What A Rubbard Does
by Jan Frode M. Lunde

You ever had that feeling something's breathing down your neck? I get that a lot. Goes with the business.

The business of Jittery Detectives, Inc.

You're probably wondering about the name.

Comes from my grandfather--used to be he owned the joint. Then he had to sell, and by way of pure chance, I ended up working here.

Jittery Detectives, Inc. went through a whole bunch of incarnations before it ended up being the veritable monster I worked for at the time this story takes place. It's a while ago now, and I bet they've been changing things around since I last been there, but I wouldn't know. I don't go there much these days, ‘cept when there's a package they got for me.

Sometimes I get packages.

There's nothing weird about that, everyone gets mail.

So if you don't mind, we'll just go right along and get to business, right?

That's how I used to like it with my old clients. Straight to business, get down to brass tacks before they realize how much they're gonna hafta pay ya.

Jittery Detectives, Inc. was a haven for people who fitted in nowhere else in the crime fighting business; most agencies wouldn't allow people dressed in latex even come near a gun, but we not only allowed it, we encouraged it.

Far as my boss could see, there could never be enough people in latex suits running around brandishing firearms in a positively flamboyant manner.

Not that everyone wore latex suits, you see. Far from it--most people just went in plain old clothes; everything from jumpsuits to swimming trunks, and most things in between.

So you might have called us superheroes, ‘cept we didn't have superpowers. At least, not per se; but there were a fair amount of the guys--and gals--who seemed to possess powers that were quite beyond the extent of what would normally be considered possible for a single human being.
Of course, those powers came in real handy when your job was tracking down the meanest bastards the city could offer. The scum we dealt with was only left over to us because no one else in their right mind would go near them.

But people paid us to do our job, and we did it well.

They still do, down at the old Inc., but I wouldn't really know. All they gots for me are my packages, and they only come about once every two or three months.

And there's nothing remotely interesting in those packages, so let me instead tell you about one of those jobs I worked on back then.

It wasn't a stormy night, but it might as well have been, because the rest of the day had been a downright mess, climatically speaking.

The rain had been pouring down, the weather acting up something fierce, but it was nothing--nothing at all, I tell you--against my boss's breath. It was foul--it stung your eyes something awful, and made you want to stab whatever parts of your body that makes you susceptible to any sort of smell at all; luckily, I could resist such things, and if I couldn't, I would have been long gone--although, even though I'd been working here for what seemed like ages, it never seemed to get any easier to put up with the chief's breath, which also seemed to only get worse by the day.

"Are you even listening to anything I'm saying?"

"Hmm?"

"I thought not."

The chief wagged his jowls sadly. There was a look of contempt on his face, as though he took great pity on me for not having heard what he said.

"I said," said he, "that you are to take the place of Detective Sanders on the Robertson case."

Ah, I thought; I could have just nodded my head, even though I didn't catch it the first time. It was standard detective corporate jingo, the lingua franca of the gumshoes of Jittery Detectives Inc., as well as any private dick with any self respect anywhere.

I jotted down the names on a piece of mental notepaper and filed it away in the storehouse which is my memory (and a damn fine one it is, too).

"Got it," I said.

"It's a serious case, Anderson."

The chief squinted at me.

I took a step back, remembering how bad his breath was. It was all I could do to not cover my mouth and run.

"I know, chief," I said, trying my best to stay downwind, which wasn't as easy as I thought, seeing as how one of the eternally blasting fans the chief had got propped up all over his office seemed to be pointing in my direction--blowing the disgusting fumes right up my nose--and I'm not speaking metaphorically, even though we do indulge in that a great deal down here at the old Inc.

"So I don't want any of your tombuggery going on, OK?"

"Sure you don't mean tomfoolery, chief?"

"I know what I mean," he said, and booted me out of the office.

Well, I thought, best find Robertson.

"Uh, detective Anderson?"

I turned to the left. I turned to the right. After seeing no one in either direction, I was wondering if I had begun going mad, hearing voices and things of that ilk.

"You're not hearing voices, you daft fool," the voice said, "it is I, Cloudnik, your faithful, unseen companion."

"Companion?" I asked. "You only work the night shift at the desk, and only those times when we can't get the troll, who I hate to admit really is less annoying than you. You're no companion of mine, buddy."

"Then why are you calling me buddy? It is because I'm supposed to be the sidekick--oh, you do remember after all, kind, kind sir--"

"I don't work with no sidekick," I said, pushing the air in front of me.

"Aaaaagh!"

There was a loud crash and a few screams from the bespectacled secretaries we employed, but other than that, there was nothing worth turning around for as I headed out the big door, into the filthy streets of the city of Condamnimininium.

Yeah, it's a mouthful, I know.

###

The streets were trawled thoroughly, the pavement roughly beaten; I sidled up and down dank back alleys searching for my lost companion for hours, until I remembered that he wasn't lost, and that he was probably sitting in his favorite café, The Lost Chitlin, whose proprietor was one Short-sighted Mel Pastry.

Pastry was a fairly well-off man, although you couldn't tell from his café. It was decorated in severely bad taste, as if time travelers from the nineteen-fifties had dropped by and left their most valueless junk, along with all the other crap that got dumped there from the seventies and eighties, as well.

It looked like an epileptic's nightmare and a retro-designer's wettest dream come true, all at once. And detective Robertson fit right in there.

His red hair was short, but only on the sides; on top, it stuck up in gelled spikes that looked like they would hurt like hell if you tried to sit on ‘em. A gold earring dangled from one of his ears, and from the other there stuck out some kind of contraption that had him constantly hooked up to the Jittery Detectives, Inc. network.

"Hi," Near-sighted Mel said as I approached the counter. "What'll it be?"

"None of your lip, that's for sure--and none of your food either, you filthy, myopic bastard. I'm here for my co-worker, and that's it." I turned to Robertson. "We're gone," I said, reaching out to pull him up from his stool.

"Hey, hang on, man, I haven't even finished my breakfast."

I looked down at his plate. It was bacon, drowning in fat and god only knew what else.

"Breakfast? It's night, Robertson."

Robertson stuck a forkful of greasy food into his mouth, his jowls glistening in the moonlight which seeped in through the stained windows.

"I know," he said. "But I been working the strangest hours lately--not to mention the damnedest cases of ‘em all. You wanna hear about it?"

"Maybe some other time," I said, reaching over to the contraption in his ear.

"Hey, whaddaya doing? Don't poke that in my ear, man!"

I pushed the loose cord back in its slot; a fizzing sound was heard, followed by some crackling.

"Just thought I'd fix that connection of yours--seems you haven't received orders."

Robertson listened to what was coming in over the wireless, looked at me, down at the plate, up at me again, then at Pastry the chef and proprietor of the hellish establishment, and then, finally, he nodded his head.

"Are you sure you don't want take-away?" Pastry yelled after us. "I make a mean poodle, take-away specialty at extra special low prices for the Jittery Detecti--"

I slammed the door shut and walked over to the car with Robertson.

"You think this is one of them crazy killers?" he asked as we sat in the car.

"I dunno," I said and started it up. "But I don't think so--these photos they been showin' us … they don't look too sweet." Christ, I was beginning to talk like my boss. "Normally," I said, the car taking off now, hovering ever higher above ground, "I think they would pass this over to Sanders, but he's on vacation right now, y'know, so--"

"Vacation?" Robertson asked absently, looking out the window at the lights below.

"Yeah, at the hospital." The car made a sharp turn to the right, but it was all part of the programming. I sat back in the seat and let it take us to our destination, Buck Hound Hill. "A real nice, long vacation, with feeding tubes ‘n all."

###

Buck Hound Hill lay in the darkest part of town, and I'm not talking pigmentally here. It was secluded from the sunlight by a weird piece of rock that stuck inexplicably out of some marshland. It had had various carvings on it for as long as anyone could remember, and no one had ever had the guts to stay there long enough to get a good enough look at ‘em, anyway--except for us, of course.

We knew what that rock was for. It was some kind of dimensional hole, a rift in some sort of continuum that we're not allowed to talk so much about--strict orders, tight lips, cross your heart kinds of stuff they leak out from the top, and only then do they tell you just what you need to know. There's a hell of a lot they're not telling us, I was sure of that, but since they weren't telling me, I cannot of it tell. So to speak.

But although the rock's only purpose seemed to be to put Buck Hound Hill in its shade, there was, as I have indicated, a darker side to the whole deal.

According to the chief, the rock had been built by indigenous peoples far back in some distant age which everyone in the office referred to as The Second Dark Age, subtitled "Yea, the One Which Hath Buggered Us All Nigh Unto Destruction, and Plunged Us Forthwith Into ye Darke Nighte of the Soul."

Happy times, I'm sure.

Anyway, this rock purportedly served as a gateway for these people, but after their slaughter at the hands of Colonel Barney "Oh That's Rich" Thompson and his numerous soldiers, the gateway closed down for business, so to speak, as if the tribesmen had programmed it to do so.

Ever since, the rock slumbered, although there were many times one could hear its baying at night. It started as a sort of humming, and slowly built up into a pulse which throbbed through the earth's soil, disturbing nearby villagers and causing much wetting of beds, screaming of babies and howling of restless hounds.

And just as soon as it had begun, the noise stopped, leaving Buck Hound Hill in silence and the surrounding territories in almost brutal awe and morbid curiosity as to what had been going on in that accursed place.
No one knew, of course, because, as I said, no one dared investigate--until they called us. Which they did, and which is why we're here now.

The rock was big, all right, and I could see the runes twinkling from up in the car. I plotted in the necessary commands to land, and as soon as we were on ground, I got out, opened the trunk, and got my plasma powered, infrared shotgun, as well as some grenades--EMP and regular--just in case.
"See that house up there?"

I pointed it out to Robertson, who was getting his gun kit on also.
"Yeah?"

"The debris is gonna hit pretty hard when I do this, so you'd best take cover, all right?"

"When you do what?" Robertson begun, but I couldn't hear him too well, because I'd already fired the missile at the house.

It struck, and the building went up in flames. The debris, as I'd already warned Robertson, came flying in our direction; I ducked, but a piece of wood struck him upon the head, at which point he went down on his knees, clutching at his temple with one hand, and proceeded to almost immediately crumple up in a fit of jitters.

"Hey, hey," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. "It's only a piece of wood--it didn't hurt your nanotitanium skull implants any … you're fine!"

As the realization dawned on him, Robertson ceased jittering, and slowly sat up, wiping the sweat from his brow.

"Phew," he said.

"Yeah," I replied.

So now you know why they call us jittery detectives. We might sound tough and all, but at the first sight or sound of danger, we hit the ground and weep like babies.

But that's only our strategy; lure the enemy in by displaying a complete and utter abandonment of control over your bio-survival neural circuits. Makes ‘em lose their guard. Easier to nail that way.

###

"Who are you? Who are you working for?"

I shot the bastard dead right then and there.

I can't abide people asking two consecutive questions. Makes my head spin, particularly after navigating through a minefield with hordes of undead rising from nearby graves at your heels.

The man's clothes, like his skin, was all burned and charred; I bent down, reached into his pocket, and found a key. I realized that I wouldn't be needing it, as I had just blown up the house, so I didn't bother picking it up. Actually, I was looking for a snack, as I hadn't had anything to eat in a while--maybe I should have said yes when filthy old Pastry asked me to purchase some of his musty food.

"Come on," I said to Robertson, who was making his way out of the semi-catatonic state he'd been in ever since the first zombie got too close to him for comfort. "I think we'd better go down to the basement."

"Yeah," Robertson said, reloading his amp rifle.

That seemed to be all he had to say, so we headed up to the remains of the house. The basement wasn't really a basement any more, as there wasn't anything on top of it. I spotted a trapdoor, and jumped down into the gaping hole in the ground.

The trapdoor needed a bit of encouraging to be opened; in fact, I had to persuade it with my boot several times before it finally became unstuck.
As it did, I found the air becoming rich with a pungent odor that would have driven even the most loyal of Mel Pastry's customers far away from his unholy diner.

"Phew," Robertson said. "Think we'd better go down there?"
"Of course," I said, dragging him after me into the dark pit. "It's always in the real basement under the fake one; that's where all the spooky and freaky shit goes down."

###

As it turned out, it didn't, as such.

I followed the tracks with an unerring ease, ending up in what looked like a dungeon, complete with various instruments of torture all nicely displayed along the walls, with a few slabs in the middle of the room; there was something on them, but thankfully, the light made it hard to tell just what that sticky substance dripping onto the damp floor really was.

Of course, this might be seen as freaky shit going down by someone not in the business, but for us, it was just another case.

A case that was harder to crack than nuts encased in a two foot wide block of concrete--but we had the sledgehammers to bust it wide open, if you catch my drift.

The drifting sound that came from the door at the other end of the room caused Robertson to turn about hastily, his flashlight wavering about in his attempt to steady himself.

"I think he's in there," he whispered.

I made with the hand signs that meant "Yeah, I already know that, Captain Obvious."

Apparently, though, Robertson thought it meant something else, of a far more insinuating persuasion, and it caused him to work up quite a froth.
"Are you questioning my--"

Suddenly, he shut up. I was out of sight before the man came into the room, but Anderson wasn't so lucky.

The last I saw of him was his arm flailing across the room, in the opposite direction of his other limbs.

As I lay in hiding, I heard a foul voice.

"Come out, Mr. Detective …"

The creep couldn't fool me; I had already got out my trusty piece, and with some acrobatic maneuvers and fine aiming I brought the bastard to his knees, which probably hurt like hell, ‘cause that's where I shot him the first couple of times.

I stood up and went over to him. He was already screeching like a pig, and I hadn't even begun.

"Please, Mr. Detective," the creep begged. "I'm just--oh my god, that's the biggest gun I ever--"

"No amount of sweet talking me or my piece is going to get you out of this, sonny." I cocked the gun loudly. "Now, I want you to tell me why you did it--why you wrote those screenplays, for what magickal intents and purposes, and the names of the ones involved."

The creep didn't even dare look at me--had his quivering face all covered up with his scabbed hands.

"I--" he began. "I did it for the money."

"Don't believe you."

I put another bullet in him, this time in his foot.

"You killed my partner," I said when he stopped screaming. "He didn't even have time to do his jittering business before you mutilated him, you cold-hearted son of a bitch--"

"Okay, okay," he sputtered. "I'll tell ya, all right! Gee-zus, you'd think you'd be a little kinder to the world's favorite director."

"You ain't my favorite nobody." I pointed the gun at him threateningly. "Now tell me--or else you get it in the other foot. And then I'm bringing in the dogs."

"The what?"

"Dogs," I repeated, lighting up a cigarette now to kill the time. "Got ‘em in out in my car. Real nasty ones too, don't much appreciate bigshot movie assholes like yourself, eh, Mr. L. Con Rubbard?"

"How'd you know my real name?"

"It's my job," I said, blowing rings of smoke. "Now, are you gonna tell me, or am I gonna hafta talk you into it?" I lifted my foot and prodded the bastard's broken ankle with it.

"Aaaagh," he screamed again, and then, "I said I'd tell ya! For Christ's sake man, just relax for a minute, okay … This is pretty rough, you know? This is just my vacation spot--suddenly my house blows up and some asshole comes in and fucking paralyzes me--"

"That'll do," I said. "Just tell me."

"All right, I'll do it." He bit his lower lip and leaned back on the heels of his hands, sighing. "It was all part of this big plan I worked out once. I always wanted to take over the world, y'see? Reshape it in my own image. To do that, I took over the City of the Spinner of Dreams. And I reshaped it, all right. I used it to put out information about our plans--not actual, real information of course, but dramatizations of things that nonetheless were going on. And after reshaping the City of the Spinner of Dreams, I set upon reshaping the rest of the Realm in my image."

"Which was severely warped from the start, I'm sure."

Rubbard shot me a steely glance. I barely took notice of it, only urging him to go on by prodding at his foot with the cold barrel of my gun.

"The plan was that if citizens of the Realm were conditioned to view such things as our occult operations involved as nothing but mere entertainment--vegetative, mind-numbing escapism--then we could go about our business with them happily unaware of it, and willing to dismiss any evidence of our workings, should they come to hear of it via someone who heard it from a friend who has certain sources, and so on …"

"So you replaced the entire City of the Spinner of Dreams with zombies, and wanted to do the same to the rest of us." I drew absentmindedly in the dirt on the floor with my gun. "That's a punishable offense you've committed there, bub."

"You haven't got the laws to catch me, detective!"

"I don't? Maybe you got me confused with somebody else, Mr. Rubbard. I'm not from the police. I kinda thought you'd be smart enough to have figured that out by now."

"What are you, then?"

"Jittery Detectives, Inc.," I said. I didn't bother showing my badge, as that would mean I couldn't be holding both the cigarette and the gun at the same time. "And it's not a law you're in violation of--not as such," I added. "It's more like a directive." I dragged the culprit up from the floor. He squealed in anguish, but I didn't pay him much attention. "In order to stem the tide you bastards are trying to release. In fact, you do it quite often, don't you? What's the matter, hard for new information to find its way into your brain and settle down there?"

I climbed up on the ledge leading up from the hole in the ground and dragged Rubbard up after me. He was nearly unconscious now, but I made sure he staid awake for a little while longer.

"Your plans always end up being foiled, Black Brother, and you know why? Cause you want them to. With such a bleak outlook as yours, I'm surprised you get out of bed in the morning. Would be easier if you--"

But it wasn't any point, I knew that.

Rubbard would be cartered off to the asylum, where he would be allowed to continue making his movies, albeit under strict supervision, seeing to it that the damage he had done be rectified in the same manner it had been inflicted, i.e. via the media.

But there would be more like him. There could be dozens of sleazy up-and-comers who were engaged with far more revolting and insidious stuff than Rubbard …

There could be …

And there were.

But for now, things were quiet--at least for a while--and I could head back to the office for a well-deserved smoke and a shot of whiskey.

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