The Great Game

This is the text of the first story, with polls and illustrative images taken out.

Chapter One

I wake up like a gunshot. There’s no hint of lingering drowsiness or dream’s feather-light intoxication. Just reality, as sharp-edged and dreary as ever. The room is just this side of cold, and smells faintly of something unpleasant. It’s dark outside, and I can see the glow of cheap lighting reflected off the wall outside my window. I fumble with the lights for a minute, and then slip out of bed. There isn’t even a TV in here. I rake my hands through my hair and make for the bathroom.

It is every bit as unappetising as the rest of the suite, of course. There’s a dirty sink beneath a dirty mirror, but when I turn the faucet, clean, cold water gushes out. I splash a handful into my face, and look into the mirror.

There I am, looking straight back at me. It’s strangely reassuring to see that I’m still made of flesh and blood and bone. I shudder slightly, and my reflection copies me exactly. I’m not sure why that makes me feel better, but it does.

Back in the bedroom, I notice that my stuff is missing. Somehow I’m not surprised, but the loss of my equipment is annoying. Grabbing my coat, I make my way out into the hall. It’s a bit cleaner than the room, but the surprising touch is a long row of flickering gas-lights where electric bulbs should be. I’m a bit sketchy on the details, but I really think I’d have noticed them when I arrived.

The reception area is deserted. There’s a cup of coffee behind the desk, still steaming a bit, but there’s no attendant. I give it a few seconds, and ring the bell. Nothing. I ring the bell again, more insistently, and follow it up with a yell. There is no response. Looking out of the front and side windows, I can see there are no cars in the car-park, no head-lights up or down the road.

I’m starting to get a little uneasy. There’s still no sign of any sort of clerk, so I give in to temptation, and vault over the counter for a closer look around the reception area. The first thing that strikes me is that there’s no TV. When did you last see a night-shift clerk in a crappy little motel who didn’t have a TV? There’s a closed-circuit camera though, cycling through the corridors and car park. It reckons the place is empty, but that’s hardly news.

According to the desk log, there are eight rooms occupied tonight. Mine isn’t one of them. The keys are kept in a cashbox in a small, messy office just off the reception, and it looks like a bunch of them are indeed missing. There’s another cashbox too, with a couple of hundred in it. Apart from that, it looks like invoices, receipts, a big file of check-in forms, all the usual rubbish. No sign of my bag of tricks, of course. The invoices are addressed to one Joe Sansom. Presumably he’s the manager, because this is supposed to be one of Weir’s places.

A flicker of motion catches my eye, and I glance up at the CCTV monitor. It’s showing a stretch of corridor. For a moment, just a moment, there’s someone standing there, staring up at the camera. At me. Then there’s nothing there again, and I don’t know if I’m imagining things or not.

I try to tell myself that it’s my mind playing games, but I’m not convinced. It makes sense to go scope out that corridor, and double-check some of the occupied rooms along the way. I make a quick note of the keys that are missing, and head out into the warren of the hotel to see what I can find. At least there are no upper floors. I make my way down a different corridor to the one my room was on. This one has gas-lights too. They give out a faint hissing noise, and the flickering light makes it look like the walls are shimmering out of the corner of my eye. It doesn’t help.

I come across the first room before I find the right bit of corridor. Number 25. I knock, loudly. There’s no reaction from inside. I knock again, and shout “Excuse me, room service.” Nothing, again. The next room on the list is a few doors down, so I go try that one instead. It’s as unresponsive as the first one, and my spidey-senses are starting to tingle. The whole place is as silent as it is deserted. I can’t even hear any wind.

Two times could be coincidence though, right? There’s another room on the list just across the hall. Without any real hope, I try that door too.

No response.

I shake my head.

A well-placed kick sends the door flying open. The crash is deafening in the silence of the hotel. I fight the urge to cringe away from the noise, and stride through into the room, ready to face down an angry occupant.

The room is clearly in use. The bed has been disturbed. There’s a case on the table, some clothes cast aside on one of the chairs, a watch, other bits and pieces of clutter that mark out most people’s territory. The bathroom holds a toothbrush, a disposable razor, a damp towel. There’s no sign of the occupant, though — a cheap businessman, from his case and crap. I wonder if he’s gone out on the town, until I find his car keys and wallet in the pocket of his pants. According to his driver’s license, Bill Nolan is 44 and lives in Illinois, and his business card says he sells filters. He looks like a nice enough guy; worn down maybe, but not hardened.

The room key is here too, under a tacky tie. Damn.

There’s nothing to suggest foul play, apart from the lack of one filter salesman. No blood, no scuffles, no toppled furniture.

I dash out of Bill’s room, and charge straight through the door of the occupied room over the hall. It’s the same story — personal effects, but no person. I don’t bother sniffing around this time; my head’s reeling a bit, and I want out of the room, so I stagger back out into the hall. The silence is stifling. I yell, a wild, incoherent sound, just to actually hear something.

“Hush now,” says a reasonable voice, directly behind me.

I fight down a sudden instinctive urge to lash out at the speaker, and pull my face into an expression of calm interest. Then I turn around slowly, making damn sure to keep my arms at my sides, and to avoid any sudden moves.

The man is a couple of feet away. He’s in his fifties, average height, looks like thinning brown hair. He is smiling pleasantly, and if it weren’t for a couple of details, he’d look almost exactly like someone’s favourite uncle. His eyes are all wrong though, filled with wild, dancing glee. It’s not a kindly emotion, not at all. He looks like a predator wearing a particularly innocuous costume.

Whilst the man’s eyes are disturbing, his outfit is just peculiar. From the waist down, he’s all Armani businessman, with sharp trousers, a stylish belt, and a pair of shoes which probably cost more than my house. Then he’s wearing a grass-green wool cardigan sweater, at least two sizes too big, over a white, pink and gray plaid shirt. A huge bunch of keys are clipped to his waist, at least fifty of them, and he’s carrying what looks like a dishcloth in one hand. To top it all off, he’s wearing a bright red Moroccan Fez hat, which clashes horribly with his sweater.

I get the sudden impression of those make-a-picture games where you have cards with slices of tops, middles and bottoms from different people, and the idea is to assemble a random chimera person. His smile stretches into a grin, and for a moment, I could swear his body slips slightly out of alignment with his head and neck.

He’s happy enough to let me stare for a long moment, then he breaks the silence. “You shouldn’t be here, you know.”

I pull on a grin of my own, broad enough to match the one that Fez Guy is wearing. “Damn right I shouldn’t be here. Have you seen the state of the bathrooms in this dive?”

He shakes his head. “No, I haven’t. Tell me about them.”

I blink at him. “What?”

“Tell me about these bathrooms.”

“They’re really crappy,” I manage lamely. He nods, as if I’m sharing the wisdom of ages.

I pull my mind back out of the left field, and am casting around for something snappy to say when he floors me again. “Your presence here is impossible.”

What the hell do you say to that? “If you think I’m impossible, you should meet my cat.”

Fez Guy ponders that for a moment. “Really? It seems reasonably ordinary. ” The conversation is definitely not going well. He ignores my uncomfortable silence. “Forget your cat. You should return.”

“Return where?”

“Yes.” He nods, the sort of reassuring movement that doctors use before giving you their bill.

“What?”

“I agree with you. I cannot be responsible for your safety.”

I can’t decide if that’s supposed to be frighening, patronising or just plain annoying. “Hang on…”

“No. Goodbye.” Fez Guy turns around, and starts off down the hallway, ignoring my protests.

I watch Fez Guy walk off, ignoring me, and all my bottled frustration gets the better of me. I slip my shoe off, pick it up, and smoothly hurl it straight at the back of his head, with as much force as I can muster. The shoe smacks him in the back of the head with a meaty thunk, and drops to the floor.

Fez Guy stops, then turns back around. His grin is gone, and without it, those wild eyes look downright terrifying. The words die in my throat.

“That wasn’t very nice,” he says. He sounds reproachful, like my uncle used to. “You apes are all the same. Domination and violence.”

“Hey!”

“Confusion justifies aggression, does it?”

“Uh…” I don’t know whether to feel silly or scared. For a moment, I think I can see a glint in his eye. Then, unfortunately,  I know I can. A pink light wells up in his left eye, a faint glow that is steadily brightening.

“You’ll have to work that out of your collective psyche if you expect to make it past 2015,” he says. I want to run, but the light is draining me. My limbs feel as heavy as lead. “You had your chance. Now you’ll just have to get along as best you can, won’t you?”

I can’t draw my attention away from those eyes, one almost blinding now, the other still dancing with glee. The beam intensifies, a white-hot laser searing into me. Then everything goes pink…

Chapter 2

I come round some time later. I’m lying on the hallway floor. My shoe is a few feet away, but… I peer at it more closely. A wooden clog, painted to look like my shoe, is a few feet away. I stare at it for a moment, and groan.

A few seconds later, one of the nearby room doors opens. There’s a quiet gasp, a woman by the sound of it. “Are you alright?” She sounds concerned.

Slowly, painfully, I sit up. It takes far more effort than it should do: I feel like I’ve been pounded with hammers.

The woman is standing in the doorway of Room 25, the one that should have had the filter salesman in it. She’s quite tall, with a shock of dark hair that might be stylishly messy, and might mean she was just lying down. She’s smartly dressed though, in a well-cut business suit — trousers, not skirts — over a blue blouse. Her face suggests character, but at the moment she mainly looks concerned.

She fidgets irritably as I stare at her. Then our eyes meet, and she gasps again. “Your eyes! What happened?”

I blink. “What?”

“Oh.” She blushes. “I’m sorry. I should know better by now. Please, just ignore me. How are you feeling? Is everything OK?”

“Wait. What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“It’s nothing. I just haven’t seen eyes that colour before. Do you want a hand up?”

My skin goes cold as a sudden wave of fear grabs me. I leap to my feet, ignoring the pain, and rush into the woman’s room, pushing past her. She makes some protest or other as I look around urgently. There’s a mirror in one of the wardrobe doors, and I dash over to look into it.

My fears are right there, staring back out at me. My eyes are bright pink, maybe even slightly luminous. They should be brown, and they’re pink. Almost as distressingly, they look ridiculous — far too over-dramatic in my familiar face. I close them for a long moment, maybe hoping it’s a mistake, or a remnant of dream. When I open them again, nothing has changed. I can see the woman, watching me, in the mirror. Her anger is fading to sympathy.

“My eyes.” I don’t remember moving, but I’m sitting on the edge of the bed.

“They’ve changed.” She says it as a statement, not a question.

I nod. “They’re — they were — brown.”

“It could be worse,” she says. I stare round at her, amazed. She seems a little surprised by my reaction. “Come on,” she says. “You’ve seen worse, here.”

I don’t know what to say. There’s an awkward silence, and then her eyes widen.

“You’re new, aren’t you.”

I shake my head wearily, then say “Yeah, I guess I am.”

The woman sits down next to me on the bed, and shoots me a sympthetic smile. “I don’t really have any answers for you. I’m not sure where this is. I’ve figured out that the hotel looks slightly different to everyone here, but the general layout is the same. No-one here is quite what they seem, I think.”

I let that sink in for a moment. Looking different? But…

“The people, by the way. They look like they come from all over. Uh. All over time. Space too, maybe. You’ll see. Just don’t be too freaked — it marks you out as new. Vulnerable, perhaps. Some of them are a bit unpredictable. Not just people, too. You hear stories. People vanish; home, elsewhere, dead, I don’t know.”

“Come on,” I say, protesting. “That’s just crazy. I was outside Milwaukee. I am outside Milwaukee…” I look up at myself in the mirror, and the words die in my mouth, drowning in glowing pink eyes.

There’s a movement at the door. I look up, and there’s a very tall, magnificently-dressed African guy standing in the doorway. He’s as bald as an egg, and dressed in flowing silks of red and gold.

He glances at me, and then looks at the woman. “Alice. Is everything alright with you?”

She smiles at him. “It’s fine, Massinisa. Thank you.”

He nods. “Very well.” Then he’s gone again.

I let the African Prince guy slide without comment, but I just can’t accept that this place is somewhere ‘else’. I look over at Alice coolly, and then get up and go to the window. Then I pull the curtain back.

For a long moment, my mind just refuses to accept it. Outside the window is… imagine huge, rotting icebergs, made of crystals of metal. Imagine corrupt sky-scrapers, fallen down as if the devil had played domino-toppling with your city. Imagine the clouds that pain might make, if it were a blue gas. Imagine the last moments of awareness before a black hole sucked you into a particle-thin stream of plasma. Then, when you have bits of all of that churning in your head, imagine it shuddering spastically, as though it was trying to get away.

It is the most horrible thing I have ever seen.

The sound of wild screams brings me back to reality. A moment later, I realise that they are mine. It takes me a moment more to stop.

“It’s best not to do that,” says Alice calmly, and for a bright, burning instant, I hate her beyond reason.

I close my eyes, take a very ragged breath, and pull the curtain closed by touch. My throat hurts.

I turn my back on the window, and collapse to the floor. Words don’t seem to have much point, but I look up at Alice, and manage to choke out “But what –?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. No-one seems to. But it’s not always like that, though. Occasionally it’s… somewhere. A gas-lit mud street, perhaps. Sleek cars snarling past on a cushion of air. Primal wildness… That can be worse.”

Something in my face gives my thoughts away.

She does a good job of keeping her face calm, but I can see the shards of terror in her eyes. “Trust me, it’s worse. When the world is wrong like that, it eats away at everything you thought you knew, at your very self. There was one occasion where it looked like we were back in New York in the 90s. But when I looked closely, I could see that all the buildings were made of bricks of solid metal. The streets, too. The people looked drained and grey and scared. I didn’t try to escape.”

Escape sounds good. Perhaps. To home, anyway.

“Oh yes, there are people who try to escape. Sometimes they fail — it’s hard, I gather. Sometimes they turn up dead. Sometimes they just vanish. Who knows? It’s a big risk. But it’s not always safe staying put either, I guess.” She sighs. “Look, I’ll be direct. You’ve had some nasty shocks, and there are going to be more coming. You need a guide, and I need… back-up. Can I trust you to play fair with me?”

Can anyone trust anything? I clear my throat gently, and say “Why do you need backup?”

Alice looks unhappy. “There are under-currents, here. I don’t know how big the hotel is, or how many people it contains. I’ve never even heard of anyone who managed to find a limit. You can always find your room quickly, and you can always find reception, but otherwise… I heard of one guy who wandered for a week straight. Its a maze here.  And it has monsters.”

What? What the hell now?

“Not literally,” she says quickly, and I can feel my face warming a bit as some blood returns. “At least, not as far as I know. But there are all sorts of groups here.”

“Like prison gangs,” I suggest.

“Yeah, something like that. Some of them are nasty. Really nasty. And…”

“You’ve got them pissed at you?” The idea appeals to me. Something actual. Something I might be able to do a bit about.

“Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. But…”

I nod. “But something’s up. I understand.” She looks hesitant. There’s more. “What did you do?”

“Nothing! That is, it wasn’t my… No. Not without something back.” She looks straight into my eyes. My freaky, pink eyes. “We look out for each other. Deal?”

I meet Alice’s gaze without flinching, and say “Only if you’re the one in the white hat. I don’t work with the bad guys.”

She smiles nastily. “You’ll find that isn’t as cut and dried in here as you might hope. But don’t worry, I’m a good person.” Despite that cynical expression, she feels sincere.

I nod, slowly. “Alright. We’ve got a deal.”

It’s only when she relaxes that I realise how tense she’s been. She slumps, and suddenly she looks exhausted sitting there. I slowly fight my way up to my feet, carefully not looking back at the window, and go and sit next to her.

I try to summon up a friendly smile, and hope it doesn’t just look ghastly. “So what happened that wasn’t your fault, Alice?”

She sighs. “I went wandering, with a friend. I think almost all of us explore from time to time. It gets so claustrophobic. Anyway, we took a bunch of food and drink from one of the canteens, and set out for a wander. I don’t really know what we expected. It’s not all rooms, right? Sometimes there are lounge areas, or rec rooms, or toilets. I suppose they could all be the same room found in different places. Who knows?”

I nod. Who knows, indeed.

“We came across a lounge room prepared for some sort of ceremony. All the tables and chairs were gone, and there were candles in a big circle around the room. There was a design on the floor in the middle, a complicated cross with extra bits, drawn in some sort of red dust or sand. It wasn’t until we’d gone in for a closer look that we realised we’d disturbed a bunch of dirt and salt that was laid all around the edge of the room. We left and got the hell out of there, but…”

“But?”

“But Eadida thought she heard some yelling as we hurried off. She told me a few times afterwards that she thought she’d seen people following her. Four days ago, I found her dead in her room. She looked like she’d died in her sleep, but there was a trickle of sand coming from her mouth, and when I asked Massinisa to have a look for me…” She trails off, shuddering, and I put a sympathetic arm around her shoulders. “He said her throat and lungs were full.”

I wince, and try not to imagine how hideous that would feel. “And you think they’re after you, now?”

She nods, unhappily. “This morning, I thought I caught a glimpse of someone following me. I tried to look more closely, but whoever it was had ducked out of sight. If there were ever there to begin with. Maybe it’s just grief and nerves…”

“I think it would be perfectly natural if it were,” I say. “But I can also see that you wouldn’t want to just assume you’re imagining it, either.”

“Yeah,” Alice says. I can feel that she’s trying not to tremble.

“Have you got any idea…”

She cuts me off with a wild shake of her head. “No, I don’t know what to do. I’ve been trying to think of something that might help, and I can’t. Maybe if I knew what was going on… but I don’t. It’s really difficult to try to come up with any sort of answer when you don’t know the question. It feels like someone’s holding a gun to my head and shouting increasingly angry orders at me in a language I can’t understand. I don’t know what the right thing to do is, and I don’t want to die.” She’s crying now, although her voice is fierce. “I don’t want to die!”

I hold her quietly as she weeps, making gentle, reassuring noises. It’s less than a minute before she wipes her eyes briskly and pulls away from me, her face carefully set. “I do apologise. I’m not on my usual form at the moment. I’m fine, really.”

“Of course,” I agree. “It seems to me that there are several possible courses of action, but I reckon the best idea is probably to try to find out about the ritual you disturbed.”

“No-one around here knows anything. I’ve tried to find out what might have been going on, who might do this sort of thing. It’s useless.”

“Well, OK,” I say. “Are there other places we could try? You mentioned being able to find reception. Is there anyone there, or is it always deserted? What about the office behind it? You said there were rec rooms too — is there a library by any chance? Or some kind of internet access?”

Alice looks at me oddly for a moment, then shakes her head briskly, gathering her thoughts. “There might be a library, I suppose. There’s no office off the reception hall though, and it’s never deserted. I’ve never heard of Mr. Andi not being on duty.”

“Well, he wasn’t there when I went through.”

“Actually, that’s a good idea. Who knows, he might know about libraries, and we should get you checked in.”

“Checked in.”

Alice smiles for a moment. “Just follow me.”

Chapter 3

Long, fluted columns of bone-white marble. Broad pathways of thick scarlet carpet. Dazzling gilt-framed mirrors reflecting the myriad lights of diamante chandeliers. Large, comfortable leather armchairs and sofas clustered around elegant coffee tables… The reception hall looks like it was stolen from César Ritz’s wildest fantasies. It would have been overwhelming — if the people hadn’t utterly overshadowed it.

As we enter, a Victorian gentleman strolls past, leading a massive wolf on a silver chain. The man is wearing a monocle that looks like it was chisled from shadow, and his top hat is exactly the same colour as the blood that sprays from a slit throat. He turns to us as he walks by, and nods pleasantly. Beyond him is a woman painted — I hope it’s paint — a vibrant blue all over, wearing clouds of churning mist that generally preserve her modesty. Off to one side, I can see what looks like a group of Native American Indians, sitting at a table. They appear to be vigorously discussing some sort of holographic graph that’s hanging between them.

There are plenty of non-descript people, of course. Lots of variations on a top or shirt and black trousers or jeans. Some of them look archaic close up; others look frighteningly futuristic. It’s too much, and after Alice has had to drag me along by the hand a couple of times, a chunk of me shuts down. I stop gawking, and just follow. My eyes get quite a few double-takes, and I don’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.

It takes several minutes to get through the hall to the reception desk, as much because of its sheer immensity as because of the crowds. I’ve seen smaller football stadiums. The desk itself is quiet however, and I wonder how for a moment.

Mr. Andi is very old, his obsidian face lined with seams and cracks. When he smiles, everything seems to light up. “How can Mr. Andi help you folks today?” His voice is warm, but he sounds slightly unsure.

Alice nudges me, so I step up to the counter and say “I need to check in.”

He looks up at my eyes. “Oh, Mr. Andi doesn’t think so.”

Alice is as taken aback by that pronouncement as I am. I’m still trying to think of a reply when he fishes around on the desk for a moment, and then passes me a key. “Here’s your key, nice and near to Miss Rogers here. Your things have been taken up.”

I blink. “My things?”

“Oh, you’re welcome. There is something else you want.”

Alice gets it together, and nods. “Yes. Is there a library in the Hotel, Mr. Andi?”

I quickly add, “Or a net link?”

The old man shoots me a quick, amused look. “Yes, Miss Rogers. Mr. Andi believes that there are branches of the AR to be found around the hotel. All manner of information to be uncovered there. Lost dreams, forgotten secrets, hidden deeds, even a good story or two.”

“Thank you,” says Alice. She steps back, and I take the hint and follow her. “I need a coffee,” she says, and I let her escort me to an table, impossibly empty amongst the colourful crowds. A coffee sounds good, but I also want to talk about this hall, and the people in it.

I sink into a wonderful leather armchair, and close my eyes. It feels so good to just block everything out and relax for a moment. The tension ebbs away, as if the chair is draining it out of me, and some of the aches subside too.

The scent of strong, rich coffee snaps me out of my reverie. Someone has left a large silver pot on the table, along with a salver of cream and a small pot of what looks like honey which Alice is tipping into her cup. I pour myself some of the coffee, and take a swig. Damn, it’s good. Really good.

I pour a second cup, and sit back. “You pulled us out of there pretty fast.”

Alice nods. “Yeah. Mr. Andi is sweet, but sometimes he seems a bit confused. I thought it was best to get away on a high note.”

“Hm, OK.” I look up at the hall, and it seems to me that we’re a discreet distance away from the crowds. “This table is a bit convenient, isn’t it? And Mr. Andi being free like that?”

She shrugs lightly. “It’s just the way it is. There’s always a table when you want one, and Mr. Andi never has anyone else with him.”

“Oh.” I take another sip of coffee, and decide it doesn’t really matter. “And the hall…”

“Always busy,” she says. “The size varies, though.”

I nod. “Right. Of course it does.”

“As far as I can tell, the people come from all over the hotel.” Alice sighs. “It’s never far to reception or back to your room. Not for anyone. I’ve been in here quite a lot, and there are some people I’ve seen a few times. The gent in the blood-red topper, for example. The one with the wolf. He’s often here. But there’s always a lot of new faces. The population of the hotel must be vast.”

“And that means it’s playing games, if everyone is close by.”

“Yeah,” says Alice. “It does. Friends’ rooms are always close, as well.”

She said something before about layout changing. But if it’s not fixed, then everything gets so much harder. A momentary wave of panic sweeps over me, but the chair siphons it away. We’ll find a way. The coffee really is good.

An idea occurs to me. “You’ve been here a few months, haven’t you.”

Alice nods, hesitantly. “Yes, I… I think so.”

Interesting. I file that away. “But there are longer term residents.”

She nods again.

“Then it stands to reason that some people know more about how this place works than others, right?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So why don’t we try to find someone who can induct us into the mysteries of this place?”

Alice’s face falls. “But where…”

“Information is power, and power brokers like to be at the heart. If anyone does know anything, he or she will be represented here. In this hall. Somewhere.”

She nods slowly, but she’s clearly still reluctant. “But there’s going to be…”

I cut her off. “A price? Yes, sure. But I know how these people work. Trust me.”

She swallows. “Alright. But we must be careful.”

“Of course,” I say. “So. Why don’t we try starting with the guy with the wolf and the hat?”

“What? Why, for God’s sake?”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. “You said he was here a lot of time. That means he almost certainly knows anyone else who is working the room. That makes him a very good starting point.”

“Of course, you don’t know. Look, he’s a pretty scary guy.”

“He’s got a freaking wolf, for Christ’s sake. Of course he scares people. It doesn’t matter if he’s a bad-ass. Everyone who plays the game knows the rules.”

“What if he’s not playing your damn game? This isn’t the Bronx, remember?”

I’m about to say something sarcastic and vaguely patronising when I realize she’s right. I don’t know anything about this place. For all I know, he cruises the hall for weak victims to cart off and feed to his pet. Still. “OK, that’s a fair point, but a bad reputation might also mean he’s clued in. What do you know about him?”

“I’ve heard he’s heavy. People seem scared to him — everyone’s polite and wary, even assholes like Gunnar.”

“Have you ever heard him blamed for anything specific?”

Alice sighs. “Rumors have linked him to  a disappearance or two, and one of Eadida’s friends claimed he was some sort of satanist. But he’s not the sort of guy you talk about, you know?”

“Ok. I hear you. I still think he’s a good prospect. Do you know anyone who’d be a better bet?”

“I suppose not,” she says.

“All right. Let’s do it, then.”

I finish off my coffee and get up briskly. Alice eyes me with a little exasperation, and then follows suit, and leads the way towards the side of the hall. I try to stay focussed, and not look around at everyone like some gawking tourist. It’s not easy.

It takes maybe quarter of an hour, but eventually we catch sight of that blood-red top hat bobbing over the crowd.  We get a bit closer, and the crowd seems to thin out. The man is leaning against the wall, the wolf curled around his feet. It would be cute if the damn thing didn’t look so feral. He looks like he’s idly watching the passers by, sipping from a champagne flute. He glances over at us, and smiles broadly.

It is not a reassuring sight.

I decide to act like I’m a fully paid up member of the club. I stroll over to him, and lean against the wall nonchalantly, copying his pose. Then I glance down at the beast on the floor between us. “Nice wolf.”

The wolf looks up and round at me, and arches an eyebrow. For a long, horrible moment, I’m absolutely certain it’s going to talk, and something inside me gibbers in panic. Then it looks away again, and rests its head back on its paws.

“If you like.” The man is clearly amused, and his tone reminds me why I’ve always been so irritated by period TV dramas.

I’m pretty sure I’d lose in any small-talk battle, so I cut to the point. “I need to find someone.”

“My word,” says the man, without even the slightest hint of surprise or interest. I can’t see anything behind his monocle, but there appear to be tiny motes of light deep inside it.

“You can point me in the direction of the right people.” I put all the confidence I can muster into the statement. He remains impassive behind his meaningless smile, so I continue. “Will you do so?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “Why would I, when you know the way perfectly well yourself?” That catches me by surprise. I was expecting an opening haggle. He seems pleased to have unsettled me. “Surrender to your intuition.” He leans down and ruffles the wolf’s mane fondly. “Unleash yourself.”

I shake my head, and say “Leashes serve a purpose.”

His face tightens for a second, although his voice remains pleasant. “Ah, yes. Keep the beast restrained, eh? Lock away anything with a bit of power, so that it isn’t a threat to the common good. Tie it down — so it doesn’t threaten the herd.”

There’s an edge creeping into his voice, one that I don’t much like. I start to say something placatory, but he rides straight over me.

“That’s the morality of the victim. The morality of the weak. Do you know why herds exist? So that every member can blend in with all the others, so that no-one stands out, so that when the predators come circling, there’s no reason to pick you. Take the neighbour. Take the relative. Take anyone, please, just don’t take me. Nothing to see here, move along.”

His face is full of scorn and anger now, and he brings it near to mine, stepping in close to me. The wolf begins growling, a low, deep, horrible sound. The man smells of cinnamon and frankincense and freshly-turned earth, and the room darkens as his monocle seems to glitter and swell. It feels as if it is pulling at me, draining me of the will to do anything but stare.

“Sheep,” he says, and it sounds like a death sentence. “Pathetic sheep, huddling together on the mountainside, praying that it’ll be one of the others tonight. Any of the others. Is that what you are? Another sheep, waiting for the cull?”

It feels as if the world has narrowed to that horrible, depthless monocle and the wolf’s relentless growl. I blink, and say ” ‘There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.’ You forget that wolves run in packs.”

“Packs? What has that to do with fettering yourself?” He waves a hand dismissively, but he backs off slightly, and the horrible sucking feeling diminishes. His voice is calmer, too. “You have a point about truth and eternity, however. Interesting.”

I nod, trying to keep my expression confident. “Not all prudence is weakness.”

He laughs. “Oh, it most certainly is. But that does not always mean that it is unjustified. Enough of that. Maybe you’re right to prefer to contain yourself for now. I can tell you where to seek answers, rather than how, if that is your choice.”

“It is,” I say.

“There’s a price, however.”

I nod, calmly. “Of course. A modest one, I assume, for such a simple thing.” I don’t have much in the way of currency on me, but I’m fairly sure that he’s not talking about money anyway. What use would there be for money in this place? I’ve seen no signs of an economy.

“A modest one!” The Gentleman laughs again, and this time he actually sounds somewhat amused. I allow myself to relax slightly. “I like that. It suits you, given your modesty regarding your own abilities and status. A piece of advice for free — modesty can be fatal, in this place.”

“I’ll take it under advisement,” I say.

He grins. “I’d expect no more. So. How will you pay? With body, mind, soul or existence?”

I arch an eyebrow, and try to look cool. “Do I get a receipt?”

He laughs again. “No, but I can offer a you a 30-second head start if you prefer.”

I find a grin for the Gentleman, stifle a sense of foreboding, and say “Body, on the express condition that I will not be maimed, disfigured, crippled, made ill or killed.”

“Not through any direct or indirect action of mine,” he says.

“In that case — and only that case — then it’s a deal.”

He nods, and says “So be it.” He holds his hand out in a clear invitation to shake on it, so I do so. I’m not sure if the faint wrenching sensation I feel as our hands touch is my imagination playing tricks or something else. Then he releases my hand, and says “I will collect one physical service from you at a time and place of my convenience.”

I nod back, and suddenly feel sick as the enormity of what I’ve just done hits me. What the hell was I thinking? I assume he can’t make me kill myself, but what if I have to do something hideous, like murder Alice or something? Maybe there was something in that coffee…

The Gentleman seems amused by my reaction. “You will of course be bound to obedience, when the time comes. That is the usual way.” He’s not making me feel any better. “In the mean time, do try not to get yourself killed or what-have-you. The living make much better servants.”

“I’ll do my best,” I say, my voice rough.

“Champion,” he says. “Now, my end of the bargain. You need to speak to David Sinclair, and you’ll find agents of his throughout this hall, dressed entirely in grey. Fittingly, they all take the surname Grey, so if they answer to the name of Mr. or Ms. Grey, you can be confident regarding their identity. Just so that you know, Sinclair typically requires memories as payment. I wouldn’t want you having another nasty shock. You might keel over, and that would never do.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

He tips his hat mockingly. “Good day.”

“Yeah,” I manage.

Alice, is sitting on a comfy couch a short distance away, looking curious. I lurch over there, and sit down next to her. There’s a pitcher of lemonade on the table, and some sandwiches.

She turns to me. “Are you alright?” I lean back into the couch, and groan, closing my eyes. I can feel a chunk of spongy stuff pressed into my hand. “Have a sandwich. It’ll help.”

I open my eyes and glare at her, but take a bite of the sandwich. Cheese and tomato. It’s delicious. I look down at it suspiciously, and then have another bite. I can feel my fear and anger fading again, and try to cling on to them a bit. “That was a bloody shambles.”

“What happened?”

“You could have warned me,” I say.

“I did.”

“Not about him. About the coffee. And the food, I guess.”

“What?” She seems genuinely confused.

I try to sneer, but finish off the sandwich instead. “It’s way too relaxing. It must be drugged.”

She smiles, and shakes her head. “Oh, no. It’s the chairs. They relieve stress. The food is just good.”

“Oh.” I take another sandwich. “Well, anyway, I took a horrible risk, and now I owe him a service of some sort. A physical one.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad.”

You never know, I suppose. “Well, maybe it won’t be. I got the information, anyway. We need to speak to a guy called Sinclair. He has people in the hall. Greys.”

She blinks at me, startled. “Aliens?”

It’s good to laugh for a change. “No, sorry. People called Grey, dressed in grey.”

“That’s a relief. I hate those fuckers. So what’s our next move?”

“We need to speak to a guy called Sinclair. He has people in the hall. People called Grey, dressed in grey. I’d like to hunt down one of them.”

Alice nods. “Me too. We’re here already, after all.”

We get up, and start threading our way towards the main entrance to the hall. I feel good, relaxed and confident, which should make me suspicious and cranky but doesn’t quite manage it. I have to settle for a firm intention to think three times before committing to anything.

Chapter 4

It takes about twenty minutes of pushing through the boneyard where movie extra characters go to die — I’m sure that one guy was holding a real 1920s Tommy gun, which is impressive — but eventually Alice spots a Grey. She’s a girl in her 20s, grey leather jacket and jeans, grey baby-doll T-shirt, no slogans, no logos. She has tumbling back hair, with a jagged grey streak shot through it. Even her big, strange eyes are grey, and her face is oddly neutral, the sort of expression you end up with when you have to be very patient for a long time. She’d be pretty, if she didn’t look so… disconnected.

We make a beeline for her, and she turns to watch us approach through the crowd. Her expression doesn’t waver, even when we arrive in front of her.

I dredge up a smile. “Ms. Grey, I presume?”

“Echo,” she agrees.

“We…”

“Need to see David Sinclair. Yes. I know.”

Well, fair enough, I guess most people who approach her do. I want to ask her if it’s dangerous, if we should be scared of this guy, but I can’t think of any way to do it that doesn’t sound stupid. That doesn’t stop her answering the question anyway, which is off-putting.

“Of course he’s dangerous. I could tell you what to look out for, where the biggest risks are. But I’m not going to.” She’s still eerily calm.

“Thanks,” says Alice.

Echo nods. “This way.”

She leads us to a side-door in the hall. It opens on to a quiet, dimly-lit hallway, and going from the throng of reception back into the emptiness of the main hotel is a surprisingly nasty shock to the system. I suddenly feel isolated and vulnerable, even though ten seconds ago I was feeling hemmed in. The hallway is fairly narrow, panelled in oppressively dark wood and carpeted in dark green. It’s not helping. Echo leads us down it wordlessly, and I’m a little surprised to note that there aren’t any doors — it’s just a corridor.

The hallway ends in a big, ugly steel door. It’s dulled with age, stained and streaked and pitted, and looks like a survivor from a nuclear power plant catastrophe. It takes up the entire wall, adding to the blast-door effect. If I squint at it, I’m almost certain I can see things swimming in it, as if the metal was somehow a pool. I deliberately avoid looking at Echo, terrified she’ll confirm my vision, telling myself I can’t actually feel her amusement.

“Knock”, Echo says.

I hesitate, paralyzed by the ghosts in the steel. Ghosts? I swallow, and turn to Echo and say “You knock on the ghost-infested door.”

Echo smiles nastily at me, the first expression I’ve seen on her face. It doesn’t make her any prettier. She steps forward, raises her hand, and raps right through the metal. Her forearm sinks in to the door, up to midway along. Then she steps back, flexing her fingers showily, and punches straight through my head. I can’t feel a thing where her arm is sticking into me, not even a tickle or a faint chill. I automatically reach up to grab her arm, but it just isn’t there.

“Tulpa,” says Echo, as if it explains everything. She withdraws her hand, face calm again.

“She means she’s a thought form,” says Alice. “Not physical.”

“So she’s — you’re — a ghost?”

“No,” chorus Alice and Echo.

“Ghosts are soul-shells,” says Echo. “I’m imagination, imbued with will and sentience.” Oh. Right. That’s me told. Echo gestures at the door again. “Knock.”

Oh well. I resist the temptation to pull my sleeve down over my hand, and knock on the door firmly. It feels squirmy somehow, but I don’t appear to be sucked in or anything. I start breathing again, and rap a second time. Something whirs deep within the door, and then it splits down the middle and slowly swings inwards, onto a brightly lit room.

“Goodbye,” says Echo, and walks off back the way we came. I share a look with Alice, and then walk into the light.

Almost immediately, I find myself in a sunny meadow, ringed by tall, forbidding trees. It feels like springtime, and the tall grasses are peppered with bright wild flowers. A pair of standing stones loom directly behind us, and there are some lower stones up ahead.

I look over at Alice, wide-eyed. “Are you seeing this?”

“Pretty summer field? Standing stones? Menacing forest?”

I nod.

“Guess so then,” she says.

“Don’t say I never take you anywhere interesting,” I say. I turn to the stones behind me to investigate. They’re tall, over 8ft, and so weathered I can’t tell if they were originally rough-hewn or carefully worked. They’re both a bit thicker than a body, and they taper off towards the top, but they’re a matching couple rather than identical twins. There’s a shimmering web of energy between them that clearly leads back to the hallway we came from.

Is this a very well-disguised normal room, or are we really somewhere else? It’s hard to tell. The trees surrounding the meadow look angry and aggressive, and they’re packed together so that all I can see between them is darkness. I can’t see the things lurking in the darkness, but they’re there, and I’m grateful they’re not in view. Insects are buzzing and rustling, and birds are chirping, but it’s all out of sight, like a soundtrack.

“Do you think these might be the gateway we came through?” Alice is peering at a hollow in one of the stones, where wind and rain have eaten away at it.

“Well, yeah. The energy clearly leads back to the hallway.”

She looks up at me, puzzled. “What?”

“The energy, …” I begin.

Alice shakes her head. She looks thoughtful, and I remember my eyes.

“You can’t see a lattice of energy between the stones, linking back to the hallway we came from?”

“No.”

Oh. “Well, can you hear the insects and birds? How about the things in the forest?”

“I hear the wildlife, yeah. But I haven’t heard anything in the forest. What can you hear?”

Also Oh. “Nothing that’s going to come out into the meadow, don’t worry. Come on.” I head off towards the group of stones up ahead. They’re clearly the heart of this place, although I can’t justify that perception. They just look right. Alice doesn’t seem entirely convinced, but she follows along.

As we get closer to the stones, I can see that they’re arranged like a burial chamber. A long, fairly tall stone forms one side wall, with a row of capstones laid over the top to seal it off. A post-and-beam arrangement at the end facing us provide a small entryway inside the chamber. The stones are dark, and as we approach, I suddenly realise that they are all seething with ants. I stop, and a moment later Alice lets out a strangled moan.

The ants are thinning out, though. As far as I can tell, they’re pouring into the tomb through the seams and cracks between stones. Nasty grinding sounds make it seem as if the tomb is creaking, and Alice takes a step back. Within seconds, the entire swarm of ants has vanished, leaving just old stone behind.

The open entrance to the tomb is an invitation, as plain as the nose on my face. I’d have to get down on my hands and knees to squeeze in there, and I’d barely be able to crouch inside, but it is possible. I look over at Alice, who is pale and unhappy, and smile at her encouragingly.

“It’s OK,” I say. “I’ll go and knock, see if anyone’s home.”

“Wait.”

I look back at Alice. She seems nervous. I guess she’s got a thing about bugs, but I’ve gone through a lot to get this far, and it’s on her behalf too, so I’m not backing down. That’s no reason to give her a hard time, of course. “Yeah?”

“What are we going to ask?”

“Who it is who is after you, I thought.”

“Well yeah, but what if we only get one question? How about where they are? Or how to stop them? Or how to get out of this…” she looks around, a bit wildly, “… hotel, and make it back home?”

“Yeah, and whose home, come to that.”

She nods, glumly. “New York, 1993. I can tell you’re from later, and no, for God’s sake don’t tell me anything about the future. How many years further on are you?”

1993? Jesus. “It was 2009 when I came here.”

“Fuck,” says Alice. “I’d be 45. If I made it that far.”

“Is that a question?” The speaker is behind us, and it nearly makes me jump out of my skin. Alice goes white as I whirl around to put a face to the rich, buttery voice.

Fortunately, he does actually have a face, and he’s not some horrendous ant monster. He’s in his fifties, grey hair, the kind of clothes you’d spot on an expensive golf course. In fact, he looks like the kind of guy you’d see at an expensive golf course. In the bar. With a glass of French brandy in one hand, and an elegant Thai hooker in the other.

“So much curiosity,” he says. “Would you like the answers to that tasty little bundle?”

I shake my head. “Not immediately. David Sinclair, I assume.”

He smirks at that. “That’s still an implicit question, you know.”

“Just a statement of my beliefs.”

“Oh, really? I could have sworn you were fishing. But I’m not unreasonable, so I’ll give you the five-cent tour for free. You ask questions. Any questions. I answer them honestly, and as fully as I am able. You pay me with information, harmlessly and painlessly. You then go on about your business, no different save for being better informed.”

“That sounds suspiciously easy,” I say.

Sinclair grins. “Thank you.”

It takes a moment to avoid asking a question by mistake, but I think a bit and say, “Of course, it’s difficult to take what you’re telling us on trust.”

“Come now,” he says. “Use those marvellous, shiny new eyes of yours. If you look closely, you’ll see that I’m being truthful.”

“How…” I stop myself. “Uh, how nice that would be, if I had any idea of doing so.” Bleh.

“Why not just try?” Sinclair is trying to look reasonable, but there’s something else going on there too. Still. What the hell.

I concentrate on looking at him, really looking, trying to see beneath the skin to his honesty. It feels like trying to make out a face in a dark room — my eyes ache, and feel oddly warm at the same time. Alice gasps. Suddenly, for a flash, I can see it. There’s a thick bar of bright golden truthfulness hammered right through him, like a spike through someone’s palm. All sorts of darker stuff churns around it, seething and roiling. Then, just as suddenly, it’s gone again.

I feel sick, my eyes hurt, and Alice is staring at me. Everything looks slightly wrong, but for no reason, like it was all replaced by an identical model the last time I blinked.

“He’s telling the truth,” I say to Alice. “He couldn’t lie if he wanted to.”

“Oh, I want to,” Sinclair says, eyes glittering. “But, as you say, I cannot.”

She grabs my arm. “Your eyes. They lit up, really clearly.” She shakes her head. “What do you think?”

I shrug. “He can’t lie, and it sounds safe enough. Let’s go for it.”

Sinclair rubs his hands together. “Good. Lay your hands on the top of the cairn for a moment, please.”

Alice and I look at each other, then I walk over to the stone, and lay my hands on it. There’s a brief sensation of a tingle perhaps, but nothing more. I look over at Sinclair, who nods, his eyes avid, so I remove my hands again, then look round at Alice and shrug. She comes over and puts her hands on the stone for a moment.

Sinclair looks like a cat who has discovered a cream-filled lake. With little birds and mice playing around the shores. It’s not exactly reassuring. “You’ve earned seven questions. You can save some for another time, if you wish, but you don’t get to buy any more in the future. At least, not that way. What did you want to know?”

Alice takes half a step forward. “Who is after me?”

Sinclair grins. “You know, that’s a really careless question. I could take it to mean chronologically, and answer that it’s your companion here. Aren’t you lucky that I’m in a good mood today.”

Alice’s fists are balling up. “We are,” I say quickly. She looks at me, but subsides.

“Yes,” says Sinclair, in a way that worries me. “You are. They call themselves Macandal. They’re a group of, well, sorcerers and religous followers.”

“Why me?”

“You stumbled onto one of their summonings, and subtly damaged the restraints. The thing they summoned got out of control, and killed four of them. It’s now loose in the hotel. They want revenge, mainly.”

Alice looks intent. “Mainly?”

Sinclair grins. “They’d also like to use your blood, along with what they already took from your dead friend, to tempt the creature back, and bind it properly. They think it will come after you, given time.”

“Will it?” Alice is looking worried.

“That’s four,” I say quickly. Alice pulls an apologetic face.

Sinclair shoots me a broad smirk before answering. “Yes. Yes, it will. It will hunt you down, eat out your mind and soul, and wear your dead skin like a puppet whilst it tricks and then destroys everyone here who knows you.”

Alice gasps in horror, and goes as white as a sheet.

“How precisely do we stop this thing from harming Alice or myself?”

She shoots me a grateful look.

“You can track down the location it was summoned from and dismiss it with a banishing using the name it was called under. You can find and recruit the help of someone who is capable of destroying it. You can get out of the hotel before it finds you. You can kill the woman yourself before it has a chance to do so. You can hide out in a null zone. There are, in fact, an infinity of options , and I’ve been more than generous in listing several.”

We have two questions left, and more pressing puzzles than we had before we started. Alice leans in close to me, and whispers “What the hell do we do?”

I try to smile confidently, and say “How about we ask these two questions: what name this damn thing was summoned under, and how to find the location it was summoned from?”

Alice stares at me. “That’s all the questions. You won’t have had any.”

I shrug. “That’s the way it goes, sometimes.”

Tears well up at the corner of her eyes, and she sniffs, loudly, and then apologizes. “Sorry. Thank you so much. It’s been so long since…” she falters, and sniffs again.

“Hey,” I begin.

“This is very sweet,” says Sinclair. “Please, take all the time in the universe.”

I roll my eyes, and turn back to him. “OK. What name was this thing summoned under?”

“Kharos.”

“Kharos,” I repeat flatly.

Sinclair nods. “Yes. And I won’t even count that as a question. Aren’t I lovely?”

“Last question,” I say flatly. “How do we get to the precise location it was summoned from?”

“You can make an accurate pendulum out of the right hand of the dead girl, Eadida, and a strand of leather. Ask her spirit to guide you back to where you broke the sands. At each parting of the ways, it will show you where to go.”

“OK,” I say. “Well, thanks. You’ve been informative.”

Sinclair grins nastily. “I’m in a good mood. I’m not often lucky enough to run into a pair of totally clueless idiots with such little idea. Almost everyone insists on a ‘no conscious awareness’ clause at least. It’s been a very lucrative transaction.”

Alice looks concerned. “What do you mean?”

The grin widens even more, and Sinclair taps the cairn. Suddenly, copies of Alice and I are standing there, naked, hands pressed flat to the stone. They look at each other, confusion and fear dawning, then the other Alice notices us, and can’t quite stifle a shriek. They whirl round, staring.

Sinclair walks up to them, places a friendly hand on the other me’s shoulder, and smiles at them. “Sorry kids. You’re just the copies. Those are the originals.”

My twin manages to choke out a strangled “What?”

I realize that my double’s skin is roughening, hardening. The head and body start swelling, seemingly absorbing weight from the arms and legs. The face is stretching and squishing, wearing an expression of profoundly agonised horror.

Both Alices are screaming wildly, and I realise I’m right there with them.

My former twin starts shrinking, slowly at first, emitting a horrible thin wail of anguish. Then there’s nothing… or is there? On top of the cairn, there’s a fresh ant running around. Alice goes absolutely white, both version of her. They’re staring at each other.

“Help me,” says the other one, in a tiny voice. “Kill me. Kill…” the words fade into a hideous scream as she starts twisting and changing too. Next to me, the real Alice vomits noisily, and then collapses to her knees like a broken doll, tears flooding down her face.

Sinclair is watching us happily. He gives me a mocking little wave, and we’re back in the main body of the hotel, outside the huge metal door that leads to his… well, his whatever. Alice looks up and wails, and then just sinks down to lie on the floor, sobbing hysterically.

I hold her for a while, murmuring quiet noises, and absolutely refusing to think about stones or ants or anything at all. When she subsides a little, into heartbroken noises, I painstakingly pick her up off the floor. Then I carry her back to the hotel lobby — it’s just round a corner and through a fire door — and there’s a nice, big couch free just where I want it. I lay her down on it, sink into a chair next to her, and hold her hand until she cries herself to sleep.

Someone has left a jug of coffee on the table, and I pour myself a cup.

When Alice comes round, I’m going to go check out what stuff I’ve acquired in this room of mine, and then track down the dead girl’s corpse. After a time, I doze off in the chair. I don’t mean to, but it feels genuinely safe.

I wake up when Alice starts stirring. She stretches, flinches back into the couch, and her eyes snap open. She looks around wildly for several seconds, and then relaxes a little. There’s fresh coffee and cold juice on the table, and a tray of food — a hot roast chicken surrounded by roast potatoes, a salver of vegetables, steaming gravy, fresh bread — along with plates and cutlery so we can serve ourselves as we wish. I’ve no idea who left them there, or even if ‘who’ is the right word, but it looks great, and I’m ravenous.

I pick up a plate and wave it gently in Alice’s direction, and after a moment, she nods.

We don’t talk during the meal, just let the good food do its work. By the time we’ve finished, I’m certainly feeling a bit better, and Alice seems less drawn too.

I smile at her. “Are you alright?”

She laughs, weakly. “I’m functioning again, if that’s what you mean. But…”

“I understand,” I say quickly. “First of all though, we’re need to find Eadida’s body.”

Alice shudders, then nods reluctantly. “Yeah. Massinisa should be able to take us to her.”

“Absolutely. Then we can find the summoning circle, and get rid of this thing that’s following you. That will give the sorcerers less reason to track you down, and we’ll find out how to square things with them. Then all we have to do is get out of here.”

“Your plan seems vague and ill-formed,” says a voice that sends chills up and down my spine.

I look round, and behind us is the guy who sent me here. I hear Alice gasp. The guy is average height, thinning hair, looks like a happy ice-cream salesman, except that his eyes gleam with unholy joy. He looks like a satanist in disguise at a town fete.  His clothes are almost reasonable this time, comfy slacks and an ugly sweater, no crazy-ass hat. Like last time, he’s carrying a cloth and he’s got a huge bunch of keys.

I fight down a savage urge to grab him by the throat, and count to five. Slowly. Then I force a smile, and say “Please, join us. Would you like a coffee, or perhaps a chicken drumstick?”

“No,” he says, coming round to sit in one of the chairs. “Ground extract of mildly toxic vegetable diluted in artificially heated water, often served with the enzymatic secretions of a large mammal. The lower leg joint of an avian, burned until the protein chains are degraded.  Neither is appealing.”

Alice is just staring at him, goggle-eyed.

I shrug. “Well, when you put it that way, I can see why. What am I doing here?”

“Resting, refuelling your flesh’s energy supplies, and draining excessive emotional charge into the furniture. So it seems, at least.”

I grit my teeth, and think back to our last conversation. He struck me as being oddly literal that time, too. Alright, then. “Yes, that is a fair summary. Why did you transport me to this hotel?”

“You struck me as intemperate and prone to rashness. It seemed highly unlikely that you would have survived if I had left you where you were, so I brought you here instead.”

“Oh. Why was I in danger? Wasn’t I in Milwaukee?”

The man nods, uncertainly. “Yes, but the structure you were in was not part of regular space-time. It had become detached, and it was being explored by inimical beings. You would not have been able to leave, even had you so wished. Most likely, your mind would have been consumed. Causing considerable damage to causality, may I add.”

“What about me?” Alice is looking a little less freaked, which is good.

The man looks at her “You were not there. It is highly unlikely your mind would have been eaten or caused any damage.”

I sigh. “What she means is, why is she in this… hotel. Place. Whatever.”

“Hotel,” says the man firmly. “This is Hotel MANDI. Your companion is here because she broke a series of wards put in place by another individual. The energy she triggered left her dislocated, so she was assigned a room and booked in.”

“Well, thanks and all, but we’re OK now. Please send us back to our homes.”

“That is not the Hotel’s function,” says the man.

Alice audibly grinds her teeth. “What the hell do you mean?”

“The function of the Hotel is to gather rogue consciousness from locations where it should not be, to ensure that it does not cause damage to the fabric of the web. By spending time here, you accumulate energies in different vectors and charges to that of your original location. If I sent you back, those energies would clash, and I do not have the time or inclination to waste in balancing. The idea is to preserve reality, not to kick holes in it.”

Alice and I fall silent for several long moments. She steels herself to ask the question first. “So we’re stuck in here?”

“I understand that there are ways out which can lead you to energetically compatible locii. Feel free to take such an exit if you locate one. Exiting in such a way as to harm causality is strictly forbidden however.”

The way he says it suggests that the prohibition is more than just theoretical.

“Just who are you, anyway?” Something else has been niggling me, too. “And what kind of name is Mandy for this place?”

“MANDI,” he says. “An acronymic one. I oversee the mechanics of the web underlying the various space-times. I don’t have a name as such, but if you feel the need to give me a label, you can reasonably refer to me as Valis.”

Whoa. “On behalf of whom?”

Valis looks at me. “I understand that inhabitants are typically fascinated with the workings underlying their particular reality, potential purposes and meanings attached to that, individuals who may be in authority, how reality is constructed, and so on. I’m not permitted to discuss such matters, as a moment’s thought must clearly make obvious.”

“So what, you, one of the architects of the multiverse, came to talk to us to welcome us to the cage and to tell us to be good kids?” Alice sounds simply disbelieving.

“Oh no,” he says. “I came here to offer redress for your highly irregular duplication.”

Alice blinks back tears. “Duplication? Really?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Ouch. I really don’t want to let my mind go down that path.

“Kill that evil son of a bitch and let my other me out of…” Alice trails off, the rage fading as she clearly thinks about what our counterparts are going through.

“I am not permitted to do that,” says Valis. “But, if you so wish, I can remove all memory of your duplication from the two of you here.”

“But…” Alice looks horrified. “But then how would I rescue me from that hell?”

“You would not,” Valis says.

I’m not sure what to think. “Is there anything else you can do? Any pressing reason for us to forget?”

“Nothing,” says Valis. “But duplication weighs heavily on limited consciousness. If the memory is not removed, you may in time be mentally distorted to the point where your awareness becomes damaging to the Hotel. I prefer to avoid such eventualities.”

“And then…?”

“At that point, your energies would be dispersed and recycled.”

“Will you offer the same deal to our copies?” Alice’s voice is shaky.

“I already have,” says Valis calmly.

“We… They… declined,” I say. “Hoping to go mad and get obliterated.”

“Yes,” says Valis. “Your copy asked me to urge you to choose oblivion. On the other hand, Ms. Rogers, yours begged for salvation.”

Alice starts sobbing. “I…” She chokes to a halt, clearly torn — and badly, too.

Our copies will get their oblivion eventually. We need to be able to focus on staying alive. “We must forget,” I say.

Alice gasps, and clutches her stomach reflexively. She stares at me, eyes wide and brimming. She makes some anguished noises, but she can’t find the words to contradict me.

Valis nods. “Very well.”

Chapter Five

“… their particular reality, potential purposes and meanings attached to that, individuals who may be in authority, how reality is constructed, and so on.” I seem to have lost the thread of what Valis is on about, and for a moment, I experience an odd wave of vertigo. “I’m not permitted to discuss such matters, as a moment’s thought must clearly make obvious.”

Oh yes, of course. He won’t answer any of the good questions. No surprise there.

“So what, you, one of the architects of the multiverse, came to talk to us to welcome us to the cage and to tell us to be good kids?” Alice sounds simply disbelieving.

“Oh no,” he says. “I wanted to warn you against any further contact with David Sinclair. His price is higher than you might imagine, and if you return to him, it will be even higher still. Keep away, or you will regret it bitterly.”

That doesn’t sound good. “Are we in danger? It must be serious if you’re involved.”

“You are not in danger as things stand,” he says. “But I would prefer not to have to deal with further fractures in reality.”

Alice and I share a look. She seems deflated somehow, and I can’t help feeling a wave of irrational guilt. “Thanks for the warning,” I say.

“Think nothing of it,” says Valis. He fades out like the Cheshire Cat, except that it’s those mad, glee-filled eyes that vanish last.

“That was odd,” says Alice.

I nod. “Interesting, though.”

“Do you think he was telling the truth?”

“I don’t see why not.”

“You didn’t, you know…” Alice waves vaguely at her eyes.

“No,” I say. “Never occurred to me. Although I doubt that I would have tried it if it had. He scares me.”

“Yeah,” she says, with a hefty dose of feeling.

I fish my room key out of my pocket. “If you’re feeling up to it, we should head back to the rooms. I need to check my gear.”

Alice looks at me curiously. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“No reason,” I say, with a smile. “So, how does this ‘getting back to the rooms’ thing work, anyway?”

The answer, it turns out, is painlessly. Once I have the intention, the route is there, in my mind, and it’s not far. We’re back at the rooms in less than five minutes. I’m two doors down from Alice, and across the corridor. She heads off to her room for a bit, and I go across to explore mine.

After all the craziness of Sinclair’s room, I’m slightly apprehensive. I unlock the door and open it though, and am both relieved and disappointed when it opens onto a perfectly bland-looking hotel room. The curtains are closed, and I have no intention of opening them. Glancing around the room, there’s no obvious sign of my bag, but there are some other bits lying around. One of my old hairbrushes is on the sideboard, along with some deodorant and a couple of books. It looks like someone unpacked — except for the fact that I didn’t have any toiletries or books with me.

I glance over at the wardrobe, then go open it, expecting to find a straitjacket with a twisted smiley face painted on the chest. My first thought is that maybe the straitjacket would have been preferable. Inside are two brightly purple shirts, one with big lace at collar and cuffs, and one with huge lace. Neither has buttons. There are also several pairs of billowing… well… pantaloons, in black, blood red or dayglo green, a pair of black boots with at least an inch of heel, some reasonably sedate underwear, and a thin, light silk scarf in white.

Nice.

I close the cupboard again, and spend a few minutes going over the room. The en-suite bathroom has a shower and toilet, my toothbrush, and some other basic essentials. And seven — seven! — different flavours of mouth-wash. There’s certainly no sign of my original stuff anywhere. The two books turn out to be the collected works of Philip K. Dick, and a biography of the self-proclaimed mystic Uri Geller, and there’s a Gideon’s Bible in the draw, which I take as some sort of joke.

Muttering to myself, I set about having a shower.

It’s fantastic.

Quarter of an hour later, when I’m finally washed, brushed, and relaxed, I head back into the main room to discover that my clothes have gone. Even my damn shoe and clog. My wallet and room key are sitting on the bed, along with a couple of old boiled sweets and a small ball of lint. I open the cupboard, with a mounting sense of annoyance. My clothes aren’t in there, or in any of the draws, either.

After several minutes of bitter swearing, I give in and put on the fancy dress. The damn underwear bears the logo of exactly the sort of unhinged smiley face I was imagining earlier. Right in the middle of the crotch. It doesn’t improve my mood, but it’s still better than going commando. The shirt opens mid-way to my navel, with no fasteners, so I reluctantly knot the scarf round my neck and wear it like a demented tie.

I look like I’ve been mugged by a vengeful Mary Quant, and the purple clashes horribly with my new eyes. It’s ridiculous. Still, it does explain why I saw so many crazy outfits in reception.

I’m glaring at myself in the mirror when there’s a knock at the door. I wince, but there’s nothing to do about it. I go and open up.

It’s not Alice. It’s some little guy in a nasty brown suit, and he’s carrying three boxes. I stare at him for a moment, and he smiles at me ingratiatingly. “Delivery for this room. Courtesy of Mr. Andi.”

“Where are my damn clothes?”

His smile slips. “I’m sorry, no-one can help you with that. I have a delivery for you, from Mr. Andi.”

I sigh. “What are they?”

“It,” he says, correcting me proudly.

“It?”

“Yes.”

“There’s three of them,” I point out.

“Yes. You may pick one, or I will select one for you.”

What? More bloody stupid games. “What’s in them, then?” I don’t have much hope of a straight answer.

The guy shows the top of each package to me in turn. Each has a cut-out picture stuck to it. One shows a gun, one shows a book, and one shows a shield. Each box is the same size, with the same cheery red rapping paper and golden ribbon.

“Alright,” I say. “I’ll have the knowledge.”

“Very good,” says the guy. He fiddles for a second, and then passes me the box with a book. Then he gives me a funny little salute thing, says “Be seeing you,” and bumbles off.

I step back inside the room, but as I do so, I hear a muffled snigger from outside. I glance back out, and Alice is walking over. To be fair, she is clearly doing her best to hide her amusement.

“Hello,” I say wearily. “All refreshed?”

“Wow. You look… fah-bulous.”

I can’t help sighing.

“Sorry,” she says. “It’s a hell of a transformation from Hill Street Blues to Soylent Green.”

“It’s not my fault.”

“Hey, do you think I chose to dress like a powerslave?” She tugs at her suit lapel disparagingly.

“Um.”

She arches an eyebrow at me, and I try to look contrite.

“Still,” I say, “I guess it explains why so many people are dressed so strangely. Is there any pattern to it?”

“Who knows? Maybe it’s your deep, dark desires coming through.”

Time to change the subject. I wave the box at her. “I got this from Mr. Andi, by delivery.”

“Shiny. What is it?”

“I’m not entirely sure. It doesn’t feel heavy enough to be a book. Information of some sort, I think.”

“Let’s find out.”

“Yeah.” We head back into my room. Alice sits on the bed, and I pull a chair across. Then I start unwrapping the parcel. Inside, seemingly floating in the centre of the box, is a simple gold signet ring. The design is oddly runic, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.

Alice ooohs, and I look up at her. “Did you get a present from Mr. Andi when you arrived?”

She shakes her head. “Nope. Guess you’re special.”

“That’s disturbing.”

She shrugs. “You going to put it on?”

I look back at the ring. “Damn straight.” My hand encounters no resistance as I reach into the box, and I’m able to grab the ring and pull it straight out. I try experimentally putting it back in again, and it just falls to the bottom of the box, so I pick it up again. It looks about the right size for my thumb, so that’s where I slide it onto, on my left hand.

A cold, sparkling tingle ripples through me. It feels like a firework of ice exploding, and it tastes like swords. Then the sensation is gone. I don’t feel any different, but I know that the ring could be described as an information overlay designed to interface with my neural structure. I know that Mr. Andi is currently dealing with 14,733 residents of the hotel simultaneously, and that he gives the impression of paying them all his full attention. I do not, however, know how that is achieved.

“Well?” Alice’s face is a complex jumble of emotions — curiosity, concern, hope, jealousy, impatience, all fighting for skin real estate.

“A whole load of extra information has been quietly added to my memories alongside all the old stuff.”

“Wow! So what do you know now?”

“It’s hard to be sure. It feels like there’s a lot of stuff in there, and I don’t have a catalogue. I know that you like violets, that our clothing style is set by a complex formula that blends expectation, subconscious tendency and flat-out randomness, and, oh, that the guy in the red top hat is called Edward.”

“Huh,” says Alice pensively. “Do you know where the thing that’s coming for me is, or how long it will be?”

I think about for a moment. “No, I’m afraid not. I know where those damn bokor summoned it up from, but that’s not important right now. ” I don’t want to scare her, so I don’t mention that I also know what it’s capable of.

“Bokor?”

“That’s the type of sorcerer that the Macandal are. They work with spirits.”

“Is that what this thing is?”

“The morosos? No, not really. It’s more like an anti-spirit, if you see what I mean.”

Alice shakes her head. “Not really. But I’ll take your word for it. Hey, what’s outside the window?”

“That’s where we are.” The idea makes me shudder. “This place is built inside a fibre of space-time, stretched out and round to loop back into itself, set totally apart from the rest of reality.”

“Oh.”

I get the feeling we both rather wish she hadn’t asked.

“So then,” I say briskly. “Are you up for looking for Eadida’s body?”

“I suppose so.” She doesn’t look exactly thrilled by the prospect, but that’s hardly a surprise. “We’ll need to find Massinisa.”

His room is down the corridor a short way, close enough to Alice’s and to mine that it is going to stay in the same place.  He’s on the block, in other words. Alice knocks, and a few seconds later he answers the door.

Massinisa is dressed in reds and golds and browns today, silks and linens, lots of fluttering edges. It’s very grand, but it must be horribly impractical. My God, is my closet going to make me wear worse outfits than the one I’m currently stuck with? It’s a frightening thought.

“Hello, Alice.” Massinisa sounds grave. “And to your friend, too. You look sad.” Behind him, his room looks surprisingly minimalist and sterile — chrome, glass, white surfaces, everything his clothing isn’t. I wonder which is the real him?

“Hi Massinisa,” Alice says. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m afraid we need to find Eadida’s body.”

Massinisa wrinkles his nose, and sighs. “That poor girl. I left her in a ghost room.”

Ghost room… “You mean a blank node, right?”

He looks at me curiously. “They are without content or form, filled with hints and shadows.”

I nod. “Yes, that’s a blank node.”

“It is where we let the dead rest,” he says. “It seems fitting.”

“Can you take us there, Massinisa?”

“I will take you there, Alice. Both of you.”

She smiles at him, and I can see some of the tension ease out of her shoulders.

It takes about half an hour. We walk in silence, wrapped in thoughts. The way is not straightforward, and I wonder idly how Massinisa can find the place again. There’s nothing en route but door-speckled corridors, not even a rec area, and I find myself wondering if the hotel is deliberately keeping our way clear of distractions. We end up at a white door in a stretch of corridor that looks like it came from the same designer as my clothes. The carpet is predominately orange and brown in an ugly hexagonal pattern, and the white doors look cheaply laminated.

I don’t doubt Massinisa’s word, but the room in front of us is not a blank node now.

I look at the door, and say “This is not an empty node. Are you sure it’s the right place?”

He nods gravely. “Yes, I am certain. I can always find my way to the graves I have dug, and to the bodies I have laid to rest.”

“That must be a burden,” I say.

Massinisa looks at me oddly. “Yes, but it is one I gladly shoulder.”

I nod. “You have a strong heart.”

“Thank you,” he says, but he sounds a bit shaky.

Alice is looking at me curiously, so I flash her a reassuring smile, then try the door. It opens smoothly, onto a dimly-lit room. It feels safe enough, so I walk in, and find myself in a stone-clad chamber. Rushes line the floors, and light is provided by guttering torches fixed in the centre of each wall. Curious artworks fill the walls, primitive but powerful.

Eadida is lying on a pyre of stacked wooden beams, as if ready for burning. She’s dressed in a flowing white gown, with a simple necklace of fresh daisies. She looks terribly young to be a corpse. She’s unusually well-preserved, too. It must have been several days at least, but there’s no evidence of decay, which is odd. Even just taking internal bacteria into account, her skin should be waxy by now with dark streaks of internal decay, and she should be bloated with intestinal gasses.

“We need to take her hand, Massinisa.”

He looks over at me, surprised. “Her hand?”

“It will point the way to where this trouble all started. Where we can save Alice’s life.”

Massinisa looks at Alice, who nods unhappily. “Her hand,” he says again. “And how will you claim your prize?”

He has a point there. I look around the room for anything that could be useful. “Well, uh, I might be able to smash through her wrist using one of the wooden spars she’s lying on. Or it looks like the torch brackets are nailed in fairly crudely, it might be possible to lever a nail out of the wall with my room key. In fact, I…”

“Stop it!” Alice is on the verge of tears. “She was my friend. We should do this properly. We should go and find a knife.”

“I understand your feelings,” I say. “There’s no way of knowing how long that would take though. If the hotel is feeling bloody-minded… We don’t know how much time we have to spare. Are you sure about this?”

Alice shudders, and hunches in on herself, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Why do you not ask the girl for her hand?” Alice and I both look over at Massinisa, but he’s playing it deadpan. Alice shudders again.

I sigh, and say “Alright then Massinisa, why don’t you ask the dead girl for her hand?”

Massinisa glances at Alice, who’se just one step away from rocking back and forth like a Romanian trauma baby, and nods. He steps up to the pyre, and nods respectfully to the corpse.

“My dear Eadida, I beg your forgiveness for disturbing your rest. Your friend, Alice, needs your help. We seek to save her from the fate which claimed you. She must find the summoning circle that the two of you discovered. Your hand can point the way. Now that you are beyond pain, will you consent to give it to us?”

Alice and I share a look, and then Massinisa screams, the hoarse yell deafening. Bright gouts of blood spurt from all around his wrist, and he twists towards us, dropping to his knees as he does so. There are crimson streaks across Eadida’s white gown and white face, and hot splatters on my shirt. Massinisa keeps screaming, his face anguished, clutching at his right wrist. Mushy gore splutters through his fingers.

Through the screams, I can clearly hear the crunch of breaking bone. His hand is withering, all the colour swiftly leeching out. He keels forward onto his face, which muffles the noise a bit. Alice snaps out of shock quicker than I do, and she darts forward, kneeling down beside him, checking his pulse and stroking his hair.

The screams stop as if cut off with a switch, and for an instant, I’m terrified that he’s dead. But he moans softly and mumbles something, and then Alice is helping him unsteadily to his feet. He looks pale, drawn and shocked. He gingerly wipes some of the blood off his right hand, and Alice gasps. It is white, and small, and slender. His wrist tapers savagely from his broad forearm to the new hand, shading from african to pale caucasian as it does so. Eadida, it seems, has something of a nasty sense of humour.

I glance over at her blood-streaked body and sure enough, she now has Massinisa’s right hand.

Massinisa flexes the new hand cautiously. It appears to work, and he seems free of pain now. Alice looks on the verge of going hysterical, but she’s keeping it together by a fingernail grip.

Massinisa looks me in the eyes. “So. I have asked for you, and I have received for you.” He sounds angry.

I nod, and say “You have. I am in your debt.”

“Yes,” he says curtly.

My first impulse is to offer to shake on it, but I manage to stop myself. I actually don’t really want to touch the hand, and Massinisa sure as hell doesn’t need to be reminded. Instead, I clasp his shoulder, and summon up a hopefully sincere expression. “I pay my debts.”

He stares at me for a moment, then he sighs and deflates, his face softening. “I’m sure you do, friend. Come, let us leave this… tomb.”

Alice chokes back a giggle, and makes a beeline for the door. Massinisa and I follow. When we get outside, I notice that the carpet has changed slightly, with blotches of red now added to the orange and brown hexagons. I don’t bother saying anything. What would be the point?

There’s a rest area not too far from where we are. I know it’s there, and we could all do with a minute. “I know where we can catch our breaths,” I say. “Come on.” The other two look at me with odd expressions, but they follow along obediently enough. It only takes a couple of minutes — round a corner, through a fire door and down a hallway, and then there’s a big glass double door on the left.

The rec area looks like the sort of pleasant lounge you might find in a laid-back cafe. It’s stylish, in a muted sort of way, and decorated in soft earth tones. There several tables, some clustered round with well-padded chairs, others with deep-looking sofas. There’s a counter at the back, with a selection of buffet food and a range of beverages, including a professional-looking espresso machine. You’re obviously allowed the illusion of self-service here, but I’m pretty certain that you’d find the buffet included whatever it was you most felt like to eat.

Massinisa goes over to poke around the facilities, and Alice sinks down onto one of the sofas, head in hands. I sit down next to her, and put an arm round her shoulders. “How are you doing?”

She coughs, and looks up at me. “Couldn’t be more perfect!” Her voice is too high, too bright.

I look her in the eye. “Alice?”

She shudders, and when she speaks again, her voice is low and sad. “Eadida was a lovely, kind girl. She was my friend. It was just… hard. I thought I had this place down, but every step you take, you seem to make it freakier. It’s wearing me down. I’m not cold like you.”

Cold? That’s an uncomfortable assessment. “I…” What the hell do you say?

“You were going to mash her hand off with a log.” It comes out as almost a whisper.

Well, yes. I was. I shrug uncomfortably, and say, “It’s hardly for my own damn pleasure.”

She laughs quietly and bitterly, something between a chuckle and a sob. “You know what I am? I make jewellery. Necklaces, pendants, bangles. The Innsmouth stuff goes pretty well. So does the tacky Liberty crap. God. How am I supposed to deal with this?”

“One step at a time,” I say. “Bit by bit, without thinking too hard about what might happen next. Why don’t you tell me about your work. Do you have a shop?” Massinisa, over by the buffet still, nods approvingly, and starts picking at something from a plate.

She shakes her head. “Hell no. I wish. I sell my pieces through craft stores and little galleries around the city. Commissions too, when I’m lucky. It’s not easy, but I’m keeping going.”

“What about…” Wait. She said she was from ‘93. No eBay. “Um, corporate work?”

“Like mass-produced lapel pins or something?”

“Sure.”

Alice shrugs. “Sometimes. But that kind of work pays rock-bottom, and they always behave like they fucking own you.”

“Yeah, don’t they just.”

She sighs unhappily. “I miss my life. It was nice. I didn’t know how lucky I was.” She seems more pensive than despairing, more herself again. “How about you? How did you get so that smashing a girl’s hand off is no big deal?”

“Does it really matter?”

Alice shrugs. “You’re right, I don’t want to know.”

“I’m going to help you through this, OK? That’s what’s important.”

She looks at me directly. “Why? You don’t even know me.”

I meet her gaze. “We have a deal, remember?”

“Well yeah, I know… But…”

“But I could just waltz off with my new-found hotel knowledge and my possibly mojo eyes, and let you hang?”

She looks at her feet. “Something like that.”

“You were kind, helpful and reassuring to a very confused new arrival. I’d feel pretty shitty if I just abandoned you now.”

Alice smiles weakly. “Thanks.”

I grin at her in reply.

Massinisa, seeing the mood lift, makes his way over. He’s got a plate of assorted food, which centres around a small mound of pilaf. He looks reasonably cheerful again. “What is our strategy now?”

“We were told that Eadida’s hand could point the way to the place where she and Alice disturbed the ritual pattern,” I say. “When we get there, we can unsummon the thing that was called. This will stop it eating Alice’s soul, and will also take away one of the reasons that Eadida’s killers have for wanting Alice dead.” To her credit, she manages not to flinch at any of that.

Massinisa looks a bit bemused, he nods, and swallows his mouthful. “Very well. What should I do?”

A nugget of information comes to me from my new memories, something about the partial possession of a German surgeon. “Try blanking your mind as much as possible, and relaxing all the muscles in that arm and shoulder.”

“Very well.” He puts down his plate and closes his eyes, and the visibly relaxes. At first nothing happens, but then, slowly, the hand lifts and turns. It pulls the arm up bit by bit, as if there were a string lifting the fingertips. When Massinisa’s arm is fully outstretched, it is pointing in front of his left bicep, a bit to the side of Alice’s head.

Massinisa opens his eyes. “That was… strange.”

“But effective,” I say.

“So it seems,” he says. “If neither of you wish refreshment, then let us go. I can eat as we walk.”

We head out, and set off in the direction which is closest to the one Massinisa was pointing in. The next junction we get to, we turn to the right, crossing the direction we want. The idea is to keep turning in towards the bearing we want, and hope that keeps us reasonably true. Every few junctions, we take another reading, and it’s encouraging to see that our destination stays roughly where it should do. We pause to rest every so often, but with no idea of how far we have to go, none of us want to dawdle.

The corridors we walk through offer up quite a wild variety of styles. At one point, we find ourselves in a hallway with marble floor and tiled white walls striped with blue and green patterns. Later, there is a short stretch where everything is made of chrome-plated metal, locked down with bolts and rivets, and light comes from flaming braziers. Another series of passages make me feel like we’re walking through one of Tutankhamen’s palaces, right down to the stelae engraved in the walls.

Patches like these reflect particularly strong-willed local inhabitants, past or present. The hotel is reasonably accomodating, and if someone has fierce expectations or desires, then they can have quite an impact. The rest of the time, it just sort of does its own thing.

We hit one area with oddly crystalline walls and floor, and all the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I know what shaped them. I speed up here, and urge the others to hurry, but I don’t explain. There’s no need to traumatise them further.

It’s about half an hour after that when I suddenly know that our destination is just a couple of corridors away. There are powerful entities in the area, too; I can feel them, like heavy weights on the fabric of the hotel.

“Wait.” They stop, and turn back to face me.

“What is it?” Alice looks nervous.

“We’re almost there,” I say.

“How can you be certain, my friend?”

“I can feel it now, Massinisa. I know exactly where it is.” He nods, thoughtfully. “There are powerful beings around here too. I don’t know what or where though, I’m afraid.”

Alice blinks. “Do you think it’s the thing?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe some of the Macandal are heavy hitters. It’s quite a big coincidence if it’s unrelated, though.”

“What are we going to do?”

That’s a good question. “We need information. I’ll scout ahead. Whatever you do, don’t attract attention.”

Alice looks nervous. “But if it’s that, uh, thing…”

“The morosos.”

“Yeah. It’s tuned into me, right? Won’t it know I’m here?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if it works like that, and anyway, it could be something entirely different.”

“I guess.”

“Look, I’ll be as quick as I can. If anything nasty appears, run like hell for reception, and if you’re not here when I get back, I’ll meet you there. ”

“OK.” She pauses. “Thanks.”

I smile at her, and head off.

Sneaking around is a trade-off between speed and stealth. It’s possible to walk silently, and it’s possible to cover distances quickly, but you don’t get to do both at once. There’s no cover in the hotel, at least, not without kicking a door down, so if anyone stumbles across me, I’m going to be seen. That makes speed a bit more important than silence, although obviously I still need to be quiet. I make my way down the first stretch of corridor as swiftly as I can without clumping along. The sense of psychic pressure doesn’t change, so I’m totally in the dark as to who or where it’s coming from.

When I get to the corner, I kneel down and peer round cautiously. People are more likely to notice minor disturbances like that at head height, so it’s worth getting low down. The corridor ahead is quiet, with a slightly ’50s feel to it. The ritual room is four doors down, on the left. I wait for a few seconds, but I don’t hear anything, or see anything odd.

See anything odd. Hm. I close my eyes for a moment, feeling horribly vulnerable, and try to relax as best I can. Then I concentrate on my eyes, and trying to feel the energy sinking in to them as I open my eyelids. My vision swims for a moment, and my eyes start to ache. It feels like straining a muscle — hot, tiring and sore. There’s a flicker, and then I can see a strange symbol on one of the doors nearby. It’s a complex design, lines and angles and curves, inside a circle. I’ve no idea what it means, and it sputters in and out. There’s no sign of anything down by the door to the ritual room though, which was my concern.

I relax my eyes and blink a couple of times, then stand up and slip round into the second corridor. I make my way down to the room, kneel again, and peer in quickly.

No-one there. Good.

The doors slide, and they’re currently fully open, so I leave them where they are and go in, just enough to be out of sight of the corridor. There’s a definite energy to the place, dark and swirling and hostile. It looks like a rec area, but all the furniture has been taken out. In its place, an odd design is traced on the floor in sand, a big sprawling thing full of crosses and swirls, stars and eyes. I try to make sense of it, but its just too complex, drawing my eye first one way and then another.

I’m still staring at it when a click from the corridor outside brings me to my senses. A door is being opened. I immediately retreat to the wall next to the door, wishing I had something to hide behind, and that my clothes weren’t so garish. A couple of seconds later, I can definitely make out someone coming towards the room.

The somebody comes in. He’s a tall guy, strong, somberly dressed, dark skin. Power beats off him in waves; he’s the one I’ve been feeling in the area. He walks into the room, then turns to where I’m standing. A moment of surprise flickers across his face, leaving me an instant to act.

I immediately decide to try bluffing. I pull my face into something resembling a cold smile, and make my voice as neutral as I can. “It looks like you have a problem here, friend.”

His eyes narrow. “Is that so?” He sounds composed, relaxed, and deadly dangerous.

“You’ve called up something from the space between spaces, anti-life, and now it’s roaming the hotel, hunting for meat. Hunting for you, bokor.”

He smiles, and I realise my arms and legs are frozen in place. “You have sharp eyes. Interesting eyes. I wonder what I could see if I took them from you, friend.”

I grin as nastily as I can. “If you could see through my eyes right now, you’d be looking a fool with 5 hours and 33 minutes to live.”

“Easy words to say,” he says, but he doesn’t sound quite so certain as he did before.

For some reason, David Sinclair comes to mind. “Your monster got into Sinclair’s nest. The morosos learnt things it should never have learnt…”

He stares at me in horror. “It entered the Sinclair soul bank?”

Soul bank? I nod, gravely. “In the husk of a Tulpa.”

“That is not good. Really not good. Sinclair is unharmed? Yes, of course, otherwise you would not be here. So be it. We will recapture it. Tell Sinclair he can drain his precious toys back out once we have it bound. All will be well.”

“You will not find the girl.”

He flinches. “The girl?”

“She has hidden herself well.”

He sighs. “Very well. What is the price?”

I remember that the Macandal generally deal in sorcerous favours. “Seven spirits, bound.” That feels like a high price.

The bokor grimaces. “That is ridiculous.”

I smile pleasantly. “5 hours and 31 minutes.”

“Alright, seer. You make your point. Seven spirits, bound, when Sinclair wants them. Now where is the girl?”

Good question.

Good question. It needs to be somewhere away from where Alice and Massinisa are hiding. What will take him in a different direction? Ah. Gotcha. “She is in the hotel’s ancient warrens, from the time before Sumeria arose. There is a chamber there that persists, with animals painted on the walls. The guides know it. She is within two corridors of that place.”

“I know it,” he says.

Damn, he’s a guide? He doesn’t look anything like crazy enough. Still. “Make haste. Sinclair would prefer to be able to collect on our deal.”

His face contorts for a moment, but he nods, and strides out. As soon as the sound of his footsteps fade, I dash back the way I came. The pressure of the bokor’s presence eases, but not entirely; there’s a sense of imminence.

Alice and Massinisa are where I left them, looking jumpy. They relax as they see me round the corner.

Alice quickly asks, “What happened?”

“I bumped into one of the sorcerers. I bought us some time, but not much. Come on.”

I start leading them back to the ritual room. Alice comes up beside me. “How long do we have?”

“I don’t know. I sent him off on a wild goose chase, but he’s a guide, so there won’t be much travel time.”

“What do you mean that he is a guide?” Massinisa sounds doubtful.

“You know how easy it is to get to reception? Guides can get anywhere like that, if they know it.” I check round the corner quickly, then lead on. “Some nodes are fixed. The guides use them as landmarks to different areas. But I gave him as big an area to search as I dared, so we should have a while.”

I usher the the others into the ritual room, and follow them in, sliding the doors closed behind me. They’re both staring at the design, much as I did when I first saw it. Alice is trembling slightly.

She wrenches her eyes away from the thing and looks up at me. “What now?”

“We now the creature’s name. Sinclair said we could use that to banish it.”

“Yeah, but do you know any handy banishing rituals?”

I look around the room helplessly. I don’t know what I’d expected — maybe to find a grimoire or something. My new memories don’t stretch to banishing rituals for anti-life.

I don’t even have to say anything. Alice just shudders, and says “Oh god.”

“We could lie in wait here for the sorcerer,” says Massinisa. “If you stand somewhere visible, perhaps Alice and I can overpower him.”

“Uh, maybe,” says Alice. “Or we can get the hell out of here whilst his back’s turned, and go see if we can find a ritual to use, and maybe a weapon or two. The creature might not be planning to snack on me for days yet.”

“That’s true,” I say, “but it’s a risk. The sorceror has a room just a couple of doors away. It’s heavily warded, and I don’t know what the wards do, but there might be something in there that will tell us how to proceed.”

“Hold on,” says Alice. “Didn’t that Valis guy say that I got sent here in the first place because I tripped a bunch of wards back home?”

“Um, yes.”

“Peachy. Do you genuinely think it’s worth the risk?”

“On the whole, I’m inclined to just give banishing a go. How hard can it be?”

Alice and Massinisa both turn to stare at me.

I summon up a confident smile. “Look, I got lucky ditching the bokor. Who knows if we’ll be able to get this room clear again? Plus Eadidia’s hand may be able to guide us a bit once we get going, and I’m getting better at seeing energy flows… We don’t know how much time we have for this. It’s got to be worth a try.”

Alice shrugs, clearly uncomfortable. “I don’t know, it sounds kinda hair-brained. Then again, this whole thing is a nightmare. Maybe you’re right. What the hell, huh?”

“If you wish to try this Alice, then I will support you,” says Massinisa uncomfortably.

She looks over to me, and I nod, gravely. “Alright,” she says. “Let’s do it.”

“Right,” I say. “The creature is being drawn to you Alice, so you should be inside the design somewhere, at a focus. I reckon Massinisa should be with you, because of the hand. Hang on a moment.”

I close my eyes, and let myself relax. My consciousness seems to get heavier, sinking into a feeling that makes me think of fluffy pink clouds. I turn my attention to my eyes, and try to recall the sparkling sensation of seeing energy patterns. It takes a few seconds, but I manage to get it, an odd impression of fizzing in the back of my eyeballs. The middle of my face starts to feel flushed, and a wave of nausea strikes me, hard and fast. I groan and stagger slightly, opening my eyes as I do so, and both Alice and Massinisa gasp.

It’s as if I’ve never actually been awake before. The design on the floor is a shimmering labyrinth of energies, golds and reds and greens. It’s beautiful. There are several cells within the pattern, symmetrically laid out. I glance up, and see the cocoon of energies surrounding Alice, shimmering and changing. It’s totally enchanting. Massinisa is the same, apart from the deep black pit surrounding the hand. Occasional spikes of violent neon colour shoot through the darkness like lightning, and I wonder how he can bear it. It must hurt like hell.

“Your eyes,” says Alice.

I nod. They’ll be glowing brightly enough for even normal sight to perceive. I can feel the slowly energy draining out of me through them, but it’s such a small price to pay for glory.

I direct Alice to an empty cell on the left, and Massinisa to a  corresponding one on the right. The physical pattern has stars at that point, so it’s easy to explain. I can see where the design was originally damaged, too — a line was cracked, the energy damming around it. It’s the work of an instant to smudge the design slightly, enough to let the energy flow again. The lines flare for a moment, and Massinisa shudders. Interesting.

Now for the moment of truth. I take my place at the heart of the design. I don’t know any of the niceties of the ways the bokor deal with their patrons, so I can’t even guess at a banishing that compliments the original summoning. I do know the name of this morosos though, and I think I can coax the pattern to at least react to me. A shred of some dimly-remembered horror movie will have to serve as a template.

I take a deep breath. “In the name of Lord God the Almighty, his son Jesus Christ, and the power of the Holy Ghost, by the powers invested in me, I bind and abjure the unclean spirit Kharos to my will. Kharos, you are cast from this place, your bones split, your flesh torn asunder. Kharos, …”

The temperature leaps twenty degrees and a horrible buzzing whine fills my head, making my spine crawl. Just inside the doorway, a hideous flaring void wavers and burns. Reality is melting around it, energy turning brittle and crumbling away to be sucked inwards, falling into it and falling and falling… My vision flares and the world swims, and when I can see again, I’m on my knees, screaming. My eyes feel like boiling lead in my skull, and my stomach is trying to crawl up my throat and escape. All I can see is normality, but that is a blessing, because now the morosos is just a whisper of dark, roiling air.

I can hear Alice screaming as well, but I can’t wrench my eyes from the thing. Somewhere nearby, doors are slamming.

A tentacle of shadow licks out from the morosos, and I watch it caress Eadida’s hand and flow up Massinisa’s arm. Where it touches, the flesh bubbles and froths, and is sucked away. He doesn’t even manage to scream, just stares in total horror. Within seconds, it has consumed his arm, his right shoulder, part of his face. Gouts of blood vomit from the hole in his chest. There are worlds of anguish in his eyes as he collapses, a broken, greying marionette. Wildly, I hope his soul somehow escaped.

Alice screams again, a horrible sound blending terror, loss and flowering madness.

The tendril retracts.

The door to the room slams open, and several people are suddenly scrabbling to keep back. I hear one of them swear.

Maybe the morosos is distracted.

Maybe the morosos is distracted… I stagger to my feet and quickly press on with my banishing. “Kharos, I command you to be gone from this place and return from whence you came.”

Outside the door, I can hear the new arrivals start up some sort of chant as I’m speaking. They’re arranged in a rough semicircle, and they look grim. The morosos rolls over one of them, and his clothes and skin slough straight off, forming a dark mist around his wet, pulsing body. He opens his mouth to scream, and his entire body rips open down the centre, from the bridge of his nose down to his groin. The Morosos slides inside. The chant falters, but the macandal guys are made of strong stuff, and they continue.

So do I. “Kharos, I command you again to be gone from this place and return from whence you came.” A horrible stench hits me like a hammer, blood and shit and offal and foulness. I’ve never smelled anything like it. It would make my eyes water, if they weren’t so damn hot.

Blood and bile oozing out of the horrible central crack, the skinned corpse turns to the man next to it. It reaches up, and tears his head straight off his neck as easily as if it was picking a wild flower. Whilst the headless torso is still falling, the skinned corpse adjusts its grip on the head it just plucked, and mashes it down onto the skull of the man next to it. His cranium vanishes in a cloud of blood, bone shards and tissue. Then the morosos billows back out of the corpse and surrounds the last man. He immediately starts frothing and melting, the gore evaporating into the morosos like an ice-cube under a blow torch.

“Kharos, I command you for the third time to be gone from this place and return from whence you came. Begone!”

Slumped on the floor, Alice is laughing, a high, horrible sound, and as the last of the macandal guys vanishes, she starts clapping.

It starts flowing towards us, darker now, the shape always churning and shifting, and my voice dies away. Damned Hollywood. Can’t trust them to get anything right.

From somewhere outside, a strong, hard voice starts shouting in a language I don’t know. The bokor. It sounds a bit like French that he’s speaking, but it isn’t. The morosos stops approaching, wavers, and then heads back towards the doors.

Then I realise he’s started yelling at me. “The girl’s blood, seer. Kill her. Now.”

It starts flowing towards us, darker now, the shape always churning and shifting, and my voice dies away. Damned Hollywood. Can’t trust them to get anything right.

From somewhere outside, a strong, hard voice starts shouting in a language I don’t know. The bokor. It sounds a bit like French that he’s speaking, but it isn’t. The morosos stops approaching, wavers, and then heads back towards the doors.

Then I realise he’s started yelling at me. “The girl’s blood, seer. Kill her. Now.”

Shit. I grab Alice, haul her up, and hope the morosos and the bokor will be too busy to stop us escaping. She doesn’t exactly make it easy — she seems to have mostly shut down — but at least she doesn’t fight.

The morosos is just outside the doorway, now. The bokor does something I can’t see, and it flinches and recoils a little.

“Now, Seer. Now!” He sounds desperate.

It’s as good a time as any. Dragging Alice, I make for the doorway as quickly as possible, keeping as far from the morosos as I can.

The bokor sees us making an exit, and laughs hopelessly. “Fool.” He makes a gesture, and his eyes and mouth light up like pyres for an instant, and then he collapses, his face a charred ruin. Some sort of suicide magic?

The morosos immediately flows back towards us, and I can hear its hunger, billions of horrid little voices babbling depravity. Everything blazes red with agony, and then