his hands, but it did no good. He leaned back against the cool wall of the yard, grateful for the shade it cast over him. His right hand was hurting. It was the Red Hand, the one that always hurt him. The skin burned angrily where it was stained that lurid red color, as if the blood of every one he had stuck that hand into could never wash off.
He saw the group of men approaching, but paid them no mind. He could tell they were talking to him, angrily taunting him, but he couldn’t hear them. The music was too loud. It was calling to him, and threatening to overwhelm him. What do you want, he wanted to shout, but he only grunted as he closed his eyes.
He is coming, the music seemed to say. All must be ready for Him. Claw knew he had to prepare for Him. But Claw didn’t know when He would arrive. He opened his eyes, and saw the five men standing around him now, menacingly. He left his body momentarily, and entered the body of the one in the middle. The body was strong, but the mind was weak. Claw lashed out with the body, striking out at the other men, catching them off guard, and knocking them senseless on the ground. He grabbed one and slammed his head into the concrete wall, the sound of bones crunching as he did so.
Claw released the body, and returned to his own. This sort of thing exhausted him. But the music persisted, insisting that he do more. He had to prepare the way for the arrival of his Lord. Claw didn’t know when He would arrive, nor how. He would have to read the signs, read the entrails, as he had always done. It was the only way. He looked at the man whose body he had borrowed only moments before. The man was staggering from the exertion of having beaten his companions to a pulp. Claw reached out to the man with his Red Hand, almost tenderly, just barely touching the man’s abdomen with his scarlet fingertips. The pain in his hand flared as if he had reached into a fire, and Claw roared furiously as he shoved his hand into the man’s abdomen, through the skin and flesh, and into the slimy, pulsing entrails. He grabbed them, and the man doubled over and screamed. Claw yanked out the entrails, tearing through muscle and skin, and throwing them to splatter messily on the ground. The music was so loud that he could no longer hear the screams of agony coming from his victim. He gazed at the pulsing entrails, reading their signs, the network of vessels like scrawls of writing against the paleness of the intestines. He was coming soon. There was no more time to waste. Claw had spent enough time in this prison, and it was time to leave.
He turned his back on the writhing body, and found the big crack in the concrete wall. He had studied that crack for weeks and weeks, every time he was out in the yard. He knew it well, and knew well how to make it take him where he wanted to go. He would go to the high place where he kept his nest. Claw concentrated on the crack, on the shape of it, and the direction that it would take him too. He felt the pulsing of the air around him, and knew that all was ready. He just needed one more component. Reaching down to where the man lay shuddering in shock, his intestines spilled out on the ground, Claw reached into the wound and drew out a clot of dark blood. He smeared it on the crack in the wall, pushing as much of it as he could into it, and then slipped in, disappearing into the crack as the rest of the prisoners watched and screamed like scared birds. He was gone, free, and he was ready to begin his work.
He saw the group of men approaching, but paid them no mind. He could tell they were talking to him, angrily taunting him, but he couldn’t hear them. The music was too loud. It was calling to him, and threatening to overwhelm him. What do you want, he wanted to shout, but he only grunted as he closed his eyes.
He is coming, the music seemed to say. All must be ready for Him. Claw knew he had to prepare for Him. But Claw didn’t know when He would arrive. He opened his eyes, and saw the five men standing around him now, menacingly. He left his body momentarily, and entered the body of the one in the middle. The body was strong, but the mind was weak. Claw lashed out with the body, striking out at the other men, catching them off guard, and knocking them senseless on the ground. He grabbed one and slammed his head into the concrete wall, the sound of bones crunching as he did so.
Claw released the body, and returned to his own. This sort of thing exhausted him. But the music persisted, insisting that he do more. He had to prepare the way for the arrival of his Lord. Claw didn’t know when He would arrive, nor how. He would have to read the signs, read the entrails, as he had always done. It was the only way. He looked at the man whose body he had borrowed only moments before. The man was staggering from the exertion of having beaten his companions to a pulp. Claw reached out to the man with his Red Hand, almost tenderly, just barely touching the man’s abdomen with his scarlet fingertips. The pain in his hand flared as if he had reached into a fire, and Claw roared furiously as he shoved his hand into the man’s abdomen, through the skin and flesh, and into the slimy, pulsing entrails. He grabbed them, and the man doubled over and screamed. Claw yanked out the entrails, tearing through muscle and skin, and throwing them to splatter messily on the ground. The music was so loud that he could no longer hear the screams of agony coming from his victim. He gazed at the pulsing entrails, reading their signs, the network of vessels like scrawls of writing against the paleness of the intestines. He was coming soon. There was no more time to waste. Claw had spent enough time in this prison, and it was time to leave.
He turned his back on the writhing body, and found the big crack in the concrete wall. He had studied that crack for weeks and weeks, every time he was out in the yard. He knew it well, and knew well how to make it take him where he wanted to go. He would go to the high place where he kept his nest. Claw concentrated on the crack, on the shape of it, and the direction that it would take him too. He felt the pulsing of the air around him, and knew that all was ready. He just needed one more component. Reaching down to where the man lay shuddering in shock, his intestines spilled out on the ground, Claw reached into the wound and drew out a clot of dark blood. He smeared it on the crack in the wall, pushing as much of it as he could into it, and then slipped in, disappearing into the crack as the rest of the prisoners watched and screamed like scared birds. He was gone, free, and he was ready to begin his work.
Series of events:
Juliette dreams that she is in a prison yard and she is being taunted by several men that appear to be Mexican gang-bangers. She hears nothing but a pulsing, haunting music, and then she sees that one of the men begins to flail about uncontrollably, and then begins to beat up on his companions. She then approaches one of the men, and she sees herself reach out with a hand that is bright red, as if it has been dipped in red ink, and the hand transmogrifies suddenly into a scaly red claw before plunging into the stomach of the man, and ripping out his guts, tossing them aside onto the prison yard.
Waking up, she realizes that she has painted a picture depicting the violence of her dream, and showing red smears of paint superimposed the black skull of an animal. She goes to find her friend Dr. Dion Cantor, where they discuss the possibility that she was seeing something that actually happened.
Meanwhile, Special Agent Marcus Kent of the FBI has taken over the investigation of the ritualized murder of a young man at a Manhattan church after the prime suspect in the case was found crucified to a wall in an upscale townhouse in the Hamptons. Together with Genevieve Delanuit, Agent Kent examines the chalk markings on the wooden floor of the scene, and it seems to him that the symbols are familiar to him. It is something that he has seen in a book called The Gate. Calling Dr. Cantor, they ask him if he has a copy of the book, and Dion Cantor does indeed know the book (although it is not necessarily taken seriously in academic circles). The agents go to see Dr. Cantor in his office at the museum.
Wanting to know more about Opiel and Nehal, Dion remembers an old friend from graduate school named Olufemi “Femi” Orundire. She studied anthropology with Dion, and was writing a dissertation on the persistence of Taino cultural traditions among Dominicans. Femi’s father was a Nigerian scholar of African history and politics, and her mother a Dominican medical doctor. For personal reasons, Femi never finished her Ph.D., but runs a music and bookstore in Harlem called “Taino Music and Books.” Visiting the bookstore, they find that the store is jam-packed with used and new CDs, mostly consisting of Reggae and World Beat titles, as well as some Alt Rock, Jazz, Latin Jazz, and Ambient music. Along with the usual posters of Bob Marley and other musical artists, there is an Imperial Ethiopian flag, a framed portrait of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, and next to the door, a small iron cauldron and a dish with a dome-like effigy with a crude face made of white cowries set into it. The bookstore portion of the shop consists of a small display of bookshelves in a back corner. Most of the titles are on anthropology, sociology, history, and subversive politics. The effigy is an Eshu Elegua, a spirit guardian of doorways and passages in Santeria, who is believed to facilitate communication between the mortal and spirit realms.
Femi herself is a fair-skinned African-American woman with long dreadlocks tied back into a kind of dense ponytail, and dressed in army fatigues and jacket and a sleeveless T-shirt with an image of Marcus Garvey superimposed on a large black star. She wears a woven hemp necklace with Rastafarian colors and a pendant depicting a crowned lion. She is attractive, but seems to harbor a deep and potentially volatile resentment. She is suspicious of the agents, although cooperates well enough because of Dion’s influence. She also quickly warms up to Juliette. The agents question her about the Dominican cult activities, which make her angry and uncooperative. When Dion asks her about Nehal-Opiel, however, she realizes that he knows something about some of what she has been experiencing lately. She takes them downstairs to her basement, which is crowded with ritual artifacts and accoutrements. She then shows them a table where she has several different statuettes and effigies, including images of the Hindu elephant-headed Ganesh, another Eshu, an African version of the Yoruba Eshu, a shell carving shaped like a skull (and similar to the small carving found in the hand of the sacrificed man at the church), and a replica of a Hellenistic sculpture of Hermes cast in resin. All of the images represent gods or spirits responsible for passages and transitions, and the investigators make the connection between this theme, the “gate” symbols at the murder site, and what Dion knows of the mysterious Nehal.
Femi asks Dion if he’s heard the music. She says she keeps music playing in her shop loud to try and block it out, and it seems to work, but she’s heard it loud recently, and especially when she met with a boy who came into the shop looking for books and a CD on cymatics. The boy gave her his cell phone number, which she then shares with Dion.
Juliette goes to see Dion to talk with him about her dream, when the FBI agents show up. Meanwhile, while listening to police band radio, Terry Strahan hears about a homicide near Times Square. He goes to get the scoop, and meets up with the others there. His police contact gives him access to the crime scene, while Dion Cantor and Juliette Pearce stand by. The victim is a young man whose abdomen has been torn open and his intestines pulled out and scattered on the pavement in the alley where he was killed. His wallet identifies him as Eric Golden. He has not been robbed, only brutally murdered. After the initial crime scene investigators have done their work, Dion and Juliette are allowed through. Juliette immediately recognizes the similarities between the murder and her dream.
Meanwhile, Dr. Cantor surreptitiously takes the substance that he uses while working magic, and casts a spell to detect the presence of magic. While there is a considerable amount of magic, he senses that it is dissipating, and the highest concentration is on the wall of one of the buildings forming the alley. Dion notes a crack in the wall dripping with blood. Genevieve has determined that an impossibly dense concentration of blood has been inserted into the crack in the wall, and is now oozing out. Dion determines that a teleportation portal of some sort was activated here, and casts a spell to try and see where the portal leads. He has a vision of a kind of nest or den containing a variety of odds and ends, and built on what appears to be the side of a badly-paved road overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Realizes that it is a piece of raised highway, broken off from the rest of the road and left standing, but before he can get a better look at the surroundings, he becomes aware that the one who created the portal is aware of him, and the vision abruptly ends. Meanwhile, Dion and the others determine that the splattered guts are a perverse form of extispicy, or divination performed by examining entrails.
Juliette mentions the similarities between her the crime and her dream, and asks if a similar crime has occurred in any nearby prisons. Genevieve asks her police contacts, who tell her that a prisoner being held at Rikers Island was disemboweled in a similar manner just yesterday. The man was Mexican, which coincided with Juliette’s dream. Considering the possibility of an interethnic war of some sort, they learn that Dominican drug dealers are currently at war with Mexican drug dealers that have been moving in on their local turf.
After doing some research, the investigators locate a possible site matching what Dion saw in the vision. It is a partially demolished bridge in a mostly desolate neighborhood of south Brooklyn. They arrive to find a piece of bridge mostly inaccessible without the use of a very tall ladder. They get the sense that they are being watched from the broken windows of an abandoned warehouse. Inside, they encounter some strange creatures vaguely resembling doglike men and smelling of putrescence. One of the creatures wears a pair of spectacles, and speaks in fairly good (though distorted) English to Dion, telling him that he was once a scholar and his researches into the unknown seems to have caught up with him and dragged him into the world he was studying. He warns Dion that there is another hybrid creature that’s made its nest nearby.
Meanwhile, trying to find a way to climb up to the broken span of bridge, the others are not aware that they have been noticed by the murderer, and that they have become the quarry. They are stalked and then attacked by a creature like a man whose nearly hunched back is covered in red scaly skin. His right hand is transmogrified into a bright red, monstrous claw, and he attacks them, nearly sending Genevieve falling off the third floor of the warehouse. Between them they manage to wound and then kill the creature as it falls off to its death from the third-story catwalk. Later, investigating the abandoned span of bridge, they find a nest with several items belonging to the victims, and a series of ritualistic symbols drawn in plant paint on the broken pavement. Scrawled in English are the words, “He is coming!”
Juliette dreams that she is in a prison yard and she is being taunted by several men that appear to be Mexican gang-bangers. She hears nothing but a pulsing, haunting music, and then she sees that one of the men begins to flail about uncontrollably, and then begins to beat up on his companions. She then approaches one of the men, and she sees herself reach out with a hand that is bright red, as if it has been dipped in red ink, and the hand transmogrifies suddenly into a scaly red claw before plunging into the stomach of the man, and ripping out his guts, tossing them aside onto the prison yard.
Waking up, she realizes that she has painted a picture depicting the violence of her dream, and showing red smears of paint superimposed the black skull of an animal. She goes to find her friend Dr. Dion Cantor, where they discuss the possibility that she was seeing something that actually happened.
Meanwhile, Special Agent Marcus Kent of the FBI has taken over the investigation of the ritualized murder of a young man at a Manhattan church after the prime suspect in the case was found crucified to a wall in an upscale townhouse in the Hamptons. Together with Genevieve Delanuit, Agent Kent examines the chalk markings on the wooden floor of the scene, and it seems to him that the symbols are familiar to him. It is something that he has seen in a book called The Gate. Calling Dr. Cantor, they ask him if he has a copy of the book, and Dion Cantor does indeed know the book (although it is not necessarily taken seriously in academic circles). The agents go to see Dr. Cantor in his office at the museum.
Wanting to know more about Opiel and Nehal, Dion remembers an old friend from graduate school named Olufemi “Femi” Orundire. She studied anthropology with Dion, and was writing a dissertation on the persistence of Taino cultural traditions among Dominicans. Femi’s father was a Nigerian scholar of African history and politics, and her mother a Dominican medical doctor. For personal reasons, Femi never finished her Ph.D., but runs a music and bookstore in Harlem called “Taino Music and Books.” Visiting the bookstore, they find that the store is jam-packed with used and new CDs, mostly consisting of Reggae and World Beat titles, as well as some Alt Rock, Jazz, Latin Jazz, and Ambient music. Along with the usual posters of Bob Marley and other musical artists, there is an Imperial Ethiopian flag, a framed portrait of the late Emperor Haile Selassie, and next to the door, a small iron cauldron and a dish with a dome-like effigy with a crude face made of white cowries set into it. The bookstore portion of the shop consists of a small display of bookshelves in a back corner. Most of the titles are on anthropology, sociology, history, and subversive politics. The effigy is an Eshu Elegua, a spirit guardian of doorways and passages in Santeria, who is believed to facilitate communication between the mortal and spirit realms.
Femi herself is a fair-skinned African-American woman with long dreadlocks tied back into a kind of dense ponytail, and dressed in army fatigues and jacket and a sleeveless T-shirt with an image of Marcus Garvey superimposed on a large black star. She wears a woven hemp necklace with Rastafarian colors and a pendant depicting a crowned lion. She is attractive, but seems to harbor a deep and potentially volatile resentment. She is suspicious of the agents, although cooperates well enough because of Dion’s influence. She also quickly warms up to Juliette. The agents question her about the Dominican cult activities, which make her angry and uncooperative. When Dion asks her about Nehal-Opiel, however, she realizes that he knows something about some of what she has been experiencing lately. She takes them downstairs to her basement, which is crowded with ritual artifacts and accoutrements. She then shows them a table where she has several different statuettes and effigies, including images of the Hindu elephant-headed Ganesh, another Eshu, an African version of the Yoruba Eshu, a shell carving shaped like a skull (and similar to the small carving found in the hand of the sacrificed man at the church), and a replica of a Hellenistic sculpture of Hermes cast in resin. All of the images represent gods or spirits responsible for passages and transitions, and the investigators make the connection between this theme, the “gate” symbols at the murder site, and what Dion knows of the mysterious Nehal.
Femi asks Dion if he’s heard the music. She says she keeps music playing in her shop loud to try and block it out, and it seems to work, but she’s heard it loud recently, and especially when she met with a boy who came into the shop looking for books and a CD on cymatics. The boy gave her his cell phone number, which she then shares with Dion.
Juliette goes to see Dion to talk with him about her dream, when the FBI agents show up. Meanwhile, while listening to police band radio, Terry Strahan hears about a homicide near Times Square. He goes to get the scoop, and meets up with the others there. His police contact gives him access to the crime scene, while Dion Cantor and Juliette Pearce stand by. The victim is a young man whose abdomen has been torn open and his intestines pulled out and scattered on the pavement in the alley where he was killed. His wallet identifies him as Eric Golden. He has not been robbed, only brutally murdered. After the initial crime scene investigators have done their work, Dion and Juliette are allowed through. Juliette immediately recognizes the similarities between the murder and her dream.
Meanwhile, Dr. Cantor surreptitiously takes the substance that he uses while working magic, and casts a spell to detect the presence of magic. While there is a considerable amount of magic, he senses that it is dissipating, and the highest concentration is on the wall of one of the buildings forming the alley. Dion notes a crack in the wall dripping with blood. Genevieve has determined that an impossibly dense concentration of blood has been inserted into the crack in the wall, and is now oozing out. Dion determines that a teleportation portal of some sort was activated here, and casts a spell to try and see where the portal leads. He has a vision of a kind of nest or den containing a variety of odds and ends, and built on what appears to be the side of a badly-paved road overgrown with weeds and tall grass. Realizes that it is a piece of raised highway, broken off from the rest of the road and left standing, but before he can get a better look at the surroundings, he becomes aware that the one who created the portal is aware of him, and the vision abruptly ends. Meanwhile, Dion and the others determine that the splattered guts are a perverse form of extispicy, or divination performed by examining entrails.
Juliette mentions the similarities between her the crime and her dream, and asks if a similar crime has occurred in any nearby prisons. Genevieve asks her police contacts, who tell her that a prisoner being held at Rikers Island was disemboweled in a similar manner just yesterday. The man was Mexican, which coincided with Juliette’s dream. Considering the possibility of an interethnic war of some sort, they learn that Dominican drug dealers are currently at war with Mexican drug dealers that have been moving in on their local turf.
After doing some research, the investigators locate a possible site matching what Dion saw in the vision. It is a partially demolished bridge in a mostly desolate neighborhood of south Brooklyn. They arrive to find a piece of bridge mostly inaccessible without the use of a very tall ladder. They get the sense that they are being watched from the broken windows of an abandoned warehouse. Inside, they encounter some strange creatures vaguely resembling doglike men and smelling of putrescence. One of the creatures wears a pair of spectacles, and speaks in fairly good (though distorted) English to Dion, telling him that he was once a scholar and his researches into the unknown seems to have caught up with him and dragged him into the world he was studying. He warns Dion that there is another hybrid creature that’s made its nest nearby.
Meanwhile, trying to find a way to climb up to the broken span of bridge, the others are not aware that they have been noticed by the murderer, and that they have become the quarry. They are stalked and then attacked by a creature like a man whose nearly hunched back is covered in red scaly skin. His right hand is transmogrified into a bright red, monstrous claw, and he attacks them, nearly sending Genevieve falling off the third floor of the warehouse. Between them they manage to wound and then kill the creature as it falls off to its death from the third-story catwalk. Later, investigating the abandoned span of bridge, they find a nest with several items belonging to the victims, and a series of ritualistic symbols drawn in plant paint on the broken pavement. Scrawled in English are the words, “He is coming!”
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