Manson showed me the cigarette and smiled. “They looking to move on, to move up, get that enlightenment jones a-goin’. ’Cept they got it right, not like all those bible-thumpers and prissy-ass Satanists. They get you can’t know light unless you know the dark, and after a while spent in either, you go blind, and the dark wins out anyway.”
It was my turn to get it.
“They’re seeking out enlightenment by courting the dark, embracing it,” I said. Charlie nodded.
“Yeah, it’s beautiful, baby.” His eyes were looking into places I couldn’t see. “They put my feet on the path a looooong time ago. I was walking it and didn’t even know it, ’til they showed me. They taught me the real meaning of family. Children, man, they are the harbingers of our own end and the gateway to immortality. I’m gonna live forever. My seed is in all the blood of mankind now, just like theirs. Everything I foretold is coming to pass right now—the race riots, the hate and anger, the end of the of wagging tongues, the dawn of the raising of fists, the whites and the blacks going to war. I’m a prophet and that will be borne out by history. They sent me out as their prophet, showed me all of it.” Manson cocked his head and gave me an almost pitying look. “They’ll show you too. They like you, Ballard, that’s why they haven’t killed you yet.”
“Okay, Charlie,” I said, leaning closer. “This one is for a light for that cigarette and a carton of smokes. I want you to explain something to me, and I want every detail.” And he did.
* * *
“It’s a cult,” I said to Grinner, Anna, and Vigil, “a cult of Buddhist mystics. The murder of Jane, of all the girls, they’re ritual sacrifices for them, designed to provide empowerment and further their messed-up take on enlightenment. It all makes sense now.” We were in the office at the Hard Limit, and daylight was burning. I had spent the morning with Manson, and I now had much less than twenty-four hours to get out of Dodge.
Gida had ordered Dragon out of town on an assignment shortly after we had our little chat. Dragon was to go back to Bombay Beach, where Jane’s body had been dumped in 1984, to follow up on local interviews. Dragon and I both knew it was bullshit, a way to keep her from helping me and compromising herself to the Nightwise. I had urged her to go. I didn’t want to cause her any more grief than I already had. Gida was making her take Luke along, supposedly as a partner, but really to keep an eye on her, make sure she was nowhere near me.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold the phone,” Grinner said. “We’re talking freakin’ Buddhists here. No attachment, right? Y’know, letting go of aggression and resentment. The Mr. Rogers of religions, right? This sounds nuts, Ballard. I think you and Manson shared too many magic toadstools, man.”
“Not a lot of people in the West realize it, but there are different sects and opposing philosophies and traditions in Buddhism,” Anna said, sipping her mint tea. “It’s not monolithic, any more than any other faith. They’ve had their internal struggles over doctrine and their versions of reformations and heresies.”
I nodded in agreement.
“Exactly,” I said. “I remember hearing about this particular heresy at the night schools of Shambhala, when I was studying in the Tian Shan mountains. They’re called the Dugpa, or Dögpa, but that’s a really loose and inaccurate translation. ‘Dugpa’ is kind of like calling all Southerners ‘klan’ or all Muslims ‘terrorists.’ The West doesn’t have an accurate word to describe what they are. None of my teachers wanted to discuss them very much, it was forbidden, so, of course, I was all over it.”
“Natch,” Grinner said, tipping his coffee mug in my direction.
“They’re practitioners of Black Tantra,” I continued. “Selfish, greedy, ruthless sorcerers. Their view of Buddhism is ass-backwards from everyone else’s. They believe that cultivating negative emotions and thoughts leads to enlightenment. Attachment, possession, in all its extreme tangible and metaphysical forms is to be embraced.”
“Okay.” Grinner nodded. “So, Sith Buddhists, got it.”
“Nothing is considered sacred to them,” I continued. “The very notion of sacredness is a joke. They embrace experience in all its permutations and perversions, and they gain mystical power through self-destruction and the corruption of others.” Anna, Vigil, and Grinner all looked at each other, and I felt an uncomfortable understanding pass between them. “What?” I asked.
“It’s nothing, Laytham,” Anna said. “Go on.”
“The Dugpa were briefly associated with the Kagyu sects, but not for long. Many of the oldest and most prominent Buddhist sects, like the Kagyu, got painted with the same racist broad-brush by Madame Blavatsky and some other western occultists because of the Dugpa. She lumped these assholes in with all the different Kagyu and two other very old and reputable branches of Buddhism. It’s something the Red Hat sects have been trying to clear up ever since with westerners.”
“Wait a second,” Vigil said, “Brett Glide’s production company is called ‘Red Hat.’”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s one of the western names for the Dugpa. I should have picked that up when we were out in the desert, but I was too hungover, I guess, just not thinking straight. Glide’s in this somehow. He registered to me and Dragon like someone with some magical training. I should have known.”
“I ran his prints off the water bottle like you asked, and they completely fucked up the Fed’s NGI identification system I ran them through,” Grinner said.
“Just like mine would do,” I said. “He’s got some serious magic working.”
“No shit,” Grinner said. “So I’ve put him under a microscope, and you’re right, Mr. Crunchy Granola is up to his tits in your and Dragon’s cold case. I was able to use facial recognition software matched up to a massive porn image search program to determine that every woman murdered had been active
