Those to be Forgiven

Published: 22 Feb 2018

So this is the first time you had heard of Morris International?

I don’t really keep up with the business section in the NYT. They well known bad-guys or something?

Not quite. While not exactly wholly innocent they’re not a business that we’ve ever felt warranted our attention. If they have been in some way working alongside your Dutchman… then maybe they’ve started down a course that requires a second look. I really do wish you’d have mentioned in this in your report Mr Quaid. It could have saved us a lot of time.

The report relates to the Donny Baldwin case. I’m not going to include information about anything else.

Even if it coloured your involvement?

It didn’t colour anything.

Morris International were being employed by The Dutchman. The Dutchman was currently at war with Christiansands. Christiansands was tied to the Wolf-Turtle which in turn had been mentioned by Johnny Ives. Johnny Ives seems to have been a prime abuser in the case of the missing Donny Baldwin. What was it you said? It’s always the little things?

(…)

And Roland Burgess?

Yeah… like I said. I felt pretty pleased with myself after that one. Turns out that he wasn’t as important to the Feds as he had believed he was.

Men like that rarely are as special as they believe themselves to be. You mentioned a ‘Plan B’ if there was federal intervention in his arrest?

It was more a germ of a plan.

(…)

The intention was to request assistance from Keena. If Justice couldn’t be served by the police then I’d have to find it at the hands of men who operated outside of the law.

Did you believe that Marko Keena would help you?

I figured it was worth a shot.

The morning before going to see Keena I swung by Darnell Cooper’s apartment to pick up Johnny Ives’s laptop. He answered the door in his underwear with a just out bed look creasing his handsome face.

“Did I wake you?” I asked with a smile.

“Would it bother you if I said that you did?”

I smiled at him without answering and went in for our regular ‘bro-hug’.

I sat myself down on the sofa in his living room, while he threw on a pair of pants and t-shirt, and flipped through the channels on his TV – stopping on a round-up of the entertainment news. That British band that had won all those Grammy’s a couple of years ago: Bartleby Reign were fighting an attempt to get their last two albums pulled from download sites. “Devil Music” the woman on the screen was calling it, the line under her labelled her as Tammy Jones, a spokesperson for the American Family Association. As she was railing against the corruption of family values and the wicked influence of foreign music Darnell walked in carrying the laptop and a bowl of Apple Jacks.

“You should eat adult food.” I said as he handed me the computer.

“I eat adult food when I get invited out to dinner.” He replied spooning the cereal into his mouth.

“Yeah… I’m sorry about canceling on you.”

“You know when David’s gonna be back?”

“Soon. Hopefully.”

“You missing him huh?”

I smiled at Darnell while he he chewed: “Well you know… I kinda have to I guess.”

He smiled back.

“Any problems with the computer?”

“Easy as pie man. I just made an edit of the password from the grub boot. I really need to show you how to do all this stuff. Once I start at Black Rock Sands I’m not gonna have the time to be your tech guy.”

“Darnell… as always, you’re amazing. Thank you.”

“The new password is Seafood Risotto by the way.” he said smiling.

“Better than Apple Jacks.”

“You got time?”

I looked at the clock on the right hand side of the screen. “Yeah. I got time.” I needed a break from all the shit… and spending an hour or so in the company of my friend while we drank coffee and talked about games and films and his upcoming job was a welcome breath of fresh air.

It couldn’t last long though. At twelve thirty I ran back to my office and popped Ives’s laptop in my safe and made my way to Keena’s club.

Arriving just in time, I was bundled into Keena’s office by Brooklyn and Nasal after the now familiar pat down on the stairs and was beginning to feel like Deja vu might, in fact, be a real thing.

“Good of you to come Mr Quaid!” He stayed planted in the chair behind his desk, palms up and a smug smirk across his face.

“I wasn’t aware that I had much of a choice.” Definitely Deja vu.

Keena motioned for me to sit in a chair across from him while Brooklyn and Nasal stayed statue still at the door behind me.

“Wasn’t I supposed to be meeting with someone else?” I flashed the hand with the ring on it in Keena’s direction.

“Unfortunately he won’t be able to make any meetings.”

“Am I supposed to infer that The Dutchman spotted him?”

“His body was found in his apartment yesterday morning.” Keena opened the top drawer of his desk and dropped a business card in front of me: linen finish, Daan Dieprink centred, the raised symbol in the top right hand corner. “That was between his clenched teeth.”

I sighed.

“To be brutally honest with you Mr Quaid, when you didn’t show up at your apartment for a few days I had half figured to find you that way too.”

I think I maybe cocked an eyebrow at him. “About that… The Corolla yeah?”

The fucker smirked at me again while he removed his glasses and wiped them with a small square of cloth. “Tommy’s just keeping to himself.”

“I’d appreciate it if he could keep to himself somewhere else from now on. I’m helping you right?”

“Where’s the weasel?” He asked changing the subject and looking behind me as if Pickman was hiding somewhere in back.

“He’s busy.”

Keena’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Too busy to come talk with me. Considering the mess he’s gotten himself in that’s a pretty ballsy move. You must be rubbing off on him.”

“He’s looking into The Dutchman.”

“And?”

“And he has a lead. Dieprink has been down at the New Jersey Docks. He’s shipping containers out of the country.”

“Containers? Of what?”

“That we don’t know yet. That’s why I’m here alone and Pickman is running around by the water trying to find answers.”

He placed his glasses back on his face and ran his fingers through his hair.

“I need to talk with Mr Christiansands.”

“You’ve already spoken with him, Mr Quaid. I think he made it clear that he didn’t want to have to see you again.”

“It seems that there might be a connection with your boss, whatever The Dutchman wants and the case I’ve been working.”

“The missing kid?”

I nodded.

“How’s that going?” For what it’s worth he seemed genuine with his question. Same as when he called back down the hallway outside of his office the night one of his thugs broke my nose. I guess that maybe that there must have been a streak of humanity in him. Besides the sorrow that he let slip for the loss of men at Red Hook.

“It’s more… involved than I first thought. A lot more stones to overturn.” I watched him nod with concern. “What do you know about the marijuana seeds that Christiansands and The Dutchman are fighting over?”

“I don’t know nothing about nothing… except that if it’s important to him, then it’s important to me.”

“What about the ring that he gave me?”

“What about it?”

“What does it mean? The Wolf Turtle?”

“It was a way of identifying you to our associate. The one that we had looking into The Dutchman. The one who had that in his mouth.” Keena pointed toward the card on the desk.

“The only person who’s recognised it so far is an old lady who runs a bookshop.”

“Alka Wrona?” Genuine surprise in his voice as he shifted in his chair.

“You know her then?”

Keena narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything.

“You’ll have to forgive me for saying this but you don’t really strike me as much of a reader.”

Those narrow eyes narrowed further.

I slipped the ring that Christiansands had given me from my finger and held it in front of Keena. “I need to know what you know about this symbol? If what you and Christiansands are can in anyway help me find out who took that boy then you need to talk to me Mr Keena.”

From talkative to lips tight like a clam. I wondered what was going through his mind. What thoughts were pressing at the edges. I could feel something like a nervous energy behind me. Maybe Nasal shifting his weight between his feet waiting for Keena to give a glance or a nod or a roll of the eye… whatever it took for him to spring out of his metaphorical foxhole and club me about the head.

“Forty years ago thirteen year-old Donny Baldwin was taken by a cult. From the photos and the video that I’ve seen, from the excrement passing for human beings that I’ve met… they did some really fucked up shit to him. Stuff that gives me nightmares. And your boss might know more about it.”

“You think he’d involve himself with this sort or shit?”

“If what I was told about the ring and what it’s supposed to mean, then Christiansands might be able to help me find the bastards who took him. Maybe even find Donny if he’s still alive…” I held the ring up between us hoping that it meant something to him. Meant something enough to make him help me. “If this ring does mean something to you and if what I’ve been told about it is actually true… Then despite your chosen ‘profession’ you might actually be on the side of the angels Mr. Keena. How about you try and live up to that?”

A voice coming over the phone speaker on Keena’s desk: “Bring him to my office.” It was Christiansands. “Alone. Give it a couple of hours. I’m… in a meeting until then.” Then the click of the phone as Christiansands hung up.

“He’s been listening in the whole time?”

Keena shifted uneasily. “Yeah. He does that.”

I waited downstairs in the club while they arranged whatever they need to arrange to transport me from Keena’s bar to Christiansands office. The cute young Italian barman who was restocking before they opened poured me a whisky and not wanting to be rude, I accepted.

What I had wanted to do was to call David. We’d never been apart for so long and I was troubled by the thought that I hadn’t been more eager to call him more frequently. I guess that part of that was to do with Mike and the confused feelings I was having about the kid. Before that, I guess, it could be down to the thoughts that I had been having while watching the film loops. The darker urges that had taken root in my dreams.

Just that night before it was… I don’t know how to describe it. It was like an out of body experience. I was Johnny Ives. I watched myself as Johnny Ives as I forced myself on thirteen year-old Donny Baldwin in the back of some dirty mobile home. I felt the sick pleasure of having total physical control over the smaller weeping boys body. It seemed to be that way every time I closed my eyes. Some new deviant horror that had found root in my subconscious… The self medication wasn’t helping.

Thirty minutes and two glasses later Brooklyn and Nasal came down from the balcony and shuffled into the back of a car that was waiting outside the club. Once in the back seat Nasal wrapped a piece of cloth around my eyes as a makeshift blindfold and sat himself next to me.

We must have been driving for a good hour or so. Any conversation I tried to strike up was met with a stone cold silence… Whoever the driver was must have tired of me trying to talk, as he turned on some music. I kept quiet after that. At some point it felt like we went over a bridge but I couldn’t be sure, The music was too loud and we were moving too fast.

As we pulled up I was shuffled out of the backseat and walked from sidewalk to a lobby. I heard Nasal mumble to someone else before a bigger heavier hand took my arm and pulled me into an elevator.

“Nice night.” I said as I heard the elevator doors close. The hand on my arm didn’t respond.

There were no pings or bumps or any indication, bar the time spent moving, of how many floors we were passing. I tried to count the seconds it took for us to reach our destination but the awful sounds of Jazz music as if played by a band of substitute high school geography teachers, on long unused instruments, coming over the speakers was too distracting.

When we stopped and the doors opened I was pulled out onto a carpeted floor and walked only a few steps before I heard my ‘guide’ knock on a door. Handed over to someone else, I was pulled inside and lead down a corridor before being turned left and pushed through a door and into a room.

Silence. I couldn’t hear a thing except my own heartbeat in my ears.

“You can take the blindfold off now, Detective.” It was Christiansands voice; as cool and calm as it had been the night in Marko Keena’s office when he broke my hand.

I pulled off the blindfold and blinked. Letting my eyes adjust to the soft light.

Books! That was my first thought: Books! Lots of them. Three walls covered floor to ceiling, several smaller cases standing separately throughout the room – small statues and ornaments and curios decorating the spaces in between. A large brown leather sofa and matching chair across from it on either side of what looked like a walnut coffee table. A closed roll top desk by a window with heavy royal blue drapes drawn. And in front of me, standing with that sort-of-smile in grey suit pants and shirt, with sleeves rolled up just below the elbows: Christian Christiansands. The tattoos on his ring covered hands extended up both forearms and under the sleeves of his powder blue shirt.

“I had hoped our paths wouldn’t cross again.”

“After our last meeting I was kind of hoping the same.”

He nodded his head to the figure standing behind me. It was the goon from the club, the guy with the airplane wingspan shoulders: Boeing. He nodded in return, stepped back and left the room, closing the door after him. I was obviously no sort of threat to Christiansands that needed the presence of his muscle.

“You’ve been digging Detective…” He turned his back to me and walked to the brown leather chair. Sitting himself down then waving his open hand at the sofa across from him, beckoning me to plant myself down. “Mixing in some interesting circles.”

“I had little choice.”

“Coincidence?” he asked.

“Perhaps fate?”

“If each life is to be thought of as a spindle, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos would spin their threads of human destiny and entwine yours and mine… Luckily I don’t believe in fate.”

“Coincidence it is then.”

That sort-of smile again. He reached down beside his chair and pulled a bottle of whisky and two crystal tumblers.

“You’re a whisky man aren’t you Detective?”

I nodded.

“This is a Glenfiddich 1937. Only sixty-one bottles were ever produced. I have two of them. If you try to buy them now you have to go to Hong Kong and you’d be looking at paying north of one-hundred and twenty thousand dollars.” He splashed the golden rye into a glass and handed it to me before pouring one for himself. “I’ll be honest, I’m not much of a connoisseur and the price of something doesn’t always mean that it’s better. But I know what I like.”

That taste on my tongue: treacle and leather, oak and cedar, something like bitter chocolate and smoky dry grass…

“You spoke with Alka Wrona.”

It wasn’t a question. I nodded anyway. Still enjoying the taste of the whisky as it danced in my mouth.

“She spun you tales as fanciful as the three Goddesses.”

“She helped shed light on a case I’m working.” I said reluctantly swallowing.

“The missing boy.” He played idly with one of the many rings on his fingers. “I would help if I could Detective. I’m hardly an angel… but even I won’t let certain things stand. The corruption and abuse of an innocent soul is, for me, The Ultimate Evil. All children are innocent Detective.”

“Then tell me what you know.”

“Why do you think I would know anything?”

“Lions and Wolves Mr Christiansands. That’s what one of those bastards who hurt the missing boy, and God knows how many others, said. Lions and Wolves. You’re a Wolf aren’t you?”

Silence. I wouldn’t even hesitate to make a guess at what he was thinking. What was going on behind those heterochromatic eyes is all him.

“There are fewer of us than there once was. Fewer still this morning than last night.”

“Donny Baldwin was thirteen when he was taken. Just a kid. His life ruined. His family’s lives ruined. His friends lives ruined… If you can help me find some sort of peace for whatever is left of that boy, for his brother and his family. For the old man who still lives in Shaolin and shed tears and begged me to find out what happened to his friend… If you can help and you are who Alka Wrona told me you are then…”

“What questions do you want me to answer.” He interrupted.

I was a little stunned. I had thought that he’d put up more of a fight. Like he liked the sparring nature of it. I reached into my pocket and pulled out Johnny Ives’s notebook: “Can you look through this? Can you tell me if this means anything? If it will help me find out what happened to Donny?”

Leaning forward, he took the book from my hands and pulled back the elastic closure; opening the book and carefully looking at each page with one gray and one green eye.

“Can you read it?” I asked after only a few moments of silence that had felt like some quiet eternity.

He didn’t look up from the book when he answered me. His eyes remained shifting side to side on the pages of the book as though he were able to both read and hold a conversation with me at the same time: “Aklo is the phonetic version of R’lyehian.” Ms. Wrona had already told me that but I didn’t want to say. “As a phonetic language it is prone to variant spellings. For the most part though, yes. I can read it.”

I had to wonder, as I sat across from him, who Christian Christiansands actually was. Was he the gangster who ruled The City’s underworld with a quiet word and an iron fist? Was he the mad man who ended the reign of one Chicago’s oldest crime families by amputating their fingers and tongues? Was he truly the Devil in Helsinki? Or was he this Wolf Turtle? An intelligent man charged with protecting humanity from imagined demons and ancient gods?

“Ms. Wrona said that. What is R’lyehian? It’s not a language I’ve ever heard of.”

“It stems from a the name of an ancient city continent: R’lyeh long sunken beneath the ocean waves before humanity set foot on this planet.”

I think I actually snorted. “Like Atlantis? Like Ancient Aliens?”

Christiansands looked up from the book and smiled at me beneath the lids of his eye: “You don’t have to believe me Detective. I’m aware of how much damage something like Scientology has done to the world’s willingness to accept knowledge that seems fantastical. But really? Is it any any less believable than a Virgin birth or that a man will rise from the dead to wash away the sins of all humanity?”

“It’s strange,” I said. “I wouldn’t have pegged you for believing in anything other than the cult of personality that is: Christian Christiansands.”

He looked up from the book with that sort-of-smile before returning his gaze to its pages.

“It’s mostly rituals. In the book.” He said eventually. “Descriptions of practices and black services set to give those who perform these rites waking access to The Dreamlands.”

Alka Wrona had mentioned that too.

“Do you believe that they work?”

A sly grin with his eyes still in the book: “We’d need to try them to know for sure.”

“I’ve seen…” I struggled to let the words escape my lips. “I’ve seen evidence that suggests that they do.”

“Tell me what you’ve seen Detective.”

“A man who should have been at least in his mid to late fifties looking no older than twenty five. A boy seemingly unaged: Thirteen for at least twelve years.”

“Then the rituals work.” He looked back down to the book and turned the pages.

“The thing that they worship is drawn in there. That fat cock maggot thing.”

He turned the book to me to show that he was on the pages featuring Johnny Ives’s crude drawings. Placing the elastic closure over the page he was on he closed the book, stood. and walked over to the bookcases on the wall to his right. Fingers clasping at his chin he cast his gaze over the shelves before reaching with both hands to a large leatherbound book the size of a newspaper but perhaps over a thousand or more pages thick.

With both hands he lifted it from the shelf before dropping the book on the table between us; where it landed with a heavy thud and all the restless anxiety of ‘the one ring’. He sat back down across from me and opened its creaking binding, turning yellowed age worn pages until he reached what he was looking for.

“This is it.” He glanced up at me then back down to the book. “This is what those pervert’s that you’re chasing worship.”

He spun the book on the table so that I could see it for myself. Then turned it back so he could read from its pages:

“Known as ‘The Profane’ as ‘The Violator’ as ‘The lord of man’s desire’ the Great Old One J’ngc’ubbuc has been worshipped in some form or other since the time of the Mesopotamians. In certain sects of Greek worship he was believed to have been a Titan and attributed to have rule of incubus and succubus.

“Although its actual form is unknown; High Priests in it’s cult who claim to have interacted with it in The Dreamlands, during their rituals, have described it variously as: ‘A giant erect penis with a head at both ends that constantly leaks semen from it’s jawed lips.’ ‘A fat maggot with tiny mouths all over it’s blubbery body,’ or ‘A mass of ever moving gelatinous blubber that couldn’t maintain a single solid form.’

“Despite the varying descriptions of its physical form, all followers believe that it lies dreaming deep beneath the Colli Albani Volcanic District just outside of Rome. Although inactive, since eons before the birth of man, a series of recent earthquakes in the region have been attributed, by the Order of the Lion-Turtle, to both a steady increase in its followers across the globe and the varying success of their rituals. These followers believe that once awakened, all who gaze upon it will be swept into an age of reckless sexual depravity that will span ten thousand years before J’ngc’ubbuc will finally open his version of The Dreamlands to all.”

I sat silent. Did he actually believe this? He was talking like he did. Like there was the distinct possibility that this… insanity would come to pass.

“J’ngc’ubbuc is briefly mentioned in both ‘Al-Azif’ and the eighth volume of ‘The Revelations of Gla’aki’ but it’s full history is held in copies of ‘The Mjel’nec Grimoire’. Only two of which are believed to still be in existence in its original and unabridged form: one in the catacombs beneath Vatican City and the other in possession of a Paladin of The Order of the Lion Turtle.”

“A Paladin of The Order of the Lion Turtle? That sounds religious.”

“It’s not. Lions and Wolves Detective… Lions and Wolves. There are two orders where there used to be six: Lions, Lynx, Wolves, Foxes, Eagles and Crows.”

“What happened to the others?”

“History is long and unkind.”

“And the significance of the animals? Of the turtle shell?”

He spoke as if quoting some mantra, that had ben drummed into him over the years: “The Lion is lordly in its strength, the Lynx stealthy, Wolves predatory and Foxes cunning. The Eagle keen-eyed and the Crow clever. The cleverest of all in fact.” He smiled a little. “But not so clever as to have survived Kurōzu-cho though… And Turtles? Turtles have long been seen as protectors in myth throughout history; whether it’s the World Turtle of African or Native American legends or the avatar of the Preserver in India or the Black Warrior of Imperial China… It was adopted for its place in man’s storied past.”

A symbol.

I waited hoping he would expand on what he was telling me of his own accord but had I not asked I don’t really doubt that we both would have sat there in silence for days.

“What is it then? The Wolf-Turtle? The Lion-Turtle? All of it?”

“Separate and independent organisations branching from a shared vision. The Lions will claim that they came first: from North Africa a few hundred years before the modern calendar. The Wolves came from Eastern Europe about the same time. The Eagles said that they were born in Japan during the Yayoi period…” Christiansands took a sip of his whisky and smiled to himself. “After ‘The Mad Arab’ Alhazred wandered the Nameless City and wrote the Al-Azif before dying on the streets of Damascus in seven-hundred and thirty-eight AD, our groups found each other and agreed to work beneath the same umbrella. Adopting the turtle shell as its symbol.”

“A secret organization that works to stop whatever apocalypse these things,” I pointed at the picture of the sweaty-cock-maggot, “are going to bring about?”

“That is the sum of it.”

Two weeks prior to the conversation I was having I was chasing down dodgy insurance claims and cheating husbands. I was thinking about what to get my own Husband for his birthday. I was reading emails from my Mother and Father in Canada about the Huskies that they were breeding and I was dodging neighbours on the stairway who wanted David to drive them to church on Sunday Mornings. Ask that same guy what he thinks he will be doing in two weeks time and he would not tell you that he expected to be sitting across from The City’s biggest crime boss as he tried to get information from him that related to a seemingly unaged missing boy and discussing a whole lot of crazy about millenia old organizations and ancient creatures who wanted to open a thing called ‘The Dreamlands.’ Tell that guy what he would be doing and he would call you a liar. He would call you a crazy liar and walk away from the conversation.

The guy sitting across from Christiansands though… he’d seen and heard enough by that point to consider what he was being told was just plausible enough to believe.

I must have been sitting in silence long enough for Christiansands to assume that I was stroking-out because he eventually asked:

“Are you still with me Detective?”

“I believe so.”

“Any other questions then?”

I brought my focus back to the case: “In your book, where it talks about that thing that they worship… is there any mention of someone called The Hurdy Gurdy Man?”

A quizzical look from Christiansands.

“The man I took this book from in North Carolina spoke of The Hurdy Gurdy Man. So did a boy I… rescued from him. The Hurdy Gurdy Man apparently appears from the woods covered in moss and bark when they perform their rituals. The boy doesn’t believe that he’s human.”

“No. That sounds more like a High Priest giving over to theatrics. Each cult, even the cells within them, while making a performance of their rituals will add their own idiosyncrasies. The only servants of something like J’ngc’ubbc are men. Those desires don’t exist anywhere else.”

“So… Do you actually believe this?” I looked up at him.

“How have your dreams been lately Detective?” He took the bottle from the table beside his chair; poured himself another whisky and topped up my glass. “What do you see when you close your eyes at night?”

I’d see Donny. I’d see Mike. I’d see Johnny Ives or like some out of body experience watching myself be Johnny Ives as I committed atrocity upon atrocity against those boys.

“You know what I dream about?” He asked me as if he’d just looked into my mind. “Nothing. I sleep like a baby, Detective.”

Christiansands spun the book on the table to let me gaze again upon the image that had been drawn; Similar to the one from Ives’s notebook yet oh so different. He stood and walked to the roll-top desk where he opened the shutter and withdrew a small clear jar of liquid that looked liked gasoline.

“Four drops.” He held it up to the lamp and watched the light dance through the liquid. “Every night.” Christiansands handed me the jar. “Mixed with Hōjicha tea and roasted in a porcelain pot over a charcoal fire. The Eagle-Turtles gave us that little wonder.”

I looked from Christiansands to the jar in my hand: “The cannabis oil?”

He smiled.

“Not dreaming can be become addictive Detective. Particularly when your dreams are haunted by the worst versions of yourself.”

“Is that why The Dutchman wants it?”

He didn’t answer, instead taking the jar of cannabis oil from my hand and placing it back in the roll top desk: “Something is coming Detective… Something that Dieprink believes that we as race should be thankful to him for. But what he hopes to aid usher in will see the ruin of us all.”

“And he thinks he needs the oil for that?”

Again he dodged the question: “There’s still some scepticism in you. I don’t blame you really. When he enlisted me it took me years to see the truth for what it is. And the only reason I’ve not taken my own life for it is because of the oil.”

Pickman was right. The history between Christiansands and The Dutchman was a little more complicated than them being just rivals.

“So is Dieprink a Wolf-Turtle too?”

“Lion-Turtle. But he’s gone rogue.” Christiansands sat back down across from me. “He’s now of the opinion that what’s coming can’t be stopped. Or perhaps… shouldn’t be stopped is a better way of phrasing it. He now believes that by aiding the monsters, he is somehow shielding us from the infinite horror that’s coming by being a harbinger for a lesser one.”

I tapped my finger on the picture of that odious creature in the book in front of me: “Is it this?”

Christiansands shook his head: “No. J’ngc’ubbuc cults are… or were rare. Their particular deviancies don’t allow them to be organised enough to mass a full scale raising of their God. Besides I’ve never thought of Dieprink as particularly sexual. And the Dreamlands that this thing would open would hold no interest for him.”

“So what does he believe? What is he trying to bring forth?”

Christiansands stood to pull The Dutchman’s business card from his pants pocket. He snapped it down on the table, between me and the book and sat back down: “Tell me Detective?” He leaned forward in his chair, elbows on knees. “Have you seen the Yellow Sign?”

“The what?” I couldn’t tell if he was shitting me or asking a genuine question.

“In the corner of the card.”

That strange symbol – three spirals like irregular question marks sparking from a blotch in their centre.

“How do you feel when you look at it?”

“Nauseous.” I answered a little too quickly. “Something like Vertigo.”

He nodded – understanding: “It looks like Dieprink may have signed a contract that will lead us all down a path we won’t be able to return from. I don’t speak in hyperbole, Detective.”

“He’s shipping something in containers.” I suddenly thought to tell him.

Christiansands narrowed his eyes. “I’d heard you say to Keena.”

“We don’t know what yet. One cargo ship set sail last week. Another leaves tomorrow night. From the APM Terminal at eleven.”

“The seeds of that marijuana plant have more than one use. When smoked – its bud will grant access to The Dreamlands, when mixed with Hōjicha tea and consumed as liquid – it can actively prevent dreams. I can’t say why he wants the seeds but I believe that he wants them for the same reason that I use them. He’s becoming desperate. The dreams are fogging his mind and making him unable to see with clarity. It’s the only reason that he did what he did at Red Hook Grain Terminal.”

“Do you know what he’s shipping in those containers?”

He wasn’t listening. His eyes found the middle distance between the card on the table and me: “The Torchbearers gaze falls to hallowed skies, Deaf to the woeful Pleiades cries, All is lost here in, Damned Carcosa.”

“What’s that?”

He looked up: “Something that will be whistling on the wind in his dreams.” Christian stood. “Tomorrow night. I need you and Pickman at Marko’s club no later than eight.”

It wasn’t a request. I doubt that he made them.

“You’re going to find out what he’s shipping Detective. And you’re going to stop that boast from leaving the port.”

To Be Continued…

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