Haggopian and Other Stories

Synchronicity or Something

Back in the 1980s, a young man called Carl Ford published a multiple award-winning Cthulhu Mythos RPG (role-playing game) fan magazine called Dagon. Toward the end of that decade Carl contacted me and commissioned a Mythos story with an RPG theme which he intended to publish in the same format as his magazine. The story I eventually sent to him was “Synchronicity or Something”. It contains quite a few in-jokes—the somewhat skewed names of a small handful of contemporary horror writers, for example (not to mention that of a certain young publisher)—and like that, but it is also quite nasty. And with an ending that is suitably Cthulhu Mythosian, “Synchronicity” saw light of day as an excellently presented “Dagon Press Production”, in 1989.

Jim Slater sat glowering, nursing his pint, plainly annoyed. His drinking companion, Andrew Paynter, was a bit put off, especially since he’d just asked Slater to be his best man.

It was a Friday night and both men had just finished divorce cases; which is to say, they’d gathered sufficient evidence of adultery to satisfy any court of law in the land that their respective clients should be granted divorces, and compensation to boot. Tomorrow they would go into the office, put their reports in order and check their pigeonholes, then with a bit of luck take the rest of the weekend off. They worked for a detective agency specializing in the usual dirt-digging, with no excuse except “somebody has to do it”.

“So…what’s eating you?” said Paynter. He was young, not yet thirty, lean and handsome in a colourless sort of way. After spending five years in the Intelligence Corps and two more in shiny boots on the Metropolitan beat, he’d finally taken his chances on private-eyeing. It was shitty work but it paid the bills, and so far it had been something of a not-so-private eye-opener. Infidelity-wise, the world was abustle! As for Phillip Marlow-type cases: forget it.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Slater answered. He was Paynter’s senior by maybe ten years, himself divorced for three of them, and wore his cynicism like armour. A big man, there was a touch of the early Robert Mitchum about him, the same sleepy eyes and deep, dull voice. But he looked so much the part that usually people didn’t think he could be what he was. A nice fellow when he was one hundred percent sober, but as often as not he was eighty percent proof. He had taken the younger man under his wing when Paynter joined the agency, and Paynter hadn’t forgotten it.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?” Paynter grinned. “Or is it just the world in general?”

“Since you’ve asked,” Slater answered, “it’s you. See, I thought you had a brain in your head. I mean, how long have you been with us? A year…longer? How many days—or more properly nights—spent traipsing around checking out all the illicit screwing? Taking your sly little compromising pictures, listening to sobbing wives or husbands telling you their worst fears or suspicions, discovering them to be right and in the process finding out that the ‘innocent’ party is also balling or being balled? Son, it’s a cesspool!”

“Our job? Tell me something new.”

“The world, for Christ’s sake! There isn’t a bird out there, married or single, who can’t be pulled at the right time, in the right place, for the right reason, and there isn’t a bloke who isn’t trying to pull one. Sometimes I think it’s not the act itself, just that it’s a guilty act! You know? Stolen apples taste the sweetest? Well, maybe they do—until they cramp your stomach. But they do it because it’s forbidden. Some of them, anyway. And others just because it’s there.”

“Like climbing a mountain?”

“Smart bastard! I’m serious. Every timid little fink you see is a potential stud, and every sweet, innocent little thing is probably getting it six nights a week. And the married ones are the worst.”

Paynter shrugged. “That’s life, Jim. But apart from work, what’s it got to do with me?”

“Everything. Now you tell me you’re getting married, to Judy Dexter, the boss’s daughter—and that you want me to be your best man!”

Paynter’s smile slipped a little. “I’m not following you,” he said, hoping he wasn’t.

Slater finished his beer, ordered two more. “Yes you are,” he said. “You just turned sour, so I know you are. Listen, I was married! Did you know that?”

Paynter knew. Three years ago she’d gone off with the milkman or a door-to-door insurance salesman or something. He’d heard it mentioned in the office, but never when Slater was around. Jim was too big and too volatile to take chances with. Apparently it had broken him up for a long time: the fact that while he was out nooky-snooping, some jerk had been doing it with his wife. Hence the creeping alcohol dependency, the cynicism, and now this bitter anti-connubial harangue. If Jim Slater didn’t straighten up, he’d soon become a marinaded misogynist. Or, if tonight was typical, he was one already.

“You know?” Slater said again, insistently, his words beginning to slur a little. “I said I had a wife!” He used the last word like it was poison.

“There are good ones and bad ones, Jim,” Paynter answered, wishing he could change the subject. “You had a mother and a father, too, but did they split up?” He knew he’d made a mistake as soon as he said it.

Slater eyed him across the table. “Actually, yes,” he said. “But good and bad? I suppose there are. At least I used to think so.” He looked away, peered into his beer, seemed to find it fascinating. At length he took a swig, said: “Tell me, what’s the most expensive thing you’ll ever buy in your life?”

“Eh?” (Maybe the subject had decided to change itself.) “A house, I suppose.”

“You suppose wrong,” said Slater. “But it’s a good try. Let me tell you: you buy a house to cage a bird. Before the bird, digs are good enough, or a grotty old bachelor flat. But when she comes along it has to be a house, for the kids. So…point made. Try again. The most expensive thing you’ll ever buy?”

Paynter’s sense of humour was rapidly evaporating. “A car?”

“A car? Hah! No imagination. But again, it’s an example of how the mind works. Why do young guys buy cars, eh? To pull the birds. And why do birds like guys with flash cars? ‘Cos they’re handy for how’s-your-father. Anyway, you’re wrong again.”

“So what is the most expensive thing I’ll ever buy?”

Slater scowled. “Your bloody marriage certificate, ding-dong!”

Paynter had to admit the wit of it, however misplaced, mordant. “Jim,” he said, “Judy and me are different. I mean, are you really worrying about us?” He smiled, sadly shaking his head, trying to convince Slater how wrong he was. “We’re…different,” he said again.

Slater couldn’t be swayed. “See, I’ve worked for Dexter for a long time,” he said. “His little girl Judy’s been around ever since she was oh, fifteen? You think you’re the only young, good-looking filth-ferret in the business?”

Paynter was still smiling, but it was frozen on his face now, totally humourless. “I think you’ve said enough, Jim,” he said.

“Eh?” It was the other’s turn to display his surprise. “You think I’ve said—? Well if that’s what you think, then I haven’t said nearly enough!”

“Enough for me, anyway,” said Paynter. He stood up, almost sent their beers flying, headed for the door. Snatching his overcoat from a peg, he knew Slater was right behind him. The bartender called good night after them, but neither one answered him. And then they stood outside on the pavement like strangers, buttoning their coats, silent in the dark and the drizzle. Slater radiated misery, Paynter anger, and each was physically aware of the other’s aura.

After a while Paynter said, “Forget it.” He looked this way and that, uncomfortably.

“Yeah, yeah,” Slater mumbled. As close as he would get to an apology. “Hey, my car’s round the corner. I’ll drop you off.”

“No, it’s…are you sure?”

“Sure. You can’t walk in this. It’s only fit for fish. Soaks through everything—even a soak like me!” Another apology.

Paynter softened. “You’ll be OK to drive?”

Slater managed a smile, however wry. “When I’ve had a few is the only time I am safe to drive!” They ran through layers of mist and rain to find his car. When they pulled up in front of Paynter’s place fifteen minutes later, and as the younger man was getting out of the car, Slater said: “Andrew, if I turn this best man thing down, you won’t think too badly of me?”

“I guess not. No one knows I was going to ask you, anyway, so no one can get upset.”

“It’s just that—”

“It’s OK, Jim. I know…”

• • •

The next morning Paynter “overheard” a conversation where Slater and Dexter talked in the latter’s office. In fact the entire office overheard it, for Dexter was angry and Slater surly. “Jim,” Dexter’s voice was hot, exasperated, “I just don’t know what gets into you. You called this woman…names!”

“She deserved every one of them,” Slater answered, his voice rumbling as always.

“What? But that wasn’t for you to decide, Jim. We’re lucky that this one will probably end up settled out of court, because if it went through a court we’d be the losers. Oh, not the case—our reputation. Now look, Jim, it’s taken me too many years to build this thing up to have some woman-hating gumshoe tear it down.”

“I called the girl a slut,” Slater’s voice was a little louder now, “and she is. A young slut eating up boyfriends like the world was running out of men. Which wouldn’t be quite so bad if she weren’t already married—to a rich idiot! I watched her for a fortnight and even I didn’t believe it! I was afraid I might catch something just following her!”

“But you’re not the judge and jury!” Dexter’s voice was louder, too. “And you’re far too experienced a detective to just let them catch you watching them. I say you let yourself be seen! It was a deliberate provocation. That man lost two teeth! If he wasn’t so badly compromised you’d be explaining all of this to a judge right now—and this agency would be hiding under whatever cover it could find!”

“The guy went for me!” Slater pretended astonishment, but Paynter knew from his voice that it was an act. “Was I supposed to just stand there and let him take me to pieces?”

“You nearly hospitalised him! Look, I’ve had it with you, Jim. No more arguing on this one—or the last one—or the one before that. Get this through your skull: these people aren’t Big Criminals, they’re just people who cheat on their husbands or wives.”

“Right. They fuck fraudulently.” Slater wasn’t cowed.

“Whatever they do, they’re our bread and butter. If you want to beat them up and toss them in a dungeon for their sins, then maybe you should emigrate to South Africa, get yourself fixed up with a sjambok and…and what the hell! Something like that, anyway. But you certainly don’t belong here!”

“I’m sacked?” Slater’s voice was calmer now, almost resigned.

And after a pause: “No,” said Dexter, sourly. “Not sacked, just warned. And Jim, this time it’s the last warning.”

“Is that it? Are you finished?”

“Yes.”

People scattered in the main office, began filing things away where they didn’t need filing, opening envelopes, picking their fingernails. Someone started whistling tunelessly, and Paynter went back to checking a perfectly good report. Dexter’s door opened and Slater stood there looking out, his head cocked on one side. He saw the exaggerated bustle and smiled humourlessly. Over his shoulder came Dexter’s voice, still angry: “Look in your pigeonhole, Jim. It’s for next weekend. Worth big money. It might keep you off the bottle and get you out of my hair for a while all in one go!” Dexter had intended the entire office to hear every word, and Slater knew it.

He slammed the door behind him…

Two hours later when Paynter left the office, Slater was waiting for him. “A quick one?”

“Drink or word?”

“Both, now that you mention it.”

They went to their local, ordered beers. Paynter had things to do; without his saying anything, the half-pint he ordered underlined the fact that he wasn’t staying.

“What, have I got leprosy or something?” Jim Slater scowled.

“It’s the weekend,” Paynter reminded him. “What’s left of it. Me, I want to enjoy it. I thought you wanted to talk? You didn’t say anything about a booze-up.”

Slater took a long Manilla envelope out of his pocket, slapped it down on the bar. “What do you make of this?”

Paynter took up the envelope, shook out a letter, a couple of photographs, several cuttings from foreign newspapers and typed translations of the same. “The job Dexter gave you? For next weekend?”

Slater was impatient. “Yes, but what do you think about it?”

Paynter sighed. “You expect me to read all of this?”

“Hey, let’s not pull any punches here!” Slater put on a hurt look. “I mean, wow! Here’s this total stranger asking for a whole ten minutes of your time!”

Paynter nodded, and quietly, resignedly said, “OK.” And he started to read the contents of the envelope. At first it didn’t make much sense, but then it began to sink in. “Well,” he eventually commented, “at least it’s not a sneak-and-peek job!”

“It’s not any sort of job that l can see!” Slater snorted. “It’s a kid’s job, a get-paid-for-nothing job, something you’d give to a keen, bright-eyed, oh-gee-this-is-my-first-assignment-snot!”

“Money for old rope,” Paynter shrugged. “And you’re on twenty five per cent of the take. And the cheque is a big one! So what are you making all the fuss about? Hey, if you don’t want this, give it to me!”

Slater scowled but made no immediate reply. After a little while he said, “Did you get the gist of it?”

Paynter was reading through it again. “Eh?” he briefly looked up, continued his reading. “Yes, I think so. A nutter, obviously. Phew! Somebody is a real fruitcake!”

Slater nodded. “Quite apart from the fact that it’s what Dexter said it was—namely, a way of getting me the hell out of it for a while—it’s weird, too. I mean, it isn’t that I don’t know how to go about it, but while I’m doing it I’ll feel about as balmy as the old girl who’s paying for it!”

Paynter had to agree that it was weird, but the cheque that accompanied it was very real. He frowned. “I’m trying to work it out.”

“Here.” Slater slid him a sheet of A-4. “This is how I broke it down.” Paynter peered at the beer-stained, minutely scrawled page:

(1) Role-Playing Game Conventions: Milan, Berne, Rheims.

(2) Signora Minatelli’s son, Antonio, eighteen years old, attends a weekend convention in Milano (Milan, Italy) and comes home with some story that the German Guest of Honour, Hans Guttmeier, disappeared from his room on the Saturday evening (17 or 18 July). Antonio is disgusted; Guttmeier had a big game the next day against an Italian challenge team for his world title. The Italian fans reckon he chickened out and did a moonlight flit back to Germany.

(3) Antonio, who can’t get enough of this gaming stuff, attends the Berne (Switzerland) convention two weeks later. Signora Minatelli expects him home late Sunday night or in the early hours of Monday. But he doesn’t show. Finally she telephones the hotel in Berne; they tell her his bill is unpaid and his car is still in the hotel car park—but no sign of Antonio.

(4) Meanwhile, news has broken that Hans Guttmeier didn’t make it back home to Frankfurt. And now it becomes clear that when he disappeared from the hotel in Milan he left all his gear in his room—including his Deutsche Marks and return rail ticket! Spurred on by interested parties, (top of the list being S. Minatelli) German, Italian and Swiss police get together on the job but there doesn’t appear to be any connection. So a couple of young blokes disappear in foreign parts—so what? It happens all the time. Tourists, especially in France and Italy, go missing regular as clockwork. Routine police work, that’s all; and the investigations grind slowly on…

(5) S. Minatelli—a real Italian Momma who loves her son dearly—gets in touch with the Surete about an upcoming French convention in Rheims, all set for the end of the third week in August. She has it all figured out: a wandering lunatic is doing the rounds of the gaming conventions, killing off attendees. Nice theory, but there are big holes in it. Like, no bodies? Anyway, the Surete thank her for the tip and assure her they’ll do what they can—which, as it turns out, amounts to nothing. No one goes missing from the convention in Rheims. But…S. Minatelli isn’t satisfied, and still her son hasn’t shown up. She gets a list of attendees at the French con., tracks them down, discovers that several were hippy-types of no fixed abode. So one or more of them could have gone missing after all…

(6) By now, though, S. Minatelli has come up with a second theory: her son has perhaps fallen in love with a young lady of similar bent (“bent” seeming very appropriate) with whom he is now doing the round of the cons. Apparently he’d mentioned in passing this girl he met at the Milan bash. Having remembered this much, Tony’s mother simply ignores the fact that his name isn’t on the Rheims list, and the coincidence of Hans Guttmeier’s disappearance. In short, she’s now clutching at straws.

(7) She contacts Interpol, the CID, Scotland Yard—you name it—and passes on all information, cuttings connected with the disappearances, photographs of her son, etc., etc. Will someone please look for him at the con coming up in London in mid-September? Which is to say, next weekend. We can only imagine what Interpol, CID, Scotland Yard think of all this; but…they say OK, they’ll have someone drop in at regular intervals over the weekend and case the crowd for Antonio Minatelli.

(8) She still isn’t satisfied: she contacts a PI—Dexter, of course—and he gives the job to me…

• • •

“Questions,” said Paynter, returning the notes to Slater. “What is a role-playing game?”

“The players act out roles under the guidance of an umpire. Where there are decisions to be made or alternate routes which may be taken a dice-throw decides what’s what. Or maybe it’s left to the umpire, the ‘gamesmaster’, to decide. See, there are lots of alternatives. Obviously, experience counts. You have to know the theory of the game: the books the game is based on, the skills you require to win, the scenario.” Slater studied Paynter’s blank expression. “Are you getting any of this?”

Paynter nodded. “I think so. It’s something like war-gaming, right?”

“Sure. In Star Trek scenarios it usually is war-gaming—but set in space. But I can’t be too dogmatic about it because I’m a little out of my depth myself.”

Paynter thought about it for a moment. “Of course, remove the background picture and you’re left with simple missing persons cases—or a missing persons case, if we’re just talking about your job: Antonio Minatelli.”

“You can’t ignore the background,” said Slater. “You know that. The background is the case.” He grinned. “You know, I’d passed this place downtown a thousand times and thought I’d never noticed it until I got this brief. Then I at once remembered it. Powers of observation! After I left the office this morning I went down to this specialist dealer and picked up some stuff.”

He produced a much larger envelope from his briefcase, tipped out its contents. “These kids publish their own magazines, worship their own idols, live in their own weird worlds—from what I can see. Look at these titles, will you? Vaults and Vampires, and…Cerebellum? And what about Judge Druid, and all this other stuff? Everything from the Dark Ages to James Bond! This one,” he indicated a slim pamphlet with a horror comics cover, “is an amateur magazine: a ‘fanzine’. But get the title, will you? They go for strange, strange titles!”

“Dugong?”

Slater shrugged. “A sea beast. Like an overstuffed walrus. Old-time sailors thought they were mermaids. But a sea creature, anyway. You see, Dugong’s for the aficionados of, er, this guy.” He slapped down a garish magazine on the top of the bar. “See, all the things that live in the sea worship the Great Sea God, pictured there.”

Paynter looked at the magazine’s cover. A sentient, leprous squid-thing seemed to look back at him, leering out from under an almost unpronounceable title. “The Call of—?”

They both squinted at the magazine, pulled faces.

“Er, Cuth-lu?” Paynter ventured again.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Slater shrugged. “Hell, the guy in the shop whistled it at me!”

“Eh?”

Slater nodded. “Future shock,” he said, shrugging. “Maybe I’m getting too old to keep up anymore. But when I bought this stuff, the guy checked the titles, got to this one and said: ‘Oh, yeah, The Call of Tootle-tootle?’ I’m not kidding! Here’s another: The Shoggoth Pit! Dedicated to this same Tootle-tootle. Do you believe this stuff? Hey, have I lost you?”

“Only slightly,” said Paynter, sarcasm dripping.

“Snap!” said Slater. “But I’ll keep at it. At least I’ll earn my twenty-five percent.”

Paynter laughed. “You’re a strange one, Jim. Fifteen minutes ago you were complaining about this job. But to tell the truth, I actually think you’re looking forward to it!”

Slater’s expression changed on the instant. “I was complaining about being got shot of,” he growled. “Like a kid sent to bed early without his supper.”

“Not just a kid,” Paynter corrected him. “A bad kid! And anyway, that was just part of it. Your main beef was that this was a job for a snotnose, that it was demeaning to send a supersnoop like you out on this sort of job.”

“And you don’t think it is, eh?” Slater raised an eyebrow.

“Like I said: if you don’t want it, give it to me.”

“Yeah,” said Slater, finishing his pint. “Snow job.”

“Nothing of the sort,” Paynter insisted. “And just suppose you do find out what happened to Antonio Minatelli, eh? Or better still if you find the kid himself! Wouldn’t that be something: to walk into Dexter’s office with the goods, and shove them right up his nose?”

Slater considered that and grinned. “It gets me away from the sleaze-beat, anyway,” and his face at once turned sour again. “Monday I have another divorce to process, and Thursday I’m to ‘talk’ to a guy about a little sexual harassment he’s been engaging in. Jesus!”

“Just remember to keep your paws off him,” Paynter warned. And then, to change the subject, “But think: Saturday you go up to the Smoke, all expenses paid, for some fun and frolics with the weird set! Great!”

Slater scowled. “Are you sure you’re not just taking the Old Peculiar?”

“No way!” Paynter denied. “And to prove it, I’ll have another half with you. It’s your round anyway…”

• • •

The following week came and went. The other investigators in the office seemed to have their hands full, but Paynter was pretty much at loose ends. When he wasn’t gophering for Dexter he did a little reading, stuff connected with Slater’s upcoming weekend jaunt to London. Not that London was anything special—the offices of DPI (Dexter’s Private Investigations) were in Croydon, and the Smoke was just up the road but it was a different sort of job. And Paynter was glad that Jim Slater had pulled it.

On the other hand, Slater hadn’t asked him to research anything for him; he probably wouldn’t appreciate it if he knew; but again, it was sufficiently removed from the actual case that Paynter had gone ahead anyway. And his conscience was clear: the fact was that he would like to help Slater out if he could, but unobtrusively, so as not to put his back up.

Slater had been in the office Monday, mumbling something about a court appearance Tuesday, had disappeared midday and didn’t show up again until Wednesday when he looked in his pigeonhole and found nothing. Thursday he successfully “warned off” a blackmailer (a loathsome creature who had demanded sex for silence) with a threat, turned the thing over to the police, and delivered his report to Dexter who seemed well satisfied. Friday, payday, and Slater was in again and his nose looked less puffy; less blooming, so that Paynter guessed he’d been keeping clear of the booze.

That lunchtime, however, they did have a beer and a sandwich together. “Been doing some reading,” Paynter opened, having decided that his interest wouldn’t be misconstrued.

“Wonderful!” said Slater, in that dull, booming Bob Mitchum way of his. “Never knew you had it in you. It’ll be ’riting and ’rithmatic next.”

“No,” Paynter grinned, “I mean seriously. In connection with your missing person.”

“Eh?” Slater was at once suspicious.

Paynter held up a hand. “Not on the job—just background stuff. You did say that background was all-important. Stuff on H. P. Lovecraft, the Mythos Circle writers. Stuff about Cthulhu…”

“Old Tootle-tootle?”

“Do it how you like,” said Paynter. “Cthulhu’s good enough for me.”

“Cthul who?”

“Also some Charles Fort stuff,” Paynter ignored him. “Really weird.”

“And Von Daniken?” Slater raised a natural-born sceptic’s eyebrow. “UFO’s? How about Lobsam Rampa and Rambling Sid Rumbold?”

“I said I’m being serious,” Paynter insisted.

Slater nodded. “I can see you are. And how about me? Have I been wasting my time or something?”

“You’ve been reading the same stuff?” Paynter was surprised. “I mean, I only started because I found it interesting, and because—” He paused.

“Because you wanted to help? Because you thought people had been down on me and you were my friend? Well, thanks for the fact that you’re my friend, but no thanks for the sympathy. We all get what we ask for in life. As for your research: I skimmed all that stuff you mentioned, but when I discovered that Lovecraft himself derided it…anyway, I got the overall picture. And that’s what I wanted: to discover what it is about this stuff that switches the kids on. So why did they like Dracula or Frankenstein? Same story: when you’re young you need something that grips the imagination. A pity they have to grow up. As soon as the sap starts rising, to hell with the imagination! That’s when they start looking to get the other bits gripped! So much for the background, but the job itself is more basic. I’ve looked at things like recent Interpol missing persons lists, tried to come up with possible motives, doublechecked lists of attendees at the various conventions, made or tried to make a couple of connections—”

“Connections?”

“Sure,” said Slater. “Like—how these disappearances are connected. Or are they entirely coincidental? And where does the common factor of RPG Conventions come into it? And if there really is a crazed kidnapper or murderer on the loose, well…obviously he or she connects in both Milan and Berne. So I might find his or her name on both of those lists. See what I mean? A jigsaw isn’t a picture until all the bits connect up. The bits are there, it’s putting them together that gives the thing perspective.”

“And do like names appear on both lists?” Paynter was fascinated.

Slater nodded. “You know some of them do. Hans Guttmeier for one. He was scheduled to appear in Berne after the Milan con. Strike Guttmeier, for of course he’s a victim. Likewise, obviously, Antonio Minatelli. But then there’s a couple of others…”

Paynter leaned closer. “Oh?”

“Like Cindy Patterson, yes. She’s a young American, a publisher who produces the games and associated products. She controls a lot of rights, and she’s heavily into spreading her empire abroad. A shrewd young lady. She’s also the moving force behind the conventions, helps coordinate them. That’s why they fall so conveniently, with gaps of a couple of weeks in between, so that she and a couple of guys from her outfit can hop from one to the next without overlapping. Also to enable her to spend a week or so in each location, promoting her stuff. The Americans are big on advertising, you know? And it seems this RPG thing is rapidly becoming big business.”

“And you think these Americans are connected, right?”

Slater pursed his lips, slowly shook his head. “If they are, I really can’t see how. What? They should run around killing off their future livelihood?”

“A spot of judicial culling?”

Slater frowned. “Where’s the motive? These were fans. They weren’t rival publishers, weren’t exerting pressures. Guttmeier was a top player, he was good advertising! And Minatelli was nuts on Moribund’s stuff.”

“Moribund?”

“The name of Cindy Patterson’s publishing house. So no motive there—or if there is, it’s not yet apparent. And anyway, you can strike the Americans because they missed the Berne convention. There were problems back in the US of A, apparently, that needed sorting out. They only just got back in time for Rheims.”

“How do you know all of this?” Paynter ordered more drinks. “I mean, who’s your informant? You obviously didn’t speak to anyone who might be involved, for you’d tip their hand. So who gave you all of this stuff?”

Slater grinned, said: “Elementary, my dear Andrew. If you want to know the state of the church’s rafters, don’t ask the bellringer, ask the deathwatch beetle! The people on the inside. So who to speak to on the inside? Someone who wasn’t at any of the foreign conventions. Karl P. Ferd, is who.”

“Who?”

“Ferd, the editor and publisher of Dugong. The entire scene is an open book to him. You know, Dugong is one of as many as eighty fanzines—in this country alone! Anyway, Karl seems a genuine young guy, and he knows just about everyone in or on the fringe of the game—or games. Fans and pros alike. I’ve talked to him and I like him, so much in fact that I felt something of a shit laying my scam on him. I told him I was doing some research for someone who’s doing a book on the whole gaming thing. It would mean a lot of publicity for Dugong and a couple of the better amateur ’zines.”

Paynter nodded. “So you’re building up a stack of background information here,” he said, “but as yet nothing solid on the case itself. And yet I sense you’re onto something. Something you haven’t told me?”

Slater grinned, nodded. “Ferd tells me there’s a certain nut name of Kevin Blacker who’s a kind of gamer’s guru. He’s full of shit about the Tootle-tootle Mythos, attends all the cons—can’t play worth a bent penny but talks a good fight—and talks, and talks, and talks. And apparently he’s a true believer.”

“A what?”

“He thinks it’s all real. Or at least, that’s how he makes it sound. The Mythos is real! Cthul—who do you say it?—is real, existing between the spaces we know, waiting to take over the world again, and—”

“Hold it!” Paynter cut in. “Surely Cthulhu’s dreaming in his house in R’lyeh?”

“OK, his minions, then,” Slater shrugged. “The rest of the gang. They’re ex-directory, sort of, but they keep in touch. And when the stars are right and the cult is big enough—”

“What cult?” Paynter was trying hard, but Slater could move fast when he wanted to.

Slater sighed. “The Cthulhu cult, obviously! Like I said, this ding-dong Blacker thinks the stories—the original Lovecraft, Smith, Howard and etc. you name it, stories—were based on the real thing. Facts which only a handful of people were privy to. The guy’s crazy! So says Karl P. Ferd.”

Paynter was thoughtful. “Crazy enough to kidnap people, or at least make them disappear—maybe even kill them? And the motive?”

Slater inclined his head, opened his slitted eyes wide and said: “Ah!”

“Was he on the convention lists?” Paynter pressed. “Did he attend?”

“No to the first; yes, probably, to the second. See, Ferd says he doesn’t operate like that. He’s a guru, likes to appear mysteriously and vanish the same way. He just shows up, stays a couple of hours or maybe a day, expounds to his followers and anyone else credulous enough to listen, then moves on. So while it’s unlikely he’d appear on the official lists, it’s just as unlikely that he’d miss a con. He goes to all of them! He was in Milan, I’ve learned that much. And I’m betting he was at Berne and Rheims, too.”

“You didn’t mention the motive.” Paynter wanted to pin Slater down. “Ah! isn’t a motive.”

“Guttmeier is or was the world champion player. He knew the stories, books and rules backwards. Gaming-wise, he went where angels fear to tread because he had the measure of Old Tentacle-face and the rest of the starspawn. But Blacker says it’s not just a game. Maybe this is his way of proving a point, eh? He’s convinced himself, so now he has to convince the others. Don’t mess with Tootle-tootle, ’cos he’ll get you! Same goes for Tony Minatelli: he’s crazy keen on the game and one day could be a challenge. Blacker can’t stand people who look like they might steal his glory. He has to be the centre of Cthulhoid attention, and—”

“Cthulhoid?”

“Pertaining to Cthulhu. See, even I can say it now! Anyway, you get my point.”

“So…it seems you have a lead.” Paynter seemed disappointed.

“Oh, hey!” Slater said, with exaggerated gaity. “Oh, joy, let’s all be happy-happy! Jimbo has a lead!” He stopped mincing about on his barstool and turned his half-shuttered eyes on Paynter again. “So what’s eating you?”

“Well, actually,” Paynter began—and broke off. “Hell, I suppose it did sound like that, didn’t it?”

“It’s OK,” Slater nodded. He smiled with one side of his mouth. “I get the feeling I’ve popped your bubble. So what was your theory?”

“Theory?” Paynter snorted. “My trouble, you mean! See, I’ve had a—well, a sort of sneaking admiration for the Adamskis, the Rampas, Von Danikens and Charles Forts of this world. And it’s a bit disappointing to be put down. To be put right, I mean. When I was a kid I read Westerns. Loved the J. T. Edson things. They were so…authentic! Then I discovered Edson was an overweight postman from Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. A nice man, but hardly Zane Grey. And never John Wayne! I feel the same about these other guys. It would just be sort of nice if something like this turned out to be true once in a while, you know? So this last week I tossed logic out of the window and went for the esoteric instead. And I thought I’d found something—one thing, anyway—that was kind of scary. Except it now seems silly.”

“Are you telling me you wish there really was a Cthulhu and Co? That has to be scary! OK, I know what you mean. So say on, I’m all ears. What did you think you’d found?”

“Oh, there’s no ‘think’ about it. It’s there, all right—except I suppose it has to be a coincidence. Do you know what ley lines are?”

“Ley lines? Oh, yeah. Imaginary lines on the surface of the earth that connect up points of pre-historic or religious interest. Like churches or other places of worship, or maybe the sites of primitive rituals.”

“Rituals of sacrifice?”

Slater squinted at Paynter. “What’s on your mind?”

Paynter shrugged. “A coincidence, that’s all. But if you line up Milan, Berne, Rheims and London—”

“A ley line?”

“That’s right. Not quite accurate, but close enough.”

“Well, you really did toss logic out the window, didn’t you? What if those places had formed a circle, or a triangle? Coincidence, that’s all.”

“Synchronicity,” said Paynter. “Or something…”

“Never heard of it.” The other shook his head.

Now Paynter shook his head. “Wrong word anyway,” he said. “It means events happening in different places at the same time, apparently connected but purely coincidental. Something like that anyway. But what we have here are predictable events occurring at a predictable time and place.”

“Too deep for me,” said Slater. “And wrong in any case. These disappearances were only ‘predictable’ in hindsight! If you know that they happen at conventions. I don’t go with that. It’s like saying: ‘how queer, last week Saturday followed Friday followed Thursday followed…’ See what I mean? It’s not queer at all, because that’s the way things are.”

“Charles Fort and his fishers from outside,” said Paynter. “Adams Adamski and his UFO.”

“Cranks,” said Slater.

“The time-scale fits, too.”

“Oh?”

“If you look at those places again on a map, and measure the distance

between…it’s weird, that’s all.”

“Well, go on.” Slater nudged his elbow. “Don’t keep me in suspenders.”

“Just suppose,” said Paynter, “that every now and then a sort of door opens between worlds, between universes. A gap in…hell I don’t know! In what we call space. A fissure into—or out of—the spaces between the spaces we know.”

Slater sighed. “Well, you did warn me. You did say that this was peculiar stuff. So you think maybe Tootle-tootle’s crowd are fishing through the fissure, eh?”

The faraway look left Paynter’s face and he grinned sheepishly. “Maybe I should see a shrink, right?”

“Tell me about this time-scale you mentioned,” Slater urged.

Paynter continued to look sheepish. “If there was a crack in space-time,” he continued, “a door to another dimension…I mean if the two surfaces of ours and some other universe were slowly sliding together and causing a fissure—”

“Hold it!” said Slater. “Milan: mid-July. Berne: end of July. Rheims: third weekend in August. London: mid-September. Distances?”

Paynter shrugged. “Calculate approximately ten miles every day and it all fits in. Dates and places, the lot.”

For a moment Slater frowned, but then he shook his head and grinned. “You see what we have here?” he said. “Listen, we have an invisible steam-driven spaceship flying at ten mpd (that’s miles per day) across Europe, crewed by awesome creatures from the dawn of time, fishing through a fissure.”

Paynter scratched his chin. “Yes,” he said. “Sorry.”

Slater stood up. “You’ve had too much to drink. And I don’t intend to, because tomorrow I have a date with a bunch of even weirder characters. I’m grateful for your thoughts on all of this, but me?—I reckon I’ll stick with Kevin Blacker. For now, anyway.”

“I’ll finish my beer,” said Paynter, staying where he was. He watched Slater walk away from the bar, turn at the door and wave. And he thought: Synchronicity, or something. Now what the hell is the word? And he answered himself: Coincidence! That’s the word. Just coincidence—you ding-dong!

• • •

Slater didn’t wait until Saturday but went up to London that night. He booked into a local hotel and checked the registration book. This was nothing more than habit, but it produced results. Cindy Patterson’s name was in there, along with Hank Merne’s and Darrell le Sant. Slater guessed they’d be her two from Moribund. “A convention?” he innocently inquired of the receptionist.

“Something of the sort,” she answered. “At the Horticultural Society Hall. Greycoat Street. We have a half-dozen of them staying here. They’ll probably be in the bar later.”

“Oh?” he said. “A quiet lot?”

She sniffed. “A funny lot! We’ve had ’em before. But they’re no trouble.”

He dumped his case in his room, left the hotel and inclined his face into the fine, drifting rain, heading for Greycoat Street. At the Hall: there was no missing or mistaking the gamers. They were setting up, getting organised, fixing up their tables and props. Some were dealers, with their stuff in boxes piled under their tables, not yet displayed; others were players, moving through the crowd looking for their friends; very few of them would be more than twenty-two or twenty-three years old. It was a pretty much male-

dominated scene, but there were some girls there: girl-friends most of them, but also one or two players, Slater guessed.

Slater hung his overcoat over his arm, stood to one side and smoked a cigarette. He knew he stuck out like a sore thumb, and that it was a big disadvantage, but the fact was that even if he wasn’t “an old guy” still he couldn’t have pictured himself as part of this crowd. Even if he were young again, you wouldn’t find him here.

A good many of the youths were just that: pimply, gawky, gangling, uncoordinated and mainly out-of-work youths. Respectable, most of them, Slater supposed, by their looks, anyway. Not criminal types, he’d stake it all on that. But who could go on looks anymore? The young man with the dark, brooding eyes and the black, waxed, pointy beard, for instance: he was probably respectable. And the two overweight guys who could be brothers, like a pair of mobile haystacks, hairy, ungainly and unwashed, but probably respectable. In their way. And there were rich kids, too, all smartly if casually dressed, fairly well-groomed, poised and polite, with plums in their mouths and their pockets full of money. A crowd that cross-sectioned the spectrum, this one. And the games seemed innocuous enough.

But…of course there were the freaks, too. Not physical freaks, RPG freaks. Like that bunch there with the green-dyed faces and Spock ears: Trekkies, obviously. And the little tubby guy with the rubber mouth-mask fringed with bouncing, writhing tentacles. Old Tootle-tootle himself. The latter, meeting friends, invariably greeted them with: “N’gah, R’lyeh, Cthulhu fhtagn!” Terrific…

And how about the one with the gold and silver balloons clustered about his head? He wore a T-shirt printed with “Yog loves Lavinny”, and behind the balloons a rubber mask festooned with boils and quivering, protruding pustules. Slater thought: but I’ll bet your Mum loves you.

“Mr. Slater?” Someone touched his elbow. The voice was quiet, almost shy. But it was quietly confident, too. Slater looked down a little from his seventy four inches at a slight, unassuming, bright-eyed specimen who couldn’t be more than twenty or twenty-one. He wore middle-length hair and an inquiring half-smile. “I’m Karl Ferd. Er, I suppose you are Mr. Slater?”

“Right first time,” said Slater, offering his hand. “I won’t ask how you picked me out of this lot!”

Ferd grinned, glanced all about. “Good crowd, innit?”

“Is it? Look, er, Karl: you’d better treat me as an ignoramus. I’m here on assignment, remember? I’m gathering information and atmosphere on behalf of someone else. This is all very strange to me. In fact, it’s strange period! So you’re the expert and I’m the novice. Which means that if I just seem to stand here and let you rattle on, don’t think I’ve been struck dumb or something. It’s just that I’ll be trying hard to follow what you’re saying, OK?”

“Sure,” said the other, still scanning the crowd. He was beginning to look a little disappointed.

“Something wrong?”

“Er, no. I’d hoped to see a few more foreigners, that’s all. I was hoping there’d be a lot of ’em this time—to buy up the latest Dugong and take it home with them, spread the word abroad. So far there are a couple of Krauts—er, Germans. And a few Frenchies.”

“Frogs?”

Ferd grinned again. “They’re all right,” he said. “Thing is, if Guttmeier had won in Milan, he might have showed up. That would have been interesting.”

Slater played dumb. “Guttmeier?”

“Hans Guttmeier, yeah. It seems he quit before play started—in Milan, I mean—and just walked out. They say he chickened out, but I can’t see it. He knew his stuff.”

“Oh,” Slater nodded. “He was some sort of champion, right?”

“World’s finest player!” said Ferd.

“So you get the French and the Germans attending these, er, conventions. Any others? What about the Swiss, or the Italians?”

Ferd shrugged. “Not a lot. Frogs and Belgiques, mainly. Oh, and some of the pro publishers. The Green Goblin people from over here, and occasionally one of the American outfits. Cindy Patterson was in earlier, from

Moribund. I mean, she is Moribund!” He grinned. “If you know what I mean. She said they’d have a couple of drinks and make an early night of it, be back tomorrow morning in time to see things get under way.”

Slater nodded. “I’m in a hotel just up the road. This Cindy Patterson and her American friends are staying there too. They’re probably in the bar right now. In fact there are quite a few gamers staying there. Fancy a pint?”

“Sure, why not? Nothing much is going to happen here until tomorrow.”

They went back to Slater’s hotel. In the bar were maybe two dozen people, and Ferd nudged Slater’s elbow, directing his glance to a corner table. “Cindy Patterson,” he whispered. “With Hank Merne and Darrell Le Sant. Big names!”

Slater looked. Cindy Patterson was in her early thirties, small and chubby, looking like lumpy putty and wearing glasses so thick they gave her an owlish expression. There was a plate of sandwiches on her table, and she had a tomato seed stuck in her teeth. Her companions were debating something or other while she listened, adding very little to their conversation. Hank Merne was of the same shape, size and constitution as Cindy, and Darrell le Sant was thin as a beanpole with his fair hair cropped a half-inch all over. But sinister? Forget it.

But then the door opened and in came the enigmatic pointy-beard with a bunch of friends. One of them was a Spock whose green was starting to run, and another was still wearing his “Yog loves Lavinny” T-shirt, though mercifully he’d dumped his balloons and diseased mask. The others seemed entirely normal, but very bright-eyed and excited.

“Oh-oh!” said Ferd, warningly. “The mobile mouth there is Kevin ‘Cthulhu lives’ Blacker, the gaseous guru. He’s full of it. Gives us a bad name, that one.”

Slater’s interest climbed a notch. he asked: “What’s his speciality?”

“Same as mine,” said Ferd, sourly. “The Mythos. But where I’m a fan publisher, he’s a prophet of doom! That’s his story, anyway. Hang around a bit and you’ll see what I mean.”

Blacker had spotted Ferd standing at the bar. He saw his friends into their seats at a central table, then briefly came over. He was only young, maybe twenty two, but his voice was straight from his boots. Also there was a sweet, unmistakable odour about him, so that Slater guessed he smoked the occasional funny cigarette. Blacker ordered drinks for the people at his table, turned to Ferd. He didn’t seem to notice Slater.

“Hello there, Karl,” he grunted. “Still publishing your blasphemous crap, I see.” He slapped a copy of the latest Dugong down on the bar, prodded it with a pointed fingernail. His voice sank even lower as he said: “Don’t you know that this stuff is an open invitation? Can’t you see that you’re inviting them in?”

“Course I can, Kev’,” Ferd sneered. “But I don’t recall inviting you. Do you mind? I’m enjoying a pint—or I was!”

Blacker scowled, shook his head in a half-angry, half-frustrated, pitying way, and returned to this group. Slater said: “If he’s so down on the Mythos, how come he associates with the Yog-loves-Lavinny, guy?”

“Trying to save them,” Ferd growled.

Slater’s interest went up another notch. “Are they in danger? Save them from what?”

“From themselves. A one-man Salvation Army. Danger? Yeah—they might drown in all that garbage he talks! See, there he goes, oiling his larynx.”

Blacker downed a pint of Guinness in one long pull, wiped his mouth and ordered another. And then he was off and running:

“They were here before us,” he said, his voice rising over all the other bar sounds, “they’re here now, and they’ll be here after they’ve cleared us off. The old cults are dead, gone, except in a handful of lonely, dark places. But the new cults are here in bright, shiny disguises—yes, and the new cultists are also disguised! The difference is this: that they don’t know they’re cultists! Who am I talking about?” His voice was rising as he gathered impetus. “I’m talking about you,” he prodded T-shirt in the chest. “And you,” he snarled at the Spock character. “And especially you!” He pointed across the room directly at the Americans around their corner table. “Moribund? God, how right you are! You and your acolytes, like…him!” And this time the accusing finger was aimed at Ferd.

Slater watched and listened, soaking it all up. He had a feeling that this was it, that he’d found what he was looking for. Blacker was plainly off his trolley, but still there was something darkly fascinating about him. He was like a young, slim Aleister Crowley—a sort of unholy roller—or would be if he wasn’t on the other side. As he talked the bar lights flickered, dimmed a little, at which his dark eyes brightened to scintillant pin-points. “Can’t you feel them in the very air?” he raved. “Can’t you almost smell them? Their energies are all about you, energies which you yourselves attract, and their emissaries watch you with false human eyes. You hear their massed voices in the convention halls, and you fail to recognise them. Your players call their names and you invoke them with your gibberish—and yet ye know not what ye do!”

While all of this was going on, several changes had occurred. For one, Cindy Patterson and her two had left their drinks and departed. Obviously they’d encountered Blacker before or knew his reputation—or they simply didn’t like the look or sound of him. Slater couldn’t blame them. But there’d also been a new arrival. In the old days, ten years and more ago—before Slater got married, and long before the experience had turned him right off women—this would have been just his style.

She wore black trousers with a white jacket, a lightly frilled shirt whose cuffs showed fluffily around her wrists, a card saying PRESS under her left-hand breast pocket, (which Slater thought a bit daring, especially in a place packed with peculiar or at least curious people) and a tiny pager in the pocket itself, with its aerial extended and sticking up level with the top of her head. Her black high-heels made her about five-ten; her black hair was very shiny and bounced on her shoulders; dark eyes in a creamy face lost the rest of her features in the shadows they seemed to cast. Slater was aware of a small nose and a red Cupid’s bow mouth, but the eyes were the main attraction.

She found a chair at Blacker’s table, didn’t wait to be invited but simply sat herself down, making quick shorthand notes in a pad while Blacker continued to spout. The fans where they made room for her were very much impressed; they seemed torn between listening to him and ogling her, and it looked like she was going to win hands down.

“Phew!” said Karl Ferd in Slater’s ear.

“Damn right,” said Slater. But to himself: yeah, go right ahead, young Karl. Mess with that one and see where it gets you. She’s broken more hearts than you’ve had warm pints. But at the same time he knew that if he were ten years younger, he’d very likely be considering messing with it himself.

Blacker had meanwhile noticed her. He would have to be dead not to. Stopped in his tracks, he blinked at her and said, “Eh?”

A policeman came in out of the rain. He wore an issue cape, spiked helmet, whistle chain, the lot. A Bobby off the beat. Things grew quieter as he went to the bar and leaned on it, speaking to the bartender in lowered tones. He showed him a photograph, waited while he scanned it. Slater was all ears. “Nope,” said the barman, wiping a glass. “Eyetie, innit? Bad lot, is he?”

“Missing,” said the Bobby.

Slater had managed to get an inverted glance at the picture: Antonio Minatelli. Good grief! This was someone’s idea of how to unobtrusively check out the convention! They hadn’t even bothered to send a plainclothesman. That was how likely they thought it was that Minatelli was going to turn up here. As the policeman left, Blacker started up again. And having noted that the new girl—woman—at his table was a reporter, now he really got his teeth into it:

“Alhazred, crazy? It’s you people who think he wasn’t real who are crazy! Oh, that may not have been his name, but he was real, all right. A prophet, a doomsayer: ‘repent ye sinners, for the end is nigh!’ Lovecraft himself was another, only not so outspoken. He cloaked his realities in fiction. His stories were warnings! If you can’t see it you’re blind. Blinded by your own cleverness. But Alhazred, Lovecraft—oh, and plenty of others—yes, and me, too, we…”

The lights flickered again, went very dim, and Blacker pointed at the wavering bulbs here and there around the room. “They know, do you see? They hear me speak the truth and they fear it! They fear discovery, for the stars are not yet right! But I have discovered them, and so can you, if only—”

The lights went out.

Behind the bar a shadowy figure said, “Shit!” and went scrambling for the fuse box. Midnight shapes groped and collided in the darkness. Someone said: “Ohhh!” And someone else—Slater figured it must be the Yog-loves-Lavinny—shrilled: “Ia, R’lyeh! Cthulhu fhtagn!”

Slater didn’t know why, but for some peculiar reason that last made his skin crawl. It had sounded so fluent, very weird and alien. The midnight shapes continued to slither and grope in the darkness, and Slater (again for some reason he couldn’t pin down) pictured them closing in on Blacker. “Jesus!” he whispered to himself. His imagination was in full flight. He pictured alien things with huge, shiny hooks, thrusting them through Blacker’s flesh, at the same time gagging him, dragging him choking and dripping blood through a hole in the darkness into an even darker dark…

Then the lights came back on. Like a camera, Slater froze the film—the scene—on his mind’s eye. Blacker wasn’t there. The reporter-lady stood over his empty seat, her eyes huge and astonished. But Blacker definitely wasn’t there. Jesus!

Slater had almost forgotten Ferd standing beside him. But now Ferd said, “A fuse.” That simple statement saved Slater from what might have caused him a lot of acute embarrassment. For at that moment:

“Did you see that?” came Blacker’s hoarse cry of triumph and terror from the doorway to the toilets. He stuck his head out, glanced all about the room. He was pale now, and trembling. “They have their ways—but they don’t get me that easily! They’re near, I tell you. No—they’re here!” He made for the exit, rushed out into the night and the rain.

“A real nutter,” Karl Ferd commented, neatly threading his way through customers at the bar, heading after Blacker. “But he’s got style.” And over his shoulder to Slater: “I’ll be right back.”

Slater started to follow on, then changed his mind. He settled back against the bar, felt his excitement ebb away. He took a deep breath and wondered if maybe he was getting a bit old for this sort of stuff…

The reporter-lady had spotted Slater at the bar. He caught her glance, the silent appraisal, and thought: she’s thinking, he’s not much but he’s the best this place has to offer. At least he’s a guaranteed free drink. Maybe even two. “Hi,” he rumbled as she came over.

“Are you here for the convention?” she asked.

“In a way. I’m looking for someone, that’s all. But no, I don’t play games.”

“Don’t you?” She cocked her head a little on one side. “That’s a pity.”

Ah, well—that’s the preliminaries over and done. “Would you like a drink?”

“Why not? May I have a gin and tonic?”

Slater ordered. Ten minutes patter and she’ll drift away. “And you?” he said. “An article on the convention?”

“That’s part of it.” She pressed up against him to let people squeeze by. “Sort of two birds with one stone, really.”

“Oh?”

She sipped her drink, grinned at him. “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine,” she said.

Slater did his Robert Mitchum double-take. “Hussy!”

“You know what I mean,” she grinned. And she was at once serious again. “I’m looking for Antonio Minatelli.”

Why not? Slater thought. I’m looking for him; the police are looking for him; why shouldn’t she be? “I’ve a feeling he won’t show.”

“You’re Old Bill!” she accused.

He shook his head. “No, just an interested party. What difference does it make?”

“What, him not showing or you being…whatever you are? Never mind. It makes no difference.”

“Good,” said Slater.

“Minatelli was top of my list, but…when one story dies on you, you look for another. I’ll rearrange my priorities, that’s all.”

Slater ordered more drinks. He’d had two beers, three brandies, nothing to eat. If he was going to carry on drinking he really ought to eat. “What are your priorities?” he inquired.

“The next in line after Minatelli just ran out on me,” she answered, ruefully. “The one with the beard and the mouth.”

“Kevin Blacker? If he’s not careful he’ll frighten himself to death! I believe he really does believe. The guy’s a nut. I mean, it’s one thing to ‘believe’ in Hilda Ogden, but Cthulhu’s something else.”

“Hlu-hlu,” she said, without smiling.

He shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“I’m Belinda Laine,” she introduced herself, glanced at her watch. “And I just went off-duty.”

It was 10:15. “Slater,” he answered. “Jim Slater, and I’m hungry.”

The bar was filling up; people jostled; Karl Ferd came twining through the crush. “The next on my list,” said Belinda Laine, as Ferd joined them. Ferd looked at Slater with eyes that said, you don’t waste any time, do you?

Slater said: “Do you two know each other?”

“Er, no.” Ferd appeared a little shy. “I’m Karl Ferd.”

“I know,” she said. “You’re Dugong, right? Britain’s answer to Bob Prout’s Shoggoth Pit?”

Ferd tried not to preen. “Dugong is OK,” he shrugged.

“You’re too modest, Karl,” she said. “But you’ve done some deep stuff lately: like the tongue-in-cheek issue where every article offered ‘proof’ that the whole Mythos thing is real. The only ‘name’ that was missing from your contents page was Kevin Blacker.”

Again Ferd’s shrug, and his sour grin. “That’s ’cos it was tongue-in-cheek!”

“But very well done,” she complimented him. “A lot of your readers—close to a thousand of them?—might get the idea that you believe in this stuff, too. I mean, you present some damning ‘evidence’.”

“I got some clever writers, that’s all.”

Her serious look slowly evaporated, and she smiled. Which was worth seeing. Slater had been thinking: she knows her stuff. She’s talking to him on his own level. She’s researched this better than I have! “I’m hungry,” he said again. “Do you want to eat, you two?”

“Not me,” Ferd answered. “I’m off home. I’ve a pal down at the Hall who has offered me a lift.”

“Before you go,” said Slater, “tell me: why did you go running after Blacker like that?”

“I wanted to check if he’d be around tomorrow to mess up the games,” Ferd answered at once. “He makes people uncomfortable.”

“And will he be around?” Belinda Laine was interested.

Ferd shook his head. “No. He says he’s delivered his warning and now it’s up to us. He’s on his way back home to Oxford.”

She seemed disappointed. “But you’ll be here, right?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Maybe we’ll get a few minutes to talk in private.”

Down, boy! Slater thought, seeing Ferd’s eager expression. “Great!” the young man answered. “Long as you like.” He turned to Slater, said: “Cheers, then.”

“Cheers.” They watched him leave.

“Where will we eat?” She smiled.

They took a taxi to a steak house and had a small meal. She hardly touched her food. Slater got through his, and through a bottle of house white which tasted dreadful. She had a gin and tonic but only drank half of it. While she toyed with her food and drink, he asked, “How did you get onto this? What’s your angle?”

“Not fair,” she answered. “You already know about me. Ace reporter and all that. Assignment: check out the games convention, look for missing kids; get some sort of a story, anyway. Possibilities. Why are so many young people so deeply into this thing? What’s the attraction? Etc, etc. You know all that, but I only know your name. “

True, he thought. “I’m a PI,” he said, breaking Rule Number One. “Tony Minatelli’s Mum wants her son back. But I don’t think she’ll ever see him again. Young guys don’t run off and leave their cars behind. He’s a goner. Oh, and you did say you were looking for missing kids. Plural. My opinion: Hans Guttmeier’s a goner, too.”

She opened her eyes wide. “You’re well informed,” she said. “How about Jean Daniel de Marigny?”

“Eh?”

“Young Frenchman.” She stared hard at Slater. “Disappeared in Rheims.”

I’m well informed! he thought. “Maybe we should team up,” he suggested. “Also, you’re in the wrong business. Give the newspaper job the elbow, Belinda, and open up a detective agency! You’re well ahead of me.”

She laughed, then went serious again. “Are you a believer, Jim?”

“Only in Santa Claus. You mean this ‘they’re here, walking among us’ business? Naw! Oh, someone is walking among us, all right: a crazy man, a psycho. Maybe Kevin Blacker. But aliens? Elder Gods? Invaders from the spaces between the spaces?”

She sat back.

“Now Andrew Paynter,” he went on, “—a pal of mine back at the agency in Croydon—he’s just gullible enough to make something big of all this.”

“He is?”

The wine was getting to Slater. “Universes sliding together,” he mumbled. “Fishers through fissures. Him and Kevin Blacker could have a really heavy session together.” He looked at the empty bottle and her eyes followed his.

“Will the bar be open back at your hotel?”

He shrugged. “Dunno—but I’ve a half-bottle of Martell in my room.”

“Strictly business,” she said, but she was smiling.

“Of course,” said Slater, thinking: you stupid bastard! Meaning himself, naturally.

• • •

In the taxi she snuggled up to him, said: “What if it was all real? I mean, why would they be taking out these people? Guttmeier, Minatelli, de Marigny…”

“Guttmeier was the world’s No. 1. Maybe it was more than just a game to him. Maybe he’d seen through the curtain. Minatelli? Perhaps he knew or guessed something. I don’t know. But it isn’t real. If it were…surely there’d be bigger targets? Like this Moribund outfit.”

“No.” She snuggled closer. “Moribund only produces the games—they’re in it for the dollars. They don’t believe. They’re Blacker’s unconscious cultists. And they’re doing a great job, spreading the word—but without believing a word of it.”

“If it were real,” Slater mused, aware of her beside him, “Blacker would have to go. He’d be high on their list.”

He felt her nod in the darkness of the back seat. “Maybe Karl Ferd, too.”

“I like Karl,” he said, “and so I’m glad it’s not real. On the other hand I’m also glad you are.”

“That’s nice,” she said.

He was silent for a moment, then asked: “Why Karl Ferd? He’s no true believer.”

“No, but he’s a deep one. I mean, not a Deep One, but inquisitive, questioning, investigative.”

“Everybody’s trying to get into the act,” said Slater. And after a moment: “But you know, I think I’ll stick with this one. There’s more to it than meets the eye. It warrants a little in-depth scrutiny.”

“And you’re good at that, right?”

“Once I get my teeth into something, yes.”

It had stopped raining when they got back to the hotel. They went up to Slater’s room where he produced his bottle. “If that’s what it takes,” she said, “go ahead. It’s unflattering, but flattery isn’t what I need right now.”

Suddenly nervous as a kid, Slater drank while she showered. Over her splashing, the telephone rang. The receptionist put Andrew Paynter on the line. “Hello, Jim? I’ve been trying to get you all night.”

“Make it short,” Slater slurred. “What’s up?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Paynter said. And now he sounded uncomfortable. “See, I just found out that Judy reads weird fiction. She’s a horror-freak!”

“Ho-hum,” Slater yawned. “Believe me, you’ve got more shocks than that coming.”

“No, listen—this is interesting. She mentioned how she’d like us to go up to a convention in Birmingham next week. The British Fantasy Society or some such outfit. All her favourite authors will be there. People like Curly Grant and J. Caspar Ramble—and Edward J. Waggler, the guy who did the Blaine series. So I’m thinking of taking her.”

“What you’re thinking of is a dirty weekend,” said Slater.

“Will you listen to me?” Paynter insisted. “There’s more.”

Slater sighed. “I’m listening,” he said.

“See,” said Paynter uneasily, “there’ll be a whole bunch of Mythos writers up there; and I just happened to be checking out a road route, and—”

“Birmingham sits right on your ley line, right?”

“That’s right! And the time-scale is right, too!”

“Ho-hum,” said Slater again. He began to sing: “They’re coming to take me away, ha-ha…”

“Well I think it’s interesting,” said Paynter. “You…you—oh, bollocks!” The phone went click and started to beep. Slater grinned and replaced it in its cradle.

“Huffy bastard!” he said. And then he sat very still for five minutes and listened to Belinda Laine splashing…

• • •

When she came out from the shower she was naked as newborn and scrubbed just as pink. Slater looked at her and discovered he’d forgotten how long it had been. The sight of her drew the alcohol like tweezers draw a bee sting; in a moment he was half sober again. Removing his clothes with fingers that weren’t quite his own—or which at least behaved like they were someone else’s, and someone stupid at that—he wondered: Christ, how long has it been?!

“You’re a hard one to get close to,” she said, drawing him stumbling into the bedroom. “I couldn’t tell if you wanted me or not. And I’m still not sure!”

But a cool one? Even stretching him out on the bed, she leaned over to adjust the position of her pager on the bedside table. Bloody “ace reporter”!

After that…obviously it wasn’t love, wasn’t even lust—it was need! Like a good meal after fasting for a week, or a drink after hiking across the Gobi Desert, or fresh air after an eight-hour stakeout in a smoky motel room with no air-conditioning. And it felt good! And while they were doing it he had to admit (if only to himself, and then grudgingly) that it was a sight better than risking wanker’s cramp in a tepid bath of scummy water.

But that was while they were doing it. Immediately after—when the weight was off and the sugar was melting from his brain, when he’d stopped groaning and could unclench his teeth, unscrew his eyes and look her in her lovely face—in short, when he could start thinking again…

…It was the same as it had always been. It was nothing. Or if anything, it was disgust. With himself, but even more so with her. So that he thought: Lord, as close up as this she isn’t even good-looking! And instead of the sugar she’d sprinkled there for a little while, now the acid was back in his brain, putting words in his mouth he knew he shouldn’t say to a dog let alone someone he’d just emptied himself into:

“For an ace reporter,” he heard himself say, “You make a bloody good hooker!” But having said it, instead of biting his tongue, it was as if the words themselves bred more acid. Acid that burned away his perceptions until they warped right out of shape and started lying to him and feeding him wrong information. Suddenly she didn’t even feel like a woman any more, and her face was like so much rubber and downright ugly!

“A what?” she said, apparently stunned, but not yet outraged. She seemed more surprised than shocked. Maybe that in itself should have told him something, but he was too far gone now—too angry with himself that he’d succumbed. She was WOMAN, and they were all the same. “A tart! A piece! A slimy bloody hooker!”

“Ah!” she said, with a lot of emphasis; and she smiled at him with her suddenly mobile, swiftly metamorphosing face. Her left arm held him tightly and her legs wound about him. Her left hand grew three-inch claws sharp as needles that sank all the way into his back. One of them pierced his spine expertly to paralyse him, so that his scream came out a shrill, gasping whistle. “No,” she said, in a voice which flowed like her unbelievable features, “not a hooker—just a hook!”

He shook on her, jerking like he was ready to come again, vibrating in agony—the agony of knowing, and in knowing there was nothing he could do about it. Her right arm uncoiled from his back and lifted the pager from the bedside table, and something sharp and shiny pressed its button.

There came a crackle of static, and something else that might have been speech, might even have been a question. But not in any language of Earth. She answered it in the same—tongue?—and sank a second needle into Slater’s spinal column to still his twitching and calm him down a little.

Before the darkness came, he realised he knew beyond any reasonable doubt that she’d been speaking through the fissure, and also that he knew what she’d said.

“OK,” she’d said. “You can reel us in now…”