Holy Terror by Graham Masterton Page A

gone.’
    â€˜Can you remember what they said to you?’ asked Sebastian.
    Conor shook his head. ‘The woman didn’t speakat all. The man just lifted up his hand and said, “Do you know me?” and that’s all I remember. Maybe he said more. He must have done, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.’
    â€˜Describe them,’ said Ric.
    â€˜I can do better than that. I can draw them.’
    Sebastian brought him a gold mechanical pencil and a sheet of white writing-paper. Quickly Conor repeated the sketches he had shown to Salvatore.
    Ric took the sheet of paper and frowned at it. ‘You were right, Sebastian. They
are
aliens.’
    â€˜I’m – uh – not exactly an artist,’ Conor told him.
    â€˜No, no. Joking aside, you’ve pretty much caught them.’
    â€˜Caught them? You
know
them? You’re putting me on.’
    â€˜Ric knows
everybody
,’ said Sebastian, showing his claws. ‘He gets around New York like a dose of the flu.’
    Ric sat up straight, rewrapping his sarong. ‘The woman’s tall, right, about thirty-five years old, white face, totally black eyes like she’s a zombie or something? The guy looks like he’s Latino, sharp clothes, curly hair, Little Richard mustache?’
    â€˜Absolutely dead right. That’s them. You don’t happen to know what their names are?’
    â€˜Sure I do. Ramon Perez and Magda Slanic. He’s Mexican and she’s Romanian. Leastways, she always
said
that she was Romanian. She had a thick accent but as far as I’m concerned it could have been anything. Greek, Russian, who knows? They were a weird pair, didn’t talk too much, and when they did you weren’t too sure what they meant. I haven’t seenthem for over a year, not since
Vaudeville Days
closed down.’
    â€˜They were involved in
Vaudeville Days
, too? They’re entertainers?’
    â€˜That’s right. Their stage names were Hypnos and Hetti.’
    Conor pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. He couldn’t think why it hadn’t occurred to him before.
Hypnotists
, for Christ’s sake. They had simply put him into a mesmeric trance, and made him do whatever they wanted him to do. That’s where his twenty-nine minutes had disappeared.
    Ric said, ‘They were amazing hypnotists, Hypnos and Hetti. But they weren’t audience friendly, if you know what I mean? They used to make people do all these really humiliating things on stage, like wet their pants or swear at their wives or burst into tears because they thought they were kids and they’d lost their mommy at the market.
    â€˜I really had the feeling that they
hated
their audience, you know? They never knew when to draw the line. They once made a woman lick the soles of her husband’s shoes.’
    â€˜They must have hypnotized Darrell, too,’ said Conor. ‘I only knew half the code to open the strongroom, but he knew the other half. Do you think they could have made him tell them what it was? I mean, just like that, snap, in the blinking of an eye?’
    â€˜You’re joking, I hope. Those two could make you do anything, whether you wanted to do it or not. You know that myth about hypnotism – that you can never make anybody do anything against their will?That’s so much bullshit. We had a backstage party the night
Vaudeville Days
opened, and Ramon made this middle-aged make-up artist take off all of her clothes and dance on the table with a pink feather duster sticking out of her ass. I left. I mean, quite apart from the fact that I don’t like women with no clothes on, it was
wrong
, you know? It was degrading. It was morally wrong.’
    Sebastian brushed an invisible mote of dust from his knee. ‘Ric’s quite the religious fundamentalist, isn’t he, when he gets going? Mind you, he’s more interested in fundaments than he is in religion.’
    Conor