Remember, this is the second of two chapters posted at a time, don't miss the previous one! BTW, there is a section of authors notes which I'm going to post along with the epilogue when I get to it, so if you want to know more, just wait til then.

I don't own any of these guys (except Steve Barlow, he's mine) or anything else.

Chapter Ten - Fear in a Handful of Dust

Kolchak spoke again into his recorder:

"I had never been involved with anything like this, and certainly not with the police. In my experience, the police had never been accepting of the more arcane truths I tried to tell them, and in fact had usually been overtly hostile. Even now it was obvious that only Detective Starsky was really convinced. But if the other two were willing to keep quiet and listen, that was a plus in my book."

Madam Yram bent over her crystal, staring into it. She started breathing deeply, as though she were falling asleep, but her eyes were open.

Suddenly her breathing took on a harsher note.

"I see the city," she whispered. "Big. Really, really big. The carvings... things with tentacles. And all the angles are funny. Wrong. And slime and mud over everything, and dead things, dead fish, rotting. There's a statue... huge, made of green stone." Her voice cracked a little. "It's so ugly, a thing with wings and claws and more tentacles. And it's more than just a statue, it's alive! But asleep, asleep for so long…"

Suddenly she gasped, and her eyes grew large. "The chanting, the chanting started. Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!"

It wasn't words she was saying, just sounds, sounds that shouldn't be able to come from a human throat. Kolchak had never heard anything like it before.

"Ia! Ia! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."

She sounded almost hysterical, and the noises seemed to rip themselves from her.

"Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! Cthulhu fhtagn! Ia!"

Her eyes closed, and she rocked in place. Kolchak looked at the other men with concern. Something seemed wrong about this.

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn. Ia! Ia!"

Gently he touched her shoulder. Her eyes snapped open, and she gasped.

"Are you alright?" he asked in concern.

She swallowed, and nodded once, quickly. Then her eyes went back to the crystal ball.

She breathed faster now, as she went on, "We look up at the sky. It's night, and the stars are out, but they're wrong, they're all wrong! They shouldn't look like that, but I don't know why."

The four men all leaned towards her, as her words came out in a rush.

"We're going up into the sky now, farther and faster, higher... now everything's behind us. We're out in the cold and the darkness, empty, black darkness."

She almost sobbed.

"But now it's not empty any more! We're at the center, and there's things here... Oh God!" Her voice rose to a shriek. "The piping, the drumming, the noise, and the things flopping around... no, no, I can't look! I won't look! NO!"

This time both Kolchak and Starsky reached out for her, each touching her on one shoulder. She reached up and took their hands, one in each of hers, and squeezed. The strained tension in her relaxed a little. She managed a smile at both of them, then turned back to the crystal.

Her voice trembled as she said, "OK, this is new, this is what I couldn't see before. There's a door... it's all behind a door. You have to keep the door shut. There's something horrible behind the door, evil. The statue! He's calling to it, calling... Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! He's calling! He's opening the door with the drugs. The drugs are the key. He's using the drugs to open the door."

"Who, Mary? Who is it?" Starsky's voice was gentle but urgent.

"Tall man, black..." Mary's voice shook. "He knows you... he sees us! He's watching us, and he knows who you are! He's laughing and laughing... Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn! "

She broke away from the crystal, and pulled her hands from the men, buried her head in her arms, and sobbed for real. The vision was obviously at an end.

Starsky pulled the crying woman to him. "Shh, Mary, shh... it's all right. We're here, you're safe." He rocked her gently. She looked up, tears still streaming down her face, and reached to touch his forehead.

Guess that's where she thinks he was kissed by the angel, Kolchak thought.

"You'll make sure it's OK?" she whispered.

"Promise," Starsky said, smiling. "Cross my heart. Pinky swear."

Madam Yram laughed shakily. "I guess you gotta' mean that." She drew a breath. "OK, I think that was all there was to see. Get anything from it?"

"You said the drugs were coming from a 'tall black man', and he 'knew us'," Hutchinson said thoughtfully. "Would you recognize him again if you saw him?"

"Yeah, I think so. He has a really creepy laugh, too."

"Would you be willing to look at some pictures tomorrow?"

"Mug shots? Sure."

"The door you saw," Kolchak asked. "Was that a real door?"

Madam Yram shrugged. "It was and it wasn't. It was a real door, but it also was a symbol. Visions are like that, you know?"

"What about those, those... words... that you said? Do you know what they mean?"

Madam Yram silently shook her head. Kolchak looked at the others. "Anybody?" Everyone made generally negative gestures.

"Madam Yram," Kolchak asked. "What library around here has a good occult collection?" That was the sort of information he'd wanted an informant for, after all.

"Call me Mary," she said, making Kolchak realize she'd asked before. "The best is Jameson College. Haven't you heard about them? They call them 'Miskatonic West', 'cause they have the best occult collection on this side of the Rocky Mountains. The only better collection in the country supposedly is Miskatonic University in Massachusetts. But it's a closed collection, you can't get in unless you have a recommendation from one of the professors."

"Jameson College? That's where Professor Jacobs works," Starsky said. To the blank looks of Kolchak and Mary, he explained "It's the Jacobs who own this cottage. We're house sitting for them."

"That's fine! You can get the professor to give me a recommendation!" Kolchak said excitedly.

"I can try. I can ask Mrs. Jacobs to ask him."

"When are you going to talk to her?"

"Well, with the time difference, it's way to late to call her now," Starsky said regretfully. "Or, actually, too early there. It's, what?" He looked at his watch. "Almost 7:00 here, so it's only 3:00 am there. But if I wait until midnight, I can call and it'll be 8:00 in the morning, they're early risers, I should just catch them."

"Almost 7:00?" Barlow broke in. "Hey, I have to get going, Angelina's going to be waiting for me. Nice meeting you folks," he said to Mary and Kolchak. "Starsky, always a pleasure."

"I'll walk you out," Hutchinson said to his partner. "Starsk, I'll start dinner when I get back in." Kolchak assumed he wanted to talk to Barlow privately. He made some sort of polite noise to the younger detective, he wasn't even sure what, as his mind went over the information at hand.

"Nice to meet you, Detective Barlow," Mary said sweetly, batting her eyelashes.

Starsky moved into the dining room and started setting the table.

Kolchak started making his next day's plans.

"In order to figure out what was going on, I knew I had to decipher the strange chanting that Mary had relayed to us, and that I had recorded here on my recorder. I hoped Detective Starsky's connection to Professor Jacobs would win me admission into the library of Jameson college, ominously known as "Miskatonic West". I had heard of Miskatonic University, and rumors of the dark secrets that they dealt with there, and I didn't like the comparison. Little did I know that I was going to uncover equally dark secrets here."

Once again Kolchak put away his recorder.