Dangerous Games

Chapter 10 part 2

In response to the shrill, imperious ring of the bell, Marie snatched open the door with her customary ill temper. Over the years she'd become quite used to her husband's pack of ne'er-do-well friends, none of whom seemed to be able to keep down a job for more than about two weeks. Here, however, were two faces she didn't recognise as being members of the rag-tag bunch that seemed to turn up on their doorstep all too often.

She looked disparagingly at the two new-comers, with their large, thick spectacles and knitted woollen hats. There was no doubting why they were there.

"So, you two losers are here for this meeting are you? Well, you've come to the right place. Come in." She stepped aside to allow them to enter. With luck none of the neighbours had spotted those two dead-beats on the doorstep. Not that her reputation in this area could be any lower. Already, the inhabitants of 659 Barnes Street were labelled as the neighbourhood nutters. It had started even before they had moved to that house, as her husband had desperately wanted to buy house 666 just down the road, convinced it would help with his Satanic studies. The sale had fallen through (thank goodness) but even so his immediate reaction had been to buy the nearest house he could find.

Just before she closed the door Marie cast a quick glance up and down the street. No twitching lace curtains, no curious faces leaning out of the windows. She listened, but couldn't hear any doors banging shut. What a relief! They might just have gotten away with it.

The two strangers were standing behind her in the hallway with an air of quirky curiosity. What? she thought, they were looking at her as though she were the odd-ball? She shook her head slightly and sighed with exasperation. "Down there!" she commanded, indicating the stairs down to the basement with a scornful jab of the finger. However, before they were allowed to descend into the bowels of the building, she leaned down the stairs and heralded their arrival by screaming "Herb! Another two lunatics want to join the asylum!"

Bob and Melvin descended the wooden staircase that led down into the surprisingly large and well lit space beneath. The steps creaked and bent slightly beneath their quite considerable weight, and Marie secretly hoped that one of them would slip and fall. A broken neck would work wonders in bringing these impromptu gatherings to an end. Having said that, the rest would probably simply try to contact the dead man using a ouija board or something. Perhaps the wooden staircase would break under their bulk trapping the whole lot of them in the basement forever and a day. If only!

Having reached the bottom of the stairs safely, much to Marie's disappointment, the two were welcomed into the small band of similar misfits already present. Herb, the man in charge – well, it was his basement, after all – took it upon himself to perform the introductions.

"Okay, guys. This is Bob Kannugan, from The Los Angeles' Society of Psychic Studies." He looked around as if expecting the name of the city to ring a bell with his colleagues, and the murmur of approval he received confirmed the fact that all present were on the same wavelength. "Bob, would you like to introduce your friend?"

"Er, sure." Bob indicated the much younger man at his side, who couldn't have been far out of his teens, if that. "This is my nephew Melvin. He's recently taken an interest in psychic phenomenons" – he'd never mastered the fact that the plural of phenomenon was phenomena – "who's decided to follow in his famous uncle's footsteps. I said he could tag along. Hope that's all right."

Again there was a general murmur of approval, this time accompanied by a general slight nodding of heads. Societies like theirs tended to haemorrhage membership as wives and girlfriends stamped their feet and insisted that their other halves stopped messing around with all that nonsense and got their priorities straight (by which, the women meant themselves, of course), so any potential member, particularly one who was single and unattached, was a welcome addition.