uyen

A Mystery Story in Serial Written by G. Lester


Is there really a curse? A member of a rock band called the "Cult of Skulls" has purchased a small black ceramic skull and now he seems to have all kinds of trouble following him. Or is he really causing the trouble himself to attract attention? And why on earth is Sterling's ex-girlfriend and her daughter mixed up in the matter?



Chapter One

"Excuse me, sir? Can I talk to you a minute?"

Joseph Sterling looked up doubtfully from his half-consumed fast-food burger. Generally, in his experience, whenever anyone called him sir it was either a clerk trying to seem polite while secretly looking down on him or someone young enough to be one of his children. In this case it was the latter, a skinny young man in a fast-food outfit not coincidentally matching that worn by the workers where he was eating.

"Is something wrong?" he asked cautiously.

"No, no, nothing like that," the young man assured him. "Well yeah, I guess it is, but not like it has anything to do with this place. I mean you paid your bill all right and everything. As far as I know, anyway. They don't let me handle the money, see. Well it's not that they don't let me, exactly. It's not like I'm a crook or anything. I work in the kitchen, here." Without any more invitation he slid into the plastic chair across from the small table at which Sterling was sitting and leaned forward earnestly.

"I kinda need your help," he half-whispered.

Sterling looked around the nearly-empty fast-food place (it would probably have been over-polite to call it a restaurant) and then back to the teenager. "Short-handed on the fryer today?" he ventured.

The young man was too wound up - or too slow - to laugh. He shook his shaggy, somewhat oversized head. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"Should I?" Sterling took a bite of burger just to hint that he had come here to eat and not to provide a shoulder to be moistened by the tears of a teenaged burger-flipper.

"Hal!" a sharp woman's voice broke in. The young man looked up guiltily at the woman glaring at him from behind the counter and then he gave Sterling an embarrassed half-grin. "I have to get back to work," he apologized. "My break's not for another hour. Can, ah, can I talk with you then?"

"Why do you want to?" Sterling prodded, trying not to grimace.

"Remember the Golden Harvesters?" the boy asked. "And - and Mariam and all that?" A brief flash of pain passed across the young man's acne-tormented face.

"Ah," Sterling nodded in sudden understanding. "You're the... ah,"

"I was the gatekeeper at the compound," the boy nodded. "Till I helped Mariam hide from her dad and you told them and got me kicked out."

Sterling had enough sensitivity to feel slightly embarrassed, though that wasn't exactly the way he remembered what had happened. "Sorry."

"Nah, it's okay." The young man shrugged. "My own fault. Mariam is nothing but a little - well anyway, they kicked me out and now I'm here. And I sort of need your help. I know I'm imposing, but... Can you hang around till my break? So we can talk?"

"I have an appointment," Sterling told him. The boy looked so crestfallen that he found himself relenting in spite of himself. "But I can come back later. What time do you get off?"

"That won't work. I have to get back to the center. I don't have any transportation. One of the guys takes me. So I have to leave when he does."

"Center...?"

The young man flushed. "Never mind. I just - I can't."

"Hal!" the manager shouted even more sharply. Sterling had the impression that the glass in the window behind him was vibrating from the shrillness of her tone.

"I have to go. Sorry." The boy slid from behind the table and disappeared into the mysterious inner workings of the fast-food kitchen.

Sterling pondered while he finished his burger. Then he went to the pay phone, made a call to cancel his appointment, and ambled out to the parking lot to sit in his battered car and listen to the radio for awhile.

He couldn't really say why he was interested. He remembered the incident the boy had been talking about, of course. Not because it had been one of the greater moments of his life or even a masterpiece of deduction. A simple runaway girl who had fooled a gullible young man into helping her in her petty attempt to spite her parents. He had figured out the scam easily enough, but it couldn't have lasted much longer anyway, really.

The only thing that had burned it in Sterling's memory was that the girl's mother had been the love of his life, more or less. Or so he had told himself for decades while their relationship had never gone anywhere and the lady involved had gone elsewhere for companionship. Several elsewheres, in fact.. So there had been some pain involved in the experience. But life goes on, and he had learned, finally, that there were other fish in the sea. So he had put the entire experience, and everyone involved in it, firmly behind him. He wasn't especially eager to rake up old coals that might have a few sparks left to burn spots on his heart all over again.

And yet something told him that the boy might actually have something interesting to tell him. His reporter's instincts, perhaps, though Sterling didn't consider himself a reporter. Officially, he was a free-lance journalist writing feature articles about the odd and unconventional and the kooks who occupied the far reaches of the metaphysical and religious spectrum of life.

Being a reporter probably would have paid better, but he knew he would have withered and died writing about shady politicians and unimaginative criminals. Or so he told himself, mostly to justify a lifestyle that wasn't too many notches above that of one of the unfortunates who made a living returning refundable beer bottles and gathering random bits of scrap metal to sell at the junkyard.

When he decided enough time had passed he went back inside. After ordering a cup of coffee, he made his way to a booth in a relatively secluded corner of the fast food place's rather grandly titled dining room, away from the overexcited screaming children who had been convinced by endless commercials that eating cheap food in a cold, sterile environment was a party and their tired-looking mothers who seemed not even to notice that their progeny were in the same building as themselves. The acrid, bitter stuff that someone with a sense of humor had decided to offer as coffee had barely cooled enough to sip by the tme the young man arrived from an inner doorway.

"I didn't think you'd come back," he breathlessly as he slid into the hard plastic chair opposite him.

Sterling shrugged. "I admit, I was curious. I don't really remember your name....?"

The boy grinned. "I don't remember yours, either. I just recognized you from - well from what happened. I'm Hal Armand. Well, Halbert, but who wants to go around with a tag like that hung around his neck? It was okay for those Harvester nuts, but... Anyway, now it's Hal."

Sterling smiled and told him his name. The boy nodded and then seemed at a loss for words.

"Maybe you'd better tell me why you wanted to talk to me," Sterling suggested. "I don't suppose your break is very long in a place like this."

"It isn't." Hal's face darkened for a moment but then he shrugged. "I just- you solve mysteries, right?"

"Not exactly," Sterling corrected him. "I'm a journalist. Free-lance." Which meant that he seldom got paid for what he wrote he added to himself, but didn't say that aloud.

"But you do look into things, right?" Hal asked. "I mean like mysteries and stuff?"

"Sometimes," Sterling admitted. "Why? Do you have one?"

"I think so." He glanced around conspiratorially. "Have you ever heard of the Cult of Skulls?" he half-whispered when he had apparently determined that no one was eavesdropping.

"Like in India?" Sterling asked vaguely.

Hal shrugged. "Maybe, but I mean a rock group here in the city. You probably don't know them."

Sterling shrugged off this slur on his overall coolness in the eyes of someone half his age. "So what about them?" he prodded.

"Well one of their members is a friend of mine - he stays where I live, at the center - and he figures they're under some kind of curse."

"Literally or metaphorically?" Sterling asked, but then waved it away as Hal gave him a blank look. "Never mind. How does he know?"

"That's the problem," the boy said. "He doesn't, not really. He just thinks so because of some of the things that have been happening to them. Look, it's kind of hard to explain and you're right, I don't have a lot of time. If I lose this job too they'll throw me out of the center - they got it for me, see - and I don't really have anyplace else to go right now. Can we maybe talk about it somewhere else? When I don't have the Burger Harpy breathing down my neck?"

"Burger Harpy...

Hal nodded toward the manager behind the counter. She was clearly chewing out one of the other workers there, throwing suspicious glances in Sterling's direction as she did so. Watching her, Sterling could understand Hal's concern.

"Do you have a car?" he asked

Hal snorted. "Oh sure. But my Rolls is in the shop today, sorry. They're rotating the air in the tires."

"I don't know where you live," Sterling pointed out.

Hall flushed. "The Coms Center," he said with an embarrassed flush.

"I know the place," Sterling nodded. "I stayed there for awhile."

Hal looked at him with wide eyes. "Really?"

Sterling smiled slightly. "We all need help every now and then," he told him. He didn't add that he had done it as part of undercover research on the strange urban myths of the city's derelicts for a story that he had been writing at the time. A story he hadn't been able to get published anywhere... "I can come around sometime this evening if you want."

"Well, before ten, then," Hal said. "I start my second job at 11."

Sterling was impressed. "Two jobs. Sounds like you won't be staying in the Center long," he observed.

"Yeah, well maybe," the young man said vaguely. "If you can get there about, say, nine, that'd be cool. I'll just get up a little early."

"You sure you want to do that?" Sterling asked. "Sounds like you're on a tight schedule."

Hal shrugged. "I can do without sleep for one night I've done it before."

"With two jobs I don't doubt it."

"I have to get going," Hal said, watching warily as the Burger Harpy clicked around behind the counter on her painfully sharp high heels, clearly searching for a new victim. "I'll see you tonight, then. Be prepared for a pretty out-there story. And - thanks."

人情味不是偏私而是博爱，

不是施舍而是关怀。

不是表面的礼貌，

而是内心的尊重。

Friends will bail you out of jail.but Best Friends will be sitting by you saying,
" that was awesome !"

uyen

The Cult of Skulls was written by G. Lester



Chapter Two
The Coms Center was an old hotel in a run-down but not totally hopeless area of the city. The district had once had its own commercial center - a few blocks of storefronts, an empty movie theater, and the hotel that was now the Coms - but mostly it was a neighborhood of small houses built at the turn of the last century for families of modest means. That was pretty much what it still was, not exactly shabby but no longer quite so clean and new. Urban renewal had spared it the ravages of total destruction and somehow it had survived with most of its dignity and still a few of its dreams intact. But like all neighborhoods it had its problems, hence the Coms.

Private charity had financed the Center, providing the funds for both the original remodelling and the expenses of its continuing operation. Sterling had heard rumors that the sources of its income were somewhat shady, but months of investigation both from within and without had led him to nothing more substantial than a discovery that it was a favorite charity of some rather eccentric churches of small membership and unusual beliefs. But they seemed to be completely disconnected from the day-by-day operation of the institution itself, even if there had been anything improper about them. And from what Sterling had been able to discover there wasn't.

The Center wasn't for recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, or chronic troublemakers. It was simply intended to help those who had run across some personal hard times get back on their feet - a rather tightly structured environment within which those who were willing to make the effort could get a second start. It was part of the stated philosophy of the Center that anyone who wanted to improve himself had every right not to be victimized by those who prey on the unfortunate, and that was primarily what the Center attempted to provide - an environment in which its guests could feel reasonably safe and secure as they tried to put their lives back together. Not very spectacular, and not tackling the worst of humanity's problems, but it served a purpose. And it seemed to be working. Sterling had found nothing about it to condemn, and his final article had been entirely complimentary. Perhaps that was why it hadn't found a publisher, since the news media generally tend to love scandals.

The building itself appeared pretty much as it had been back when it was a hotel. The only concession to modern needs had been the construction of a small parking lot at the rear, accessible through a narrow alleyway between the hotel and an empty store to its left. The parking lot was public in the sense that anyone could park there - at least during the day - but its secluded access made it difficult even to find, and a guard was posted to watch over it for constant security.

Sterling pulled his not-very-new-model car into the drive between the buildings and found a place to park just as the sky was darkening and the lights in the lot were flickering on with their sour-stomach yellow glare. As he walked past the small guardhouse he waved at the uniformed guard inside. The man nodded politely but gave no sign that he enjoyed having to do so. Nevertheless, Sterling decided he had done the equivalent of signing in and made his way to the rear entrance of the building.

The upper rooms where the tenants stayed were basically off limits to outsiders, though in theory one could gain access to them by signing in at the desk. For security reasons this was seldom allowed, however. Sterling remembered from the days that he had stayed there that security inside the building was very tight, both to keep those who lived there safe and to drive off those tenants who would choose to use the Center for less than honorable purposes. It had been set up to be a strict and controlling environment, and from what Sterling recalled it had certainly been so.

But as he came into the lobby he found that things seemed to have changed considerably since his last visit. The lobby was still as clean as it had been but somehow it now looked cluttered and unkempt. The furniture seemed to be the very same pieces that had been there before, only now more aged and worn. Young people of both sexes and varied styles of clothing were draped everywhere, crowded together in masses on the couch watching an old movie on the public TV or laughing loudly at one another's juvenile inanities in crowds clustered randomly about the room. It looked like a party that hadn't quite got off the ground yet and Sterling felt like an overage and unwelcome intruder.

He hesitated in the doorway, glancing toward the unoccupied desk, but then a body broke away from the masses and rushed across the room to grab him companionably by the elbow.

"Hey, dude, you came!" Sterling recognized Hal Armand, now dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with a hard to read, poorly spelled word in the front (it didn't quite seem an obscentiy but then perhaps Sterling simply missed the reference - he often did). The young man seemed much more relaxed than he had been at work - hardly a surprise, Sterling supposed. His hair, no longer restrained under its paper cap, hung in somewhat unclean locks on either side of his thin face, making him look somewhat like a horse that hadn't been eating very well lately. His eyes were somewhat sunken and he seemed slightly high, though unless the Center had gone completely to ruin Sterling thought that unlikely. But he was grinning broadly and turned to the young man at his side. "Here's your solution, man," he said. He jerked his head toward Sterling. "This guy can figure out anything."

Sterling and the stranger looked one another over with the typical caution of two strangers who weren't quite sure just what they were getting into. Sterling already knew that his appearance was less than impressive. Somewhat overweight, not especially tall, on the wrong side of the age curve, he would never win any beauty contests. The young man studying him, on the other hand, was remarkably good-looking. Tall, lean, perhaps twenty years of age, his hair was a rare color of butter blond and his large, soulful eyes were almost painfully blue. Mother Nature had definitely put some extra work into his straight, thin nose, high cheekbones, and full, sensuous lips. Sterling felt a stab of envy. Even at his best he would never have been able to compete with this guy. "This is Ev," Hal told him. "He's the one with the little problem." He grinned at his companion, who merely gave him a serious look in return and then held out his hand politely to Sterling.

"Evan Humblesley," he said. "Very pleased to meet you, sir." Sterling almost shook his head incedulously to hear that the young man had an impeccable upper class British accent. Talk about having all the breaks. "Perhaps we can go upstairs away from all this noise where we can talk in private?" the youthful paragon asked.

Sterling blinked. "Well, I suppose so," he said doubtfully, glancing toward the empty desk. "But I can't sign in...."

The two young men gave him twin, blank looks. "What for?" Hal asked. "You're not going to stay here, are you?"

Obviously things had changed considerably since he had been there last, Sterling decided. He merely shrugged inwardly and followed the boys up several flights of creaking stairs, down a hallway with bad lighting and worn rugs, and into one of the rooms.

That, at least, was much as he remembered it - small and austere, with cream-colored walls and ceiling, simple fixtures, no TV, a counter with a sink and inset hotplate - a place for temporary survival but offering no luxuries.

The clutter was only moderate, considering that its occupant was a boy barely past his teens. A few scattered clothes, some mail that had clearly been addressed to occupant, some dirty plates and bags from a fast-food place (not the one where Hal worked, Sterling noticed with some interest - nobody ever ate where they worked), a slightly funky unwashed smell - typical but not terrible. Sterling wondered whose room it actually was. Hal didn't strike him as being that well organized.

But it seemed to be his room, nonetheless. the young burger-flipper scraped some clutter off one of the chairs onto the floor and nodded toward Sterling. "Have a seat." he invited. "It's clean." he added as the older man hesitated to take him up on the offer.

"Let's hope so," Sterling muttered as he sank onto the somewhat worn cushions. Hal perched on the arm of the couch opposite and Evan, somewhat disconcertingly, sank to the floor, folded his long legs up beneath himself lotus-fashion, and leaned his back against the wall. Sterling knew he could never match the grace of such a simple, unconscious movement.

He waited poiltely for someone to speak but the young men seemed content simply to sit there, Hal idly fingering a pimple on his cheek and Evan humming softly to himself while beating out time on his knee with one hand. Finally Sterling cleared his throat.

"I thought you had to go to work?" he asked Hal pointedly. The young man seemed startled.

"Yeah, right." He turned to Evan. "You'd better explain, Ev."

The young man shrugged. "I'm not very good at talking, I'm afraid." It didn't sound much like an apology.

"Well someone is going to have to tell me something," Sterling said impatiently. "Or why else did I come here?"

The young men exchanged glances. "It's just - do you know of my group? The Cult of Skulls?" Evan asked.

"No, sorry."

Evan laughed slightly. "So much for fame. We're rather well known here in the city, actually. Well not for among your crowd, of course. Among the kids."

"So of course that leaves me out," Sterling agreed. Evan turned his large eyes on him and gave him a thoughtful look.

"Have I offended?" he asked.

"Forget it," Sterling shrugged. "Okay, so you're famous but you have to live in the Coms Center."

"I didn't say we made any money at it," Evan said mildly. "The income level of most musicians is vastly overstated, believe me. And I'm afraid I've had some personal problems..." He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the wall.

"So tell him," Hal urged. "That's part of it, isn't it?"

"Perhaps." Evan opened his eyes and looked questioningly at Sterling. "Do you believe in curses?"

"Do you?" Sterling countered.

"I don't know. I rather believe I do." He sprang from the floor in one smooth movement and rummaged in the room's one closet. "Here." He tossed something smallish, round, and hard in an unexpecting Sterling's direction.

"Don't drop it!" Hal shouted, leaping forward as the object almost slipped from the older man's startled hands.

"Is this real?" he asked, turning the object gingerly to study it from all angles.

"Oh certainly. From a rare, now-extinct species of man sporting totally black skulls," Evan said. Then he smiled. "Sorry. I didn't mean to be sarcastic. No, of course not. It's ceramic. Modelled on a real skull, though, as you can see if you examine it closely. It's very lifelike."

"So it is," Sterling agreed, looking over the black, shining skull in awe. "Where did you get it?"

"I thought it would be rather a good mascot for a group called the Cult of Skulls," Evan not-quite-answered. "Unfortunately I think it may be cursed."

Sterling looked up at him with the professional blankness he had learned from endless interviews with individuals with unusual beliefs. "What makes you think so?"

Evan looked at him for a moment without speaking, then, turned to Hal. "Do you happen to have a glass anywhere about?"

"On the counter, dude."

Evan shook his head. "Not plastic. I mean a glass glass. Made of glass. Hence the term, 'glass.'"

Hal grinned. "Bloody Englishman always looking down your blueblood nose at the colonials."

Evan smiled somewhat apologetically. "Sorry. I can't help it."

"Ev here is a real Brit," Hal explained over his shoulder as he dug in a cabimet. "He tries to hide it, but the inner snob rises to the surface every now and then. He even has a title."

"Not much of a title, really. We're really very small potatoes, believe me. And I don't have it, my father does," Evan explained. "Also it passes to my older brother, not to me. Primogeniture and all that, you know."

"Oh sure. But I say if your daddy's a duke you gotta be something." Hal returned with a not-too clean, thin-necked wine goblet, which he gave to Evan.

"Not a duke," the young Englishman protested but said no more. He went to the sink, filled the glass with water, then turned and brought it dramatically to his lips.

"Observe," he said, and drank with a flourish. Almost instantly the glass shattered in his hands, pouring water and fragments down his chest.

"Wow!" Hal said wide-eyed. Sterling just grunted, but he had to admit he was impressed.

"I'm rather surprised that worked actually," Evan said, looking down ruefully at his water-stained chest. "Normally they're not quite so forward."

"So this is the curse?" Sterling asked. "You can't take a drink of water?"

"Well if I stick with plastic - which can indeed be a glass, as my benighted colonial friend here observes - or something equally unbreakable I can at least keep from dying of total dehydration," Evan explained. "But generally if I try to handle anything the least bit breakable it - well, it breaks. Rather disconcerting, actually, as you may well imagine."

"Yeah." Sterling glanced down at the skull in his hand, then up to Evan. "And you believe the skull is responsible?"

Evan shrugged. "I rather think so, yes."

"Interesting."

人情味不是偏私而是博爱，

不是施舍而是关怀。

不是表面的礼貌，

而是内心的尊重。

Friends will bail you out of jail.but Best Friends will be sitting by you saying,
" that was awesome !"

uyen

Chapter Three


"So this is the extent of your curse?" Sterling asked mildly. "Glasses shatter in your hands?"

Evan shrugged. "Among other things. The usual curse fare - nightsweats, terrible dreams of claustrophic darkness, lights blinking as I approach, seeing formless shadows moving on the edges of my field of vision, hearing strange noises- an unimaginative list of events, I suppose, but I confess I find them rather disconcerting."

"Tell him about the accident," Hal urged.

Evan looked annoyed for a brief moment but then he shrugged and made a helpless gesture with his hands. "That could well have been nothing but a coincidence." He smiled apologetically at Sterling. "I was driving home a few weeks ago - dead of the night, as of course a band such as ours tends to work latish hours - the other members lolling in the back paying no attention whatsoever to anything but their own inner muses, and a car came out of nowhere and smashed into our van."

"Well, that does tend to happen -" Sterling began.

"Literally out of nowhere," Hal insisted. "That stretch of freeway has unlimited visibility for miles in every direction and all of the guys agreed that there wasn't any traffic there at all. Then all of a sudden - wham!"

"They could have been mistaken," Evan said. "They were hardly in a state to judge. We often get free drinks as part of our pittance of pay for performances," he explained. "And we had been paid rather well that night, if you take my meaning."

"Had you been drinking too?" Sterling asked.

"Not that night. I was our designated driver. A repulsive term, incidentally, though that's neither here nor there. But being a rock band, and known to the authorities as such, we have to be careful. The police do like to pull us over to search for various possible infractions. You know how musicians are. Or are suspected to be, at any rate." he winked broadly.

"And then it disappeared again," Hal spoke up, stubbornly. "The cadillac, I mean."

"Well, yes, there is that," Evan agreed. "And I admit, there was no easy way for it to do so. As for its appearing from nowhere, unlimited visibility for miles is, perhaps, something of an exaggeration, but..." He shrugged. "Somehow it got away with no one seeing where it had gone. And by that time we were certainly paying attention."

"And it was a black cadillac," Hal added.

"They do exist -"

"And it had tinted windows so you couldn't see inside."

Sterling frowned. "That's illegal in this state, isn't it?."

"And no plates."

Evan shrugged. "Well, no one saw plates, but we were somewhat rattled at the time, obviously. But one supposed they had a good reason for desiring anonymity. Drug lords, perhaps, or something equally nefarious. I don't mean to make mysteries where there are none. It was probably just an accident, nothing more or less."

"Maybe." Sterling turned the skull over and over in his hands, thinking. "But you do believe this thing may be influencing your life in some way?" he asked, looking up at Evan questioningly.

"Oh, absolutely. No doubt whatsoever. Perhaps not a curse in a technical sense - I confess I know rather little of such arcane matters, my education has been strictly musical - but it's definitely doing something. And I'd just as soon it stopped. I'm beginning to find it somewhat annoying."

"If you think the skull carries a curse, why don't you just throw it away?" Sterling asked.

"I have. Repeatedly. But it keeps coming back."

Sterling's ears perked up and for the first time he found himself becoming interested. "Really?"

"You have no idea how many times I've tossed this charming fellow into the old dumpster out back," Evan said, taking the skull from Sterling's hands. "Then retired to my lonely bed with the sense of a job well done. Only to wake to find it sitting on my dresser, staring eyelessly back me. One assumes its expression was mocking, though since it has no flesh it's rather hard to tell, actually." He held the skull up next to his own head face outward and blinked owlishly, as if mocking its wide, empty stare.

"You have any proof of this?" Sterling asked.

Evan shrugged. "As I said, 'lonely bed.' Presently I suffer the misfortune of sleeping alone. Alas. Witnesses? No." He shook his head.

"Well, I did see you throw it away that one time," Hal put in. He turned to Sterling. "I was with him when he put it in the dumpster. And then the next morning, there it was on the counter again."

"But you weren't with me every moment after, Hal," Evan pointed out. "I may have gone down to retrieve it sometime during the night."

"Did you?" Sterling asked.

"No, I did not. I merely point out that I have no proof," Evan explained patiently. "Frankly, I'm less concerned with proving that it's haunting me than in eliminating its shadowy influence from my life. Let the psychics and rationalists fight out truth and falsehood amongst themselves. I simply want to be left alone with my music."

"Hmm. And you don't want to tell me where you got it?"

Evan blinked. "What gave you that idea?"

"Well, when I asked before -"

The young Englishman waved a hand. "Sorry. I got distracted. No, I have no objections whatsoever to telling you. I picked it up at a little fleamarket just down the street."

"Elbowes," Hal explained. "That's the name of the place," he added when Sterling gave him a blank look..

"I rather expect there's some obscure reference to arses to elbows in that one," Evan said. "Though of course I've never asked. One would hate to suggest such a thing and then be mistaken."

"It has all sorts of second-hand stuff," Hal told Sterling. "Most of the guys here get their clothes there. And used CDs and plates and knives and forks and whatever they need."

"And glasses," Sterling remarked. The others looked at him somewhat suspiciously. "Sorry," he half-apologized. "Just thinking out loud." He looked up to Evan. "Did you ask them about it? Like where they got it?"

Evan smiled slightly. "Clearly you're not familiar with our dear old Elbowes.."

"What does that mean?"

"It just means, no, I haven't. With good reason."

Sterling let that one go for a moment. "Have you tried giving the skull away?" he asked. "Or even selling it?"

"And saddle someone else with a curse?" Evan asked with an expression of mild incredulity. "Oh come now. I don't claim to be the most considerate man on earth, but even I have my limits. Much better to neutralize it, don't you think? If at all possible, of course."

"Have you looked into that, then?" Sterling asked. "There must be spells -"

Evan rolled his eyes. "Spells? I'm not completely gullible. I'm willing to admit that there's something disturbing about this skull because I can't deny the evidence of my own senses, but I rather doubt dancing widdershins at midnight chanting bits of bad poetry at the moon will have much influence. If there's such a thing as magic, I suspect it requires more than that to activate. Or in this case, to deactivate."

"What do you think it might take, then?"

Evan looked at him with large, seemingly innocent eyes. "Well, when it comes to that, you're the expert on such things, aren't you?" He asked. "I should imagine you have a better grasp of the necessities than I."

"One would think so," Sterling muttered. He glanced back and forth between the two young men. "You share this apartment?" he asked.

"Nope," Hal shook his head. "The Center doesn't really approve of roomies. They like one body to a room so they know who to hold accountable if anything happens."

"I believe there are some sort of local ordinances involved," Evan explained. "Just what they may be one shudders to imagine."

"I just wondered how - I mean, the skull was in the closet here, but you asked if Hal had any glasses..."

Evan smiled slightly. "A simple answer, Mr Holmes. I've asked Hal here to keep the skull here when he's out. An arrangement that allows me at least a few hours of undisturbed sleep. Of course if it caused him any problems I should immediately retrieve it, but so far..." He shrugged.

"It hasn't?" Sterling asked Hal.

The young man made a face. "It was kind of creepy the first couple of nights," he admitted. "Even though I give it back to Ev when I get home so it wasn't here anymore. Just thinking it had been around, I guess. But no, nothing has happened."

"Then why don't you just leave it here all the time?" Sterling asked. "Problem solved, right?"

Hal blanched and Evan laughed. "One imagines if there actually is a curse, it can handle only one victim at a time," the Englishman explained. "If one were to leave the skull here on a permanent basis I suspect poor Hal's peace wouldn't last very long." Then he turned serious. "I said I won't inflict anyone else with what I'm going through and I won't. I'm grateful that Hal is willing to take the skull for brief periods while I try to get some undisturbed sleep, but I won't risk his safety beyond those narrow limits. And even that..." He shook his head.

"No, for the good of everyone concerned we need to find what's at the root of this and put an end to it," he said. "Before someone gets hurt."

人情味不是偏私而是博爱，

不是施舍而是关怀。

不是表面的礼貌，

而是内心的尊重。

Friends will bail you out of jail.but Best Friends will be sitting by you saying,
" that was awesome !"

uyen

The Cult of Skulls was written by G. Lester


Chapter Four


In actual fact Sterling had no particular interest in investigating Evan Humblesley's curse, hypothetical or otherwise. Though he had written about paranormal events for most of his adult life, his interest was limited primarily to those who believed in them - in finge cults, obscure little churches, as well as individual, so-called psychics, occultists, magicians, and metaphysicians. If asked he would have explained that he was fascinated by the psychology of anyone who was able to resist the almost overwhelming pressure of mainstream culture - religious and dogmatic or scientific, rational, and reductionist - and managed not only to evolve his own personal beliefs system but to hold onto it despite the constant social pressures to agree with what 'everybody knew.' Something of an agnostic himself, uncertain of the certainties in life, he admired anyone who could really, deeply, totally believe. It didn't matter who they were or what they believed. It was the act itself he found fascinating.

Actually the more ridiculous the belief, the less it conformed to mainstream culture, the more he admired those who were able to hold it. The strength of will and stubbornness involved he found amazing. Amazing and impressive. He knew everyone else called those who believed in space brothers or communicating ghosts or socially active angels naive. Personally he considered them rugged individualists worthy of nothing but respect, not because he thought they were right but precisely because no one else did - and they knew it but still refused to knuckle in. That took a kind of courage Sterling could only admire from a distance but never share. Not share, but at least he could write about it.

So Evan Humblesley's skull didn't really interest him. It was mildly curious that someone of the young man's apparent education and background might actually believe in a curse, but it didn't seem to Sterling that he believed in it very much, and there was no organized thought behind that belief, just a vague impression that 'bad things' were happening. All in all, Sterling didn't feel that there was anything that he could really sink his journalistic teeth into.

Nevertheless there did seem to be a story there. What had happened to the Coms Center? Even a few years previously it would never have allowed him simply to walk up into one of the tenant's rooms without authorization. Not to mention all of the young people hanging out in the commons room downstairs. Sterling wasn't naive enough to believe that they all lived there. Not if they were still enforcing the rule of one body per room, as seemed to be the case. So what was going on? Had they dropped their standards? Did they even have any standards any longer? And if they didn't, what sort of nefarious adolescent activities were going on there? How did new tenants get accepted? Who checked them out? Was there any screening process at all? Who was in charge? What had happened to the small puritan churches who had been funding the place? Were they gone or did they simply not realize what was happening?

Sterling knew he could just walk in and start asking questions. He might even get some answers. But if there truly was anything even vaguely nefarious going on nobody would tell him anything with that approach. Anyway, he could always do that later. For now what better way to nose around in the Coms than to pretend to investigate a skull with a curse? He knew from experience that such an approach would work; most of those who knew what he was doing would view him as a bumbling, naive innocent but they wouldn't take him seriously. And more importantly, they wouldn't object to any questions he might ask. They'd just assume he was being stupid, as they tended to imagine those who investigated such things to be. He could get away with almost anything and nobody would care.

He considered several approaches but decided the most direct was the best. Well, the easiest, anyway, and Sterling tended to take the line of least resistance when and wherever possible. So the very next morning, bright and not unreasonably early, he pulled into the Coms parking lot (filled with far fewer cars than the night before, he noticed; presumably most of the tenants were out working at their various jobs) and made his way to the desk.

If it had been unattended he would have given up on the Coms altogether, but as it turned out such extreme despair wasn't necessary. An attendant indeed sat huddled there - a somewhat sour-faced old man who looked as though he hadn't smiled since Nixon had been impeached. His oversized, somewhat block-shaped head was almost totally bare except for a grey-black fringe that made him look unwashed rather than merely bald. His clothes hung loosely on his emaciated body, as if he had somehow shrunk from within not long after getting dressed that morning. His thin, skin-loose neck rattled loosely in his high-collar shirt and as he turned to glare questioningly at Sterling the reporter had the feeling that none of the clothes had even bothered to shift position to accomodate the movement.

"Can I help you?" the old man asked with a voice obviously ravaged from several decades of heavy smoking.

"Could I speak with the manager, please?" Sterling asked politely.

"What about?"

"I'd prefer to discuss it with the manager," Sterling replied cautiously.

"Is it about one of the punks?" the man asked aggressively. "Because we can't answer any questions about them. No matter what we think, no matter what we see. They're holy-holy don't-touch, see? The little punks." He turned and coughed nosily as if he were drowning on his own phglem.

Ah ha. Sterling's ears perked up. "You have a lot of problems with them, here, do you?"

The old man shrugged. "None of my business. I sign 'em in, I sign 'em out. What they do in the meantime ain't any of my concern." He held up an old-style hotel leger. "See? Lists of names. That's all they are to me. Names on a list. Ink and paper. Don't make me no never-mind anyhow. Drink, fornicate, burn out their brains on drugs - useless punks. Kill themselves at twenty, they will, most of 'em, and good riddance to the whole bunch."

"I suppose it must be a challenge trying to keep track of so many young people," he said sympathetically. "And at that age they do tend to be somewhat high-spirited."

The old man gave him a one-eyed contemptuous sneer, reminding Sterling vaguely of how Popeye might look on a bad day. "Spirit ain't got nothing to do with it," he said flatly. "If you'd seen some of the things I've seen here you'd be down on your knees praying to God to save you from the memory of it." Then he shrugged. "But like I say, none of my business. Sign them in, sign them out, keep my nose clean and my mouth shut. That's what they tell me, that's what I do."

"But there has to be some sort of set-up here to keep them in line," Stering prodded. "I mean, so many young people shut up together like this, and a lot of them from troubled backgrounds. There's bound to be trouble if there isn't any structure."

"Oh sure, there's rules," the old man agreed. "Plenty of rules. Some of them enforced, some of them, well, forget it. They do keep the little lechers apart, I'll grant 'em that. No copulating here - well not in public, anyway." He looked so disgusted that Stering wondered a bit at the old man's private life, if any. "Sneaking around in the corners, I expect, doing what they shouldn't where nobody's looking. But here in the Center - no. Never caught them at that, personally, and I know most of what's going on here, believe you me."

"I imagine you do," Sterling muttered. The old man gave him another of his suspicious Popeye looks.

"Can't help it, can I?" he demanded. "Gotta sit here all afternoon, nothing to do but watch the door and make the little weasels sign in and out. Bound to see a few things."

"I wasn't doubting it," Sterling assured him. "I stayed here myself, some time ago."

"Did you?" As the old man frowned even more deeply Sterling relaized that he had made a tactical mistake. Obviously he hadn't done anything to improve his standing in the old man's eyes, considering his opinion of the tenants.

"Of course the rules were entirely different back then," he hastened to add. "They seem to have been, anyway."

"Different how?"

"Well, things seem much more - casual, now," Sterling hazarded. "Of course you'd know better than myself, I expect."

"Don't know nothing," the old man grunted, suddenly very engrossed in shuffling loose papers on his desk. He looked up into Sterling's eyes and sniffed. "You was saying you wanted to talk to somebody?"

Sterling realized the old man had withdrawn behind his inner shields and shrugged to himself. Well, so much for that source of information.

"Is the manager around anywhere?" he asked.

"Suppose so. If she's not out on one of her three-a-day, two-hour-apiece lunch breaks."

"I'd resent that more if I didn't see you sleeping at your desk half the afternoon, Harry," a rather pleasant woman's voice spoke up with obvious humor. The old man started so violently with surprise that a stack of loose papers on the counter in front of him slid to the floor. As he bent over to pick them up, muttering obscenities under his breath, Sterling looked into an open doorway behind the desk to find a well-dressed, slim young woman standing there smiling at him. Her hair was dark and trimmed close to her head, her complexion he guessed to be of vaguely Southern European ancestry. Her clothes had clearly been chosen to create the image of a busy but well-groomed professional woman who cares just enough about her looks but puts her career before all. She was small, the top of her head barely reaching to Sterling's shoulder (and he was far from a tall man) but she seemed competent, relaxed, fully in control of herself and whatever situation she might find herself in. She smiled at Sterling as equal to equal, not quite in mockery of Harry the deskkeeper but encouraging him to recognize that he wasn't on the same intellectual or social level as themselves.

"Hello," she said, advancing with hand outstretched. "I'm Trish Collins, day manager here. I don't think we've been introduced?"

"Joseph Sterling," he told her, accepting her firm, professional handshake. "I'm here about some troubles one of your tenants has been having."

The woman's face clouded over with concern. "Nothing legal, I hope? We do try to keep them on the straight and narrow, here, but obvioulsy with so many tenants, we aren't always able to -"

"Nothing like that," he assured her. He glanced meaningfully toward Harry, who was listening to their conversation with no attempt even to appear to be busy elsewhere. "Is there someplace where we can speak in confidence?" he asked.

"Certainly. If you'll come with me."

Ignoring Harry's glower, Stering stepped around the end of the desk and followed the woman into the recesses of the Center's inner offices.

人情味不是偏私而是博爱，

不是施舍而是关怀。

不是表面的礼貌，

而是内心的尊重。

Friends will bail you out of jail.but Best Friends will be sitting by you saying,
" that was awesome !"

uyen

Chapter Five

Trish Collins' office was typical of its kind, almost to the point of dreariness. A simple, modest metal desk, dark filing cabinets, a comfortable but not ostentatious chair for visitors, even a potted plant that appeared to be some sort of ivy - he had seen it a million times before. It looked as if it had been built from a kit. Well-built, admittedly, but with no real individual thought put into it. Even the photos on the desk seemed to have been placed there for show rather than because of any personal affection for the persons whose photos were contained within them. Like the anonymous pictures of beautiful models you sometimes got in a new wallet. The perfect showplace for the up and coming young businesswoman but not a place to give away the personality of the occupant in any way. Which was probably the idea, he supposed.

But Trish Collins seemed open and friendly enough as she offered Sterling a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker warming aromatically on a neaby counter (rather close to the dropping tendrils of the vine, Sterling noticed - rather a design flaw there) and then took her place behind the desk as he settled into the visitor's chair.

"Sorry about Harry," she apologized with a smile. "He really is good at his job and, surprisingly, all of the youngsters seem to like him. Someone older than themselves to laugh at, I suppose. But he does have some control over them, not easy in this day and age. The rest of us suspect they don't want to get him in trouble by breaking too many of the rules. Though why they should care..." She shook her head and laughed lightly. "But they seem to, so we keep him out there, irritating everyone in general and yet somehow getting things done."

"I noticed that most of your tenants seem to be young," Sterling remarked, probing cautiously. "I don't recall it being that way in the old days."

Trish Collins shrugged. "I don't know what you mean by most. We have our share of mature adults here. Of course they tend to keep to themselves more than the others. What middle-aged man newly divorced and having money troubles wants to hang out with teenagers giggling over music and other teenagers of the opposite sex? One can hardly blame them." The suddenly she dropped the friendly chat and became all professional.

"So, one of our tenants is in some sort of trouble?" she asked in a sympathetic but crisp manner, leaning forward to display just the right shade of interest without appearing too aggressive.

"Not in that sense of the word, no," Sterling assured her. "He's asked for my help on a subject of private nature. I don't want to violate a confidence so I'd just as soon not go into details."

"I see." Trish Collins' perfect smile became rather strained for a moment. "Well I don't know what I can do for you if I don't know what you need to know, obviously."

"I didn't mean to suggest I wasn't going to tell you anything." Sterling assured her. "I just want to make sure you understand that this is in confidence. I don't want it to reflect on the young man involved in any way."

Trish Collins spread her hands slightly on the desk, as if holding a fragile bird within. "Here at the Coms our only concern is the welfare of our tenants," she assured him. "And naturally that means keeping confidences. Our discretion here is absolute, I assure you."

Well Sterling has his doubts of that. From what he remembered the management would have sacrificed anyone and everyone to maintain the integrity of the organization itself (not that he blamed them for that, exactly- the founding premise had been to help those ready to be helped but not to allow themselves to be exploited by the weak and manipulative). He was willing to play along, however.

"I'm glad to hear that," he said with what he hoped was a proper show of sincerity. "It's not that this has anything to do with the Center as such. I just don't want to get the young man in trouble."

"Neither do I," the woman assured him. "Now just who is it we're talking about?"

Sterling decided he had played the coy card about as long as he could. "Evan Humblesley," he said with what he hoped was the proper show of reluctance.

"Oh, Ev!" The woman sat back in her chair and waved a hand dismissively. "I suppose this is about that ridiculous skull of his."

Sterling blinked. "You know about it?"

She smiled slightly. "I certainly do. It's hard to imagine anyone in the Center who doesn't, considering how he corners everyone not quick enough to get away from him and tells them all about it. At great length. Don't tell me he's convinced you of the reality of his curse?"

"Well, not really," Sterling admitted. "But I did promise him I'd look into it. A favor for a friend."

She eyed him speculatively. "Evan Humblesley is your friend?" she asked.

"I didn't say for him," Sterling pointed out.

"No, you didn't," she agreed. "And really, I doubt if Ev has any friends, when it comes right down to it. His British reserve is like steel armor that shuts him away from mere commoners."

Sterling rubbed the side of his nose doubtfully. "That's not the impression I had of him. He seemed sociable enough to me."

"Oh yes, he seems friendly enough," Trish nodded. "But I doubt if anyone here has been able to make their way past that superficial charm of his and reach him on any sort of emotional level. Ev is the prince of the realm passing among the commoners for a lark, and he's always far too aware of it. It's all just fun and games to him, and the rest of us are still nothing but peasants. Some day he'll go back to the castle and marry the Queen of Lipstick or someone like that and all of the rest of us will be nothing but stories they laugh about at their aristocratic dinnerparties."

As an experienced interviewer Sterling managed not to show it, but he found the bitterness in the woman's tone somewhat interesting. Evan was in his early twenties and Trish was, at a guess, somewhat past thirty, but her attitude was that of a jilted lover, or at least a jilted flirtation, and he wondered if there were some history between them that might account for her attitude. Not that it really mattered, of course, but he filed it away for future reference.

"Well, to put your mind at ease," she went on with a slightly tight smile, "no, there is no curse. And I don't believe Ev thinks there's one, either. Though I admit with Englishmen it's hard to tell. They do tend to be superstitious, don't they?"

"Do they?"

"Well don't they?" She laughed. "To hear them tell it, the country is so deep in ghosts they must have to line up to use the bathroom. Or loo, I believe they call it over there."

She shook her head. "Anyway, Ev doesn't strike me as very superstitious. Just the opposite, in fact. He seems downright cynical about most things. Remember, the Center was founded by several of the local churches and their members do occasionally wind up here. You should hear Ev argue with them. He seems to enjoy ridiculing the deepest-held beliefs of others. I find it hard to believe he would suddenly reveal a spiritual side."

"You sound as if you know him well," Sterling remarked carefully.

She shrugged. "I know him. How well is something else again. As I said, I don't think Ev lets anyone know him really well." Once again Sterling would have been deaf not to detect the note of bitterness in her tone.

"I thought no one stayed here in the Center long enough for that sort of thing."

"Some do. If they match the requirements and can't seem to get their lives together in the outside world."

"And Evan does? Match the requirements, I mean."

"He passes all his drug tests, doesn't get into trouble with the law, seems to make an honest effort to get and hold jobs, if that's what you mean," she told him. "I suppose you know that the Center is meant primarily for those who are underemployed rather than entirely unemployed. They make money, but not enough to survive on their own in the outside world. Ev manages to do that with that pathetic little band of his - they perform just enough to keep him from starving but it's not paying his rent. Though I'd imagine in another six months or so the screening board will get fed up with him and even the sweet-talking Brit won't be able to finagle them into giving him another extension. Everybody's luck runs out eventually, and he's been staying here on pure charm for a long time, now."

"I suppose so," Sterling said vaguely. "Well, this curse thing may well be nonsense, and I agree, from what I've seen of him Evan Humblesley seems fully capable of making the whole thing up as a prank. But I did promise... I suppose you have no objection to my nosing around a bit? Asking a few questions and that sort of thing?"

"Do you really believe it would serve any purpose?" she asked skeptically.

Sterling shrugged. "If nothing else it might put everyone's mind at ease. And if Evan is playing a prank, I should be able to expose him."