The Sign of Ouroboros

by David Longhorn

  “Worth a try,” agreed Brad.

  Marcus opened the audio file and found the phrases Kathy had recalled.

  “Litch-weir,” he said, “or Hitch-mere. Let's find a list of stone circles and compare the names.”

  “Sounds like a one man job,” said Brad, standing up. “I really need to get some air and do some thinking.”

  “We've no reason to believe that was Kelly,” Marcus pointed out. “Hypnosis isn't magic, and I don't believe it triggered some sort of telepathic link to the cult.”

  “You think it was just Kathy's subconscious being playful?” asked Brad.

  Marcus nodded.

  “That's the reasonable explanation. She's been through a lot. So-called multiple personalities, like we've just seen, are a kind of play-acting, the subconscious trying out different roles.”

  “I'd like to believe it,” said Brad. “But my dreams keep telling me something weird is going on. And that voice, it really did sound like Kelly. The sassy way she usually talks to me. When she talks to me at all.”

  “I'm not saying you're wrong,” said Marcus, obviously choosing his words carefully. “Let's just suspend judgment for now.”

  “Agreed,” said Brad. “Let me know if you find anything.”

  A few moments later, Brad was in the bustle of Camden Market, surrounded by people of all ages, races, and degrees of wealth. He began half-heartedly browsing the various stalls while his mind raced.

  Was that really Kelly? How could Kathy have faked her voice so well? Or was it all down to a convincing American accent plus wishful thinking on my part?

  “Five-ninety-nine, that one dearie,” said a female stallholder. “But if you don't want to buy it, don't muck it about.”

  Brad realized that he had picked up a tee-shirt decorated with a circular image. It was the Ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail.

  “Do you sell a lot of these?” he asked.

  The woman frowned.

  “Doing a survey, are you? Yes, there's been a lot of demand for 'em lately. Question is, do you want that one?”

  “No, no thanks,” said Brad, putting the garment back. The woman turned away, muttering something about tourists.

  He looked around at the other clothing stalls, then at the people thronging the market. In a matter of seconds, he saw a middle-aged woman wearing an Ouroboros tee-shirt. Then he noticed a girl in her teens with a bag bearing the same distinctive logo. After a few minutes of walking up and down the aisles between stalls, Brad had seen the circular image half a dozen times.

  Just a fashion thing, he thought. Surely, it can't be more significant than that?

  He could not quite convince himself.

  Returning to his hotel on the Underground, he saw the sign of Ouroboros three more times. After a while, he tried not to look. Leaving the station at Russell Square, he glimpsed a crude graffiti image. It was too badly faded to be sure what it represented. But it was circular.

  ***

  On Tuesday night, Brad's dream was even more bizarre and disturbing.

  Again, he found himself face to face with Kelly in an ordinary coffee shop. This time, when he looked out the window, he saw the turning Earth below. Again, he watched cracks appear in the planet's crust. Great eruptions of smoke and flame obscure the familiar continents, tarnish the blue of the oceans.

  “Kelly,” he said, turning to his daughter. “You can't want this to happen. This is evil, insane.”

  “Dad,” she sighed, with familiar exasperation, “don't be so damn literal. Maybe it's a metaphor? Maybe the old world needs to be destroyed to bring about something new, something better?”

  The vista of the planet in chaos was replaced by a new horror. Outside the coffee shop, hordes of people were milling about, confused and afraid. Then they started pointing, screaming, running. A vast reptilian head appeared, its jaw gaping beneath huge slit-eyes. The colossal serpent writhed down the street, darting back and forth, grabbing individuals, and gulping them down whole. For every one it consumed, it must have crushed a dozen people. Brad heard faint cries of terror from the tiny fleeing humans before they vanished under the scaly coils.

  “You call this something better?” Brad yelled at Kelly. “This monster? This carnage?”

  She shook her head in pity.

  “Metaphor again, Dad,” she chided. “Death and rebirth. People fear change. They run away from it, rather than face it.”

  She reached out her hand for his, gripping his fingers with surprising strength. He tried to pull away but failed.

  “Come on, Dad,” said Kelly, in her most persuasive voice. “Come and join us. Don't be left behind when the big changes come.”

  Outside, the huge serpent cast its shadow over them, a great wall of scaly flesh hurtling through the wrecked city.

  “No!” he shouted, looking back to see his daughter's face transformed by a snarl. Long fangs protruded below her upper lip. The table between them rocked and was overturned. A long, scaly body writhed from under it.

  Brad woke to find himself tangled in sweaty sheets. What had become a familiar routine kicked in. He got up, made coffee, tried to work a little, then gave up. He checked his emails and ensured that things were okay with his company. Brad emailed his boss and asked if he might have another couple of weeks leave, unpaid. He was calling in a lot of favors. But he had the growing conviction that this was his one and only chance to find Kelly. He found a message from Marcus Valentine, sent late the previous evening, saying that he had located the most likely place for the cult's new base.

  'That's great,' he typed back. 'Let's meet up at my hotel, lunch maybe?'

  Brad sat back and pondered the new elements of his nightmare.

  Would she really want me to come and join them? Am I in some kind of telepathic contact with her? Does that explain what happened when Kathy was hypnotized?

  He gave up in frustration, accepting that he simply did not have enough data to draw any conclusions. To clear his head, he got dressed and went out for a walk, taking in the sights and sounds of London waking up to a new day. It was just after six, and Brad decided to have an early breakfast.

  Brad chose a greasy spoon diner and ordered 'the full English,' a lavish breakfast of eggs, bacon, sausages, and other artery-hardening ingredients. The place was full of shift workers and the like. It reminded Brad of his days in the field as an oil geologist, and he felt himself relaxing as he sipped instant coffee.

  “Look out, lads, we're being ogled."

  The remark came from one of a group of truckers at the next table. Heads turned to face the window, and when Brad looked around, he saw a young woman gazing in, looking straight at him. As soon as he caught her eye, she smiled, turned, and walked off.

  “Aw, I'd have offered her a nice bacon butty!” said the trucker, to general amusement.

  Brad continued to stare after the woman had vanished from sight. There was something about the way she had moved that bothered him. She had been a little too sinuous, languid, self-consciously slinky. And her expression had been peculiar, as if she were taunting him to follow her.

  In every movie I've seen where this happens, the guy jumps up and rushes after the mystery girl, Brad thought. So screw that. I'm not playing anyone else's game.

  A few moments later, his breakfast arrived, a steaming carnivore's feast.

  ***

  Later, on Wednesday morning at New Scotland Yard, Detective Sergeant Declan Healy opened his dossier on Deputy Commissioner Sir Nigel Faversham. It gave him a thrill to know that, if it were discovered, he would be in deep trouble. And yet the dossier had only one entry so far. It read, 'Links to Ouroboros? Kelly Steiger – knows whereabouts?' He added 'Arrogant bastard, treats subordinates like dirt,' then deleted it.

  “Not exactly a cast iron case,” he muttered to himself.

  Healy looked at his phone lying on the desk. He was conflicted about the Arnold case. Preliminary findings from the medical examiner had confirmed that the private detect
ive had died from constriction. The air had literally been squeezed out of his lungs. The best the expert could come up with as a murder weapon was 'some kind of mechanical device, possibly pneumatic in nature, involving a steel cable.'

  Which tells us nothing while sounding impressive, thought Healy. And surely, somebody would have noticed a gadget like that being carted around Hyde Park at lunchtime?

  What bothered him more than the odd nature of the crime, though, was Faversham's attitude. That stuck in Healy's craw. He picked up his phone and called Brad Steiger, offering to meet up.

  “I'm sorry,” he said, “I can't talk about this in detail over the phone. All I can say is I've not been permitted to list Kelly as a missing person. No, I agree Mister Steiger, and I'm going to find a workaround if I can. But let's talk about this face to face. Lunchtime? Sure. See you at your hotel, about one pm.”

  After hanging up, Healy rejigged the file on the Matt Arnold killing. He added Kelly Steiger as a possible witness. It was a deliberate abuse of procedure but one that would flag up her name on the national police computer. He would be informed if she were arrested, had hospital treatment, or otherwise came to the attention of the authorities.

  Now for Ouroboros, he thought. Let's see just how naughty they are.

  Faversham had not expressly forbidden Healy from investigating the cult. It took him a few minutes to find that there had been several complaints about the cult over the years. All were from relatives of converts. None had been followed up on. The reports stated that no evidence of coercion could be found. But the files did reveal an address for the cult's headquarters, albeit in a report that was two years old. It was a large town house in Berkeley Square, in the pricey Mayfair district.

  Worth checking out. Well, why not? Let's see what these nutcases are up close, maybe put a scare into 'em.

  Healy put on his jacket and summoned Knapton.

  “Your lucky day, Constable,” he said. “We're going to visit a fringe religious group that apparently worships reptiles.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Knapton, unworried. “Looks like rain, I'll bring my brolly.”

  An hour later, Healy parked their unmarked car outside Number 50, Berkeley Square. After a moment's thought, Healy sent Knapton to talk to the neighbors on either side.

  “What am I supposed to ask them, Sarge?”

  “Tell them you've had a complaint about noise, or something like that,” replied Healy, “if people have any complaints about the cult, it might give us some extra leverage. Also, you never know when a snippet of information might prove valuable.”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?” asked Knapton.

  “I'm going to walk up to the front door and ring the bell,” replied Healy. “It usually works.”

  In this case, though, it failed. There was no reply, and on closer examination, it seemed as if the house was not in use. Knapton confirmed this, returning from a chat with a neighbor.

  “They say all the weird people left last autumn, Sarge.”

  “So the house is empty?” asked Healy.

  “Seems so.”

  “Hard to believe,” said Healy, looking up at the house's impressive frontage. “This is a posh neighborhood. Properties like this aren't just left empty.”

  “What do we do now, Sarge?” asked Knapton.

  “We check doors and windows carefully,” said Healy. “Just in case there's any evidence of burglary. Whoever owns this place would thank us for it, don't you think?”

  Knapton followed his boss around the block and into the alleyway behind the luxurious town houses. The back door of Number 50 was secure. But a broken basement window caught Healy's eye.

  “Now that's an obvious invitation to the criminal element,” said Healy. “Wouldn't you say, Constable?”

  Knapton sighed, knowing what was going to happen next.

  “I feel we have grounds to investigate the premises,” Healy went on, “just in case some hapless citizen is all trussed up while villains ransack the place.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Knapton. “Do you want me to go first?”

  “No,” said Healy, “I've got this.”

  Wrapping his arm in his jacket Healy reached through the broken pane and opened the window. Then he managed to squeeze through the narrow gap to find himself in a basement room. It was full of old furniture and other junk. Healy caught his foot in the springs of an old mattress and managed to tear the cuff of his pants while freeing himself.

  “Bloody hell, this place is a death trap! Go round the front and I'll let you in,” ordered Healy.

  The detective clambered over the junk and found the door unlocked. He made his way up a narrow stairway into a large kitchen. The place was clean but had an abandoned air. Checking cupboards, he found no food. The refrigerator was also empty. A large black garbage bag stood against the back door. He opened it to find a rolled up piece of fabric, light brown in color. It was like a roll of old wallpaper, but felt more like hardened skin to the touch. Grimacing in distaste, he closed the bag, dismissing the odd material as irrelevant.

  Rubbish could have been there for weeks, anyway. Place is obviously not in use, he thought. The crackpots have long since moved on.

  Healy left the kitchen and worked his way along a corridor, opening doors and checking rooms. The first two contained nothing but objects covered in dustsheets. In one, there was a circular design on the tiled floor. It had been nearly erased so that Healy could not quite make out what it represented. The third room was different. In one corner, there was a sleeping bag, a small heap of brightly-colored clothes, and some kind of cage. Entering, Healy went closer to the cage and saw it was occupied by half a dozen hamsters. The animals' small, pink muzzles pointed toward him, black button eyes shining with curiosity.

  “Hello, fellas,” he said, bending down to examine the cage. “What are you doing here? Claiming squatters' rights?”

  Suddenly the little animals ran to the far side of the cage, squeaking in evident terror.

  “I might ask you the same question,” said voice behind him.

  Healy turned around to see a woman's face looking through the door. She was young, with large dark eyes and an abundance of black hair. She had a dark complexion, or was deeply tanned.

  “Sorry, miss,” he said, reaching for his ID, “but I thought this property was abandoned.”

  “No,” she said, “I'm the caretaker. Is that a police identity card?”

  “Yes,” he replied, walking toward her. “Please, take a closer look. Detective Sergeant Declan Healy, New Scotland Yard. And you are?”

  The woman smiled.

  “You can call me Cleo,” she said, and walked into the room. He could see now that she was indeed dark all over because she was completely naked. Healy stopped, lost for words, then took a step backward. He was vaguely aware of the hamsters becoming even more agitated behind him.

  “I'm afraid you caught me while I was changing,” said Cleo, walking up to him. A powerful fragrance filled the air.

  “Oh, erm, sorry,” Healy stammered. “Look, miss, perhaps you'd better put some clothes on? This is hardly proper.”

  “I'm quite secure in my own skin,” she replied, putting her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes were level with his. “How about you, Declan? Feeling uncomfortable? Try to relax.”

  Healy gulped, again lost for words. The woman's eyes seemed to be getting larger, expanding to overwhelm everything in his field of vision. Cleo was still talking, but her words were going deeper in his conscious mind, seeming to echo in his skull.

  “Relax, let's get to know each other,” she said, “I'm always keen to help our boys in blue. And I'm sure you can be a great help to me.”

  “Help,” he said weakly, feeling his consciousness ebbing away. “Help.”

  A loud knocking noise broke in on her silky words. A distant voice shouted. He felt Cleo's concentration waver. Her eyes flickered uncertainly.

  “You all right, boss?” A voice echoed along empty co
rridors. “Can you let me in?”

  Knapton, Healy thought, focusing on his job, his duty. He summoned all his willpower and broke free of the woman, shoving her hands away as he staggered backward.

  “Don't fight it, Declan,” Cleo said, stepping forward, smiling. “This was meant to be.”

  He kept backing away, collided with the window sill, then dodged around her and headed for the door. He felt cool fingers brush his neck, heard a throaty giggle.

  I'm running away from a naked woman, he thought. They'll never believe this back at headquarters.

  He raced along the corridor and found himself in a large hall. Fists were hammering at the front door. Healy quickly unbolted the door and rushed out into the street, almost knocking down the startled Knapton.

  “You okay, boss?” asked the young officer.

  Healy took a moment to compose himself before replying.

  “Just had an interesting experience, Constable,” he said, hesitantly. “Keep it to yourself, but I may be going a bit bonkers.”

  “I see,” said Knapton, looking into the hall. “Is there anyone in there?”

  “Possibly a young woman,” replied Healy. “I – I thought I saw someone inside. But let's go and check. Together, not splitting up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  After twenty minutes, they had searched every room in the house, and found no living things other than the hamsters. The back door was still bolted from the inside.

  “If there was someone here, where might they be hiding?” asked Knapton. “Unless this woman climbed out through that broken window.”

  And ran through the streets in her birthday suit, thought Healy. Not very likely.

  They went down to check the cellar. It was clear that, while Healy had been able to scramble in, no normal person could have climbed up and out without a ladder.

  “It's a mystery all right,” said Healy.

  His encounter with the enigmatic Cleo now seemed unreal, like a fading memory of an intense dream. And yet he could still smell the strong perfume she wore. Then he realized it was in the air again.