On the drive home from the office, my mind races through the details of the case like a jackrabbit darting through a twilight forest. Wandering. Searching. Seeking in a dark and dangerous landscape.

  I’m certain Clara saw Jack. But why? Why was he there? Could the man in yellow have been Sam Softson? That’s the most obvious conclusion, but we really don’t know enough to say that for certain. Whoever it was, he’s a real creep hanging around a bunch of kids. Especially handing out drugs.

  A guy like that? I’d like to hold my Registered Magnum to his head. I’d like to look into his eyes as I slowly squeeze the trigger and blast his brains out, blast him into eternal night.

  An eternal, peaceful slumber? No, that’s too good for a guy like that.

  Maybe I oughta believe Hell. Maybe I oughta believe there’s a place where the scum of the Earth go when you take ‘em out. No such thing, though. We have to make our own Hell here and now for guys like that.

  What am I thinking? I don’t even know who this guy is yet or what was going on. Was he even real? There’s a chance Clara just imagined him. There’s no chance they all imagined him. I can’t ask the boys who were there. One’s missing or worse, and I don’t even know who any of the others are.

  We need more clues.

  We need to chase some of these leads.

  I don’t think we have time for a warrant. And Jack’s reputation won’t do him any good if he’s dead. We’ve got to hurry.

  But we can’t go around forsaking laws. We forsake one, then another, and another, and soon every brick in the wall between us and barbarism is torn down and thrown into the sea. The law must be upheld. It isn’t arbitrary.

  But at the cost of a man’s life? That’s ridiculous. We craft the law to protect innocent men, not to bar us from saving them.

  Jack would think I’m stupid for even debating this. He’d shoot first and ask questions later. Is that what happened the day you shot that robber? You acted on instinct and regretted it?

  Where did that get you, Jack? Where did that get you Wednesday night? Were you just following instinct, trying to find Sam Softson? Are you following your instinct now? Are you running from us for some reason? Are you getting by?

  I have to be honest with myself: you’re probably not. There’s no more getting by for Jack Wolfgang.

  No. Don’t think that.

  There’s still a chance he’s alive out there somewhere. “Wandering in the mountains? That’s how I get by.” And it’s my job to pick up the scent before that chance runs out, to find him before all the sand slips through the hourglass.

  Hope you still have good odds with dames, old pal; it all comes down to Lady Luck for you. Will she favor you enough that I find your trail in time to save you?

  Can’t kid myself: Jack has terrible luck with women. I was shocked he even got married. Terrible luck. Maybe that’s by design, though. They sure always had a thing for him. Maybe he was the one they were terrible with.

  I guess that still leaves one question: how’s Lady Luck treating you, old pal? Not too good, I take it.

  I’m running in circles here. I need to focus.

  This church. The New Faith Unitarians. Neither of us has never even seen one of these New Faith churches, let alone heard of them. From talking to Clara, sounds like they’re open to all kinds of experiences. I guess when you’re open to anything, you’re susceptible to everything.

  Can drugs really make someone see those sorts of things? That’s all this really was, right? A bunch of kids doing a bunch of drugs and going crazy over it.

  Or, maybe, it wasn’t just the drugs.

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  Maybe if you mix drugs with a religious sort of fervor, you create room for the dark recesses of the mind to fabricate a new kind of reality.

  Maybe that’s exactly how ancient man survived in his brutal battle to the death against nature.

  Maybe drugs and religion let man reimagine the world in a preferable way, and there he found the solace to begin fashioning the ancient cities, the ancestors to our mighty nations. Outdated ‘technology’ for solving a long resolved problem.

  I guess when you’re an ape, you’re open to anything.

  Everything turning purple. Being thrown through the air. It had to have all been imagined. Right? Maybe even the man in yellow and Barry’s death. Imagined.

  The question is “how?”

  That’s beyond me. Besides, it doesn’t matter. Not really. None of it explains how Jack disappeared or why. It all just leaves me wondering.

  Confused.

  Here are the facts: Jack Wolfgang is missing. He was at the cabin the night Clara and her friends were smoking and joking with their religious ceremony. That’s the last place he was seen. Has to have been; his car is there, and I got about as positive an i.d. as you could ask for from a zonked up girl.

  What’s our next lead?

  We don’t know where the boys are. We don’t even know who most of them are. At least one of them might be missing.

  What connected them all, though?

  Their church.

  This book.

  Investigating the church will have to wait until Sunday. We could contact the pastor, but my gut is telling me to look around undercover.

  The book is the only immediate lead we can follow. It’s up to me to find something in there that Joe and his priest missed.

  All this mental running around just to arrive where I started. This case… It’s driving me nuts.

  I need to read the grimoire, of course, but … maybe if Clara imagined everything, she got the ideas from a story! Maybe they were reading these Weird Tales books, things got a little too real, and the next thing you know, her imagination starts running the show. It’s complex. It really could be a mix of things.

  Damn. I wish I could just speak to anyone else who was there.

  The closest thing I’ve got is the magazines. I imagine one of the Elvgren girls with that stupid look of “innocent” surprise on her face. Nothing innocent about them. What secrets are you hiding? Not a damned thing I imagine. Airheaded broad.

  Get a hold of yourself, Marlowe. You’re losing it. Go home, and read the book and the magazines. See if any of it suggests that Clara imagined what happened or gives us any other clues or indications. That’s the best you can do, so do it.

  This weekend, I’ll go visit Clara’s church. I don’t know what to expect. I’ll just go and observe. I’ll get to know people. I won’t pry too hard. But maybe reading the grimoire will help me know what to look for or give me some insight. I suspect I’m going to have to dig deep. I get the impression that everything will seem ‘normal’ on the surface, but that there’s probably some weird stuff going on underneath.

  Maybe all of this connects back to Seattle somehow. Why else would a P.I. from there go missing? There’s got to be some reason he drove all the way down to a cabin outside Eatonville.

  The ‘cigarette.’ The pills. Maybe it’s drug trafficking.

  I don’t know. I don’t have enough details to start filling in blanks. We just have to get more information. But, it might help to see if there’s also a New Faith Unitarian congregation in Seattle. We’ll check tomorrow. Tonight, I read.

  [ HOME IS IN A DIRTY CITY ]

  I get back to my apartment complex. Even lost in thought, I find myself in wonder over the beauty that Seattle could be. If only it weren't so dirty.

  Bringing my new library haul upstairs to my room on the third floor, I unlock the door, flip on a light, and drop the book and magazines on my coffee table.

  Taking a deep breath, I look out the window and enjoy that comforting grace of being home. It’s turned gray outside, and a drizzle has started.

  Perfect weather for staying home to read. Someone should make Seattle the literary capital of the world.

  I thumb through the Weird Tales magazines, not really paying much attention, honestly. My mind is on other things:

  These will take a while to read, and they’re just pulp. Can’t be too much that’s useful in there. Maybe I start with the most suspicious text first. That’ll give me an idea of what the boys were trying to do. Then, I’ll try to find the inspirations for Clara’s imagination. Once we separate the real from the imagined, we can start following reality to its logical conclusions.

  I turn my eyes to the brown, leathery grimoire.

  I’ve never seen such an ugly book. The thing looks like Frankenstein’s monster got left out in the sun too long. Probably just some modern production made to look old and spooky, scamming kids out of their allowance.