Chaosium Digest Volume 32, Number 2
Date: Wednesday July 5, 2000
Number: 2 of 2

THE WHIPPOORWILL HOUSE AFFAIR
J. Aspera
Chapter One


"Eternal winter
Machines in the sky
Electric Light
Pulse Fear"
Darkthrone 1991



It was an idle rain, scattering inadequately across the winter breeze, without
the dynamism of a storm or the refreshment of cold mistiness. Predominantly it
was an irritation, the phrase that springs to mind. That seems most appropriate.
Everything started with minor irritation, and then I met a major irritation. I
had not hitherto organized my life according to the edicts of an investigator,
but my companion on that bus had and chose to impose, or inflict, his
characteristics on me. As regarding the considerable upheaval in my life
subsequently we had a love-hate relationship, i.e. he loved it and I hated it.
Whippoorwill House? I couldn't stand it, unsurprisingly. Enjoyable as
supernatural phenomena may appear when submitted to dubious literary dynamics, I
may assure you that the realities of the situation are less than favorable. My
companion, being of the investigative persuasion, was blessed with a repartee
that was, if not witty, at least brimming with character. I'd happily say that
he had a personality that could be measured on the Richter scale. It didn't take
much to provoke his moral idealism and I was unfortunate enough to be caught in
the melodrama blast radius. He managed the obscure feat of being obnoxiously
opinionated without having any opinions to speak of.

In truth I can't remember if he approached me first on that fateful bus journey
or whether I opened the festivities. Perhaps this was some sort of catalyst for
the events to come, I often observed subsequently. It seems appropriate that the
rather disturbing events that followed were opened like a thirties detective
story, particularly as my stoical companion was locked in a perpetual film noir
almost entirely derived from his own fevered imagination.

Whatever the circumstances that prompted our tethering to each other and mutual
dislike spawned from my habitual cynicism we have been tied together by strings
of fate ever since, a relationship I would sooner be spared. At least this
serves to document our sojourn into a considerably nastier world, and hopefully
to substantiate my derisory opinions. Whatever you think about the narrative,
attempt to ignore my companion. I know I tried.

Idle, scattering rainfall. The rickety bus, clanking and wheezing arthritically,
began to laboriously climb another hill at an agonizingly slow pace. Darkness,
the more profound and unsettling darkness of an unpopulated, wild area,
commandeered the threatening skies, extinguishing the inadequate light filtering
down from distant stars and a crescent moon. The burgeoning, formidable swathe
of forest was a clustering, chilled and macabre lushness in the barren, lonely
expanses of North-Yorks  moorland. Rivulets of ice sinuously curved from beneath
the trunks and scattered across the road as if somebody
had accidentally cracked the world. I'm not sure that something hadn't. It
seemed more and more over the next few, erratic and obscure days that the world
had cracked right open and that I had unwittingly tumbled into the abyss. In a
more skeptical frame of mind this might delineate the following events as the
figment of an overactive imagination, to which I have no falsifiable answer. My
sincere advise is to consider all this with an open mind.

Let us rewind twenty-four hours. The rain incessantly arced stinging out of the
sky, glimmering slightly in the darkening air as the car lazily trawled through
the winding, improbable roads of the North York moors. The last vestige of
azure-tinted light was draining ponderously from the western horizon and the
driver, peering through the spattering showers, flicked the headlights on,
searchlights in a gathering pall of chilly mist. The rolling expanses of
dampened bracken slowly became indiscernible and fog ruled the
dusk with a cold, clammy grip. Inside the car, shivering in the autumn cold, I,
James Aspera, huddled with a strained expression on my face. I was 28,
enthralled by melodramatic occult fiction (and the bountiful profits therein),
and soon to embark on another new opus. A depressing drive through the Tees
estuary was unfortunately a requirement on my pilgrimage from Oxford to Glasgow,
and I was not particularly relishing the prospect of the stopover. I had
dismissed Teesside's university several years
back with the knowledge that its entry requirements just about amounted to a
bronze swimming certificate and, on the more exclusive courses, successful
passage of the primary school system. This automatically made me question the
intellect of the inhabitants. Last time I had visited, an identical sea of
dysfunctional youth had accounted for 99.9% of the population.

But I digress. The treatment of Teesside University there was somewhat
unjustified, and the combined forces of its extensive library and the venerable
Central Library by the law-courts was a high contributing factor in the
subsequent events, which are documented here. Previously my writing had amounted
to vicariously learnt occult mysticism, expressed through fairly cheap novella.
My manifesto was patched together with the works of the predictable influences,
H.P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell and the like, and I had hitherto not stepped
beyond the boundaries of fairly flimsy plot-lines woven around a Mythos created
by others. I was considerably lacking in original creations, my work featuring
more Cthonians than you could shake a Dhole at, at the expense of derision for
the derivativeness of my work. I had had one tenuously occult encounter, in
Edinburgh of all places, which had introduced me to my own habitual survival
instincts. To put it more colloquially, this was my reliable tendency to run
screaming like a girl at the merest hint of an inhuman snuffling, never mind the
incursion of some cosmic horror from beyond the stars.

I was trawling laboriously through a sea of peripheral information to find the
subject matter for my next opus. Teesside phenomena yielded quite a bit of
information, stories of black goats and carnivorous trees near Osmotherley,
tales of obscure fish-people living off the coast near Hartlepool (ahem) and
other dubious occultism. In truth, it seemed the Tees Estuary had at least as
much of an occult history as the Severn Valley. The only occult author I could
remember from the area was Brian Lumley, but he seemed pretty on the ball about
the sinister underbelly of the valley.

The information on North-Yorks 's enigmatic Whippoorwill House had piqued my
literary instincts and I had felt the outline of a narrative as soon as I heard
that most cherishably obscure name.

Obviously you can imagine my chagrin that the only information available was a
few flimsy half-truths delivered with derisory tone. I would obviously have to
venture deeper into the field to find anything substantial. I was not especially
happy, really. I had business to attend to and an expedition into the mysterious
wilds of rural England was not exactly first on my agenda. But we all have to
make sacrifices for our careers, whether you want to, or not as the case may be.
So therefore you can imagine all the beautiful thoughts skimming half-heartedly
through my addled brain on the bus through the area of Whippoorwill. I was so
manifestly excited that I fell asleep.

I dreamed of pyramids in the void, Insectile chittering, the leer of humanity
twisted beyond the borders of which even the most perverted of souls had not so
much as moved toward. Something grabbed me with a grip as cold and icy as a dead
stars blackened surface, screaming I awoke.

The bus had thudded to a halt rather suddenly, throwing me from my seat, the
insect chorus turned into the rain gently but furiously hurling itself at the
ground and bus. Outside I could just make out dense forest, something snagged at
my brain but for the life of me I could not place a finger or any other
appendage on it for that matter. The bus driver was speaking, turning I could
see that there was only one other person excluding the driver on the vehicle. If
ever there was any one who lived up to the stereo type of their profession it
was this cabbage, his attire allowed me to instantly surmise that he was one
of two things: A) door to door pornography sales man, or B) a private
investigator. My mind toyed with the idea of the former, but I simply couldn't
handle the sheer hilarity of that prospect. No, really. His hair had the quality
one normally associated with frenetic nuclear activity, or possibly the lead
character from the film 'Boogie Nights' gone jaundice blonde. Another twenty
years and Columbo would be reborn, no disputation. In case it's taking you a
while to jam the jigsaw pieces together, this is the erstwhile companion I
related at the beginning of this narrative. He turned to me, a smile lighting up
his face like
search-lights flash upon a running criminal. I returned it with a frightened
flicker of an eyebrow and pretended to be examining a fascinating clump of
chewing gum adhering the seat in front of me. Don't introduce yourself, don't
introduce yourself, the mantra oscillated around my mind, bouncing off the
insides.

I was granted that small mercy only temporarily as the driver spoke. It was odd
really, for what he was proposing was not exactly a major task of considerable
difficulty, quite the opposite in fact. He was explaining that he would be going
down the road to gain some assistance from the first farmstead he encountered.
Quite a feasible plan considering the condition of the bus, but why then did he
display all of the mannerisms of a man on the short walk to the electric chair?
He begged us to stay in the bus, keeping the door locked for all but him and
then he was gone. As he left, I noticed that his hands were shaking like someone
with his motor functions wired into the national grid. At this point hope of not
having to communicate with the escapee of "Goodfellas" dissolved as he turned to
me with the expression of a predator cornering its prey, eyes, teeth and hair
aspark with glee. His lips cracking open to expel the funereal emission of
whisky and cheep garlic products, he spoke with a voice thick with unknowing
intent and I slumped in exasperation, as salvation, sniggering, booked tickets
to the Antarctic. The words came...

"Can I interest you in illicit products for the mature gentleman?"

Actually, I just made that up.

"Hi!! Matt Swindell." He thrust out a hand bearing an identification card,
smeared in a way that made me shy away from speculation about just where he kept
it. The small, naturally bad passport photograph lined him up as a finalist for
'What's My Pathology?', and identified that he was, as he declared, Matthew
Barnabas Swindell Esq. I considered making a citizens arrest there and then and
exiling from the bus for twenty years. And this is when he'd expressed just five
syllables. Not monosyllabic talk, like I expected. I introduced myself in a tone
that expressed a polite invitation for him to fly to Antarctic alongside my
salvation. He didn't take the hint despite the fact that I all but hit him over
the head with them in inflatable form. The smile pinpointed me again like a
frightened badger in the glow of an oncoming juggernaut.

"Pleased to meet you," I lied through gritted teeth, "may I bring your attention
to that most interesting object just over there." I pointed in an opposing
direction and lifted a book from the central library to cover my entire face in
a parody of concentration. With a gesture that makes me think longingly about
napalm he pulled the book down with a crooked finger.

"I'm a private investigator!" he said with more enthusiasm than was warranted,
or come to that, psychologically healthy. He wiggled a finger nonchalantly in
one ear. I waited with rapt anticipation for it to emerge through the other
side. It didn't. How disappointing.

"That's magnificent. I'm not."

I attempted to bring the book back to my face, but he 'accidentally' knocked it
from my hand as he reached into a pocket for a crumpled and bedraggled packet of
Lambert and Butler Lights. I didn't smoke but I breathed the tobacco fumes in,
in the hope that I would pass out from them.

He rambled, and I listened with half an ear, or more accurately about 0.01% of
an ear. The rest of my sensory equipment paid no attention. Out of the corner of
my eye I noticed expressive gestures and wondered idly what he was going on
about, before remembering that I didn't care one jot. Instead, my mind ruminated
over deep philosophical conundrums.

What does not caring one jot mean? What on this plane of time and space is a jot
and why are they so manifestly important to caring about situations? My mind
explored its recesses for back up information, and I was enjoying a little
sideline in the inanities department of my head when words he used drilled into
my consciousness. Chapel of Contemplation. I had encountered such, and on the
verge of actually engaging him in serious conversation about this notable occult
phenomena when a frenzied banging on the windows juddered thoughts from my head.
The driver had evidently returned, and judging from the frenzied assault he was
perpetrating upon the door I surmised that he had perhaps not found the help he
was seeking. Swindell rose to let him in when we both froze and I wet my self
(luckily not a noticeable amount). Emotions that had been thankfully dormant
since Edinburgh leapt back into the fore as the driver let loose the single most
unnamable utterance of long forgotten primal fear. It was horrendous, and
actually rattled the rain-bespeckled windows, causing the droplets to run in
frantic arcs. The driver's hands were snapped back from the window as if he had
been plucked like a eyebrow hair from the darkening face of night. A flicker,
literally; one second his fear-addled face was pressed against the windows and
then the dark maw of night swallowed him without warning.

The shriek promptly descended into pitiful gurgling half sobs conjoined with
faint grunts, the tearing of flesh and the snapping of bone. After an eternal
few seconds this culminated with satisfied breathing and rustlings as something
pushed its way back into the forest. At this point Swindell issued the two
words, which would become his somewhat annoying catch-phrase of the upcoming
events. However adequately he thought the phrase fit the situation, the words
'oh' and 'man' almost detracted from the horror of events as they transpired. At
the same time I saw something ignite in his already aflame eyes, he turned upon
my with an excitement akin to that of someone infected with rabies again he
spoke.
'Hey buddy, you know what we got here' I managed to utter my bafflement. He
continued  'We got ourselves a mystery!' I groaned inwardly and my head fell
into my hands. I had befallen a worse fate than the bus-driver, becoming the
victim of a dramatist. I sourly considered the implications of this vegetable
who had magically entered my life, like an embarrassing medical complaint.

Outside the silence repressed my thoughts and again something at the back of my
mind screamed at the unnamable wrongness of the exterior forest. I shook my
head, aware that Swindell had a tight expression, which he presumed communicated
intensity and resolution but brought me to mind of how I felt after eating too
much banana.  He began to search the bus and discovered the following items: One
half eaten bag of crisps, which my companion proffered to me. The smell was
intolerable. He shrugged and ate a handful with a sound not unlike the crunching
we had recently heard, but amplified. He appeared not to notice the writhing
whiteness within, and I arbitrarily chose not to notice either.

One AA road map for the Severn valley district, which had Brichester lake
circled and a spiky object scribbled within. I had encountered the Severn
through the elucidation of Ramsey Campbell literature, and hastily folded the
map into my pocket. One torch with an unopened packet of batteries, I snatched
this with a look that suggested that not even death would separate me from my
new love.

And lastly, one copy of a well known pornographic publication to be delivered to
none other than Whippoorwill House, it disturbed me that Swindell pocketed this
at something close to the speed of sound, and I'm not going to comment on his
rather delighted expression in too much detail. I wondered just who lived at the
House I had been so eager to feature in my next opus. I sourly cast my eyes upon
the dim suggestions of forest encroaching upon the road, and again something
nagged without warranty. I could be inside one of my own books.

A sense of urgency descended upon us both like a horde of ravenous locusts, we
both shared a knowing look, we had to leave the bus, we had to leave now.
Swindell opened the door. As I hastily stepped through, I had the feeling that I
had been sucked unknowingly through a molecule, as if the bus had been a pocket
of imprisoned reality traversing a much darker, more unpredictable realm. My
brain attempted to assimilate this feeling and then as I cast my eyes over my
new environment. My body reacted before my head could tell it to stop and I
suddenly needed a change of underwear.

Something hideous shared the dark glade with me and Swindell, something
dreadful. The flickering iridescence of a bulbous moon fleetingly glittered
across the rain-speckled carpet of pine-needles, illuminating the horrific scene
before us. Behind me, a small voice said 'Oh, man.' I had to echo his
sentiments.

Yes, it was now clear if this was his idea of help the bus driver was a somewhat
unusual individual.

He hung in inverted cruciform from a tree branch, upon his chest was carved in
interesting variant of the traditional pentagram motif but with a rather
disturbing, almost circuit like embellishment to it. The list of other
'interesting details' is far to long for my limited vocabulary but mutilation
and evisceration cover it in a round about way. My expertly aimed projectile
vomit further added to the corpses indignity as if being forced to eat your own
genitals wasn't bad enough. Swindell however seemed to show the same interest as
the laconic washing machine repair man as he investigated the cadaver muttering
in
agreement to himself.

My eyes skittered across the scenery, searching for telltale suggestions of
movement. I whimpered involuntarily as I thought an enigmatic silhouette of
unidentifiable shape momentarily flickered across my vision. Agitatedly, I
slapped Swindell on the shoulder, and reluctantly asked him to join me in
exiting the scene. With a last wide-eyed expression of rigidly moralistic
disapproval and a murmured 'Oh, man', for the third time in two minutes, he
lumbered into a jog as my harried footsteps receded away from him, pounding on
the forest road. Panting quickly and with lamentable fitness, my breath steaming
in the unnatural cold, I almost rebounded off a signpost that loomed suddenly
out of the
impenetrable darkness. It was rotting, canted on an obscure and painful angle
and bedecked with moss. The faintest suggestion of a wood-louse makes me recoil
with revulsion so I kept my distance just in case. The lettering, hacked into
the wood, was almost unreadable in the benighted wood, so I flicked the beloved
torch on and swung the beam reluctantly onto our choices of destination.

Whippoorwill House, 0.5 miles. Certain Death, Soon. Behind me, from the
direction of the bus I heard a guttural growl and something silhouetted against
the moon reared. Swindell pounded up beside me and I didn't stop to contemplate
what opened the bus like a tin of sardines. As we ran, a twisted, mangled wheel
spun through the trees into the darkness of the overhanging canopy of branches.
We pounded along the path through the all-consuming forest towards Whippoorwill
House.

Whatever had turned the bus into scrap metal had thankfully not followed us in
our frantic flight down the road. At least I ignored the things, which chittered
and yammered in the woods of my peripheral vision. At long last the gates to the
Whippoorwill estate loomed gothically above, wrought Iron skeletons instilled
with an eldritch air. I couldn't escape the notion that things squirmed in the
carpets of fallen leaves around the bases. In order to distract my overheated
imagination, I looked upward. It was at that point we noticed, or rather I
noticed and pointed it out, that firstly there where no identifiable
constellations in the sky and that secondly those that where alighting the
celestial sphere where spinning and slowly starting to spiral toward a reddened
central point. Now you must understand that I'm no astrophysicist but even a
layman such as myself was able to reach the conclusion that something
potentially disastrous was occurring, however whilst my brain made all the
preparations to keep running my body had other ideas, as it often does. The gate
swung open without a slightest creak, and somewhere down the shadow-blackened
road a bestial roar urged us into the apparent safety of the house grounds.

The grass was unkempt, tufted and irregular. Foliage, such as it was, was in an
impoverished condition. Beyond the gates, the woods began to close back inward,
pincer-like, gleaning their vitality from the cold earth. The hoary oaks, loomed
and cast a complex, dappled web of shadows that wove impenetrable darkness at
its thickest points. It was then that my mind enlightened me as to what had
instinctively questioned. The little information I had collated on Whippoorwill
House had located it on a barren moor, not a domineering and wild forest. As I
contemplated this it seemed that the trees leaned closer in suspicion and
anticipation. Again I was sure I saw flickers of movement, as if the trees
themselves were behaving in unimaginable ways. As I eyed the path leading to the
house, slightly visible through the trees, I felt unfriendly eyes scrutinizing
me. I spun, catching a glimpse of a robed figure that melted back beneath the
dark overhang before I had a chance to substantiate any further information.
Swindell evidently hadn't noticed and looked reproachful when I hammered his
shoulder again in eagerness to retreat to the safety of four walls. I tried to
shut my ears to the chittering as my feet kicked up a flurry of falling leaves
and then Whippoorwill House was towering above me, imposing and macabre, looming
out from the shadows, white paneling glittering with a red glimmer from the
dizzying, drunkenly pin-wheeling star-scape above. Everything was silent.
Suddenly wary I tentatively climbed the porch steps to the formidable front
door. Swindell climbed up the steps with the noise normally generated by a
charging horde of wildebeests. The floorboards creaked forebodingly as I testily
crossed the threshold into the unknown.

Though the interior was lightless, shining the torch beam nervously about we
were able to perceive that the house was not in a state of ruination and decay
but was seemingly in use, although there was no sight or sound to suggest that
any one was in the residence. The house was evidently of some age though the
décor was most definitely modern. We were stood next to a coat stand and
telephone table both in varied states of decrepitude, discordant with the
surroundings. Swindell instantly picked up the receiver with brittle brightness.

'Hey, maybe I can call a pick up truck from the local garage!'

My jaw fell as I looked at him in disbelief. In any occult experiences I had
written of or participated in it had never occurred to me to ask the AA for
help. The reason for this was perfectly simple; it was inappropriate, pointless
and witless.

'Don't you think the police would be more appropriate, Shaggy?' I said with a
wide streak of venom playing in my voice.

He looked slightly puzzled, then, pulling a face that said, 'I am NOT pleased
that you have pointed out my stupidity', he began dialing 999 and placed the
phone to his ear, trapping a few lively curls. Perplexity spread across his
face, as it would many a time, and he turned to me.

'How....odd...' He filled the sentence with far more mystery than was actually
necessary. He handed me the receiver and I put it to my ear wearily. I was not
greeted by the emergency service operator, but instead, was assailed by a
pulsing undulation of noise that vaguely resembled machinery. What was
disturbing was the fact that looking out of the window I could see that it
matched the grinding rhythm of the swirling heavens. "How odd" had been somewhat
of an understatement.

Again I nervously tattooed the entrance hall with a rapidly dimming torch-beam,
dust pirouetting momentarily in the air as it highlighted them. Then, on a
superficial arc, the beam froze as my grip tightened involuntarily on the
handle. A chilliness spread along my spinal cord, infecting my senses. Squatting
in the stairwell something indefinable undulated, a sinuous darkness amid the
natural shadows of the eaves. Behind it were the merest suggestions of a
doorway. I motioned as tentatively as I could to Swindell. His eyes widened and
two familiar syllables murmured through his parted lips.

Hastily with a stammering few steps we edged through the nearest door and shut
it as quietly as possible. I experimentally flicked the light switch, my eyes
constantly monitoring the door and my ears straining for any sounds. Behind me I
heard Swindell regressing back to irritating cheeriness. I heard him fiddling
with something on a surface and then the poorly concealed sounds of munching.
Turning I saw we were in a game room of sorts. It contained a bar fully stocked
with all manner of alcoholic salvation, and it was upon this bastion of chemical
oblivion that my dear friend Matt had spied a bowl of beer nuts. Sickeningly I
watched as grubby handfuls disappeared into the oblivion of his seemingly
unquenchable hunger. The centre of the room contained a pool table that, along
with a glass of whiskey, still steaming mug of coffee and half burned cigarette,
seemed to have been abandoned rather quickly, a'la Mary Celeste. A large
collection of hand-guns and rifles adorned another wall, which both me and
Swindell eyed with equal relish, though possibly with different ideas in mind.
The bay windows where mercifully shuttered and stoutly padlocked. My gaze
circled onto the final wall, upon which was hung a picture that covered almost
its entirety. The picture portrayed this unwelcoming house with the stars
whirling maddeningly above. I balked and attempted to alert my companion, but as
I turned I could only watch in horror as he raised the open whiskey bottle to
his lips, because he had not noticed what squirmed within, convulsing in
anticipation at the chance to worm into my companion's mouth.

The noise I made was more of a squeak than a full blown scream, Swindell dropped
the bottle and saw what wriggled noisomely out. At first glance it had the
appearance of the male genitalia, but closer examination revealed that this was
only a passing resemblance and a Freudian fuelled imagination. Not that I was
amazingly keen on closely examining the disgusting creature.

In actuality it was more of a large shrimp, and a carnivorous worm, crossed with
god knows what else.

Swindell suddenly wore an almost half-serious expression, as, shaking his head
slowly he ground the thing into the carpet leaving a violet and green stain
dotted with flesh covered lumps. He turned and said, 'Can you stop making that
noise, men where never meant to reach that high a note'

I had to grudgingly admit that he was right. I also had to admit that I would
have warned someone I liked much sooner, and that I was contemplating hitting
him with the bottle and running away with his wallet, giggling. But that would
leave me without a shield, I thought dejectedly. I didn't say any of this out
loud of course. Actually, that's a lie. I said it all at a rather high rate of
decibels.

Swindell scowled in adolescent manner, in a way that made me struggle to
restrain the urge to poke him in the eyes with forked fingers. It was
surprisingly childish of me, but if he had been wearing a hat I would have taken
great pleasure in flicking it off his head as a derisory provocation. Alas, such
could not be so, so I satisfied myself by expressing some habitual profanity
that seemed to anger his stubborn morality all the more.

I have to say now that this acerbic humour is my coping strategy when faced with
dreadful situations like this, my version of 'Oh, man', if you will. My brain is
stubborn in letting me express fears and the like without a superficial veneer
of sarcasm that gets in the way of the full horror of the situation. In reality,
my eyes were darting with constant frightened alertness and my autonomic nervous
system was being worked into the ground with stress resistance tactics. I
fingered the end of one of the more compelling and powerful guns hanging silent
upon the wall, and then instinctively pulled it down and began to hug it,
mercilessly two-timing the torch. Swindell followed my example hurriedly. He had
been
eyeing the disturbing painting with a growing look of suspicion and agitation,
and finally deigned to elucidate me.

"I can't be certain, but that painting is bulging in a way that I don't damn
well like," he said with practiced vocal histrionics. His dramatic modulation
was beginning to really grate with me.

"Tell you what," he continued, "I'll creep up and fling it aside and you move to
the back of the room and get ready to fire."

"The other end of the room? I like it already."

I hastily made a circuit of the pool table, in doing so noticing that the balls
were arranged in a bizarre occult diagram. Nervously I reached over and knocked
a few of them out of place. Then, making sure the pool table was in between me
and pretty much everything else, I raised the gun, forgetting completely to see
if it was loaded or for that matter take the safety catch off. I don't know if
Swindell noticed or not.

My heart was pounding louder than ever, but as it turned out for little cause.
The real occult dynamics were evidently being saved up. I let the gun drop, only
then noticing its complete inadequacy and irrelevance. The only thing behind the
painting was a safe, and a not particularly imposing one at that. Swindell
twiddled ineffectually at the combination dial with little results. I finally
lost patience, and motioned Swindell to follow me. As he was exiting the room I
examined the painting for one last time. It sent a considerable chill down my
spine. Then, from outside the door I heard a plaintive, 'Oh, maaann', and shut
my eyes in exasperation. Then I turned on my heel, clicked the safety catch off
on the shotgun I was brandishing amateurishly, cracked a bottle against the pool
table and stepped through the door, bringing my gaze on what had struck Swindell
dumb. Then the broken bottle hit the floor, smashing into fragments, and my
lungs opened.

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(That's all folks!)


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