When we get inside, Vincent is facing us, standing over a magic circle laid out in black paint. Someone covered the graffiti and piss stains on the floor in white so that the black would stand out against it. In the very center of the white is rust-colored splatter. A lot of splatter, like someone emptied a kiddie pool of color on the floor.
“Is that dried blood?” says Candy.
Julie says, “I think so.”
“This is it. Here,” says Vincent. “This is where I woke up.”
I walk into the center of the circle, stand in the old blood.
“You sure?”
He nods.
“I’m absolutely certain. It was night, but warm. I was naked. I found my coat and clothes over by the door.”
“You remember anything else? Anything you haven’t told us?”
He shakes his head, holds up his hands.
“I don’t know.”
I turn three hundred and sixty degrees. Whoever set up the room knew what they were doing. The paint created a binding circle, and a good one. Whatever someone drew down here, maybe even an angel, would have a hard time getting out. And if there was, say, a body at the center of the circle, a clever necromancer Dead Head could drive the entity right down into the meat and there’s nothing it could do about it.
Vincent gets on his knees and touches the circle, looks up at the ceiling. There’s black there, but it’s not paint. It’s a scorch mark. I crook a finger at it.
“Something came down hard from up there. It would have gone right through the floor and out again if it hadn’t been caught in the circle.”
Vincent lies down on his back in the middle of the circle and rubs his chest. He points at the back wall.
“It was here. I woke up facing that way.”
There’s a symbol painted on the back wall.
“Do you recognize it?” says Julie.
“No.”
Candy takes out a pocket camera and snaps a few pictures. She shoots a few more of the circle. Vincent gets up and dusts himself off. Julie points to a spot near the door. A White Light Legion emblem. Candy shoots it.
I look at Julie.
“What the hell is this place?”
“I told you. Murphy Ranch,” says Candy. “Hitler’s American love shack. Sort of.”
I look from her to Julie. Julie looks around appraisingly.
“She’s right. Remember the Silver Legion, the precursor to the White Lights? Like them, the compound was started around the same time they did. It cost four million dollars. That’s in 1930s dollars, and was entirely financed by one couple: Winona and Norman Stephens.”
“A couple of Silver Legion groupies,” says Candy. “This is just one building. The whole compound covered over fifty acres and had its own water system, a diesel generator for power, and a bomb shelter.”
“Everything a self-sustaining Nazi community would need to ride out the war,” says Julie.
“I guess history didn’t go their way. What happened to the place?”
“It was raided by local police and shut down in ’41,” Candy says. “And that was the end of der Führer’s Hollywood penthouse.”
I look at the walls and floor, hoping to find a clue, an explanation for Vincent and this place.