Haggopian and Other Stories

Back in the 1980s, a young man  called Carl Ford published a multiple award-winning Cthulhu Mythos RPG (role-playing game) fan magazine called Dagon. Toward the end of that decade Carl contacted me and commissioned a Mythos story with an RPG theme which he intended to publish in the same format as his magazine. The story I eventually sent to him was “Synchronicity or Something”. It contains quite a few in-jokes—the somewhat skewed names of a small handful of contemporary horror writers, for example (not to mention that of a certain young publisher)—and like that, but it is also quite nasty. And with an ending that is suitably Cthulhu Mythosian, “Synchronicity” saw light of day as an excellently presented “Dagon Press Production”, in 1989.

Jim Slater sat glowering, nursing his pint, plainly annoyed. His drinking companion, Andrew Paynter, was a bit put off, especially since he’d just asked Slater to be his best man.

It was a Friday night and both men had just finished divorce cases; which is to say, they’d gathered sufficient evidence of adultery to satisfy any court of law in the land that their respective clients should be granted divorces, and compensation to boot. Tomorrow they would go into the office, put their reports in order and check their pigeonholes, then with a bit of luck take the rest of the weekend off. They worked for a detective agency specializing in the usual dirt-digging, with no excuse except “somebody has to do it”.

“So…what’s eating you?” said Paynter. He was young, not yet thirty, lean and handsome in a colourless sort of way. After spending five years in the Intelligence Corps and two more in shiny boots on the Metropolitan beat, he’d finally taken his chances on private-eyeing. It was shitty work but it paid the bills, and so far it had been something of a not-so-private eye-opener. Infidelity-wise, the world was abustle! As for Phillip Marlow-type cases: forget it.

“Nothing’s wrong with me,” Slater answered. He was Paynter’s senior by maybe ten years, himself divorced for three of them, and wore his cynicism like armour. A big man, there was a touch of the early Robert Mitchum about him, the same sleepy eyes and deep, dull voice. But he looked so much the part that usually people didn’t think he could be what he was. A nice fellow when he was one hundred percent sober, but as often as not he was eighty percent proof. He had taken the younger man under his wing when Paynter joined the agency, and Paynter hadn’t forgotten it.

“Are you saying there’s something wrong with me?” Paynter grinned. “Or is it just the world in general?”

“Since you’ve asked,” Slater answered, “it’s you. See, I thought you had a brain in your head. I mean, how long have you been with us? A year…longer? How many days—or more properly nights—spent traipsing around checking out all the illicit screwing? Taking your sly little compromising pictures, listening to sobbing wives or husbands telling you their worst fears or suspicions, discovering them to be right and in the process finding out that the ‘innocent’ party is also balling or being balled? Son, it’s a cesspool!”

“Our job? Tell me something new.”

“The world, for Christ’s sake! There isn’t a bird out there, married or single, who can’t be pulled at the right time, in the right place, for the right reason, and there isn’t a bloke who isn’t trying to pull one. Sometimes I think it’s not the act itself, just that it’s a guilty act! You know? Stolen apples taste the sweetest? Well, maybe they do—until they cramp your stomach. But they do it because it’s forbidden. Some of them, anyway. And others just because it’s there.”

“Like climbing a mountain?”

“Smart bastard! I’m serious. Every timid little fink you see is a potential stud, and every sweet, innocent little thing is probably getting it six nights a week. And the married ones are the worst.”

Paynter shrugged. “That’s life, Jim. But apart from work, what’s it got to do with me?”

“Everything. Now you tell me you’re getting married, to Judy Dexter, the boss’s daughter—and that you want me to be your best man!”

Paynter’s smile slipped a little. “I’m not following you,” he said, hoping he wasn’t.