Free Neil Gaiman & Caitlin R. Kiernan & Laird Barron by The Book of Cthulhu

men in white this time. Thought you’d gone the same way as this fellow,” Bert said, throwing a cutting on the desk.
    “Just lack of sleep,” Ingels said, not looking. “As our Methuselah, tell me something. When the warehouse on Fieldview was a theatre, what was it called?”
    “The Variety, you mean?” Bert said, dashing for his phone. “Remind me to tell you about the time I saw Beaumont and Fletcher performing there. Great double act.”
    Ingels turned the cutting over, smiling half at Bert, half at himself for the way he had still not let go of his dream. Go on, look through the files in your lunch-hour, he told himself satirically. Bet the Variety never made a headline in its life.
    LSD CAUSES ATTEMPTED SUICIDE, said the cutting. American student claims that in LSD “vision” he was told that the planet now passing through our solar system heralded the rising of Atlantis. Threw himself from second-storey window. Insists that the rising of Atlantis means the end of humanity. Says the Atlanteans are ready to awaken. Ingels gazed at the cutting; the sounds of the newspaper surged against his ears like blood. Suddenly he thrust back his chair and ran upstairs, to the morgue of the Herald .
    Beneath the ceiling pressed low by the roof, a fluorescent tube fluttered and buzzed. Ingels hugged the bound newspapers to his chest, each volume an armful, and hefted them to a table, where they puffed out dust. 1900 was the first that came to hand. The streets would have been gas-lit then. Dust trickled into his nostrils and frowned over him, the phone next to Hilary was mute, his television review plucked at his mind, anxious to be rewritten. Scanning and blinking, he tried to shake them off with his doubts.
    But it didn’t take him long, though his gaze was tired of ranging up and down, up and down, by the time he saw the headline:

    ATTEMPTED THEFT AT “THE VARIETY.”
    TRADESMEN IN THE DOCK.
Francis Wareing, a draper pursuing his trade in Brichester, Donald Norden, a butcher [and so on, Ingels snarled, sweeping past impatiently] were charged before the Brichester stipendiary magistrates with forcibly entering “The Variety” theatre, on Fieldview, in attempted commission of robbery. Mr. Radcliffe, the owner and manager of this establishment

    It looked good, Ingels thought wearily, abandoning the report, tearing onward. But two issues later the sequel’s headline stopped him short:

    ACCUSATION AND COUNTER-ACCUSATION IN COURT.
    A BLASPHEMOUS CULT REVEALED.

    And there it was, halfway down the column:

Examined by Mr. Kirby for the prosecution, Mr. Radcliffe affirmed that he had been busily engaged in preparing his accounts when, overhearing sounds of stealth outside his office, he summoned his courage and ventured forth. In the auditorium he beheld several men

    Get on with it, Ingels urged, and saw that there had been impatience in the court too:

Mr. Radcliffe’s narrative was rudely interrupted by Wareing, who accused him of having let a room in his theatre to the accused four. This privilege having been summarily withdrawn, Wareing alleged, the four had entered the building in a bid to reclaim such possessions as were rightfully theirs. He pursued:
“Mr. Radcliffe is aware of this. He has been one of our number for years, and still would be, if he had the courage.”
Mr. Radcliffe replied: “That is a wicked untruth. However, I am not surprised by the depths of your iniquity. I have evidence of it here.”
So saying, he produced for the Court’s inspection a notebook containing, as he said, matter of a blasphemous and sacrilegious nature. This which he had found beneath a seat in his theatre, he indicated to be the prize sought by the unsuccessful robbers. The book, which Mr. Radcliffe described as “the journal of a cult dedicated to preparing themselves for a blasphemous travesty of the Second Coming,” was handed to Mr. Poole, the magistrate, who swiftly pronounced it to conform to this description.
Mr.