Free Chaos Magic by John Luxton Page A

hand.
    “It’s a high voltage pain dispenser,” he said following Alan’s gaze. “Want to try it? In fact, please do. It’s been a long night and I haven’t time for this bullshit.”
    Eddie Brocade had entered the room behind him. Alan slumped back on the bunk, holding his wrists together as if they were still bound.
    “Where is the detective? Talk to me now, it will be cleaner and simpler. After me,” he nodded towards Eddie Brocade, “nothing will be clean or simple.”
    Alan elected to say nothing – instead deciding to play the part of a weak and confused old man with a dodgy heart; some of which was true. Eddie came closer and stood over him, getting in his face to deliver some sadistic threat. Alan prepared to launch himself but as he did so he saw in his peripheral vision Simon Magus raise his arm...then there was only unbelievable pain, followed by darkness.
     

Chapter 18
    TRANSDIMENSIONAL PORPOISE OF LOVE
     
    I found myself without any playmates; this made Darren a glum boy. In order to ameliorate this new feeling of abandonment, a sensation compounded for the worse as I was forced to remember and confront all the carefully catalogued remembrances of similar past desertions, I sought to console myself by climbing to the top of my lonesome tower and there to lose myself in some new tangent to my paranormal and insular studies. Detective Z and Alan having both elected to go ‘off grid’ and therefore, I sulkily reasoned – I would do the same.
    To make the most of the occasion I had armed myself with several items – the most unusual and potent amongst them a vial of a herbal alkaloid extract possessing hallucinogenic properties and reputed to imbue the imbiber with the ability to walk through walls and other similar shamanic and oracular faculties. Maybe, I reasoned, this cocktail would give me access to the sideways world – the realm that had eluded me ever since my one successful sojourn to its shores, where I was able to retrieve the message from Lorna Z that had set the current phase of my engagement in the battle between light and darkness in motion. The other key components to my retreat were a ham sandwich and a flask of tea – there being no catering facilities extant in the ancient watch-tower I had prepared to repair to. Who knew what kind of sustenance I might require after the probable travails of my planned astral journey. I thought I had anticipated all eventualities – I was wrong.
    Foolish cove! I hear you say: climbing a blamey tower with a pocket full of trip oil; has he never heard of those sixties acid causalities who, in addition frying their brain pans and becoming trapped in a meta-psychosis of flashback and catatonia for the rest of their lives, thought they could fly, and whose numbers include some who found out the hard way that they could not? My response would be: whilst it may be true that those early pioneers of sensory derangement may have produced numerous jam-fests for the unhappy council workmen to attend and scrape after unsuccessful inaugural flights, I would counter with the point – they simply failed to read the instruction manual.
    I, by contrast, had; should I choose to sally forth thus. Neither had I any intention in falling for the Icarus deception and becoming unglued from my means of propulsion in the afterglow of my aviatory soarings – not I.
    I planned to reach my destination courtesy of the 419 from Hammersmith bus garage, but as we crossed the Thames, our vehicle lurching over the lumpy tarmac, I began to feel that I was being watched; that someone’s eyes were boring into me; my previous mood of fluffy anticipation evaporating, to be replaced by one of edgy paranoia.
    At the first bus stop I stood up, slung my man-bag casually over my shoulder, rang the bell and made to get off, trying not to catch the eye of any of my fellow travelers. I was, however, able to scan their faces anonymously from behind my Raybans, trying as I did so to detect