Kingdom of the Beast: The Enemy Within

© 2011 by M.P. Hellinger. All rights reserved.

First Volume of Three.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/14/2011

ISBN:978-1-4567-8562-8 (sc)

ISBN:978-1-4567-8563-5 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Biographical Details

Prologue

Part 1

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Part 2

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Part 3

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Part 4

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

PART 5

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Na’enté

Under the unseeing gaze of the vengeful but distracted Godhead and keeper of the Beast,

Within an indefinable universe beyond the vasty plains of Thrace,

The force of inevitability and unpredictability confront.

In unison with the silvered music of the Orphean Iyre.

Dionysus is torn from his mother’s womb,

To be born a second time from the thigh of Zeus;

As Orpheus returns from the nether world with the secret wisdoms

Resurrection, continuity, immortality and retribution.

The ripples and the music unwind, disperse

Yet leave their invisible and separate marks for all eternity.

While the events of future times also have already happened:

Somewhere.

G.B.

Palermo, 1767

"The ambiguities of the nature of time allows that whatever happens continues to happen, imprinted forever on the ribbon of life; as past, future and present co-exist simultaneously.

Although isolated and separated from all other events each specific occurrence is available to be tapped into and repeated should one have the perception, perseverance and perspicacity so to do.

There is a pattern.

As with the mysteries of Orpheus, who through music could coordinate the earth rhythm to charm The Beast and achieve that calm and peace necessary to pass at will through the divide and journey onwards to dimensions beyond.

Thus acknowledging an infinity of alternate realities and memories inexorably linked: a multiplicity of opposing yet complimentary worlds and consciousness.

Conversely it is possible to travel inwards within oneself, pushing towards the core of reason. Here finally to confront one’s mirror image: deception, corruption and the personification of evil and on past that towards an all encompassing and stifling void similarly contained within an incomprehensible environment incompatible with the constancy of time.

Thus it is that we exist only in the dreams of others."

These thoughts are taken from the writings of Alessandro di Cagliostro, the protagonist of this piece and draws heavily on the proscribed wisdom of the priest Onomacritus.

Di Cagliostro, an eighteenth century Sicilian born charlatan, forger and practitioner of the black arts had successfully navigated the darkest areas of his intellect through the relentless pursuit of knowledge.

In so doing he had acquired access to powers and the understanding of the illusion of self far beyond the prevailing wisdom of his and even our times.

From Greek mythology to contemporary thought, such as that of J.B.Lamarck and others, Di Cagliostro evolved his own theories and expertise in the application of transmutation philosophy.

This he utilised for his own sinister purposes while pushing towards the concept that the exact instant of fusion, of metamorphosis happens in some remote metaphysical elsewhere as seemingly extraneous elements feed in forcing an imperceptible continuity. Chance or inevitability?

Earlier influences had involved Di Cagliostro in the ceremonies of a secret society allied to that of Orphic ritual and practices.

This mysterious sect had penetrated the monastic establishment at Caltagirone where he had been sent as a rebellious adolescent and led eventually to his departure with his mentor the seer Althotas ###,in search of the odyssey of Alexander, the God King and the majestic mysteries of the Cult of Orpheus.

The writings of the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro were lost thorough time and official suppression but rumours and fragmentary evidence persist; feeding on whispered suggestion and myth.

Possibly he had found his way to the truth, an audacious truth that nothing is constant or true to itself yet logic through perception is the applied wisdom.

Perception as fragmented and flawed as reality glimpsed through a prism."

M.Y.W.

London 1997

## Perhaps another evocation of the Comte de Saint Germain?

Biographical Details

Alessandro Di Cagliostro, né Giuseppe Balsamo (1743-1795??) Alchemist, Necromancer, Charlatan and Philosopher.

A subversive by instinct.

Through his mentor he had already gained by his early twenties access to the secrets of the ancient Etruscan mysteries.

During this time he also continued his research into mind altering fungi and soporific drugs and their pulse slowing possibilities.

Later he expanded on the theories of Frederick Anton Mesmer (1734-1815) and became an adept practitioner; pushing to new areas of control through the distortion of perception.

Comtesse de la Motte (1756-1791)

Accomplice of di Cagliostro.

Branded and imprisoned for her involvement in the theft of the superb diamond necklace originally made to the order of Louis XV.

Prince de Rohan-Guéméné (1734-1803)

Raffish bishop and dupe.

The Prince had disgraced himself while minister of France to the Viennese court by questioning the honour of Marie Antoinette; France’s future Queen and daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.

Di Cagliostro, seeing an opportunity had gradually inveigled himself into the Prince Bishop’s confidence.

There was a very important diamond necklace, intended originally for a previous royal mistress Marie Jeanne du Barry, which he, de Rohan had been convinced to believe the Queen now wished to acquire; but surreptitiously.

Without sufficient funds, he had agreed none the less to act as guarantor and go between for the transaction, about which the Queen knew nothing, in order to regain his position at court.

From the confused atmosphere of Paris already unhinged by the workings of a prestigious commission appointed by Louis XVI at the instigation of Benjamin Franklin to investigate the ‘animal magnetism’ theories of F.A. Mesmer, the necklace was eventually broken up to find its way to London where it was sold illicitly.

While the Comtesse de la Motte fell to her death from an upper storey in that same city to where she had finally escaped from the Sâlpetrière.

The Rohan affair added to the flow of events that inexorably led to The Revolution and Varennes, where the authority of the Crown was definitively challenged and found deficient and assured Queen Marie Antoinette’s rendezvous with the guillotine.

Giovanni Angelo Braschi, Pope Pius VI (1717-1799)

His pontificate was initially successful. However politically destabilizing assassinations in Rome against the background of the French Revolution and the challenge to his authority by Joseph II of Austria led to his papacy ending in chaos.

He was carried off to Grenoble and was eventually to die at Valence in Southern France, far from the Holy See.

While Alexandre Berthier, Prince of Neuchâtel and Wagram and Marshal of France, who had chased the Pope from Rome, was to duplicate the death of the Comtesse de la Motte free falling from a third stores window in 1815 as the glories of Napoleonic France disintegrated.

Honore Gabriel Riqueti

Comte de Mirabeau (1749-1791)

Politician and Revolutionary.

Roger David Casement (1864-1916)

English overseas administrator and Irish patriot: humanist and victim. Executed by the British.

William Butler Yates (1865-1939)

Irish dramatist, poet, and senator. Nobel Prize winner. Long time interest in theosophy and the occult.

Colonel Otto Skorzeny (1908-1975)

S.S.Officer. Hitler’s personal choice to effect tactical diversions for the furtherance of the 3rd Reich.

Alexander 3rd of Macedonia (356B.C.-323B.C.)

Tutored by Aristotle and master of his world yet tormented by the possibility of other worlds, other wisdoms beyond his intellect.

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717-1797)

Opinionated opinion maker, gossip and trend setter.

Jean Baptiste ‘Django’ Reinhardt, (1910-1953)

Gypsy, musician and jazz innovator; the essence of his epoch.

Prologue

Early 1791

Emerging from infinite blackness, the noise of the tide nagging at the shoreline transpires to be the sound of the bellows heating the charcoal filtration system controlling the noxious nature of the vegetal brew.

The Count di Cagliostro set his chair within the reflected shadow of the pentagram which he had secretly rendered to appear at a given time of the sun’s cycle each day, and removed the protective mask, fashioned from a calf’s membrane, from about his nose and mouth.

The babble of different Italian dialects wafting up from the dankest levels of the prison did not distract him as he carefully tipped just two drops of an incandescent ochre coloured liquid from the rock crystal vial tied about his neck into the infusion of fungi he had been preparing. The writings of Bombastus Von Hohenheim, Peracelsus himself, had been inspirational in achieving the liquid and consequently the route the Count now journeyed, guided by an evocation of the melancholic child convened in accordance with the rituals.

Varennes would be soon now, anarchy and chaos.

*       *       *

The bookseller snorted, clearing his nasal passages of mucus and the smoky, static London atmosphere.

Madame Jeanne de Valois, Comtesse de La Motte, drunk as always, slumped on her chair hovering between worlds like the spluttering candles which had burnt dangerously low. On a plinth behind her the power and incongruity of an oversized, over ornate menorah, heightened the ambivalence of the decor and worked to unsettle the bookseller.

A young serving girl flounced into the room to clear the debris of a long consumed meal. She made no attempt to deal with the candles or her teetering mistress, smiled vaguely at the bookseller and was gone.

The man flicked through the sheaf of papers Madame had prepared for him. Holding the scrawl to the fluttering light he smirked as he re-read some of the names including the Comte de Mirabeau and De Rohan, Prince Bishop of Strasbourg.

Yes, his investment of a few gold guineas would return heavy dividends, especially now that the death of the mendacious Honore de Mirabeau had just been reported.

The bookseller snorted again, the Grub Street hack, he had already engaged to embellish this project could now take his art to more oblique and more lucrative levels of odiousness.

The recollection of that old saw concerned with history and lies warmed his spirit.

He continued to sit, fascinated as he watched a spider descend out of the Comtesse’s once fashionable perruque, walk across her face and descend through the cleavage of her bodice down towards some other recess of her body.

The cruddy bookseller had gone now.

Madame la Comtesse had marked his departure through lowered lids and now alone in the ever darkening salon as the smoking candles hissed and died she realized it was at last the time.

He had finally come for her as he had always promised he would. 43152.png

43155.png Escape; still successfully eluding Fersen and his pursuing troopers. The magnificence of Louis, the Bien-Aimé’s intended gift to his mistress glinting in it’s velvet case; a myriad reflected flames echoing the livid sparks as the coach and horses at full gallop slithered over the cobbles, leaving the Porte de Vincennes far behind.

. . . . The Comtesse lobs a used wine bottle from the lurching carriage.

The same diamond white flames, as humiliated, her flesh burnt, seared by the gaoler’s branding iron to her right hand.

"Alessandro’’ she cried out in tormented ecstasy as Di Cagliostro evoked within her the numbing sadness of a world beyond hope.

The candles flared brighter despite a sudden mischievous breeze which agitated the heavy draperies as it swirled through the suite of dusty, empty rooms unoccupied since the discovery of her ritualistic kiIIing.

The menorah crashes to the floor.

*       *       *

Mocking laughter rippling across the night-time gardens of the Chateau de Versailles as the Prince de Rohan made his obeisances to a counterfeit Queen of France and rolling clouds darkened the face of the moon.

Marie Antoinette talked with Honore de Mirabeau as they walked the gardens at St.Cloud accompanied only by her paramour Axel Fersen.

Mirabeau had begun to win the Queen’s confidence since he had been able to warn her of the complexities surrounding the Du Barry diamond necklace affair and the increasing danger to the stability of the realm.

He had stumbled on the conspiracy and the self-styled Di Cagliostro through his father’s connections and whispered rumours emanating from Berlin and the influences of Moses Mendelssohn.

In his deviousness he had appreciated the exploitable potential and incipient risk in attempting to control the drift as France edged towards chaos.

Plots and counterplots, ends, means and opportunism.

*       *       *

Madame de La Motte adrift in her alcoholic haze and the agony of the exquisite pain knew that they had vanquished.

Together they had summoned up Dionysus the ‘Master of Misrule’ and finally the Queen had been brought low, humiliated and ridiculed as she herself had been.

Royal greed had been underscored and previous depravities once again recalled.

Anarchy would follow chaos.

Madame sighed, fulfilled in spite of all, comforted by the presence of her master Di Cagliostro.

To-morrow mutated into yesterday.

"Alessandro’’ she whispered again, secure in his care in spite of the gnawing acceptance that she had been as much his dupe as had the Prince de Rohan.

The music wafted up from the street three floors below as the spider scurried deeper.

*       *       *

Trapped within a mesmeric trance the Prince Bishop saw the flood of excrement flow from the incubus floating above him as it defecated to extinction.

Part 1

1984

The man arrived as arranged.

He had driven up from the South, timing his arrival as instructed.

He noted the hotel porter eying the distinctive Swiss number plates on his car.

Good, his progress would have registered as he had wanted, should anything go wrong.

The woman was already there.

They said their ‘Hallos’ and settled to their assigned roles of master and mistress. The barman watched them with a certain hostility while carrying on a bitchy conversation with one of his minions.

What shall I call you? he asked

"Paola is my name’’ she replied looking straight into his eyes, challenging him to look away.

You’re Swiss aren’t you? I noted your auto comes from Zug.

The car lives in Zug, he said.

As for me call me William.

Yes Herr Tell.

She didn’t laugh, her eyes sought to understand what her position was, what this job was all about.

She was paid to be used, but this time her professional instinct sensed unusual complexities.

She came out of her reverie as the barman presented the bill for signature.

"Thank you Mr. Adams.’’ As William did the necessary.

She noticed that he signed with his left hand, his right was twisted, the top two joints of the third finger missing.

He watched the barman’s disdainful ignoring of Paola.

She didn’t react; she understood that game and how to play it.

*       *       *

Adams lay on the bed watching Paola as she dressed. The sunlight sliced through the partly closed curtains and hit off a mirror, splattering the ceiling with coloured light patterns.

A peacock screamed in the hotel gardens, disturbing the intense quietness that had enveloped them.

The booming ocean just couldn’t quite be heard.

Chapter 1

Holtzmann felt tired, very tired. Business was lousy,