Once he’d worked his way past the sales information for the surviving copies of Hazzard’s two anthologies, on antiquarian and book collector sites, and on sale for eye-watering sums, Seb discovered the occasional reference to Hazzard’s curious stories amongst weird tale aficionados.
Most posts of that nature had been online for years. The fact that so few people had read Hazzard’s work, beyond the two anthologized short stories in the early seventies, must have been responsible for the paucity of discussion amongst the writers and collectors who frequented the message boards.
A more recent thread, though still eight years old, on a ‘Classic Weird Stories’ forum began with a question: ‘Anyone read the book: Theophanic Mutations? I hear there’s a section on M. L. Hazzard and his cult? Didn’t even know he had one.’
The thread lasted for two pages:
‘Aren’t we his cult? Or still trying to be?’
‘You gotta write more than two stories to have a cult.’
‘He wrote two collections.’
‘True, but who’s read them?’
‘And it wasn’t a cult. It was a research group that studied astral travelling.’
‘Still no ebook editions.’
‘You’ll be waiting a while. Last I heard his stuff is still in copyright. No relatives can be traced.’
‘Why doesn’t someone scan his books?’
On the second page of the thread, someone calling himself Charles the Dextrous Warden of the Weird claimed to have read Theophanic Mutations:
‘Yes, read it. It came out in Numinosity Press, when they were still going. Limited to 300 copies of a pretty shoddy trade paperback. I was sent a review copy. Good read for the best part, though. Most of it is about The Golden Dawn and The Temple of the Last Days, rehashing the Levine book, but with more detail about their weird-ass medieval belief system. The section on Hazzard is pretty far out. Apparently, he was a con man and his organization – which was a kind of cult btw – shook a lot of old ladies out of their cash. He seemed to have been something of a scientology, sociopath type. Very dodgy guy who used all kinds of aliases. Author makes some outrageous claims. Definitely worth checking out, though, and it made me want to read Hazzard’s stuff, which remains, as we all know, frustratingly unavailable.’
Seb found only six copies of Theophanic Mutations on sale, from between seven hundred and nine hundred pounds. It had been published eleven years before. The author’s name was Mark Fry and his website was still current: a WordPress site called ‘Noise, Notions and Notations’.
Seb found the site comprised of reviews of electronic noise, obscure films, small press occult publications, psychic geography, folklore and art, or anything weird that attracted Mr Fry.
Seb used his credit card to buy the cheapest available copy of Theophanic Mutations from Abe Books. What choice did he have? Losing seven hundred quid was less money than he imagined he would have lost had Ewan lived. He’d have to wait two weeks for it to arrive, though, because the seller lived in New Mexico.
He then introduced himself to Mark Fry in a message via his website, mentioning his interest in Hazzard’s SPR. In order to improve his chances of provoking a response, he added the footer from his standard author email and mentioned that ‘some SPR files have come into my possession’.
Once he’d progressed as far as he was able to with internet searches, the phone recharger for Ewan’s old Nokia phone arrived from an eBay seller and Seb charged the handset.
Even though the screen was faded in the lower half, and probably damaged, Seb was able to operate it. There were seven contacts in the address book, but the text messages had been deleted. The phone was too old to have a camera or graphics, and the memory was minuscule.
The first three numbers he’d called – ‘J’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Ace’ – were disconnected. The fourth number for a ‘Baz’ rang out twice before the call was answered. A rough male voice exploded inside Seb’s ear the moment the call was accepted, the words frantic and near breathless with anger. ‘Ewan! That you? Ewan, you cunt! I’ll fuckin’ do you! Where are—’
Seb had hung up and found himself shaking for a few seconds. The lingering effect of Baz’s threat flooded his imagination with the sensations and notions of sleeping rough in damp, filthy rooms, crashing on couches that stank of cigarette smoke, owing money, being cold, hungry, hungover, strung-out, skint, depressed, unwell, tired . . . His appetite to delve any further into Ewan’s past faded. Seb deactivated the handset in case Baz called back.
He went out to the balcony afterwards. The grey clouds had blown over. Sunlight had transformed the water from the earlier colour of ash to a near-luminous blue and produced a glare from the tiered rows of white buildings bordering the harbour. For a few moments Seb felt delirious with gratitude for what he had, for who he was, and for where he lived. And he experienced a tremendous relief that Ewan was no longer alive. He was convinced that the man would have destroyed him.
15
Discarnate Inhabitants of Hades