“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…”
The Black Recalled
It was my intention originally to use “Caller” and “The Black Recalled” as a diptych, with the first to open the book and the second, its sequel, to close it. But then I decided that the end should in fact be THE END…I know you’ll get my meaning when you reach “the end” of this volume’s final story. Anyway, this Titus Crow story (wherein paradoxically our occultist hero is never actually seen!)was commissioned by Bob Weinberg for the Book of the World Fantasy Convention, 1983. Paul Ganley later got me to write a Titus Crow “origin” story, “Lord of the Worms”, and I went one better by following that up with an even earlier “origin” short story entitled “Inception”. Now, that last was not a Mythos tale, but it was done for a special reason: so that Paul could put the entire thing together in a book called—no prizes for guessing it—The Compleat Crow, which wasn’t in fact complete because of the Crow novels (six of them!) that were still out there somewhere! But at least we’d covered the short stories and novellas. Anyway, Paul published all the novels, too, so that was that all squared up.