The Amulet

by William Meikle

Finally, there was a piercing scream. The numismatist had to break open the door, and found Harris on the floor. He was breathing and his eyes were open, but his face was contorted in terror, and his arms were raised as if to ward off an unseen attacker.

  The woolly mammoth was found half in and half out of the roped area in which it was displayed. In the storeroom, the paleontologist found that his fossil fish was now embedded in the stone floor beneath his feet.

  * * *

  I raised my head.

  "You were here in '87, weren't you?" I asked Doug.

  He nodded.

  "Do you remember hearing anything about any unbelievable nonsense in the Hunterian Museum?"

  He shook his head.

  "I'll tell you later. Just keep reading," he said. "It gets better."

  * * *

  It was while Harris was recuperating in hospital that things took a strange turn. Firstly he was visited by two men dressed all in black. They spoke at him rather than with him, and told him that he was messing with forces he couldn't understand. They told him that if he didn't desist, they would be forced to take action. Strangely, after they were gone, nobody in the ward apart from Harris remembered seeing them.

  * * *

  I put the papers down and lit another cigarette.

  "What is this shit? It's like a teenager's episode of The Twilight Zone," I said.

  "Doo-doo doo-doo," Doug sang, in a passable imitation of the theme tune. "Just keep reading. You must be close to the bit that concerns you by now," he said.

  I sighed loudly to let him know how disgusted I was, but in reality I was keen to keep reading. I needed to know how my singing friend was connected to the case...

  * * *

  Harris had another visitor soon afterwards. This man has never been identified, but some have suggested that it was a distant relative of the Johnson who had financed the expedition to Ur. Yet others would have you believe it to be Arthur Dunlop, although why a Glasgow gangster would be interested in esoteric acoustical studies has never been explained. Whoever it was, they were to have a profound effect on John Harris's life afterward.

  The man funded Harris's research for the next year. Even while lying in a hospital bed, Harris broke all ties with the scientific establishment, and no more is recorded of his work, either in note form or on any computer we can find.

  On leaving hospital, Harris went straight back to the Hunterian Museum. The University wanted to deny him access to any more of their exhibits, but it is recorded that the Museum received a large charitable donation in the winter of '87. After that, Harris had no trouble continuing his studies. It seems his benefactor was at work behind the scenes.

  Harris immersed himself in the Ur tablets, studying everything that had ever been brought out of the ancient city. Now that he knew how their music was constructed, he was on a quest to translate as much of it as he could find, and find out what uses the people put it to.

  It is to be conjectured that the direction of his research was by now being directed by the mysterious benefactor. Whatever the cause, his search took on an increasingly esoteric, even occult, tone. By spring of '88 he had what he believed to be a full incantation, a song used by the peoples of that time to contact their gods.

  It is unclear whether Harris actually believed in the power of what he had discovered, or whether it was merely an academic exercise. What is clear is that his benefactor was a believer. An experiment was set up in Maes Howe on Orkney.

  It is also clear that the benefactor was a man of some influence, for they were able to hold the test on the spring equinox, inside one of the biggest Neolithic sites in Europe. Apart from Harris, all that is known of the participants is that there were two others, and that one may have been a woman.

  Most of what happened next is speculation and is taken from depositions of farmers and other islanders.

  At sunset, just as the sun's rays penetrated the inner sanctum of the mound, Harris began his chant. Strange lights were seen in the sky-silver and blue globes of energy that hovered over the Howe and the nearby stone circle, the Ring of Brodgar.

  They say that the sound of the singing rang through every stone circle, every burial chamber, in the whole of the northern hemisphere, with reports on file from Malta, Carnac, Germany and from the Serpent Mound in North America. It is even said that vibrations were detected in the stones on Easter Island.

  All along the coast of Scotland, Viking longships were seen coming ashore. A busload of Japanese tourists was surprised when a forty-foot serpent dragged itself from Loch Ness and went to sleep on the shore near Urquhart Castle. At Culloden field and Bannockburn the sights and sounds of the old battles were played out, as if time had suddenly gone haywire. At St Andrew's golf course groups of men in plus fours and wielding hickory golf clubs were seen playing the road hole on the 'Old Course'. And in Dunvegan Castle, strange, piping sounds were heard, and the 'Fairy Flag' fluttered in its frame. Out in the North Atlantic, a new volcanic island rose near Surtsey, and a fishing boat went missing just after reporting the appearance of a sea-monster, a kraken nearly a mile long.

  Inside the mound on Orkney, reality was becoming fluid.

  It is said that the stone walls, Viking graffiti and all, began to fade, and that the people inside were given glimpses of other realities; places where gossamer wings fluttered and thin whistles blew. Great barreled creatures with strange star-shaped extrusions for heads pushed against the thin vein of reality, which started to rip and tear.

  Things got very strange after that. Outside the mound, regulars in a bar in Kirkwall told of great moans coming from deep under the sea, as if the ocean floor was splitting. Around the world, the greatest UFO show in history was taking place, with sightings over the White House, the Great Pyramid, Sydney Opera House, and the South Pole Research Station.

  Maes Howe was seen to fade in and out of reality. It had almost gone completely when a blue flash lit the night sky over North Scotland. A woman's voice, high-pitched and beautiful, began to sing over the top of Harris.

  Harris faltered, and finally stopped. An Orkney farmer would later see two people carrying another away from the Howe. Afterwards, the farmer entered the Howe, and reported seeing strange, five-pointed depressions on the floor, as if the stone itself had melted.

  The next day, John Harris was admitted to a private Psychiatric Hospital in the West Coast resort of Ayr. Researchers have been unable to find out who paid his bills. Also on the next day, the Ur tablets were found to be missing from the Hunterian Museum after a visit from two men dressed in black. Maes Howe was closed for 'renovations' after which the five-pointed depressions were no longer visible. The UFO reports were dismissed as sightings of Air Force flares, and the cover- up began.

  John Harris remains in the hospital. He apparently still loves music, with a particular penchant for light opera, and Gilbert and Sullivan in particular.

  The investigation continues. Were the Men in Black from the Government? Or are our little alien buddies interested in inter-dimensional physics? Why was there so much activity in Montauk on the night the Maes Howe deal went down? Who was the mystery benefactor of John Harris? Did John Harris fall into the clutches of the notorious 'Starry Wisdom' sect? And what actually happened down in the depths of that burial chamber that was grim enough to turn a renowned Doctor of Physics into a physical and emotional wreck.

  The truth is waiting to be found.

  * * *

  Postscript:

  Since the above was written, in March 1996, John Harris has been released from the hospital. No trace of him has been found, although there have been reported sightings in Orkney, around his old haunts in Glasgow, and on the Giza plateau. Most disturbingly, someone closely fitting his description has recently been photographed near Dulce Air Force base (see http://www.moonlichtnicht.co.uk/ harrisatdulce.jpg), just before a major UFO flap in Phoenix.

  The truth is still waiting to be found.

  * * *

  I turned t
he page and found the referenced photograph. Whoever had been photographed at Dulce, it wasn't John Harris. The guy in the picture was six inches too tall and thirty or forty pounds too heavy.

  There were more pictures, and more pages of speculation, but I put them down as Doug looked up from the paper.

  "Good stuff, eh?" he said. "The usual mixture of truth, fiction and paranoia."

  "So," I said. "How much can I believe?"

  "Well," he began, lapsing into his teaching voice, "there was a doctor of physics called John Harris, and he was interested in acoustics, but only on an amateur level-there are no recorded papers in any of the journals. I can't find anything about any shenanigans at the Hunterian or about any untranslated tablets from Ur. And I don't remember any world-wide reports about singing Neolithic sites and massive UFO flaps in spring '88--do you?"

  "Maybe the government covered it up?" I said. "Along with Roswell, Area 51, the stargate, HAARP, and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all?"

  "You forgot about the Hale-Bopp saucer, the Face on Mars, the Masonic conspiracy in NASA, alien bases underground at Dulce, chemicals in contrails, the third secret of Fatima, the Philadelphia Experiment, Majestic 12 and MK Ultra," Doug said.

  "God, they must be busy, these Men in Black," I said. "They've been so successful I've never heard of half of those things."

  We both laughed.

  I reached over the pile of papers to get another cigarette, and I dislodged the top paper. Underneath there were more pictures, and one of them caught my eye.

  The caption read "Mystery man and woman leave the psychiatric hospital in Ayr after visiting John Harris". I didn't recognize the man, but the woman was unmistakable-it was my client, Mrs. Dunlop.

  "So. Does any of it help?" Doug asked.

  I sucked my cigarette and flipped through the rest of the photographs. The man-I assumed it was Arthur Dunlop-was in a few more, but she wasn't.

  "Oh oh," Doug said, "I know that look. This one's got you going, hasn't it?"

  "You don't know the half of it," I said, then I told him about Wee Jimmy, then about my meeting with John Harris. Doug did something I'd never seen him do before. He reached over to the whisky bottle, poured a large measure into the remnants of his coffee, and downed it in one gulp.

  He shivered.

  "Somebody just walked over my grave," he said. "Do you think it's got something to do with the amulet?"

  "I think it's got everything to do with the amulet." I said. "And I'm going to find it, take it to Mrs. Dunlop, and find out just what the fuck is going on."

  "Watch your back. I've got a bad feeling about this one," Doug replied.

  "I'll be careful."

  "That makes me feel soooo much better," he said sarcastically. "Anyway, I can't sit around here all day. I've got the contents of a Bronze Age midden to catalogue."

  "Time and shit wait for no man," I said.

  That only got a small smile-he really did seem spooked.

  "Thanks for the stuff," I said, waving the wad of paper at him as he stood up.

  "No problem. I'll run some more searches tonight on John Harris, just to see if there's any more weirdness in your case."

  "Please. No more," I said.

  He gave me one final wave and left me to the last cup of almost warm coffee.

  * * *

  I read the Harris piece again. It was obvious that Dunlop was the man that paid the hospital bills.

  But what did it have to do with me finding the amulet?

  I had high strangeness on the Dunlop side of the case and witchcraft on the Durban side. And I also had something inexplicably killing people on the fringes-killing them in the manner of a spook from an eighty-year-old story. This case was, as Doug so succinctly put it, weird shit. I just didn't realize yet how weird it would turn out to be.

  * * *

  Half an hour later I was out on Byres Road. It was raining again, thin, miserable drizzle from a flat, slate-gray sky. I turned up into Hyndland Road just as the rain got heavier.

  I had been about to walk-I needed the thinking time. But as the rain got heavier again, I turned right down the lane behind the office and headed for my garage.

  The rusting hulk of metal I kept there was almost a motorcar. At one time it had been a perfectly serviceable mode of transport, but the years had not been kind to it. I groaned as I saw how far the rust had spread since my last use of it, some six months before.

  The car was small, Japanese, and Shite, with a capital S. But the engine still turned over, the wheels still spun, and no doubt it would get me where I was going. It just wasn't the sort of thing any private eye on five hundred a day should be seen in.

  I was on my way to see another name from Wee Jimmy's list: Tommy McIntyre. This one I already knew. Flash Tommy, Pervy Tommy, Uncle Tommy, he had more names than he had brain cells.

  He'd arrived in town some five years back. Rumor had it that there were some Brixton Yardies after him-something to do with ten pounds of ganja and a fourteen-year-old girl. He immediately set himself up in the pawnbroking business out in Anniesland, and soon had a growing clientele of woman of a certain age.

  Further rumor had it that he did a steady trade in sex toys under the counter-high-class bondage gear for the expensive end of the market. He was also known to fence stolen items-anything from fur coats and tiaras to vintage cars-just as long as it was at the high end of the market. Tommy thought he had a reputation to consider.

  * * *

  Driving to Anniesland was like taking a trip through my past. As I crawled along behind a convoy of buses the high Edwardian buildings loomed over me. There was the pub where I held my twentieth birthday party. There was the flat where I smoked dope for the first and last time, and there was the hotel where Doug got married, and where we got royally plastered on the night his divorce came through.

  Along the road a bit was the spot where Andy, a daft flatmate of Doug's, had got beaten up. Well, what did he expect, wearing an SS uniform in Glasgow on a Saturday night? The fact that he'd been going to a fancy dress party had cut no ice with the five or six teenagers who'd played football with him for five minutes before getting bored when he stopped screaming.

  Happy days.

  * * *

  I pulled up in front of McIntyres' shop at eleven o'clock. He'd gone up in the world since the last time I was there-there was more gold in his window than I'd seen outside a museum-that is, until I saw Tommy.

  You name it, he wore it. Gold chains, three of them around his neck, three huge rings on his right hand, four on his left, including a thumb ring with an opal as big as an eye. He had a stud in each ear and one in his nose.

  He saw me looking.

  "Would you like to see the one in my belly-button?" he said. "Or the Prince Albert?"

  "No, thanks," I said.

  "I'm thinking about getting one in my tongue," he said. "The chicks love it." He stuck his tongue out at me and waggled it furiously. I resisted the urge to grab it and tug, hard.

  Tommy was stuck in the 70's. He wore a blue polyester suit with a high collar and flared trousers. He had the kind of tan that comes out of an expensive bottle, and his shirt was open nearly to the waist to show it off. He was also just about the hairiest man I'd ever seen. On the top of his head his black, curly mop was beginning to thin and go gray, but his carefully cultivated sideburns were still luxurious, as was the hair on his chest.

  He moved aside to let me into the shop, and I saw, slightly disgusted, that he had his nipples pierced with more heavy gold rings. In a younger man it would have been overkill. On Tommy, who was somewhere in his late fifties, it just looked disgusting.

  "So what can I do you for, Mr. Adams?" he said.

  Our paths had crossed several times. On the first occasion I'd been hired by a wife; to find out whether her husband was playing away. He was, but not with another woman-he had a gay lover, and they bought their play-clothes from Tommy. The second time I'd found a stolen engagement ring-Tommy was selling i
t for only twice its value.

  "I'm looking for an item," I said. "A very peculiar item."

  "If it's peculiar you're after, I'm your man," he said. He wasn't wrong there. When he smiled at me I noticed that he'd had his teeth done. His incisors were capped with gold, and a small diamond was fitted in one of his front teeth. It gave him a lop-sided look, and the way it sparkled as he spoke made you look at his mouth rather than his eyes. He probably thought it was sexy.

  "So," he said, "How peculiar do you want?"

  He reached under the long counter that ran the length of his shop and brought out what looked, at first sight, to be a leather jerkin. He held it up against his body, and I noticed it was indeed leather-a one-piece body suit, with holes cut for nipples and genitals. He poked his finger through the bottom hole and wiggled it around.

  "Interested?" he said.

  "Not even remotely," I responded.

  "I've got it in rubber as well?" he said. "Red or black."

  I shook my head.

  "Save it for your perverts," I said.

  He looked shocked.

  "A love of experimentation is not perversion. Don't you ever play games?"

  "Oh, aye. But I've got something your customers seem to lack. An imagination."

  "If you've come here to insult me," he said.

  I shook my head, suddenly weary-weary of talking to sleazy people in sleazy places, weary of pounding the streets for little reward.

  "I'm after the Johnson Amulet," I said.

  His eyes went wide.

  "What. No wandering around the subject? No verbal fencing to see if I know anything? You're losing your touch, Mr. Adams." He chuckled. I could see that he felt he was ahead of the game on this one. I lobbed him another easy one to see if he would take.

  "I'm working for Artie Dunlop," I said.

  He didn't flicker.

  "I know," he said. "A wee birdie told me."

  This was getting me nowhere. Short of physical intimidation-and believe me, I was tempted-I would have to wait and see what he could tell me, if anything. I was building myself up to threaten him when the door behind me opened. I turned, and nearly got a faceful of breasts.