21st CENTURY CONJURELLA: THE LAST WITCH

by T. Casey Brennan
T. Casey Brennan Copyright © 2002

Of course, to understand all this, you have to first read CONJURELLA at...

"I ain't no witch."

-- The Webfairy

This is the story of how I went to see the Webfairy.
This is the story of the last witch. This is the
story of love of trains and the Old Ones, and how I
found the Wai Lana yoga show. This is the story of
the Kundalini serpent which lurks within.

By the alleged spring of 2002, my Kundalini had risen up again, I had murmured their barbarous, unspeakable names, and I had set out on a new route of fame. Anonymity was a virtue I had lost. Anonymity had allowed me to migrate from lifestyle to lifestyle, place to place, publisher to publisher, the left hand never knowing what the right was doing: some time in a witchcraft coven here, a John Birch chapter there, a document signed by Clinton in my honor (January 1990 was T. CASEY BRENNAN MONTH in the State of Arkansas), a place in a free meal or a shelter or a Krishna temple, my stories in early '70s issues of the Seventh Day Adventist mag, LISTEN, or written up in the July/August 1987 DEMOCRATIC JOURNALIST from Communist Prague. In the mid-1970s, I had accepted periodic invitations to stay at the Florida home of a witch I knew as Artemis. The now legendary Herman Slater of Brooklyn's Warlock Shop, had also accepted her invitation, and Artemis frequently told me of his stay with her. Slater had published my work in his occult journal, EARTH RELIGION NEWS, before publishing his own version of H.P. Lovecraft's NECRONOMICON, much debated among enthusiasts as to whether it was a book Lovecraft had made up or found. Slater never claimed his version was the actual NECRONOMICON, only that he had found essays from the same time period ascribed to the creation of the NECRONOMICON, so that it was, in Slater's view, what the NECRONOMICON might be like. But the magical essays which made up Slater's version of the NECRONOMICON developed their own mythology. They had been stolen, they said, from a library by an Old Catholic Archbishop, named Simon. Ironicly, I once spent the better part of an afternoon walking around Brooklyn with Archbishop Simon, having met him by chance at the Warlock Shop, without a clue as to who he really was or would do, or that he would abruptly disappear from view after providing the ancient essays for Slater's book, now sometimes called the Simonomicon. Anyway, it was with Herman's friend Artemis that I oftened stayed in Florida, alternating that with brief flings in the inexpensive, elevatorless, and often cockroach ridden hotels that then lined that area of Miami Beach which overlooked their free beach, Lummus Park. Later, the only Arab mayor of Miami Beach, Alex Daoud, who would soon face prison on questionable charges involving city contracts, would write about me in these words:

"City of Miami Beach PROCLAMATION WHEREAS: T. CASEY BRENNAN is sincerely concerned about the well-being of children and has shown untiring efforts to inform children of the ill effects of cigarette, pipe and cigar smoking; and WHEREAS: In his effort to inform children of these ill-effects, T. CASEY BRENNAN has gone on a one-person crusade to prohibit the illustration of smoking in children's comic books; and WHEREAS: Because of this crusade, T. CASEY BRENNAN has had a serious impact on the comic book industry causing several of the most prominent comic strip series and characters to forsake smoking; and, WHEREAS: The City of Miami Beach applauds T. CASEY BRENNAN for his dedication and effort in encouraging the youth of today to make wise decisions concerning their health. NOW THEREFORE, DO I, Alex Daoud, Mayor of the City of Miami Beach, proclaim the month of January 1989 as T. CASEY BRENNAN MONTH in the City of Miami Beach. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the great seal of the City of Miami Beach to be affixed. DATE January 1, 1989 MAYOR Alex Daoud".

In my own way, I loved Artemis too. She was delicate, pretty, and very much the hobbyist kind of witch. Or, well, maybe. I often wonder if she didn't put a spell on me to make me forget the name of that damned Processian. In the days before the Son of Sam killings, she told me how one of the Church of the Process cultists had sought her out. The Processian had been a priest, she said, and his attributes included that he served both Christ and Satan, and generally eschewed sex. But, to my horror, she went on to explain, after months of professed abstinence on his part, he had sex with her in her hospital bed as she was recovering from surgery. Generally, however, the coven of Artemis consisted of articulate suburbanites; hobbyists who haunted occult bookstores and hobbyists. I began to theorize that the Processian was calling Artemis, demanding my removal from the coven. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps I had imagined it all; a decade later, I would join a dissident Krishna sect in Berkeley, then find the Temple set upon by reporters, when a former imprisoned priest, who had slept there before me, had tried to kill Manson in prison.

But the advent of the '90s had shattered me. I had lost the knack of always talking a girlfriend or a business contact out of a plane or train ticket to my next station: was that the word? Long before I took the train from Ann Arbor to Chicago in March, I had taken a train to Toronto, in the early '70s some time. I met a girl on the train and fell in love, as I always did. Her name was Julie, and she told me with that great earnestness of a gorgeous young girl, her eyes wide, her dark hair falling in wavy strands about her face: "Home isn't where you happen to be STATIONED. It's where your heart is," she said with all her heart. But then too, I was anonymous, and I was never to see her again.

But the 90s which had destroyed me wore on, restoring my fame, but robbing me, for all time, of that anonymity which, in fact, had been so useful to me. In 1996, Harris Comics reprinted my Vampirella comic book stories as VAMPIRELLA OF DRAKULON #1-3, and, coincidentally, in that same time period, my late mother's book, CASTLE MIRAGE by Alice Brennan, was reprinted in England by a company known as Ulverscroft. I ran across the listing in a BOOKS IN PRINT Index, and contacted Ulverscroft, asking why they hadn't paid me. They referred me to her agent, Kurt Singer, incidentally, himself a former OSS operative, and he, in turn pointed out that my late mother had signed off all foreign rights to the book. To him. However, he said that if I would write something autobiographical about my family, he'd include it as an intro to future editions, and pay me for the new material. I prepared "Castle Mirage - The Prelude: Conjurella", the first of a series of autobiographical stories alleging my own, and my family's unwilling participation in the JFK assassination. Singer received the manuscript, collapsed of an infection, and had his leg amputated and his company, Singer Media, suspended. Undaunted, I sent the manuscript to Anathema Research in Austin, Texas, thus triggering a series of fan pages about me, from around the world, usually centering around some combination of my JFK statements and my former role as an award winning comic book writer. As in Dallas, I knew I must ignore the blood. Singer was not the first to fall; he would not be the last. But bitterly I knew, even then, that the blood and the guilt must be kept in a sealed-off compartment in my soul. CONJURELLA, the final secret of the Kennedy assassination, must be fun, must be a game, must be part of CREEPY comics, of goth costumes and fanzines and skateboarding. Those who fall will go unnoticed; I cannot tell, they will not hear.

So the 21st Century had found me, not locked in remorse over the deaths that I and my late father had caused, in our efforts to tell what Dr. Earnshaw had done, but rather, in a hot pursuit of the writing career I had lost. In that context, I had noted: the Internet had chronicled a great deal of my work. Included had been my essays of sorcery and black magic from the mid-70s. It had been published in a variety of occult journals, and was the only BAD work I'd ever produced, with one exception, in the Motta EQUINOX, Vol. V, No. III. Motta's version of the Crowleyan sect was later sued, but an Australian website still sells, for an exorbinant price, the volume with my story.

But the Internet chronicles all, and now my occult work was cursed, praised, and dissected, along with my comic book work which preceded it, or my JFK work which followed, years later. It was, then, inevitable, that my former attachment to the occult should present a fabric for my account of the Kennedy assassination, as I continued the autobiographical series I called CONJURELLA.

And do now. But the anonymity, like the innocence is gone. Last year, comic book fandom had taken to belatedly recognizing me as a star again. Two convention appearances, and write-ups in the May 2001 Motor City Comic Con booklet and THE WARREN COMPANION, a trade paperback and hardcover from COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine, had secured my position as a celebrity author again. Odd then, that the JFK statements which had formed the basis for my resurgence in popularity, and spawned thousands of followers the world over, were noted only obliquely, if at all.

But at the May 2001 Motor City Comic Con in Novi, Michigan, anonymity, the sacrificial lamb, had been slain. By the second day of autograph signing and hobnobbing with present day celebrities, I had been firmly imprinted with my newly recovered role. The comic book creator guests had been joined by a host of guests of greater stature, television and movie stars and pin-up girls from the top magazines on the stands. Karen Morton had assisted me in finding the limo back to the hotel on the first day; Patti Reynolds had helped me get into my hotel room at the Doubletree, baffled as I was by the computer card which had replaced the hotel key in this modern age. Both were celebrity pin-up girls; lunchtime sometimes found me socializing with the cast of Batman or the James Bond movies. Who did and did not know of my JFK statements was never clear, but virtually everyone knew of my work for the Warren line of horror comics, CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA. Ironicly, it was a far greater matter to have been an award-winning Warren comics writer in 2002, than it had been when my stories there had actually been on the stands. A poorly reviewed Showtime VAMPIRELLA movie in 1996 had included The Who's Roger Daltrey in the cast; many felt that film adaptations of Warren's other comics, CREEPY and EERIE, would eventually follow. In the months that followed, though still employed as a dishwasher, I found myself invited to numerous campus parties as a celebrity author. Amongst the radio interviews and the guest appearances, fans sometimes found their way to my place of employment, where I would be called up to the bar from the dish machine to personally autograph bar coasters for them.

After months of rising adulation and dwindling paychecks, I found myself in the Ann Arbor homeless shelter again, and in the hands of the Darkside group. And how I came to believe in witches again, after all those years.

The Darkside group consists of lay researchers into the world of the CIA and drugs, most particularly in the area of the CIA's illegal drug and hypnosis experiments, MK-ULTRA, exposed by Congress in 1977. They are, essentially, middle class hobbyists, not unlike the hobbyists who make up the ranks of comic book fandom, or my friends of bygone eras among the John Birchers or the witchcraft covens.

They have no training, no professional status, no authoritative manuals, no funding or authorization by church or state: only a decisive prediliction to the effect that victims of this MK-ULTRA project now walk the streets, unrecognized as such. One of the prettier of them, a UFO essayist who calls herself Wiolawa, theorizes that I am half Alpha Draconian serpentine alien.

So the Webfairy, a guiding light of the Darkside group, summoned me forth. In CONJURELLA, I had written of J.H. Earnshaw, D.O., of Port Hope, Michigan, alleging he had subjected me to MK-ULTRA experiments of the 1950s, before forcing me to initiate the firing, at the age of 15, from the Texas School Book Depository Building in Dallas. And it was those very statements of MK-ULTRA programming that had so interested the Darkside group, ironicly, not the way that it all connected with the Kennedy assassination.

2002 had found me in a bizzare parallel world of Ann Arbor homelessness. In the 80s, I had sought refuge in the shelter, only to find that the rowdy and violent shelter denizens were less dangerous only than the Ann Arbor social work community, which had fostered arrangements both with my former drug dealers and my late parents' political foes. But in 2002, gone were the hostile, glowering shelterites, who had occassionally stabbed one another in their beds in earlier eras; gone the scheming, corrupt officials who watched over them. The shelterites of 2002 behaved as if they had been hand-picked from the cast of a 1930s film on the Dust Bowl: demure, considerate, concerned for each others problems, and greeting one another in the morning as brothers. The staff, meanwhile, read my comic books, posted a printout of the British T. Casey Brennan fan page on the bulletin board, and had me sign autographs and pose for pictures with them. Fellow shelterites, heartened by this, announced that they too planned the publication of essays, poems, and books. Into this maelstrom came the Webfairy. She had attracted the notice of the Darkside group by posting commentaries on my CONJURELLA work, of which she had read, regrettably, far too little. But she had founded the non-existent Church of Reason, which consisted of no Temple or congregation, but a website only. Within its pages, she wrote of Diogenes and Eris, and the philosophy called Discordianism. Further, she maintained, Robert Anton Wilson's FNORDS, of the Illuminatus Trilogy, were good.

She began by emailing, then calling me at work, offering a pre-paid train ticket and a stay in Chicago. But, by now, things had reached the point where Ann Arbor was only inhospitable by night; by day, I was a celebrity author again. Still, the Webfairy offered a new power base, and a chance to be in a real house again, instead of a shelter, however briefly. So on that day in March, after rapt email consultation with the leading members of the Darkside group, I made my way to the Ann Arbor Amtrak station. I recited a confirmation number to the clerk, who presented me with my tickets, to and from Chicago.

There was no romance on the train from Ann Arbor to Chicago, no pretty girl to sit beside, no reminiscence, no long good-bye. As Dali had echoed the Angelus in his art, recognizable, but not the same, so had the train to Chicago mirrored the trains I had taken through Canada, so long ago. But then, there had always been love, a lost love, a new love, or sometimes only a fandom which loved my art. But the cold cloudy spring which covered the terrain that stretched between Ann Arbor and Chicago could do little to mimic Canada. Still, this was not T. Casey Brennan at his best, this was not a comic book convention or a television appearance, this was T. Casey Brennan being rescued from a homeless shelter by one of his readers, and one who could, at that, barely afford it.

We pass Michigan City, Indiana, and I remember that Michigan City had something to do with the west, but I don't remember what. On still another trip to the west of long ago, my late father and I visited Glad Valley, South Dakota. He had worked on a sheep ranch in what had become Glad Valley in the late 1910s, at the age of 15, when much of the west was still as it was when it was young. He bragged of having killed two men for a local lawmen, and of association with an outlaw named Clay Allison.

Michigan City, on that day in March, is cold and foreboding, and swept with little whisps of snow, like Toronto in January was when I wrote of it in another Conjurella story: CONJURELLA MESSIAH: NECRONOMICON MONKS. Yet, it has not mattered how detailed the statements I have made, like Singer's amputated leg, they have gone unheeded.

I learn from a girl on a cell phone behind me that the train will be late. But to me, it will not matter. I have no idea when the train is to arrive anyway, the Webfairy has taken care of all arrangements, and I am certain she will be there when it does.

Closer and closer looms Chicago. I await with anticipation, never pausing to open a book or a newspaper, or start a conversation. Unbeknownst to me, I have contracted a virus which, on the following day will strike. The train pulls into the station, and, weighted by this oncoming fever, I set out to find the Webfairy. It is not difficult; she is waiting patiently, at the end of a long aisle, though the train is considerably late. We take a long, confusing taxi then subway ride back to her house. Her home is an herbal apothecary, stocked with garlic, ginger, peppers, and some two dozen dietary supplements.

But it is of no use, and soon I have succumbed to the fever, and I tell the Webfairy the greatest secret: that in 1959, when I first met Lee Oswald through Dr. Earnshaw, Lee was terrified that Earnshaw and Ferrie were plotting to assassinate Eisenhower, and did his very best to protect the President, and me also.

But it of no use, and soon I have succumbed to the fever, and I tell the Webfairy the greatest secret: that Dr. Earnshaw, the MK-ULTRA doctor had terrorized me with occultism, a favored technique of those whose medical forte is mind control and trauma conditioning.

But it is of no use, and soon I have succumbed to the fever, and I tell the Webfairy the greatest secret: that, in the Old Times, before Man ruled the Earth, the Old Ones ruled, that it was inevitable that they would take back the earth. The earth would end as it began, and those great serpents who had ruled this planet far longer than we had, would rule again.

In a few days, I have recovered somewhat, though now the Webfairy looks sick. She is an attentive hostess, and has shown much concern for my condition, bringing me food and herbal tea. On Easter, when I am not yet well, she takes me to the Green Mill, a Chicago bar, and I have a ginger ale while she sips a Rolling Rock. The Webfairy says she has taken the occult undercurrent of my stories seriously; in vain, I tell her that was not how it was meant to be. I discover Wai Lana, the greatest TV yoga teacher of all time on her television set. A pretty college coed from my past emails me; I answer on the Webfairy's computer. I have survived the sickness which struck me, as I embarked from the train. My Kundalini has risen up; I have faithfully taken the Webfairy's herbs and peppers and teas. I am returning to Ann Arbor. My homelessness is at an end, or it has been mastered. I will be a guest elsewhere soon. But for now, I want pretty young girls and skateboard lessons. I want comic book convention appearances and party invitations. And I want those Old Serpents who ruled before man, to come up from their endless slumber and rule where man rules now. All in all, it has been a good trip, and in these final days in Chicago, I know I will miss the Webfairy deeply. So the Webfairy was the last witch, a disciple, she says, of the goddess Eris. I know now that my days of poverty and homelessness are numbered, and cannot forget, that she has Ushered In the Age.

THE END

Received 04-06-2002