Zero Regrets
(October 8, 2017)
21: First Blood
Hazard got out of the driver's side, Wendy out of the passenger's. Dipper was halfway to them when Wendy yowled, grabbed her leg, and danced as though in agony. Dipper was already running toward her. "Wendy!"
"Burning!" She shucked down her green pants, stepped out of them—Dipper saw a stream of smoke curling from them—and barefoot and wearing only brief pale-green panties, she rubbed her right thigh.
"Throw it onto the lawn!" Ford yelled.
Dipper grabbed the pants, wadded them, and then threw them, balled up, out onto the lawn. The protective purple barrier flared as the pants passed through.
"Dipper!" Wendy said. "I need something to cover me!"
Dipper had been wearing a long-sleeved chambray work shirt. He pulled it off and ran to her. "Here, wrap this around you."
Hazard said, "Let me look at that!"
Ford asked, "What did you have in your pocket?"
"I don't know—an amulet or something. It belonged to the first girl who—ow! I think that may blister."
Out on the lawn, the crumpled green pants were burning, though as a ball of bright crawling sparks, not in a clear flame. "Mabel!" Dipper yelled, "Unreel the hose and spray that! Don't step on the lawn, spray it from a distance!"
Mabel turned on the water and adjusted the nozzle to a jet and blasted the pile of embers until it became a blackened, smoking mass. Ford said, "That's enough, Mabel. Shut off the water. Everyone inside, please! I'll look at that wound."
They got into the living room. "What happened?" Mabel asked.
"Had something in my pocket that got red-hot," Wendy said. "Mabes, bring me a pair of slacks from my closet, please."
With Tripper moving around, looking anxious, Wendy sat on the couch, Dipper's shirt draped over her lap. Ford had her swivel around so her right leg was stretched out on the sofa. She had an angry red circle on the outside of her upper thigh. Ford reached into his coat pocket and produced one of his anomaly detectors, a compact one—meaning it was twice the size of a typical cell phone. "Hold still, please."
He swept the sensor bar a few centimeters above the burn. The screen lit up and then offered a readout that ran for six screens. Frowning, Ford read it. "Well, good news first. Whatever the source of the heat, this is an ordinary burn, not in itself paranormal. It looks like a first-degree injury. Do you have any aloe?"
"Some sunburn gel in our bathroom medicine chest."
"I'll get it," Mabel said, tossing down a pair of worn, soft charcoal-gray pants. "Be quiet, by the way. Allie and Brandi are sound asleep in you guys' bedroom." She went and returned, holding a small clear bottle nearly full of a translucent green gel.
"Thanks," Wendy said. She squirted a glob onto the burn, smoothed it with her fingers, and then said, "Dr. P, I know you got an MD and all, but if you'll look away, I'll get some pants on."
"Sorry!" Ford said, turning his back.
"Ooh—ouch!" Wendy said as she stood, hitching up her underwear before she pulled on the slacks. "Damn! That's gonna be sore for a while. OK, Ford, you can turn around now."
"Let's go to the table," Mabel suggested. "The girls are pooped. I want to let them get some sleep."
Ford left the three of them and Hazard at the table while he opened the front door and stepped outside. They heard water running for a minute, and then it stopped. He returned. "I can see a small silver disk in the ashes out on the lawn," he said. "I'm reluctant to cross the protective barrier and approach it for a closer examination. Wendy, tell us about it. Could you draw it?"
"I'm not a great artist, but I'll try," Wendy said.
"Art supplies coming up!" Mabel rushed to her room and back with a small sketch pad and an assortment of pencils, together with two erasers, one red rubber, the other a gray, soft one.
"OK," Wendy said, reaching for a pencil and the pad. Then she stopped. "You know what? Let me describe it to Mabel and she can sketch it. I'll look on and make corrections and suggestions."
"Good idea. Brobro, go over to the sofa and put on your shirt. Your pecs aren't all that impressive."
"Forgot," Dipper said, but he retrieved and donned his shirt.
He sat on Wendy's left, Mabel to her right. "It was about this big," Wendy said, making a circle of her forefinger and thumb.
"I'll draw it about twice that size," Mabel said.
"OK," Wendy said, frowning in thought. "There's a hole through it up at the top. Not real big. That's about right, yeah. There was a thong that it hung on. Now, this side had a creature sitting on some kind of throne or some deal. It's peculiar. Sketch an outline of somebody's head and body. Yeah, that's about the right size, but it should be lower in the circle."
Mabel erased and re-drew. "Now this is nuts," Wendy said. "It might have been a mask or some deal. The head was a goat's head, looking straight at you. No, not cute. Menacing, I guess? Better. The torso is like a woman's. Naked. Bare breasts."
"Kinky," Mabel murmured, her pencil busy. "Hey, Wen, does Dip still surf the Net looking for—"
"Keep your mind on your art," Dipper said.
Wendy ignored the siblings' exchange. "Now. The left arm—look at me—was stretched out, palm up. Like it was ready to hold a ball or something. Pretty good. Now the right arm was like this—sort of out to the side, but the elbow is bent and the hand's up in the air. Hand nearly making a fist—wait a second, look—but the index and middle fingers are pointing up. Good. Now, the back legs are kinda crossed, but they look weird 'cause they're goat legs. Knees don't work like a person's."
Mabel refined her sketch until Wendy said, "That's close. OK, now the back side had a cross on it. No, not an X. Like a cross on a church steeple. Longer upright. Good. Now, inside . . .."
When the sketch was done, Ford looked at it and said, "Baphomet."
"Is that good?" Mabel asked.
In unison, Dipper and Ford said, "No."
"Mason," Ford said, "do you want to explain—"
"I've got the medallion in a containment unit," said a voice from the doorway, making them all jump. They had forgotten Hazard.
Ford asked, "Did you go out unprotected—"
"I went onto the lawn," Hazard said. "I wouldn't say I was unprotected. Anyway, I used an insulated grasper to pick up the medallion and drop it into a size 6 containment cylinder."
"You didn't bring it through the barrier?" Ford asked.
"No, Chief. It's on the edge of the driveway. The fire turned the lanyard into charcoal, but wasn't hot enough to melt the silver."
"I'll put it into the isolation chest later," Ford said. "Mason was about to explain the lore of Baphomet."
"Well," Dipper said, "you know more about it than I do, but Baphomet is supposed to be a type of demon worshiped by the Knights Templar. They were a group of knights that traveled to the Holy Land—"
Ford interrupted. "The Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Salomonici. Actually, Mason, the order was formed in the Holy Land by a group of knights who proposed to protect Christian pilgrims. The order began in Jerusalem in 1119-1120. The Second Crusade was launched later in the century, and the Templars, who had quickly risen to importance, became key soldiers on the European side."
"And the Templars kind of created a banking system," Dipper said. "Anyway, their financial success led to their being accused of Satanism. Someone—I forget the name—testified that the Templars worshiped a demon named Baphomet. The thing is, that name's not mentioned in early Christian lore, and it's not biblical. I think it first showed up in the records of the Inquisition trial that led to the Pope's order dissolving the Templar order."
"Quite correct," Ford said. "The Templars, as Mason says, were immensely wealthy. By the early 1300s, many powerful secular figures, including the King of France, were deeply in debt to them. The cynical view is that the accusations of heresy and idolatry were a strategy to destroy the Templars and so dismiss the debts. The first mention of Baphomet was in a transcript of the Inquisition's actions dating to 1307. There is no evidence that the demon existed anywhere but in the minds of the Templars' accusers."
"Uh-oh," Wendy said. "I think I see a connection. It's like the ghost in the attic, right? Nothing until somebody creates a strong belief, and then it gets to be kinda real."
"Grunkle Ford," Dipper said, "who was the guy who created the image of Baphomet? He was an occultist, French, I think—"
"Éliphas Lévi," Ford said. "His major work was Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, published in the 1850s. It's a blend of history, legend, outright falsehoods, wild speculation, and political propaganda. Not exactly the most reliable source. In fact, as far as anyone can tell, the image of 'Baphomet' derives entirely from a sketch that the author—his real name, by the way, was Alphonse Constant—drew for his book. Since that volume was published, Baphomet has entered occult beliefs as a powerful demon."'
"Wait, wait, my head hurts," Mabel said. "So these Templar guys didn't worship a demon, and the demon they didn't worship didn't exist, but then people dreamed it up, and because this French guy drew a picture, it got to be real?"
"Very roughly, yes," Ford said.
"Then you're going to love this," Hazard said. She told the story they had heard from old Myrtle Bordein. She wrapped up, "So the diary was destroyed by her dad, but Myrtle remembered it pretty vividly. And the medallion was what the girls used to try to talk to the dead."
"The kernel from which the force in the attic grew," Ford said. "It is strangely appropriate that the image of Baphomet crystallized the paranormal forces. I wonder if any of the girls who took part in that ritual is still alive. At least one of them must have had a strong belief in the occult—that would be key to the accumulation of energies. I'm sure it was inadvertent, but they focused a lot of weirdness."
"They created a focus," Dipper said. "They sort of created a miniature Gravity Falls."
"Succinctly put," Ford said. "How is your leg, Wendy?"
"Sore," she said. "I apologize for the strip tease, but, man, it hurt!"
"You did the best thing you could," Ford said. "You got the amulet away from you. Throwing it onto the lawn stopped the reaction. The protective field was responding to its presence—trying to keep occult forces out. The energies degraded to heat, and the degree of heat shows that the medallion is the focus of a powerful proto-entity. Probably it isn't sentient, but that doesn't make it any less perilous. I'm going to formulate a plan. Tomorrow we're going to confront it—and destroy it."
"I think Wendy should stay here," Dipper said.
"No, dude."
"You're hurt," he told her.
"Little bit hurt," Wendy said. "But I saw how much this means to Myrtle. And I know it means that much to the families of all the other girls. Hurt? Yeah, like I say, a little. But most of all, Dip, I'm pissed."
He took her hand. "Then whatever this thing is, it made the worst mistake it could," he said. "It pissed off a Corduroy."
