Tom did not wake until twelve thirty in the afternoon. His head was throbbing. He popped two Tylenol in his mouth but had trouble swallowing. His throat muscles were a little sluggish, he thought. He took a look at the rum. He told himself that the alcohol would take the edge off his nerves and it would be easier to face the world. With six or seven ounces in his stomach he would feel that steady mellowness he aimed for, a state in which he felt confident and competent. At least that was what he told himself. He had to admit that, time after time, he could not stop there.

There was a shop he knew called 'Sam's of Hollywood', a sort of one-stop emporium of adult entertainment. Tom's initial idea was to pick up a sampling of magazines to see whether they had advertisements for videos like Mr. Carstairs' or contacts with filmmakers who might produce something like that. As he passed down aisles crowded on either side with racks of magazines he felt his disgust rising. There was so much of this filth there was no telling how long it would take to check out the companies that could have produced the video. Besides, he had the suspicion that the amateurishness of the video was not a deliberate effect but indicated that the men involved were not filmmakers but simply perpetrators of the crimes being recorded. Still, there had to be a way that a person like Mr. Carstairs could have gotten hold of the thing. There had to be some distributor or trafficker who acted as a go-between. Tom had considered, and couldn't eliminate, the possibility that Carstairs had himself hired some vicious thugs to play out this scenario for his pleasure.

Tom picked up some magazines almost at random and came up to the checkout counter. The clerk there was wearing a black sleeveless t-shirt, revealing an impressive sprawl of blue-black tattoo ink over his right arm. His hair was spiky and dyed black. Tom thought, if Mrs. Carstairs can pay for an expert opinion, so could he. "That'll be $32.63," the clerk said, barely looking up.

"I'm looking for a certain type of video material," Tom began and dropped his voice low, "illegal stuff."

"There's not much illegal these days, Pops," the clerk said skeptically. Tom judged him to be in his late twenties.

"I mean videos that would draw police attention if they knew of it. Real action, not play-acting. I was wondering if you might have contacts to the underground."

"What are you, a cop?"

"No, I'm not a cop." Tom had abandoned the suit for a simple black leather jacket and black jeans. He knew he looked enough like a cop without dressing like one as well.

"No offense but you look more like a cop than you do a fan of adult entertainment. Not that I would want to stereotype our customers. They come in all shapes and sizes. You have a way of looking around like a cop, like you're making mental notes. Most people here would rather not see or be seen."

"It's a lonely hobby, I guess. Look, I'm a private detective. Let's say I represent a client who doesn't frequent this type of establishment. Do you get coffee breaks in this place? Want to step out to the parking lot and we can talk?"

"Let me say on the record that as an employee of this shop we have no dealings with anything underground, but as a private citizen I'm open to bribes."

Tom stood in the parking lot. The orange stucco of the building in the next lot seemed especially garish for some reason. The sun shone behind a thin overcast, like a headlight that never emerges from a fog. He was glad he had his dark glasses on. The clerk came out.

"What's your name?" Tom asked.

"Max."

"Tom. Don't call me 'Pops'. I'm willing to pay for your time, as a consultant, if you can help me. $120 a day, travel expenses if we need to leave town."

"That shouldn't be necessary if you just want to get hold of the stuff."

"I might want to get in touch with the producers. But leave that to me. You only need to point me in the right direction."

That evening Tom and Max arrived at a restored historic building, a former post office with a grand interior spanned by a high ceiling supported on stone columns. Max led the way down a dark, narrow staircase. There was a hall on this level parallel to the one on the ground floor but the ceiling was low and the space was dimly lit by old lights hanging from the ceiling. Wooden tables were lined up in two rows. On the tables were cardboard boxes and plastic tubs from which vendors were selling videos, books and magazines. A motley assortment of people were seated behind the tables, pudgy teenage boys, young women in punkish regalia, bored middle-aged men, even a grandmotherly-looking old woman knitting. It reminded Tom of a comic book or record swap meet.

Max said, "Before we start, I've have you know I'm straight."

"Let me be the first to congratulate you. I'm happy to know I'm not working with a pervert."

"I mean that I may watch the merchandise. Some I like, some not so much. I don't get turned on by the violence, if you're wondering. Let me warn you, there's some pretty sick stuff out there. What about you?"

"I'm not a pervert either."

"So you're not turned on by it. At least you aren't now. It alters your brain chemistry, you know. It changes you without you knowing it. There's a saying in the business, 'What's seen can't be unseen.'"

"I think I already know that."

"These transient markets give a good cross-section of what's available outside the commercial outlets." Tom glanced at the offerings in one of the plastic containers. There were hand-drawn cardboard dividers: 'Children', 'Animals'. "Oh, look. Bestiality, that's always popular," Max continued. "Lots of violence, sado-masochism. More than you can shake a stick at."

"I don't get it. Doesn't anyone object to this business being carried on here?"

Max shrugged. "Guess no one cares whether they're selling baseball cards or porn so long as they pay the rent."

Tom was drawn to a table with a sign that read, 'Way beyond XXXXX'. The man behind it looked to be in his fifties. His gray hair was trimmed short. He looks like my sixth grade science teacher, Tom thought. He watched Tom blandly from behind gold metal framed glasses. Tom approached the table. "You have any videos of violent assault on young girls? I don't mean staged. Real."

"Is your friend a cop?" the vendor asked Max who had stepped over. Max shook his head. The vendor picked up a couple of videos in plastic cases. "You might find these to be to your liking," he said with a sly grin. "There's a special on. Fifty per cent off the second if you buy two."

"Do you suppose you could give me a contact for your source if I was interested in more?"

"Maybe."

"Are they local?"

"Nah, this stuff comes mostly from Southeast Asia."

Tom frowned. He paid up. The vendor inserted the videos into a brown paper bag. Tom asked,"Heard of anyone local offering to sell videos like this?"

The vendor shook his head. "There's always talk but nobody brings me anything that's worth my trouble."

Tom and Max made a perfunctory pass over the other tables and were moving to leave when a teenager came up to them. "Hey," the boy said, "I heard what you were asking for. You're wasting your time here. The stuff you're looking for is on the Internet. It's not like these mom and pop operations. Everything's available there. It's open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And it's all anonymous. Here, check out this site." He passed Tom a slip of paper with writing on it. Tom nodded and thanked him.

Tom and Max were seated on the second-hand furniture in Max's apartment watching the videos. "No, this is definitely not real," said Tom studying the television image carefully.

"Ooh, it looks pretty convincing to me." Max was squirming in his chair. Sometimes he would run his hands over his face and shrink from the images on the set. Tom thought he must have looked similar back at the Carstairs mansion.

"That's got to be fake blood," Tom concluded.

Over the sounds of screams and shouted obscenities coming from the television, Max said, "Why are you here? I don't get it. Yeah, I know about your case, but don't tell me that's all it means to you. I can see it in your face. You're a man with a mission."

The tape came to an end. Max turned off the machine with the remote and got off his chair. "I need a drink after that." He went to the kitchen area and took a bottle of rye out of a cabinet. He handed Tom the bottle and he took a swig from it. "You have family?" Max asked.

"I had a wife and a daughter. My wife left me over a year ago."

Max shook his head in sympathy and took a drink. "Do they still live nearby?"

"No, she had a job offer in San Diego and left back in June." Tom's voice remained a low monotone. He closed his eyes and took another drink.

"Maybe you should watch your drinking," suggested Max. "Liquor will lay waste to your body. I'm younger and I know I'm going to hurt after this." Max paused to look at Tom. "No wonder you don't take off your shades. Have you seen yourself in the mirror lately? You look terrible. You're pale. Your eyes are rimmed in red. There are dark bags under your eyes. You don't get enough sleep."

"Don't nag me. I don't respond well to nagging."

"All right, I was just trying to be helpful. But what are you going to do about it?"

"I'm going to avoid looking into a mirror every chance I get." Tom sat moodily, cradling the bottle in his hands.

"It's too bad you're not one of those drunks who gets uninhibited and become the life of the party. You're the kind of drunk that just gets more depressed and worried."

"Thanks for letting me know." Abruptly Tom stood up and announced, "I've got to report to my client."

"You're not going to drive in that condition, are you?"

"I'll walk it off first." He pulled out his wallet and handed Max the cash he had promised. Max was a little surprised at the abruptness of it.

Tom stepped out unsteadily to the street. A light rain must have fallen while he was in Max's apartment. The asphalt had a velvety black sheen to it.

Tom reflected that he and Amy had had a normal social life once. Their friends had gradually found excuses to avoid them. There had been one too many embarrassing scenes in public. None of it could be laughed off as madcap farce. He would have to apologize, which sometimes felt like he was having his internal organs removed. Then he would have to endure the mournful look of sympathy he received in response. After a while it became awkward to meet up with friends, and ties became weak and then disappeared. Now that he thought about it he was surprised that Amy had said so little of what she had sacrificed living with him. Maybe it was loyalty, he thought.

Tom flipped open his phone and called. "Mrs. Carstairs? Tom Wills here. Sorry to phone you at night. Hope I'm not disturbing you."

"No, it's fine. I was hoping to hear from you."

"I've been going throught the missing persons files trying to find a match but there's nothing so far. I think I'll have to take a different approach."

"I appreciate your efforts, Mr. Wills. Please keep trying."

"There's something that's been nagging me. I know this is a delicate subject, Mrs. Carstairs, but could you tell me the circumstances of your husband's death? Was there anything unusual?"

There was a gasp at the other end. Tom felt an instant of alarm that he had been tactless and she would fire him. Then she said, "He was a good man, or at least he tried to be. He didn't deserve to die like that. No one does." She took a deep breath and then began to explain calmly, as if she had been holding these thoughts in her mind for some time and needed to release them. "In the last week he was insane. That's not a very sensitive way of putting it, I know, but that's the blunt truth. He was raving that he saw the girl. At the time, of course, I didn't know what girl he meant, but that didn't stop him. He kept raving about seeing a girl with long black hair. At first it was in his dreams. Nightmares, I should say. Then he would see her in the room in broad daylight. Once he screamed loud, blood-curdling screams. When I asked him what it was, he said the girl had grabbed him, that there were marks on his body where she had touched him.

"He became morbidly afraid of water. He wouldn't go near a bathtub. His doctors had psychiatric nurses brought in to care for him. No private hospital was private enough, of course. They kept him shot up with enough drugs to tranquilize a horse but when he had a clear spell he would state calmly how many days he had left to live. He seemed to know exactly." Mrs. Carstairs broke down at this and there was a long silence on the phone. "The last two days, I think, he was completely resigned to his fate. He spent hours talking to Longley about what to do with his companies after his death. He was overcome with emotion. He told me how much he loved me and how grateful he was for the years we had together. It was utterly wrenching for me but I couldn't play along with him. You couldn't expect me to believe him and accept it as his last farewell.

"On the last day we asked the nurses to be especially vigilant. John was quiet all day. In the evening there was a power failure in the house that distracted us. The servants were setting out candles in the rooms when we heard the sound of a television set. It was very loud but it was only static, the way it is when there's no signal. We were mystified and looking to see which set it was when we heard a scream. We rushed to my husband's room but it was too late. He had crawled into a wardrobe and died there. His face—I'm sorry, I can't speak of it, even now.

"Mr. Wills, you must think this is all nonsense and foolishness but there's one more thing I can't explain. The carpet in his room was sopping wet."

Tom did not easily accept that there was anything uncanny about this dramatic story. He was trained as a rational investigator. On the other hand it was useless denying the unsettling reminder of his vision of the girl. She had seemed so vivid, so real, not at all ethereal or ghostlike. Tom smirked. Not that he knew what ghosts were supposed to look like.

Back in the motel room Tom looked up the Internet address the teenager has passed to him. This was a section of a site dedicated to paranormal phenomena. Tom thought at first that this must have been a mistake or a prank. There was a private discussion forum called 'The Ringers' Forum'. On the slip of paper was another word: 'Moesko'. Tom assumed that this must be the password to gain entrance to the forum. He typed it and found that it worked. He noticed that there were discussion threads related to a so-called 'killer video'. Typically, an anonymous poster reported that he had friends who had watched a video that was supposed to kill every viewer in exactly one week. They claimed to be safe because they had copied the tape and given it to someone else to watch. It sounded like a typical urban legend, Tom scoffed. As he read further he came to posters who claimed to have seen the tape themselves and experienced the consequences. Descriptions of the content of the tape were conflicting. Some were consistent with the tape Tom saw but others were bizarrely different. Tom took note of this but continued reading. There were descriptions of visions and nightmares involving a girl that sounded familiar. Others had the distortions of vision that he was experiencing. There were posters who actually wanted to see the video. They wanted to experience the thrill of the danger, and to see how the video would alter their consciousness. Some of these people deliberately passed the video on to their friends, to share the experience. 'Ringers' were what they were called. They seemed almost a little cult.

Tom was beginning to think of his own seven day deadline. He had seen the video on Sunday. This was the second day. He was aware of a creeping anxiety, which he felt as a tightness in his abdominal muscles and a quickening of his heartbeat. He wondered if he should have been more alarmed than he was.

Tom came to a mention of a name. This stood out for him in the sea of anonymity. The name was 'Rachel Keller'. She was spoken of with a certain reverance as the person who had uncovered the story of the video. With relief Tom abandoned the site he had been reading, with its vague, meandering, repetitious stories that contained so little confirmable fact and did a search for her name. He found a story from the Seattle Post Intelligencer back in March about the mysterious deaths of some young people. All of them had died at the same time apparently one week after they had watched a video together at some secluded mountain inn. Their deaths were not explained by clear or likely causes. Tom thought that her editor must have had a lot of faith in her to let her submit a story as speculative and bizarre as that and print it. That story was the last she filed for the Seattle paper, or at least the last available online.

Tom continued searching. The reporter herself had featured in another story. She had led police to a well at a place called Shelter Mountain Inn. The skeletal remains of a girl had been recovered from the well, apparently a victim of murder. The girl had been identified as Samara Morgan of Moesko Island. Tom assumed some trail had led Rachel Keller to that body in the well but Rachel had never published the story of her investigation. She must have known much more than she told the police.