Free Bed of Nails by Michael Slade Page B

benefactor was none other than Jack the Ripper. Not the real Ripper—for that monster was long dead—but a rabid psychotic who thought he could use the Magick of the Tarot to conjure Jack from the there and then of East End London in 1888 to the here and now of modern-day Vancouver.
    The ensuing carnival of carnage had cut short the careers of most of the writers lured to the island. One by one, the psycho had picked them off in fiendish ways, and had Zinc not thwarted him before he could sign the final occult symbol in blood, there would have been no survivors to tell their tale of horror. That task had fallen to Alex, during the many months she spent at home in Cannon Beach, Oregon, nursing Zinc back to health from a stabbing at the hands of the psychotic Ripper. Deadman’s Island became the title of her resulting book.
    “I assume the Ripper’s still locked away on Colony Farm?” said DeClercq, pulling the inspector’s mind back to the Strategy Wall.
    “Yes,” replied Chandler. “I phoned FPH. He’s confined in Ash 2, the high-security ward.”
    “What about visitors?”
    “No one suspicious. His only visitors are his lawyer and support staff from that law firm.”
    “Wes Grimmer still his counsel?”
    “Uh-huh,” replied Zinc. “But the Ripper is so far gone that he may never be fit to stand trial.”
    “Is this the work of a copycat?” The chief forked two fingers of one hand at the Hanged Man card and the photo of the suspended corpse pinned to the Strategy Wall.
    “It could be,” said the inspector. “The Ripper’s occult motive was all over the media at the time of his arrest. And Alex set it out in detail in her book.”
    “You don’t sound convinced.”
    “The M.O. is different, Chief. Our Ripper hanged four women in Vancouver at locations selected to form an inverted cross on a street map of this city. That mimicked what Jack the Ripper might have done in the East End of London with his first four victims. Then our Ripper lured a final female victim to Deadman’s Island to kill her at a ‘Magick place’ so that astral projection would propel his consciousness into the occult realm. Jack the Ripper might have done the same with his fifth and final victim in Room 13 of Miller’s Court. But here we have a single victim who is male, and the cross seems to be formed in how the man was strung up.”
    “So it isn’t the Ripper. And it might not be a copycat.”
    Chandler nodded. “The Tarot has enough influence on its own to spawn an occult killer.”
    “Refresh me, Zinc.”
    The Tarot, Chandler explained, is one of the great systems of divination. The others are the I Ching and Scandinavian runes. Tarot magic is “in the cards,” as each symbol relates a seeker to the physical and spiritual worlds. Symbols evoke both conscious and subconscious reactions, so it is believed that each card opens a door to the occult mind. The word “occult” means “unknown” or “hidden.” Occult manifestation occurs when subconscious insight enlightens the conscious reality of the seeker. Divination empowers the mind to bring the occult into being, so the cards reflect what is, has been, and will be. The Magick is in the seeker’s transmutation.
    The origin of the Tarot is an unsolved mystery. The deck has worn many guises through the centuries, but the basic meaning of each symbol has remained the same. A tarot deck consists of seventy-eight cards. The fifty-six in the four suits are called the Minor Arcana, and they evolved into modern playing cards. The twenty-two symbolic pictures are the Major Arcana, and those images reflect the occult’s Greater Secrets.
    Occult power is omnipotent. That’s the basic law. All things—including us—reflect a greater power—the greater power of the occult realm.
    So what’s “up there” …
    Quod superius …
    Projects “down here” …
    Sicut inferius …
    And manifests itself as what we call reality.
    “As above, so below.”
    The Tarot hides the