The Acolyte by Nick Cutter

up, his tongue coated in a yellow film of Hallelujah Energy Boost. “Corrupting youthful Followers with subliminal messages—is that your angle?”
    Goldberg appealed to me. “Christopher Cross was a devout Baptist. His songs played on easy listening stations.”
    I tut-tutted: “The devil assumes beguiling guises.”
    Garvey snapped the record over his knee. Goldberg moaned. I rifled the stacks and picked East of Midnight by Gordon Lightfoot, and handed it to Garvey.
    “That’s a first pressing LP in its original jacket,” Goldberg pleaded. “Mike Heffernan on keyboard, Sheree Jeacocke singing backup vocals, produced by the incomparable David Foster . . .”
    “Relax.” Garvey switched gears, went fatherly. “That other album was an anomaly, right? Your entire shop can’t be packed with treasonous propaganda, can it?”
    Garvey rotated the Lightfoot album slowly, tortuously against the grain.
    Hhhuuoooooaaaarrrdddurtaaaassssstttrrreeeeoooiinnnwwwooowwow-woaaaaii . . .
    “You picking up anything?”
    I shook my head. Once I saw the relief wash over Goldberg’s face, I said, “Wait . . . wait, I hear it now. Coming in clear as a bell. It’s saying, Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, I made it out of clay —”
    Goldberg cradled his head in his hands.
    “ Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, now dreidel I shall play .”
    Garvey busted East of Midnight into shards. Goldberg yelped.
    “So help me, I’ll tear this den of sin apart!” Garvey shouted.
    “I can ease him off,” I said. “Just tell me who you saw.”
    “If I saw anyone I’d say so,” Goldberg grovelled.
    Garvey seized a record at random and broke it. A valuable one, judging by Garvey’s anguished reaction.
    “I don’t believe you,” I told him. “And until you make me believe, my partner’s gonna persist with this bull-in-a-china-shop routine.”
    “Well, well, well,” said Garvey. “What do we have here?”
    Now he was displaying the golden calf idol, which he’d discreetly tucked behind a stack of 45s.
    “That’s not mine,” Goldberg said dejectedly.
    “I found it in your shop,” Garvey went on, “and possession is nine-tenths of the law. Unless this is a tiny little milking cow. Is it a milking cow, Goldie?” Garvey turned the golden calf over, inspecting it. “Jeez, sorry, no teats. So we’ve got you on intent to distribute seditious materials and possession of a false idol. Enough to send you away for a long time.”
    Goldberg rested his forehead on the countertop. “If I tell you, can you promise immunity?”
    I said, “We’ll do our best.”
    “I don’t mean immunity from you,” he said. “Immunity from him .”
    “From who?” Garvey wanted to know. “You recognized this guy?”
    Goldberg straightened up. “I never seen him before. Or ever want to again.”
    Garvey looked very interested now. “ Speak .”
    “I was opening this morning, at a quarter to nine. This guy shoves past me—couldn’t do otherwise, seeing as he was wide as the sidewalk.”
    I prompted him. “So?”
    “So he goes to the callbox. This guy was so huge he couldn’t even wedge his shoulders inside. Then before he leaves he opens the callbox door and just stares at me. Marking me, it felt like.” Goldberg shivered. “He looked evil. The most vile evil I’d ever seen.”
    I thought back to the trailer scene. Whoever had perpetrated that did indeed possess a core of perfect evil. “And then?”
    “And then he’s gone. And now, a few hours later, you guys’re here.”
    “You got a clean look at his face?” When Goldberg nodded, Garvey said, “Lock up. You got a date with our sketch artist.”

Human Remains
    Garvey hightailed it to the stationhouse with Goldberg in the back seat. I led Goldberg down the hallway and through a set of frosted swinging doors, up a flight of stairs past the evidence lockup into an empty room housing a draftsman’s table. The artist wasn’t around so I shackled Goldberg to the radiator.
    “Sit tight,