Haggopian and Other Stories

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!”