The Widow Lynch
- At July 20, 2018
- By Great Quail
- In Vampire
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To love, the doors of hysteria, fantasy, and madness may be flung open. Pick an idol, grovel well and suffer in ecstasy. Then you in turn will be idolized four-fold by others. Just make sure your object is not too rationally chosen, for compulsion and rationality seldom coexist. It is easier to love a tyrant, a nitwit, an anomaly, than perfection, for the masochism of love demands debasement unobtainable through sterling sources.
—Anton Szandor LaVey, The Devil’s Notebook
You eat meat and you kill things that are better than you are, and then you say how bad, and even killers, your children are. You made your children what they are. These children that come at your with knives, they are your children. You taught them. I didn’t teach them. I just tried to help them stand up.
—Charles Manson, 1970 Testimony
Introduction
Every important Sabbat coven has an oracle, a Cainite tasked with using clairvoyance and precognition to protect and advance the pack. Generally drawn from the ranks of Tzimisce and Tremere antitribu, oracles are granted their title by La Reina Bruja, and unlike other Cainites, may not depart their coven unless granted permission. In 1978, the N.O.X. coven had become important enough to rate an oracle, and they were assigned Rose Mary Lynch, a neonate with connections to the Crow Magnum MC from her days as singer for the Satanic rock band Baphomet. A logical choice, few thought to question the decision—but La Reina Bruja had ulterior motives. The night she bestowed the office upon Rose Mary, the ancient Tzimisce discovered something astonishing about the young Cainite, something unforeseen and wholly unique. Tempted to imprison her in La Catedral Envuelta, the Witch Queen was surprised by the advice of her own living Tarot—Rose Mary Lynch had to be in the Bronx. Only there, among the wildest and most undisciplined Cainites of the Sabbat, would her true potential be reached. And on that distant day, the world of the Sabbat would be forever changed.
Description
Having dressed like a vampire for most of her adult life, somewhat ironically, “Scary Mary” prefers the human fashions of her bygone sixties. Tall and striking, she favors flowing silk scarves, moddish dresses and miniskirts, stockings, and thigh-high black boots. She never wears jeans, not even astride her Harley, and she’s the only biker in the club allowed to wear a full leather jacket without hassle—Mary doesn’t “do” denim and sleeveless vests. She usually keeps her long hair bound under a scarf, Audrey Hepburn style. The only concession to Mary’s former lifestyle as a Satanic rocker is her jewelry, which tends towards pewter skulls, inverted crosses, pentacles, and leering goat-heads.
Personality
Beloved by the Crow Magnums, Mary is a free-spirited Cainite with an independent streak and a biting, irreverent sense of humor. She delights playing the stereotype of the “witchy woman,” cultivating a carnivalesque air of mystery as she waves her hand to describe the hidden motions of “unseen forces.” Mary is prone to exaggeration and making outrageous claims, and she is certainly not immune to flattery; but her charming and flirtatious demeanor makes it impossible to be offended by her harmless indulgences—“You know that ‘Black Magic Woman’ was written about me, right? And of course that dreadful Eagles song…”
Feeding Habits
Mary takes great pleasure in drinking blood, especially the blood of hot young men who’ve recently smoked a lot of weed. She has established several human herds across the city, and savors their adulation and worship as much as their vitae. Mary refers to her blood dolls as “groupies,” and she’s not above making them moo like a cow when they’ve been naughty. Although she prefers men, Mary takes the occasional female lover, usually a submissive wife or girlfriend presented as an “offering” by one of her male groupies. A Satanist of the LaVey tradition, Mary’s relationship with her groupies is entirely consensual, and she refrains from killing the innocent; but she’ll cheerfully smash any poor bastard that means her harm.
History
Born in 1951 to a mild-mannered suburban family in Petaluma, Rose Mary “Rosy” Morelli grew up a devout Catholic, taking pride in her role as the youngest soprano to ever become soloist in her church choir. Sure, Rosy liked the Beatles, and the Stones were kind of sexy; and she was kind of dating an altar boy who taught her how to read palms; but as Rosy began her sophomore year at St. Vincent de Paul High School, there was little to indicate she’d one day be labelled the “most wicked and dangerous woman in America.”
Rose Mary’s Brief Unhappy Life as a Manson Girl
Rosy was an A+ math student when she met Charles Manson and Mary Brunner at a street fair in Berkeley. She was peppering a gypsy fortuneteller with questions about her Tarot cards, when she was interrupted by a derisive peal of laughter: “You don’t believe that carney bullshit, do you?” Turning around angrily, she swallowed her retort the instant she saw his eyes. Forgetting about the old woman, soon the teenager was defending palm-reading, then arguing about religion, and finally debating the merits of Sgt. Pepper vs. Blonde on Blonde. Despite their arrogant teasing, Rosy found herself strangely attracted to the older couple, and a week later they were loaning her records. The 13th Floor Elevators sounded pretty good, and the Beach Boys were cooler than she thought, but she was most impressed by Jefferson Airplane, and Mary began imitating Grace Slick as she sang into her hairbrush in front of the mirror. One night Rosy found herself in Mary’s van on the way to a party in Oakland. And then—well, it became blurry after the flashing lights and the, the…that guy talking about non-Euclidian geometry? And the lady chemist passing out samples by the hi-fi? And later, the morning walk in the rain, when Charlie…and then Mary…
Several acid trips and a few orgies later, Rosy became one of the many young women who ran away from home to join a new Family.
Rosy never returned to high school, preferring life in Manson’s psychedelic schoolbus to the dour nuns of St. Vincent de Paul. She learned to peddle her skills as an amateur fortuneteller, and Charlie began calling her “Gypsy Rose,” “Rosy Red,” and “Scary Mary Morelli.” To her credit, once they settled in LA, disillusionment set in rapidly. After the initial thrill had faded, Rose—who decided somewhere along the way that “Rosy” sounded too girly—found herself creeped out by the gathering bad vibes. And Charlie with his budding messiah complex, the whole “Charles’ Will Is Man’s Son” bullshit, the way he tried to mesmerize women with his eyes—did she actually find that sexy a few months ago? Now it was just grating. Even worse, Charlie didn’t take Rose seriously as a singer, and began mocking her talents in fortunetelling.
When Rose began hanging around a spaced-out jazz guitarist named Valery “Sugarman” Lynch, she was instructed to “sell him a hot shot and steal his guitar.” Instead, Rose lifted two hundred dollars from Brunner’s secret cash box and scribbled “Fuck you Charlie” on every page of Manson’s favorite Heinlein novel. Rose and Valery fled Topanga Canyon in a van boosted from a band of local surf rockers, complete with an airbrushed wizard carving a barrel and a DON’T COME A-KNOCKIN’ bumper sticker.
Band on the Run
Life on the road was a blast, and the couple supported themselves through petty theft, dealing fake acid, and reading Tarot cards on the street. They even did some honest busking. One morning in Utah they decided to get hitched. Rose Mary Morelli and Valery Antoine Lynch exchanged vows in Arches, the ceremony performed by a pagan priestess named Star Caller. She was paid in weed, and joined the couple for a wedding night frolic in the back of the van as Ascension wailed from Valery’s portable turntable.
Passing through Flagstaff, the newlyweds picked up a mysterious hitchhiker named Indian Frank, a California speed-freak who’d spent time in Anton LaVey’s Order of the Trapezoid. A talented drummer who could transform anything into a percussion instrument using a pair of sticks, Frank turned the couple onto “weirder” bands such as Pink Floyd, the Mothers of Invention, and Iron Butterfly. Soon, late-night drinking sessions turned into jamming sessions, and Rose Mary Lynch discovered that she also had a talent for songwriting. Somewhere near Monument Valley, the happy trio decided to form a band called “Baphomet,” and Rose rebranded herself as “Scary Mary.” Drawing from her time with the Family and cribbing language from LaVey’s rainbow sheets and bedraggled issues of The Cloven Hoof, they wrote songs designed to shock and terrify the straights. As Frank proclaimed, Baphomet would be “a psychedelic witches’ workshop with a groovy beat.” They auditioned for a bassist in Denver, and settled on a hirsute biker named Floyd Oswald who called himself Osmium Floyd—“Because, like, osmium? is the heaviest of the metals, man.” Now a quartet, the group relocated to Chicago, settling into a crumbling house owned by Grandmother Morelli, a deaf woman all but abandoned by her family as she quietly descended into dementia. After creating a minor splash on the Chicago scene, they hired a former Hell’s Angel named Otto Khan as keyboardist and manager. It was a wise decision, and Khan landed the band some Midwest gigs opening for Alice Cooper.
It became rather embarrassing after a while. I’d step off the plane and there they’d be, all huddled together to meet me in their black velvet robes with huge Baphomets around their necks. Many of our grass-roots people didn’t know much about subtlety then, or decorum. I was trying to present a cultured, mannered image and their idea of protest or shock was to wear their “lodge regalia” into the nearest Denny’s.
—Anton Szandor LaVey, The Secret Life of a Satanist
The Rise and Fall of Baphomet (1968–1971)
Although their sound would grow heavier over their brief lifespan, early Baphomet remains firmly in the tradition of 1960s acid rock. The contemporary music press didn’t quite know what to make of them. After clutching the obligatory pearls over their appalling lyrics and bizarre stagecraft, most critics dismissed Baphomet as “a less whimsical Pink Floyd,” or “Jefferson Airplane on acid. No, wait—even more acid, and bad acid to boot.” Scary Mary’s vocals were frequently compared to Grace Slick, sometimes favorably, sometimes less so. More sophisticated critics recognized the Coltrane influence on Sugarman’s guitar, and later positioned Baphomet among metal precursors and “occult” rockers such as Black Sabbath, Aphrodite’s Child, Hawkwind, Black Widow, and Blue Öyster Cult. Most famously, Hunter S. Thompson tossed them a few lines in Rolling Stone: “Baphomet’s sound is steeped in the acid sunsets of Frisco—with considerably more chanting!—but has a hard and nasty edge suggesting the slaughterhouses of their native Chicago. Imagine if the Velvets had discovered Hieronymus Bosh instead of Andy Warhol … No, wait, don’t imagine that … just go to one of their rolling freak shows and see for yourself. But first lock up your virgin daughters and make sure to load the .44.”
Gaining wider exposure from their stint with Alice Cooper, Baphomet soon became infamous in their own right, condemned by decent people everywhere as they gigged tirelessly across California and the Midwest. Known for their over-the-top theatrics, the band dressed like demonic warlocks, with Scary Mary emerging from a coffin to greet the crowd with a hearty “Hail Satan!” Every show ended with a faux Black Mass, the enthusiastic crowd chanting along with the (mostly nonsensical) syllables. Even their groupies were frightening, a small entourage of hippies, bikers, and freaks who followed their caravan from one sketchy venue to the next. LSD and methamphetamines helped fuel the circus, and needless to say, the sex was legendary. The lines between band, fan, and family had become hopelessly blurred.
Baphomet released their first LP in 1969, recorded in Los Angeles and titled Blood Ritual. Virtually designed to spark a Satanic panic, the gatefold featured photograph of a nude Scary Mary offering her blood to the rest of the band, with Osmium Floyd dressed like a hairy nun. Banned from most record stores, the furor over the LP only expanded their fan base. One of the tracks, “Mass in X-Minor,” was picked up for the soundtrack to Easy Rider, bringing them national attention and attracting even more bikers to their shows. In 1970, a sensational Esquire article erroneously linked the band to the Manson murders, and suggested that Mary might be “the most wicked and dangerous woman in America.” Even though Mary had been only a marginal member of the Family, she embraced the controversy, careful to add that she “left that crazy bastard long before his worshippers butchered that poor actress.” Reviled by most of America, to others Scary Mary became the Manson girl smart enough to leave, which further enhanced her image as “rebellious badass.” Baphomet began including an acid-drenched cover of “Helter Skelter” in their live shows. They cut a studio version as a 45, with “Mass in X-Minor” as B-side and a cover sporting a dozen naked children armed with kitchen knives. The single became a best-seller, and Mary bought her first motorcycle, a black and silver Honda 350 Scrambler.
Baphomet’s second LP was called Rose Mary’s Baby. Released nine months after the first, its lurid cover depicted a bloodstained Scary Mary, dressed in the tattered remains of a Catholic schoolgirl uniform and offering a bawling baby to a statue of Baphomet. The infant’s umbilical cord was still attached, emerging from below Mary’s torn skirt. The album proved even more controversial than the first—despite the fact the umbilical cord bore a suspicious resemblance to a pink Princess telephone cord—and was sold with its cover concealed beneath a brown paper wrapper stamped “BAPHOMET II.” Modern rock historians have speculated that even more controversial than the Satanism, the partial nudity, or suggestion of sexual violence was the fact that the baby was black, the son of self-identified “Negro radical” Toussaint Turner. A guerrilla photographer from his days with Up Against the Wall Motherfucker, Toussaint was rumored to be sleeping with Mary during the recording sessions.
After receiving a spate of death threats from outraged mothers and good Christians, Otto Khan decided to hire security for Baphomet’s upcoming east coast tour, and accepted an offer from New York’s Crow Magnum MC—as one might imagine, the MC were “big fans.” Fearing an East Coast Altamont, some venues cancelled the show; but the Crow Magnums had a surprising degree of influence, and for every cancellation, two other venues made themselves available. Naturally, the band found the Crow Magnums a trifle unnerving. They were more casually violent than their normal biker fans, they took the band’s supernatural shtick a bit too seriously, and the club’s bigshots only seemed available to meet after sundown. Nevertheless, the tour was good fun, passing amiably in a haze of sex, drugs, and…blood?
Too stoned to even notice, the band were slowly becoming ghouls. Only Scary Mary had an inkling of what was really going on, but she was too enamored of the rush to really care.
Paying the Piper (at the Gates of Dawn)
On April 30, 1971, Baphomet was scheduled to headline the Walpurgis Night Music Festival, a free concert held at Submarine Park in Yonkers. A deserted fairground facing the Hudson, the park gets its name from the derelict submarine beached on its shoreline, a rusting prop from a 1950s U-boat movie. The weather was beautiful, the drugs were plentiful, and the fans were naked by midnight. Shortly after Baphomet took the stage at 3 am, the concert was attacked by a pack of Setites and their allies, a rogue cairn of Lupines from the Palisades and a gang of human bikers called the Black Magic MC. Drawn to the event by the presence of the Sabbat MC, the Setites viewed any humans at the festival as welcome collateral damage.
Valery “Sugarman” Lynch was killed first, taking a shotgun blast to the face as a Lupine stormed the stage. Shifting into Crinos form, his attacker pounced on his fallen body and tore out his heart. Indian Frank was shot in the leg while trying to escape, his body broken under the wheels of a Setite’s chopper. Osmium Floyd fought back valiantly, but his bass guitar was wrested from his hands and used to break his ribs. He was chain-whipped into the bonfire, and burned to death attempting to crawl to the shoreline. Otto Khan was dragged from his Hammond by a Setite and vanished into the night. Having never received her entrance cue, Mary was still in her coffin at the back of the stage. She prudently remained hidden while the sounds of screaming and gunfire raged around her. The attack lasted for seventeen savage minutes, the Sabbat staving off the Setites at the cost of three slain Cainites and thirteen dead humans. Mary was rescued from her coffin by Virgil Crowley himself, who spirited the stunned widow to safety in a nearby camper. When he returned a few hours later, he was astonished by her response. Shaking with anger and shock, Mary accused the Crow Magnums of being “actual goddamn vampires.” And what’s more, she demanded to immediately join their ranks.
A genuine fan of Baphomet and perhaps a touch infatuated with Mary, Crowley was willing to grant her request, but now was not the time to train a fledgling in the Bronx. Crowley sequestered her in an Englewood safehouse, letting the bereaved singer come to terms with her grief as the coven handled the media fallout from the attack—or as it’s known today, the “drug-fueled Satanic riot” that snuffed out all five members of Baphomet. All in all, it was a fitting capstone to their brief but legendary career of evil.
There is a beast in man that needs to be exercised, not exorcised… Blessed are they who believe in what is best for them, for never shall their minds be terrorized.
—Anton Szandor LaVey
Born to Be Wild, Wild to Be Born
Two weeks after the festival, Crowley returned to the safehouse. He explained to Mary that underneath all her theatrical pretentions, her ability to read fortunes was quite genuine. Life as a Brujah was not what the Sabbat had in mind for the Widow Lynch. Mary was to be entrusted to Ezequiel Pataquiva Santos de Itagüí, a Tremere antitribu from Captain Creede Coulter’s Brooklyn Coven. Mary protested vehemently, but when Crowley explained that her gifts would be squandered as his progeny, she reluctantly agreed.
Having never been a Sire himself, Ezequiel at least was delighted by the arrangement, and set about making a new home for Mary in Sunset Park. Once Mary realized her powers of seduction were useless on Ezequiel—“Oh, darling. All that makeup and you can’t recognize an old queen?”—she proved a bright and attentive student, absorbing his instructions on her forthcoming ordeal and counting down the days to her Embrace. On the night of the summer solstice, Mary arrived in Green-Wood Cemetery wearing her full stage regalia and clutching her teenage notebook of songs. Ezequiel led her to the Charlotte Canda monument and laid her gently on the tabernacle by Miss Canda herself. Holding her hand, he bit into her throat and began drinking. Despite her best intentions, Mary struggled violently as her lifeblood was sucked away, flailing at Ezequiel and venting a string of foul curses. When it came time for her to drink his blood, she did so greedily, stopping only when her Sire pried her loose and carried her to an open grave. With little more effort than subduing a puppy, Ezequiel flung her into the casket and sealed it shut. It wasn’t the first time Mary had been inside a coffin, but it was the first time she heard shovelfuls of earth thumping against the lid. Her body began convulsing uncontrollably, and Rose Mary Lynch died in agony, her fists still pounding against the lid.
Lacking the cruelty common to his sect, Ezequiel made sure Mary’s coffin was a flimsy affair, and her grave fairly shallow. Indeed, the proud Sire waited by the grave all night long, and even assigned a retainer to guard it during the day. As he had expected, it took just a single night for his “headstrong Valkyrie” to claw her way to the surface. Bursting from the earth with a triumphant shriek, the eager fledgling tore off her clothing and rolled in the grass, laughing as the world bedazzled her reborn senses. Ezequiel presented Mary with her first kill—a prospect from the Black Magic MC. Filthy, naked, and cackling with glee, Mary chased the terrified biker all the way to Crescent Pond, where she broke his back against one of Niblo’s stone lions and drained him to the last drop. It was exhilarating, better than any drug she’d ever known, and she knew immediately her whole life had been leading to this moment. She was now Sabbat.
Much to Ezequiel’s unspoken relief, his Tremere blood proved its potency, and Mary demonstrated a ready command of the ancient Discipline of Auspex. Within a few years of training, her talent with Tarot cards was remarkable, and she began manifesting the power to contact, summon, and eventually compel transliminal beings. In 1976, Mary foresaw an imminent Camarilla attack on the coven’s headquarters in Sunset Park. Lacking the time required to consult the Thing in the Old School, Captain Coulter acted on the fledgling’s prediction, and launched a preemptive strike that caught the Prince by surprise. This precipitated the most successful Brooklyn campaign in Sabbat history, resulting in the uncontested occupation of Green-Wood Cemetery and the acquisition of Kensington and Windsor Terrace.
For her service to the coven, Mary was granted an early release from her Sire. Invited to take her rightful place in the Brooklyn Coven, the fresh neonate respectfully requested to be sent back to the Bronx. Although she was fond of her Brooklyn packmates, Coulter’s coven was too genteel for Mary, and she longed to return to the world of sex, drugs, and heavy metal thunder. With Crowley’s recently-elevated coven in need of an oracle, the Latrocinium approved the transfer, and Scary Mary was invited to La Catedral Envuelta for an audience with La Reina Bruja.
Eyes Wide Shut
Accompanied by Ezequiel de Itagüí, Captain Coulter, and Bishop Crowley, Mary’s visit to the Engulfed Cathedral was even more terrifying than her Embrace. When she finally arrived at the chambers of La Reina Bruja, her courage nearly faltered when she was instructed to enter alone and with her eyes firmly closed. Trembling in dark silence for thirty minutes, Mary endured the humid atmosphere, the nameless scents, and the terrible slithering sounds just at the edges of hearing. Then without preamble the Witch Queen spoke. In a papery whisper that issued from several directions at once, the ancient Tzimisce recounted Mary’s entire life, including her most intimate thoughts about her parents, her first boyfriend, Charlie and Mary, her husband, her band, and her Sire. Her heart laid bare, Mary found herself weeping her first tears of blood. As something cold and dead sponged away her tears, the great Paramándala Voin uttered strange and puzzling words, her native Spanish in one of Mary’s ears and English in the other.
“You are more powerful than you know, mija, and shall become a most formidable oráculo indeed. In the coming millennia, you may even outshine La Reina Bruja herself! Among all the creatures so brought before me, you are unique. Hear me, Infanta Rosa María de Ezequiel! You must keep secret the nature of your uniqueness. ¡Es la verdadera fuente de tu temible destino!”
And with that pronouncement, Mary opened one startled eye to glimpse a penqueña bruja extruding from the gloom, a maternal tentacle of flesh that curled around her abdomen and lovingly tapped her womb.
“Es correcto y bueno que tu nombre sea María…”
Feeling something rustle beneath that hideous touch, at last Mary succumbed to her fear. She found all her confusion, anger, and despair waiting for her in the abyss. Running away from her loving parents and rejecting their desperate pleas for a reunion. Exploiting her senile grandmother in Chicago. The shotgun blast that erased the face of her only love. Cowering in her fake coffin while her friends died screaming. Dishonoring their deaths with her lack of genuine bereavement, indulging instead the naked ambition to escape their fate and live forever. Being buried alive, dying and coming back, shitting out her human remains until only the hunger was clean. Her first kill, the muffled pop of his spine, his plump throat rupturing under her mouth. This awful monster surrounding her, caressing her, and telling her that she was…something was inside of her for years, something she might have woken up—
When Mary came back to consciousness, she was back in her Brooklyn apartment. The radio suggested that three nights had passed. Her bedroom was filled with slaughtered groupies, some half-dressed in Baphomet tour shirts. One girl managed to make it to the bathroom before bleeding out. Written on the mirror in scarlet lipstick was “Fuck You Mary.”
Scary Mary’s New Family
Mary remained in Brooklyn to work through her breakdown, taking the following months to come to terms with her life as a “free” vampire. She visited the graves of Valery, Frank, and Floyd; she discovered the names of each groupie she murdered and carved them into her arms; and she made arrangements to have her parents financially supported for the remainder of their natural lives. She even wrote them a letter of regretful apology, back-dated to 1971 and delivered by a Sabbat-connected lawyer. Which is not to suggest that Mary had gone soft; during this same period, she also swore an oath to find out what happened to Otto Khan and kill every motherfucker involved.
Mary returned to the Crow Magnum MC on the first day of the new year. Welcomed with open arms, she was presented with a prospect’s patch and a brand-new XLH 1000 Sportster, painted matte-black with a custom air-cleaner trim in the shape of a chrome pentacle, and a saddlebag fashioned from the skin of the Lupine who murdered her husband. She was also given an address in Bridgeport and told, “You might want to check this out.”
Riding solo to Connecticut, Mary was expecting to find something terrible, but nothing could have prepared her for the horror that waited. For the past year, Otto Khan had been enslaved to a pack of Brujah Anarchs, a gang of bikers calling themselves, somewhat unimaginatively, the Midnight Riders. Chained to the basement bar in their shabby clubhouse, Khan had been unwillingly feeding the gang for months, the words BAPHOMET BEER tattooed on his forehead and referred to only as “Khan the Keg.” Still dressed in his grimy stage costume, Khan was missing most of his fingers and toes—“snacks” for the Anarchs when they were feeling particularly cruel—and his ears had long been torn from his head and stapled to a pair of speakers, the result of his request to “hear some better goddamn music.” One of Khan’s eyes had been gouged out with a melon-baller, and his body was covered with open sores, one of them pierced by a narrow section of chrome exhaust pipe jerry-rigged with a Schlitz beer tap.
Understandably, Khan had been broken by his experience, and had retreated into an abject spiral of insanity, pawing at Mary like a dog and blubbering an apology for not coming to her rescue. Although he begged to be made into a vampire, Mary understood her duty. Dropping the needle on Blood Ritual, she offered Khan the “dark kiss,” promising he’d be made whole again as one of the undying. After she felt his last heartbeat shudder through her veins, Mary doused his corpse with gasoline and set the clubhouse on fire. During the course of her 666 Nights of Mayhem, Scary Mary murdered every single Brujah in the pack, bringing each of their heads back to the Night of Pan and nailing it to the club wall.
Rose Mary Lynch was formally patched into the Crow Magnum MC during the 1978 Hallowmas Vaulderie, passing her initiation ritual as a mixture of blood and oil rained down upon her body. She was wearing her vintage Baphomet stage regalia, a rare exception to club protocol cheerfully allowed by the entire MC. Dressed in these blood-encrusted “originals,” Mary rode her Sportster all the way to California, where she stole the crystal ball from Anton LaVey’s “Black House” as her mandatory post-initiation prank. Returning to New York, Mary retrieved her old Honda Scrambler from storage and plucked the severed Anarch heads from the clubhouse wall. Arriving at Submarine Park, she tossed the heads into the Hudson, then followed them into the river on her Honda, bailing as the bike sank into the silty water. It was her final offering to the Old Days. From now on, Mary would face the future, following her cards to whatever “fearsome destiny” awaited her.
Secrets are power. When you divulge a secret, you barter the potential power of your hidden knowledge for the fleeting ego boost that comes with its revelation.
—Anton Szandor LaVey, The Devil’s Notebook
Current Role
Today, Rose Mary Lynch lives on an upscale houseboat off Locust Point, keeping company with a pair of black cats and the occasional groupie she invites over for “dinner.” She has never sired a progeny, keeps no retainers, and rejects all offers for long-term romantic relationships. Reflecting this air of solitude and solemnity, newer members of the coven call Mary “the Widow,” a nickname she secretly appreciates despite her youthful appearance. Her preference for seclusion does not prevent her from participating in club activities, and Mary remains an active rider. She owns a garage in Throgs Neck where she stores her black Sportster, Baphomet’s original Chevy van, Valery’s red 1969 Corvette Stingray, a digger-style chopper taken as a trophy from the Midnight Riders, and a white Buell M2 Cyclone she uses for the club’s Midnight Races. Never a gearhead herself, Mary’s vehicles are maintained by dutiful prospects who know the Widow likes her chrome shiny and her paint jobs candy clean.
Mary’s singing voice remains as powerful as an air raid siren, but she only performs for limited audiences, and has never revisited her Baphomet catalog. She occasionally takes the stage at Sarnath as a guest singer for Burn Witch Burn, and her cover of Grace Slick’s “Silver Spoon” always brings down the house. Mary likes her grooves dark and heavy, somewhere between Black Sabbath and Motörhead, with Iron Maiden being a favorite since a groupie turned her onto Killers. Every so often Mary gets “recognized” in public, especially when she’s glammed up for a show, but her impossible youth triggers brisk reappraisal as a “Scary Mary clone.” When a Baphomet tribute concert was recently held in Providence, Mary overcame her reservations and attended, greatly amused by the astonished comparisons to the “real” Scary Mary and delighted to learn the word “cosplay.” Before departing, she privately revealed herself to the concert’s promoter. He begged to offer Mary his veins, and she drank willingly, then Dominated him into forgetting the encounter. Nevertheless, she sent him a crate of original Baphomet paraphernalia with a handwritten note, “Thank you for a lovely evening. Blessed be. —SM”
As the oracle of the N.O.X. Coven, Mary is responsible for protecting her pack through her powers of Auspex, which she does using old-fashioned methods such as card-reading, palmistry, and scrying. An avid collector of Tarot cards, Mary has recently commissioned a deck of her own, a “Satanic biker pack” designed by Toussaint Turner, the human artist who created Baphomet’s album covers. Now a grandfather settled down in Atlanta, Turner is the only human who knows Scary Mary is still alive, and she protects his identity fiercely.
Every full moon, Mary conducts readings at the Night of Pan, setting up shop in the back room and informing coven leadership of any important “news from beyond.” During these readings she uses Aleister Crowley’s Thoth deck and the crystal ball stolen from Anton LaVey. No one is sure how much of Mary’s act is legitimate Tremere ritual and how much is campy showmanship, but the intelligence she gathers is beyond dispute. Indeed, her mystic pronouncements seem more far-ranging every year.
Slouching Towards the Bronx
Mary knows why her power is growing exponentially. She can feel it. Scrying into the depths of her stolen globe, she imagines she’s quite literally gazing into her own navel, and the clairvoyant shadows it reveals are clothed in the moiling hues of her own blood. Remaining faithful to Paramándala’s command, Mary has never divulged her secret, but has spent the last decade quietly researching her situation. The Embrace results in a miscarriage for most pregnant women; or worse, transforms the fetus into a parasitical abomination that chews its way from the mother and must be burned alive. To Mary’s knowledge, there has never been a case of a fetus remaining stable, let alone viable. And yet, her child is developing, maturing slowly over the decades, blood-soaked cell by blood-soaked cell. That her child is destined for greatness is certain. After all, Mary was on the pill when she conceived, and pregnant when Embraced; clearly the twice-miraculous child wants to be born, needs to be born. She has already given her child its father’s name—well, probably its father, but still; Valery is a wonderful name, whether male or female. And of course, La Reina Bruja was correct.
Mary is a perfect name.
Sources & Notes
Scary Mary is a new character, created in 2018 and ret-conned into New York By Night. As I was revising the page for the N.O.X. Coven, I realized they had no oracle, so I looked through my old campaign notes and found: “Manson girl, embraced while pregnant, undead fetus gives magic powers, possible vampire messiah.” I’m not sure how I could have forgotten that one, but I combined it with another note I’d made for the Crow Magnums: “Security for 1970s satanic band, Altamont-in-the-Bronx scenario.”
As might be obvious, Rose Mary Lynch is based on the real-life Esther “Jinx” Dawson, with “Baphomet” standing in for her seminal band Coven. (A quick check of Encyclopaedia Metallum reveals that several bands have been named Baphomet since 1986, but dammit, it was the name of my imaginary band in high school, and I have the notebooks covered with fake band logos to prove it!) If you haven’t heard Coven’s 1969 masterpiece Witchcraft Destroys Minds & Reaps Souls, you should correct this immediately. The Esquire article mentioned above is real, and caused much inconvenience for the historical Jinx Dawson, who unlike my fictional Rosy, was certainly not a Manson girl. Other inspirations were Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga, and Anton LaVey’s The Satanic Witch. This latter book is a real hoot! Imagine Hugh Hefner explaining witchcraft to a stoner chick curious about carnival strippers. Starhawk it ain’t. A few other sources I found inspirational when writing Mary were the movie Love Witch, and the bands Black Widow and Lucifer, especially the album Lucifer II.
All the solo images of Rose Mary Lynch are distorted photographs of Jinx Dawson, and have been used without permission, man, because my mind has been destroyed and my soul reaped. My faux festival poster uses a Devil Tarot card I found on Pinterest; but the link to the original is broken. If you are the artist, please contact me! The image of the woman surrounded by bikers is based on a fantastic photograph I found in a Selvedge Yard article about Brooklyn’s Iron & Glory, a brand of biker accessories. The original photo was taken in 1967 by the father of Richard Brandt, the company’s founder. I believe my stand-in for Scary Mary is actually Brandt’s mother, which is totally badass.
And finally, an obligatory note. While I genuinely appreciate Anton LaVey, my Charles Manson quotation is not meant as an endorsement of Manson’s ideas. I’m not one of those idiots who regards Manson as a hip anti-hero; he was a sociopathic bully, like most cult founders. But hey—the Sabbat? Evil vampire bikers? Children coming at you with knives?
Author: Great Quail
Original Upload: 20 July 2018
Last Modified: 25 January 2023
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
PDF Version: [Coming Soon]
I plot your rubric scarab, I steal your satellite
I want your wife to be my baby tonight
Pay me I’ll be your surgeon, I’d like to pick your brains
Capture you, inject you, leave you kneeling in the rain
I’d like your blue-eyed horseshoe, I’d like your emerald horny toad
I’d like to do it to your daughter on a dirt road
And then I’d spend your ransom money, but still I’d keep your sheep
I’d peel the mask your wearing, and then rob you of your sleep
I choose to steal what you chose to show
And you know I will not apologize
You’re mine for the taking
I’m making a career of evil…
—Blue Öyster Cult, “Career of Evil”
Sharpen your teeth for the
Family feast—let all the
Hungry drool roll down
Your chin. Hide the human
And bring out the beast.
Let all the animal games begin!
Muscles like steak
Blood like wine—save
The brains to feed to troops.
Scarlet juices oozing
Slow—boiling in a
Human sea.
Is it human dinner
You’re talking about?
Then slice me tender
Raw and lean.
Where are the bodies
For dinner?
I want my food!
—Paul Kantner & Grace Slick, “Silver Spoon”