CONJURELLA MESSIAH: NECRONOMICON MONKS Abomination Scripture by T. Casey Brennan This is the story of Conjurella Con II. No, the blood has dried now; the Conjurella memories are no more. Gone the voices: "Lift him up!", gone the memory, gone the blood. It is a decade beyond 1963 now: ten years are passing. No longer Dallas, but Toronto. David Ferrie is dead. We are free. No, this is the story of Cosmicon II, the last weekend of January, 1973, a comic book convention held at Winters College, part of York University in Toronto, an extravaganza that would include future Tonight Show guest host, P.J. O'Rourke, Ted Nugent, the first computer game installed in North America (in the basement of Winters), and, at the last moment, the blood-stained legend, T. Casey Brennan No, this is the story of women named A, of abbreviated names, of Vampirella, of the Absinthe Cafe, of secrets and legends and dried blood. This is Cosmicon II. The sixties that spilled the blood of John Kennedy were over. A memory. A blurred vision of high school years, followed by the early sales of fiction stories by T. Casey Brennan...was the first a cover-featured story in the Major Magazines/Candar Men's Group men's magazine CHARGER, Feb. 1968? (they left out the "T" on my name on the cover), or was it "Family Curse" in Jim Warren's EERIE magazine, 1969? Who knows? This is 1973. David Ferrie is dead; Dallas is an aborted memory, a dream that couldn't be. But Cosmicon II will be the scene of another murder, the murder of the mind of the greatest comic book publisher that ever lived, Jim Warren. A quarter century later, a zine called HUNGRY FREAKS would publish Jim's account of a condition which seemed to attack his central nervous sytem, a condition which left him helpless as his company was led to ruin, and a court-ordered Chapter VI bankruptcy. Dr. E is close behind; I can feel his cold presence. Jim Warren has taken to publishing a great many of my stories. Dr. E is displeased. I am so unsure of myself; the sudden conversion from being a shy country boy with few friends and a secret life, to an overnight celebrity for the award and award nominations I received for "On the Wings of a Bird", drawn by the late Jerry Grandenetti, in CREEPY #36, November 1970 issue, all at the New York Comic Art Convention at the Statler Hilton in July of 1971. I stepped off the stage at the awards presentations, with the Ray Bradbury Cup of Warren's own Frazetta Awards, and nominations for both the Comic Art Fan and Shazam Academy of Comic Book Arts awards. EERIE #38 carried pictures of me receiving that trophy in 1972; I think there are copies of that issue floating around Cosmicon II. Flash-bulbs popped, fan journalists stormed me with tape recorders, mikes, and questions, and a new era was born in my life. Somehow, I imagined that, in and amongst the sad, melodramatic artistry I had perfected -- Warren's letter columns referred to "the classic T. Casey Brennan allegory", and compared me to Dali and Rod Serling -- I could drop little hints and clues of those secrets I carried so well. One of my Warren stories began with a man who resembled me leaning out the window with a rifle, thinking "Something's going to happen soon...", but I didn't know then, not all the time, couldn't bear the Conjurella memory yet. Some months earlier, I had written "Shadow of Dracula" for Warren's VAMPIRELLA comic book; it was recently reprinted by Harris Comics, who bought Jim's properties at auction after a court-ordered bankruptcy, as VAMPIRELLA OF DRAKULON #3, in May 1996. It was about the Van Helsings from the Bram Stoker classic, DRACULA, it's back in 1897, and they're attempting to create a blood serum to cure vampirism. Comic book writers often like to emphasize certain words in bold-face, and when I showed Daddy, I had emphasized the words "THE PROJECT" on the manuscript, in a reference to this anti-vampirism nonsense. Daddy points at the words "THE PROJECT", and says: "You can't do that." I say: "Why not?" Then I stare in bewilderment, but inside, that bewilderment is a lie. Deep within, the Conjurella memory lurks; deep within, the truth that cannot be: I am only a boy, shy, frail, sensitive, artistic, but it was my hand that pulled the trigger. Kidnapped, drugged, tormented, injected: I am the true cold, dark legend, Lee was innocent. I killed the President. I shot John Kennedy. Daddy growls the name of Dr. E. Closer comes the Conjurella memory; Daddy is right, I know, but I don't know how, can't remember how Dr. E could loom forth from the 1950s to forbid me to write something in a comic book in the 1970s. In one world, THE PROJECT is the Port Hope office of MK-ULTRA, a hellish reality of forced drug and hypnosis experiments on children, that will lead to the asassination of the President. In another world, THE PROJECT is a component in a vampire comic, a skillful plot device involving a cure for Vampirella, from the socially inept but brilliant comic book writer that many readers now feel is Jim Warren's best ace: T. Casey Brennan. The two worlds must not collide, but they do, only for a moment, and I say, inexplicably: "I'm not a little boy any more. He can't tell me what to do any more." And now it is 1973 Toronto. Time has washed away the blood; Dr. E's injections have washed away the memory. Kennedy is a name in a history book, like Howard Leslie Brennan. I carry no guilt, no shame, no recollection of the blood here: JFK in THIS world was killed by a lone nut with a defective weapon and no motive. Here I never knew him. Here I never wept. Not here, not now, not in the parallel world of Toronto, 1973. In the days preceding Cosmicon II, I had met, first Asian A, then American A, and fallen in love with them both. They weren't spies, public figures, or comic book publishers, so to put them among the Necronomicon Monks, they must be half known and half concealed: Pretty girls named A____ who loved me, once. Now they are gone, like their love for me. Now THEY are memories; now their words of love are as distant as Dr E's words of torment, or Jim Warren's words of praise for my comic book stories. Once they were real. The taste of memories is bittersweet. In November of 1972, Asian A and I took the train to Toronto. Asian A put her head on my shoulder; there is a scent and a taste to Asian women easily as intoxicating and as addictive as opium. It cannot be washed off; it cannot be concealed, and even now, the scent of an Asian woman will set my heart pounding, and my lungs hyper-ventillating. The story of the Necronomicon Monks is truth, but it is absurd truth, so I will take this one step further, for this also is true: if an Asian girl, particularly a pretty Asian girl (which would include about eight out of ten of them), enters my space, I will know where she is, what hallways she has walked down, what rooms she has entered, by scent alone. But this was the story of the Necronomicon Monks. Daddy's stories for Street & Smith's 1940s pulp magazine LOVE STORY were one of the few things that he ever did that I liked. It was also one of the few things he ever did that he didn't somehow figure out a way of using against me. I'd seen letters to Daddy from LOVE STORY editor, Daisy Bacon; I think she published only two of his stories, under the authorship, Bill Brennan. But he was THERE, in the pulps, like Cthulu, Conan, and L. Ron Hubbard, like Lovecraft's hypothetical book of sorcery, the Necronomicon. And in 1973, I was developing a strange, lethal obsession with black magic, that went far beyond the fictional devices we all used for the stories in the Warren magazines, CREEPY, EERIE, and VAMPIRELLA. The Necronomicon has always been a subject for debate among the followers of Lovecraft and the pulps. Some say Lovecraft created the Necronomicon, like L. Ron Hubbard's former literary agent, Forry Ackerman, created Vampirella. Others say it was an actual book of ancient sorcery, that Lovecraft had discovered and decided to use in his stories in another 1940s pulp, WEIRD TALES. In this latter category is found this legend: The Necronomicon was discovered by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, and sealed behind stone in a monastery in Tibet...even they, who could slaughter thousands of their own kind, still feared its dark power. No: I bear the Dulles Stigmata: protracted delusions of a religious or occult nature, which are the trademark symptom of those who were subjected to the CIA's illegal mind-control experiments of the 1950s, directly overseen by CIA Director, and later Warren Commission member, Allen Dulles. But this is Toronto in 1973. This is Cosmicon II. Dallas is a decade in the past, and the basement room where I would remember, and write CONJURELLA, is more than two decades in the future. In that fateful world-to-be of the nineties, I would make contact with others who plausibly and recognizably (to me, who had lived it) claimed to have been adbucted and abused by MK-ULTRA. Yet, the stories would wane into occultism: terrifying tales of unmistakable CIA abductions are peppered with the absurd. Abductees, after presenting what would otherwise be valuable testimony, go on to relate accounts of neighbors with mind-reading rays, NASA officials with time machines, and visions of Rose Kennedy as an ally of the assassins. Nor was I less guilty in this also. Relating now, in the nineties, my memories of Dr. E, and the real-life PROJECT, I am constantly reminded that in the seventies, I wrote essays for a variety of occult publications, claiming to be the reincarnation of noted occult figure, Aleister Crowley. This was as intended by the CIA. I also carry the Dulles Stigmata. If we are all reincarnations of Aleister Crowleys, time travelling through hell with NASA and Rose Kennedy, then our testimony is far less plausible, except to a very few. But in Toronto in 1973, I am innocent: not still the assassin of Dallas that no one saw, not yet the assassin of CONJURELLA that no one believed. Sometime after I fell in love with Asian A, and before Cosmicon II, I met, and fell in love, with American A. American A was pretty, but not really quite as pretty as Asian A, who was indescribably gorgeous. Yet, American A was not without power over me, and her power was words of love...promises and whispers, her fine, slender strands of blonde hair brushing across my face, so different from the thick, long, sleek black hair of Asian A. In the days before Cosmicon II, American A spoke in promises and whispers, swore she would love me forever, and begged me not to go to Ontario, where she knew Asian A awaited me. But within, there with the memory of Dallas, somehow concealed and omnipresent, like Poe's Tell-Tale Heart, was he memory of Linda. Like John Kennedy's blood, Linda's tears poured over me; like the mythical Necronomicon of Tibet, Linda's memory was sealed up in stone, sealed within. Uncle Johnny was the bad uncle. Quite unlike Uncle Charley, also of Columbus, Ohio, who had one wife, and one set of kids, Uncle Johnny married and divorced and remarried frequently, throughout his unlamented life. Some time in the early 1950s, he married Aunt Bonnie, whom I immortalized with the fictional appellation "Conjurella", in my story of the same name. Her daughter was Linda, who was the same age as me; for a while, she came to live with us in Avoca, Michigan. She was a perfect, exquisite little girl, long blonde hair, a high I.Q., and an air of placcid quality, even at the age of five. When she left us with Aunt Bonnie, in 1953, shortly before I started school, she wore white muffs with sugar cubes in them; that will always be my archetypical memory of her, Linda and Aunt Bonnie leaving. It would not be, it could not be, that fleeting glimpse of Linda, that day in Dallas, that hallway on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building, that fleeting glimpse, so cruel, as the MK-ULTRA operatives hustled her past so quickly. But this was Toronto in 1973: Linda was only a whisper here, from two decades past. Here my heart was filled with Asian A and American A, as I drank heavily, autographing copies of CREEPY and EERIE, wandering through the maze of Winters College, attempting to cope with my chaotic love affairs, my alcoholism, and my new-found fame. Yet deep within, the memory of Linda lurked, deep within, I knew: she, like me, had been of the chosen ones. She, like me, had been born to kill, born to serve THE PROJECT, born to kill John Kennedy for MK-ULTRA, born to serve the hellish renegades of the Office of Strategic Services who had chosen us to end the power of the Kennedy dynasty forever. Perhaps, sometimes when American A's blonde hair brushed against my face, there was that whisper of a memory of Linda. This was Toronto in 1973, this was an alternate world. I feared the intense cold of Toronto in the parallell world of Cosmicon II, 1973, and Winters College was a vast, unchartable labyrinth. Sometimes, in my wanders through it, I would come upon a door leading to the cold, white world outside. For a moment, I would stare transfixed at the wind blowing little whisps of snow through the bitter cold. Beyond those doors was the cold world from which I had come, and the cold world to which I would return. Beyond those doors was a cold past in which I had lost Linda and shot President Kennedy, a cold future in which I would remember, and transcribe, those things in the legend of CONJURELLA. But within those doors was Cosmicon II, a world of Asian A and American A playing tug-o-war with my heart, a world of adulation for the poetic, panelled prose that had suddenly been evoked from me, a world of comic book stars and comic book fans, a world with no John Kennedy writhing in blood from my single, only shot, a world where THE PROJECT was only a brief, emotion-packed scene from VAMPIRELLA. Within the doors of Cosmicon II, this was truth; the other world, the alternate world, where THE PROJECT was a hell that MK-ULTRA had created for children, was far behind and far before. Yet, paradoxicly, obscenely, unfairly, in that alternate world of Toronto 1973, Dr. E had stalked me, and now Jim Warren was his target. Here at Cosmicon II, I had found my Shangri-La, a world of comic book and trivialities, a world of American A and Asian A battling inside my head for my heart, a world with no blood of JFK that I had spilled, no sinister designs of Dr. E and THE PROJECT. But somehow, beyond the lies, in the labyrinth of Winters College, Dr. E lurked, stalking Jim Warren; somehow, beyond the comic books, beyond the scent of Asian A and the whispers of American A, the memory of THE PROJECT lurked. "You're part of the New Frontier, Casey," Dr. E had told me earnestly, in the presence of two associates, after the Kennedy election victory of 1960. To those who knew, but had been lied to, THE PROJECT was the CIA's ultimate weapon against Castro's Cuba: a secret invasion force which would combine the traditional warfare of the past with the super-science of the future. Lee believed. Major General Edwin Walker did not. Walker had been a prominent activist for the right-wing John Birch Society, which, in that era, had still been enamored of America's military, and America's espionage apparatus. MK-ULTRA had sought a protective cover of rightists and paramilitarists, standing ready with their own troops, to aid in the supposed "invasion of Cuba". Those who DID believe had included American Nazi Party leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, the scholarly but sinister Dr. Fred G. Schwartz of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (which shared offices with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans), and martial arts expert Bruce Lee, hell-bent on liberating his people from the murderous brand of communism which had overtaken China. But Walker had refused altogether, and Lee, under orders from David Ferrie, his commanding officer in the Civil Air Patrol, had fired on Walker and missed, deliberately, as a warning. Lee believed, but Walker did not. George Lincoln Rockwell, chess player, essayist, Nazi leader, friend: he believed also. ("Get Lincoln out of that Nazi suit, and talk to him man-to-man, and he's all right," someone had told me then.) "Call George and tell him the invasion is off," David Ferrie said, light-heartedly, after the assassination. Some years later, Rockwell would write my dad, sympatheticly, "Casey thinks he's a Jew but he's not." But Rockwell, like Edwin Walker, like Bruce Lee, like Lee himself, would perish. The sicties would claim the lives of George Lincoln Rockwell and Bruce Lee; Walker would die later, and horribly. Rockwell would be shot outside a laundromat, by one of his own men, in a virtual coup d'etat by the CIA, which would place the American Nazi Party squarely in the camp of the Kennedy assassins, directed no longer by their own eccentricities, but by the very government which they had purported to oppose. Major General Edwin Walker would be stalked and homosexually raped at a freeway rest stop, by men who would later identify him as a willing participant; he died shortly thereafter, the pain and humiliation were too great. And Bruce Lee: the cut-outs of memories, the fleeting glimpses of a past somehow lost, like that fleeting glimpse of Linda... That fleeting memory; no before, no after, just the memory. We are in a hotel room, somewhere. It is before the JFK assassination, sometime. Lee is there, like Bruce. They have both seen the children, Dr. E's children, sitting limply in chairs with needles in their necks, headsets on their ears, screens before their vacant faces. Dr. E says: it is necessary: child assassins formed with the super-science of the future, child assassins, a proud tradition of both sides of the now concluded great war, child assassins necessary for the invasion of Cuba. It has already grated on Lee; later, he will seek a friend and confidant in Dallas police officer, J.D. Tippitt, whom he will tell. But for Bruce, it is intolerable NOW. "Get rid of the kids," Bruce says, "We don't need them." Lee sits, staring downward, his hand on his forehead, wearing that sly, secret smile, only ever-so-slightly visible. "I can't," Lee says softly, and matter-of-factly. Bruce side-steps into position and gestures toward me. "Get rid of the kid," Bruce says, "Get him out of here. Take him home. Lose him. Anything." "I can't," Lee repeats, like deja vu. Bruce begins a series of blocks, cries, and kicks. I look at Lee questioningly with drugged vision: Dr. E or David Ferrie must have injected me again, recently. Lee says, chuckling, "Well, Bruce goes a little crazy like that sometimes. There's nothing we can do. It will pass." Under the hypnotic drug, I take these words literally, not as a joke, a game. I wait, horrified, for Bruce's supposed attack to pass. After, Lee says to Bruce, in earnest: "That was great. That was magnificent." But this is Toronto in 1973: this is Cosmicon II. I never knew them here. The air-tight doors of Winters College seal out the cold, the wind, the drifting snow, seal out the tormented past of Dallas, seal out the bleak future of Conjurella. Within these doors, there are no memories of the aborted invasion, no memories of the single shot which my hand fired, no memories of Christian Anti-Communism or Fair Play for Cuba...only comic books, and fans of my Warren stories, only the spectral phantasms of American A and Asian A, not present, but there in spirit, battling for the heart of T. Casey Brennan, not the child assassin, but the poet, not the pawn of Dr. E and MK-ULTRA, but the pawn of pretty girls, touching, whispering, promising, their hair in my face, their scent in my nostrils. Here, in this sealed off world of Winters College in 1973, T. Casey Brennan was not the secret assassin; he was Archie, torn between Betty and Veronica; he was not the drugged, helpless pawn of Dr. E, he was Dobie Gillis, lost in philosophy and love affairs... Yet, Dr. E lurked, even here. Inexplicably, Jim Warren had been strip searched by customs officials, upon entering Canada, en route from New York. What did they know, what did they suspect? What motives did they attribute, what foul plans did they suspect? Initially, it had seemed impossible to make it to Cosmicon II, where I had received an invitation to appear, complete with complimentary room at Winters College; Winters College, where the doors could block not only cold, but memories... And American A, who still loved me then, had begged me not to go. But go I did, riding into Port Huron with a friend that morning. I call a Canadian taxi from Port Huron, ride across the Blue Water Bridge, and soon, I am at the Canadian National Railway station in Sarnia. Or maybe I went to Asian A's apartment before the train station; I don't know anymore, I'm not a witness, I can't remember. The Sarnia-based taxi is called "A Stan-Lee Taxi". The driver gives me his card, and later, I show it at the convention, as a take-off on the name of the Marvel Comics publisher known as Stan Lee. The driver lays a rap that could be entitled: "Great Tips I Have Been Given". He tells me of a rider employed by a tire manufacturer, who ships him a full set of tires, later, as a tip. He wants comic books. But soon I will have no comic books. Soon, the bleak future of CONJURELLA will propel me into a network of hippie communes, homeless shelters and free meals. Soon, the insulating doors of Winters College will insulate me no more. I sent him no comic books, though I may have promised. I board the train for Toronto in Sarnia. I watch, sad and melancholy, as the Canadian countryside and the memories flicker past me. I am alone now. Not the sleek black torrents of hair of Asian A on my shoulder now, not the promises and whispers of American A, only sadness, when there should have been hope. Within are the memories, forgotten, but not gone, like a word on the tip of one's tongue, but somehow out of consciousness, somehow out of reach. In the last days of David Ferrie's life, in mid-1966, and early 1967, David Ferrie met with us on several occassions. I was always drugged and hypnotized during those meetings, so the words would just barely filter through, in little bits and fragments. I was no credible witness, then or now. But I knew Dr. E and David Ferrie were creating a disease to attack Africa. It must have been 1966 when David Ferrie told me they had successfully infected someone. "It's going to fly!" David Ferrie said of the AIDS virus, grinning proudly. Daddy smiled a sheepish smile, and nodded. He was afraid then. So am I. Even now. But within the insulating doors of Winters College awaited the Absinthe Cafe. The memories are non-sequential now, blurred visions of comic books, Jim Warren, fellow celebrity guests, and probably the most outstanding performance ever given by noted rock musician and hippie deerslayer, Ted Nugent. Nugent did not socialize with us, but future Tonight Show guest host P.J. O'Rourke drank that night at the same table with Jim Warren, me, and a second-rate comic book writer named Denny O'Neil. The subject of a controversial underground newspaper called SCREW comes up, then managed by Jim Buckley and Al Goldstein. Someone, I think Denny O'Neil, says: "Jim Buckley, he's the real intellectual behind that operation." At some point, Al Goldstein will be arrested in Cuba and charged by Fidel Castro with being a fellow CIA agent. And then someone says, "The Mafia does a pretty good job of distributing it." P.J. O'Rourke frowns, sips his drink, and says, "Yeah, until they take it over." But my mind is on American A, on the promises and whispers. She wants me to leave Asian A, wants me to marry her, wants me to believe in witchcraft, as she does...