by Rick Dakan
“Yeah, you’re right.” I stood up from behind my desk and walked with him downstairs to let him out.
Standing in the doorway, he turned to me and said, “Whatever you do, don’t talk to Shelby or Kym. Not even Cara. And if it were possible I’d tell you not to dream. But if you do have any dreams, make sure to write them down. They could be important. I’ll call you soon.”
He turned and walked away across the parking lot toward his car. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. I don’t remember any dreams.
Chapter 21
I woke up the next morning the fourth time the phone started ringing. I was drained from the combination of coming down from the mushrooms and the adrenaline crash following all that terror and tension, so I let the machine downstairs answer the first time. I could hear a woman’s angry voice leave a message, but I covered my head with a pillow until it went away. She called again sometime later. And then again. The messages got shorter each time, whatever she was saying. I finally answered once I’d given up any hope of falling asleep again.
“Hello,” I croaked.
“Rick, what’s going on?” It was Lauren.
“Hi, Lauren. What do you mean what’s going on?” I asked. There was so much going on that I didn’t know where to begin.
“Conrad came home late last night after I went to bed and was out the door this morning before I got up. He left me some weird note about wanting help filing a restraining order against Shelby, which is both no way to ask for a favor and also impossible since he’s still my client — which was another Goddamned favor by the way. And now his cell phone is off. Do you know what is going on?”
I decided to stay out of this. “I’m not sure, Lauren, I’m sorry. If I see him I’ll tell him to call you, but we haven’t been talking much.” Why was I lying? I knew Conrad hadn’t told her everything he’d been doing and I didn’t want to reveal anything that would get him in trouble.
“I’m really worried, Rick. Really angry too, but mostly worried. He’s been acting so strange lately, brooding around the house when he’s here and obsessed with whatever Shelby’s up to. What is Shelby up to? Do you know?”
“I really don’t. It’s a big mystery. We’re all wondering.”
“I wish you two would stop wondering and just leave it be. Let him do whatever he wants to do with his little church. I don’t know why Conrad feels he needs to hound him so much.”
“We’re just worried, I guess. Shelby’s been acting so strange.”
“Shelby was always strange. But Conrad wasn’t, and now he is. That’s what I’m worried about, and as his friend it’s what you should be worried about too.”
I wanted to explain it all to her. Explain why Conrad and I had good reasons to be worried about Shelby and about Cara and anyone else that got sucked into this Cthulhu vortex. “I’ll tell Conrad to come home if I find him, Lauren, I promise.”
“OK, Rick. Just tell him I’m worried.”
We hung up and I wanted to crawl back into my bed. But instead I dialed Conrad’s number. It went straight to voice mail. Where was he?
When I finally summoned the wherewithal to get up and go outside to find some coffee, I realized with immediate horror that I’d left my wallet, keys, and car by the pool at Shelby’s. Oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. I didn’t even have spare car keys anymore (I was already using them as my main car keys). I did have spare house keys, though, and a dish full of loose change with more than enough for coffee, so I scooped up a fistful and staggered out the door.
At first it didn’t even seem weird that my car was in its usual parking space. After all, that’s where it was supposed to be, and there it was. Looking inside I saw my clothes from the night before folded in a neat pile on the passenger side front seat and the keys in the ignition. It was unlocked. My wallet was in the glove compartment. The only thing missing from the night before was Conrad’s pen with the hidden microphone. For a deluded moment I imagined that Conrad had somehow recovered it all for me from Shelby, but I knew that was impossible, or at least really unlikely. The only logical explanation was that Shelby or one of his followers (Cara maybe?) had brought it by while I slept.
The thought of them being here while I slept, with my house keys, raced through my mind and down my spine, almost staggering me. Had they come inside while I slept? Had Shelby or Kym or Cara whispered secret thoughts into my ear like Sonia Greene did to Lovecraft? Or were they just preventing any legal trouble down the road by returning my stuff? Was the fact that there was no note a sign that they were cutting me off forever or an opening to some reconciliation? I needed to change my locks. I didn’t even know if you could change the keys for a car.
After coffee, I felt exactly as drained and exhausted as I had when I woke up. Pushing a chair against the front door, I crawled back into bed with my cell phone and left periodic messages for Conrad. I went the whole day without hearing from him, and when the phone finally rang that night the caller ID was a number I didn’t recognize, but it was Conrad.
“What is it, Rick? Are you OK?” were the first words out of his mouth. He sounded as wary as he did worried.
“I’m fine. Where have you been all day?”
“I don’t trust my phone anymore. I bought this disposable cell phone at Publix.”
“Have you talked with Lauren? She was worried… ”
“Yeah, we talked. I wanted her to help out with this restraining order, but of course she couldn’t because Shelby’s still her client. I told her she should drop him and I think she’d be more than happy to, but apparently it’s not that simple a thing to do and even if she did it would look bad if she turned around and represented the other side before a judge. So we ended up using a lawyer buddy of Reggie’s.”
“Who’s Reggie?” I asked, confused. “What restraining order?”
“Reggie Malinowski, Shelby’s neighbor that I talked to last night. I went over there this morning and apparently there was all kinds of shouting and weird noises coming from the Cthulhu compound last night after we left. Loud music and what he said sounded like muffled explosions or even gunshots. He called the cops, but by the time they drove by, everything was quiet and they didn’t do anything. It sounds like our little invasion last night really stirred things up over there. I don’t know what insanity they were up to, but whatever it was, it pushed Reggie over the edge. He’s ready, willing, and able to file a restraining order against Shelby and his church. We called his lawyer friend and went down this afternoon and filed the paperwork. We’ve got a hearing in one week before a judge.”
“What are you trying to restrain him from doing?” I asked.
“Everything we could think of. Having too many people over, operating a church from his house, loud noises, improper care of animals if he’s really sacrificing goats like Ash said.”
“What did the lawyer say? Will it work?”
“He seems to think so, especially since we got a pretty conservative judge for the hearing. If we pull it off it should put a cramp in his activities, maybe buy us some time for Sinclair to come through for us.” He paused before shifting gears. “Did you have any dreams last night?”
I said that I hadn’t and then explained about finding my car and the clothes in it. “So what do I do now?” I asked. He didn’t answer. “Conrad, what do we do now? I need to get my locks changed. Do you know anyone?”
“Sure… ” he said after a long delay. “I think so. I can have someone come by.”
“What about Shelby and Cara? Is there anything I can do there?”
“No, no I don’t think so. You need to rest up. Let me handle it, OK?”
“I want to help,” I said. I needed to do something.
“No!” Conrad said, not quite yelling. “Just, no, OK. There’s nothing you can do now. Leave it to me and Sinclair.”
“You and Sinclair?” I asked, my stomach lurching with jealousy or maybe resentment at being left out. Sinclair was my contact after all.
“W
e’ve got some ideas,” Conrad said, his tone aggressively vague.
“What kind of ideas?” I asked, not hiding my annoyance.
“I can’t talk to you about it now. Listen, you just go lie down. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.
I was too drained to really understand what Conrad’s deal was. Why was he, for lack of a more accurate term, suddenly being such a dick? When had he talked to Sinclair? I suppose he got the number when we’d called him last night. Sinclair was my source, and I was worried that Conrad wouldn’t handle him right or, even worse, might try and cut me out of things completely. I lay there and mulled over everything that happened, my mind going round and round in circles, making no progress, achieving no enlightenment. After a while I even fell asleep, and dreamed something I can’t quite remember, but which nonetheless left me feeling disturbed and panicky when I awoke late the next morning. I barely made it to the bathroom in time before I vomited all over the tile floor. Was I sick? Was it nerves? Had Shelby cast some sort of curse on me too? I inched my way downstairs and lingered long enough to get a glass of water and turn off the ringer and the volume on the phone. No more calls. No more thinking about Cthulhu or surveillance or anything until I felt better. And maybe then it would be all over.
Someone knocked on the door that night. I thought I could make out Conrad’s voice, but I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want to see anyone. I waited until the knocking was long gone before I went downstairs again. There were seventeen messages waiting for me on my answering machine. To his credit, only thirteen of them were from Conrad, mostly in the vein of “where the hell are you?” and “are you all right?” I thought about calling him back, but he didn’t leave his new cell number and I didn’t want to face the possibility of talking to Lauren and lying to her again if I called their house. I went back to bed. I took half a dozen over-the-counter sleeping pills and went back to sleep.
And then I felt great. I woke up refreshed and ready for the world. I didn’t remember that night’s dreams either, but somehow they left me hopeful that things would work out for the best. I showered, shaved, and checked my e-mail. More from Conrad, of course. I didn’t bother reading them all, I just e-mailed him directly and told him I’d been sick but that now I was better and he should give me a call on my cell phone. Then I went out to get some breakfast.
Reality came crashing down around me as soon as I walked into my favorite breakfast joint and glanced down at the rack containing a pile of the latest issue of the Weekly Voice. Right there on the cover was a picture of a slim, dark-haired hipster with glasses, holding up a copy of the Cthulhu Manifesto, a sardonic look on his face. Above him the headline read: MY THRILL WITH THE CTHULHU CULT.
“Oh shit,” I said, and picked up the paper, tearing it open to the feature story. The man on the cover was the story’s author, Wendell Locking, the same reporter who’d blogged about the art show weeks ago and who’d promised a more in-depth exposé of Shelby and his Cthulhu church.
Somehow Locking had managed to get invited along to one of Shelby’s house parties, and a vivid description of that event was the only real new reporting in the piece. His experience was nearly identical to mine in all the major details, although he played up the more salacious aspects as much as possible. The article also included a fair amount of background material on Lovecraft, Cthulhu, and the Necronomicon, although it was all presented in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. The real venom in the piece was reserved for Shelby himself, rehashing the events of last year at the Indian Point Drive house and talking about complaints from parents at finding the Cthulhu Manifesto among their children’s things. The article ended with a summary that, while veering away from journalistic detachment, summed up the whole affair in a way that I think most people looking in from the outside would agree with:
Tyree is first and foremost a provocateur. He loves to push people’s buttons and test their limits. His degrading art show display, his fake drug house parties, and his bizarre religious tracts are all aimed square at the heart of traditional, mainstream values and our society’s hang-ups about sex, drugs, and God. And if it were just performance art, there would be no problem. Society’s hang-ups bug me too. More conservative elements of Sarasota would complain. The college kids would flock to his events. Next year we’d have all forgotten. But seeing it firsthand, one realizes that this is more than just silly experimental theater. Tyree is more intense than that. People close to Tyree who spoke to me off the record agree that in fact he’s so intense that there are really only two possibilities: either he believes his “religion” and actually does want people to worship Cthulhu, or he’s a con man and he’s trying to pull some sort of scam. Or maybe both. Either way, it’s not all in good fun.
I wasn’t at all sure whether the article was helpful or not. The publicity and vivid description of the house party would no doubt bring in more interested recruits of exactly the type that Shelby and Kym were looking for. Of course the attention would also further stir up public sentiment against them, but after seeing a glimpse of the wonderful and terrible world they’d built for themselves inside that house, I knew they scarcely gave a moment’s thought or concern for public sentiment. On further consideration I realized that the article might help bolster the court case against Shelby and I wanted to make sure Conrad saw it. After breakfast I grabbed a couple extra copies for the lawyer and went home.
Conrad and I finally talked on the phone that night, and I was a little disappointed, but not surprised, to find that he’d already seen the article.
“Yeah, I saw it,” Conrad said. “The lawyer says it will definitely help with the judge.” He sounded distracted, anxious to get off the phone with me, even though he’d been leaving me messages for two days.
“That’s good. Any new developments?”
“I’ve figured out a way to handle things without you,” Conrad said, an odd mixture of apology and wariness in his voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I set up some security cameras around Shelby’s house. I can monitor them online from wherever I am.”
“How much did that cost?” I was thinking of the $1000 recording pen and the bribes to Ash and everything else.
“Not your problem,” Conrad snapped. “It’s being handled.”
It was none of my business how he spent his money I guess, and besides he was obviously in a shitty mood and I didn’t want to set him off, so I changed subjects. “I haven’t heard anything from Sinclair since we talked to him the other night,” I said.
“I talked to him,” Conrad said.
“And?” I asked, after Conrad said nothing for several seconds.
“Nothing new to report yet. He’s still investigating.” From his dismissive tone I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed that there was nothing new or if he was lying to me.
“Well, what do you need me to do?” I asked. “I’m feeling much better now.”
“Nothing. I’ve got it covered, I told you.”
“Listen, Conrad, I really was sick, but now I want to help out on this.”
Conrad sighed, but his tone became more conciliatory. “There’s really nothing for you to do right now, Rick. I’ve got it covered.”
“Well, do you want to get together and talk things through?” I asked. “Have dinner or something, brainstorm new ideas?”
“I don’t have time. I’m in the middle of something.”
“What?” I asked. This was getting frustrating. Why was he shutting me out?
“I can’t tell you.”
I swallowed the urge to snap at him, but there was still some archness in my tone when I said, “You can’t tell me? Why not?”
“I just can’t. Why don’t you go get some more rest and recuperate, all right?”
“I feel fine!” I said, exasperated. “What the hell is going on?”
“I just can’t bring you in on this now,” Conrad said, his voice now angry as well. “So leave it alone.”
“What? You can’
t bring me in on ‘this’? Why? Don’t you trust me?”
“If you want to know the truth, no, no I don’t.”
“I almost fucking drowned in that pool!” I yelled into the phone. “You think I’m on their side?”
“I don’t know, do I! How can I trust you? I just can’t trust what they might have done to you. What they might have done to your mind. Don’t you understand? You’ve been exposed to Kym’s techniques twice now. First she primed you and everyone else at the house party and then she hit you over the head big time with the drugged tea. Like that Greene woman and Lovecraft. She’s been in your head, Rick. She and Shelby both. And for all I know they’re still in there.”
“There’s no one in my freaking head,” I said. “Where are you getting this shit?”
“I’ve been doing research. I know how these things work and you show some of the signs. Not all of the signs, but some of them.”
“Signs of what?”
“Of possession.”
“You’re nuts,” I said. “I’m not possessed.”
“You wouldn’t know! That’s the thing. Sinclair recommended some books and I went from there. Listen, we can fight this. I’ll send you over something that should help you. But right now I need to keep you away until we know your brain is all yours, OK?”
I had no idea how to react to that and Conrad took my silence as assent. “I’ll talk to you when I can,” he said. “Get some rest.” Then he hung up.
Possessed? I was hung over and probably caught a cold running around wet and naked. There was no indication I was possessed by Kym. Not that I even believed in possession. I supposed there could have been some sort of post-hypnotic suggestion at work in my mind. Could that be it? That sounded plausible. Was that why I got sick to my stomach every time I thought about going back by Shelby and Kym’s house, because they’d implanted some sort of subliminal fear in me? It was a sickening thought, but I didn’t know enough about hypnotism and how it worked to say for sure that it wasn’t possible. Hell, if I’d been hypnotized there might be chunks of that evening I don’t even remember. Conrad had his recording from the hidden microphone, but there must have been some time he wasn’t listening while he talked to the neighbor. If I’d been hypnotized during that time and Conrad only realized it later when he went back to listen to the recording, it might explain his sudden change in attitude. Next time I talked to him, I’d have to ask him to let me listen for myself.