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The Sun, the Sea and the Silent Scream.

A legendary race known as the Kisanti once occupied the Ra'gasso territory, or that's what the legends say. Half man, half feline, this nomadic tribe of beast-men were drawn to the place by sun and sea, and I sure didn't blame them. The moment my airplane touched the landing strip, the Ra'gassan sun took me into a warm embrace; not scorching or stinging, but soothing and inviting. I'd never been to the holiday resort before, in fact I'd hardly been anywhere outside Oakenford, but within minutes I'd forgiven Inspector Quinn for making me go here.

"-and pack light," Quinn had advised. "It's warm down there". I never stray from my standard outfit of T-shirt, denim jacket and jeans anyway, but standard choice fit the weather. I also hoped it made me stand out less like a tourist.

The Kisanti_died out thousands of years ago and are kept alive only in stories, but Quinn brings them up every time I doubt his claims of being a werewolf. "Their race may be extinct, but _my people are not." He always stands straight when says "my people", but I argue if there was any evidence of the Kisanti left outside mythology, surely the Ra'gassans would be milking fortunes, selling souvenirs to the tourists. Today, only the family driven Hotel Kisanti honors their legacy.

I leaned against a whitewashed stone wall and drank the sun through closed eyes. A few weeks of this and I could throw away my medication. I was still a mile from the hotel but the seaside village was perfect for a leisurely stroll. The gorse in bloom carried a scent of vanilla and pineapple and their yellow flowers stood out against the blue backdrop of the sea. I bought a Piña Colada from a nearby cabana bar, put down my backpack and guitar and plopped down on the beech. I folded the change into my wallet, when a crumbled sheet of drawing paper sandwiched in between my passport and return ticket reminded me why I was here. It was a crude sketch of the creature Fernando had seen, and the same drawing that launched an episode at the police station. I cursed, and forced my attention back to drinking and watching the bathers around me. Down by the seashore, a middle aged woman was taking diving lessons from a muscular surfer with golden hair. She was in her forties, he mid-twenties like myself but I got the impression he was giving her more than scuba lessons.

"Gotta hold it like this, Darleen" he said and adjusted the buckles to her air tank. She giggled and whispered something in his ear, then checked her watch.

"Gotta go," she said. "I've a meeting with Mr. Tejón." She gathered her clothes and walked towards the stony path that led up mount Urduk. She turned at the first step and blew a kiss at the diving instructor who returned it before heading for the Cabana bar. He ordered two local beers, which he paid for with a hundred pound note. The bartender sent him a sour look and held it to the light to check if it was genuine.

"Staying at the hotel?" The diving instructor handed me a chilled can of beer.

"Not yet, I'm too comfortable right here to check in."

The stranger laughed and shook my hand. "Slater", he said.

"Paul Slater; diving instructor and professional beach bum."

"Carter," I replied. "Roger Carter, guitarist and..."

I paused. I wasn't exactly sure what else to say. That I was a mental case investigating tentacles from hell? I even lied about my name, but going incognito made me feel like a secret agent -and less like a tourist.

"And?"

I leaned back into the sand, resting on my elbows. "-and tourist for the week."

Slater laughed. He was about my height but in better shape and sported a tan the color of bronze. I got the feeling I knew him from somewhere. "Have we met?"

"Never been to Oakenford." Slater took a swig of his beer and squinted into the sun. "I like to stay in the sun."

"How did you know I'm an Oakenforder?"

"Dude! All you Oakies look like sickly asparagus." Slater grinned "But don't worry, by the end of the week, you'll be a changed man."

---

A long flight of granite steps, crudely carved into the rocky hillside led the last half mile to the hotel.

"It's one hell of a trek from this side of the mountain," said Slater. "But there's a road on the other side." He made a motion with one finger, drawing a winding road in the air that snaked it's way up the hill. "That's how they got the wheelchair up there."

"Wheelchair?"

"One of the guests is in a wheelchair."

Slater went inside the hotel while I hung around outside for a look. The view was magnificent from up here, with the rocky path snaking its way down to the southern beach. Most of the hotel windows faced either this way, or to the east where the guests had a view over a small but well-kept garden.

I was taking in the view, when I noticed something flashing in the sunlight, like a wet leaf falling. It came from a large water basin behind a tall wire fence on the west-side of the hotel. A tan caretaker in a white shirt was throwing fish fodder into the basin one handful at a time, while the fish made ripples in the water by his feet. All the while, he spoke to them softly in the local Ra'gassan dialect.

"Hola!" he said, when he saw me looking at him. "You must be Carter from Oakenford."

"What gave me away?"

"You don't have a tan." The caretaker grinned and wiped his hands in his pants. "Fernando said you'd arrive today. I'm Miguel." He left the enclosure through a metal gate and locked it behind him. "Hotel gardener and trout-farmer."

"Do they bite?" I asked, when I noticed a smear of blood leaking through his white shirt.

Miguel examined his sleeve. "Must have torn myself on a rose bush," he grunted. "Catalina wants fresh flowers in every room, and she won't leave my prize lilies alone."

"That's the girl who was attacked?"

"She waved at me from a window," said Miguel, "then she fainted."

"Fernando mentioned some kind of creature?"

"If you worked as hard as we do, you'd see creatures too."

Miguel seemed uncomfortable talking about the subject, he turned his back to me and shook the metal door, making sure it was locked. "-and the wild cats won't leave my fish alone."

---

"I'm putting you into room 110," said Fernando. "It has a wonderful view over the rye fields." The manager was a Ra'gassan in his late fifties. His hair was almost silvery grey but with no sign of baldness setting in. Thirty years ago, he would have been considered handsome, a heartthrob even. Now most would say he was simply aging with grace.

He closed the office door behind us and poured two glasses of a strong local wine, known as knettle.

"I'm going loco, Mr. Wolf!" He took a bulging manila-folder from his desk drawer. It was stuffed with pencil drawings of tentacle-like monsters, all with expressionless eyes and sharp fangs. There must have been at least fifty sketches in the pile, of that same scene. Fernando was no artist, but the detailing grew better with each sketch, he even tried to fit a woman in some of the later drawings. I hadn't met Catalina yet, but I guessed it was supposed to resemble her. The creature had wrapped itself around her like a boa constrictor and was tugging at her, dragging her towards a black cloud that hung suspended mid-air. Fernando emptied his drink in one gulp and poured himself another shot of knettle.

"Every night, I can't sleep. Every day, I can't work."

"This!" he singled out a sketch of the creature in close-up, "is wrecking my mind."

"Listen," I said. "Quinn sent me here because I see things too. Especially when I'm overworked and under-slept. I've seen that same monster."

"Like in my drawing?"

"Same guy, right down to those beady little eyes and four nasty fangs."

Fernando leaned back into the chair and began to relax. "Catalina always tells me to ease up."

"I see crazy shit like that when I'm stressed out," I said. "Happens all the time."

Apart from Slater and myself, the other guests counted Darleen who shared the room with Slater, Artie Phelps --a traveling sales representative, and an elderly gentleman everyone called Mister Tejón. Finally there was Jack Tell and his son Chris. Mr Tell was some kind of businessman who stayed in his own room and kept to himself most of the time, making phone calls Fernando described as "very shouty". His son was confined to a wheelchair and was looked after by a full time nurse, who had her own room next to Chris.

"There's so much to do." Fernando picked up his drink and gazed out of the window. It faced the trout farm where Miguel was working on an air pump. After a few moments in thoughtful silence, Fernando turned and spoke in an almost inaudible voice.

"Would you... Would you take a look at room 203?"

"Sure." I had little desire to stand face to fang with the creature from Fernando's sketches, but the calm of the place convinced me that whatever had happened, was caused by an overworked mind. So, I followed Fernando up a short flight of stairs to the upper floor. The hundred year old hotel was built low, and someone taller than myself might feel claustrophobic from the low ceiling. Fernando unlocked 203, and even though he tried to keep his hand under control, it still shook visibly when he turned the key.

"Here it is," he rasped. "I saw the monster coming out of nowhere, right... here." He pointed with both hands to a space in midair, as if he tried to draw a frame around an invisible figure.

"Some kind of hole."

"And you threw a vacuum cleaner at it?"

Fernando shrugged. "It was within reach. I must have hit the creature, because it let go of Catalina and climbed back into that... cloud."

"And she doesn't remember a thing?"

Fernando grabbed me by both shoulders and looked as if he was about to burst into tears.

"Nobody believes me, Mr. Wolf; not Miguel, not Raymundo, not even Catalina. They only believe I'm going loco."

"Maybe you panicked when she fainted, and you began to see things?"

"Possible, si! But how do you explain my Hoover going missing?"

I didn't answer. Maybe Fernando was crazy, but crazy was something I knew how to deal with. I've had hallucinations since I was seventeen and I wanted to believe nothing had happened in room 203. I envied Quinn; he didn't have to worry about living intestines jumping out of the abyss like some trans-dimensional hernia. Right now he was back in Oakenford, downing espressos and telling street gangs not to duke it out over a couple of rocks. I wanted the creature to be a figment of an overworked brain, but I had to stay behind in 203 to make sure, and I couldn't concentrate with Fernando chatting away. I finally promised I'd perform along with Raymundo, the piano player that same night in the hotel bar, and I shooed Fernando out of the room. He turned in the door and opened the built-in closet where someone had left a square cardboard box.

"Mr. Quinn asked me to give you this."

I opened the box and found six bottles of Farvale Bourbon inside.

"He said you needed them for your investigation?"

Son of a bitch. If Quinn expected me to drink myself shit-faced and trigger an episode, just so I could help out his buddy...

...he was probably right.

_"_I'm sorry?" Said Fernando when I hesitated.

"It's just a little private joke between Quinn and myself." I forced a passable laugh and patted Fernando on the back. "Quinn is such a funny guy."

Fernando lit up in a smile and gave me a master key before leaving me alone in 203, the honeymoon suite. It was the largest room in the hotel and facing east with a view over Miguel's beautiful garden. The afternoon sun poured in from the double window, I uncorked a bottle of bourbon and stretched out on the bed. I began drinking straight out of the bottle and tried to get a vibe on the room.

Alright, show me something!

I took another swig when nothing happened, but I couldn't relax. What if I DID see something?

The next swig made me lightheaded. Screw it, I thought. I'll just drink for the sake of drinking and crash out for a few hours before...

"He's crying"

The voice came out of nowhere. It was faint but clear, as if someone had a television set next door.

Say that again?

I held my breath and listened for any voices that might be hiding in the outside breeze, in the swoosh-swoosh-swoosh coming from the ceiling fan, or in the engine sound from a passing motorcycle.

Say something, damn you!

A sudden tidal of sadness washed over me. The sensation was much stronger than anything coming out of the abyss and I felt lost, betrayed and hurt. The sensation was so powerful I lost my breath and my lungs began to spasm as if I was sobbing uncontrollably. Whatever happened in this room had involved great emotional pain. I needed air and opened the window. The feeling of grief evaporated with every breath of the outside air and I tried to calm down.

Where were my voices when I needed them?

I checked the window and discovered a rusty smear. I remembered Quinn telling me about the maid scrubbing at a smear that wouldn't come off before she fainted, maybe this was it? I wiped at it with a Kleenex from the night table, when I discovered the reason why it wouldn't come off: it was on the outside of the window. The windows opened outward and I had to lean out to reach the smear with the Kleenex. The color and smell left no doubt; it was a dried smear of blood. The hotel was built low and climbing or jumping from the window into the soft soil below was quite possible, but any prints were gone by now as someone had gone over it with a rake.

All was quiet and the room was back to normal. I turned on my heel and was about to leave, when I felt something small and hard under my shoe, like a pebble or a piece of chalk. I bent down and discovered the empty brass case from a 9mm bullet. The acrid scent of gunpowder was fresh, and you didn't need Quinn's werewolf nose to tell it had been fired recently. My mind was unclear from drink and I staggered back to the bed. Maybe I could read more from the room if I hung around, but I nodded off within minutes, and I was out cold for two hours when Catalina knocked on the door.

I followed her downstairs and into the hotel kitchen. Catalina was a pretty brunette with a carefree attitude, but just as overworked as Fernando and Miguel.

"Tell me what happened in 203."

"I was wiping the window when Whiskers rubbed against my ankle."

"The smear that wouldn't come off?"

She shrugged and smiled at me. "I never got it off, because I fainted and Fernando won't let us go back into 203."

"Did he tell you anything about the moment he found you?" I asked.

"Si! He showed me a drawing of the creature." Catalina broke eye contact with me and stared at her shoes instead. She was uncomfortable talking about the attack.

"Fernando had this uncle, Hernandez." Catalina's voice had dropped to almost a whisper. "He went loco and saw all these horrible things."

We were interrupted by a tiny buzzer above the stove going off. A red LED flashed on a wooden board with the numbers 210 in handwritten letters below it.

I've got to go," said Catalina. "That's young Chris' room."

"You put a guy in a wheelchair on the upper floor?"

"He wanted the view over the fields, but room 110 smells of bad plumbing."

"Hey, that's MY room!"

Catalina blushed. "We meant to put him in there, but his father blew a fuse when he noticed."

She stood up straight and pushed out her stomach, bowed her head and rested her chin on her chest as if doing an impression of someone with a double chin. "I'm not paying fifty bucks a night to have my son sleep in a sewer," she growled in a deep voice. Then she burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't make fun of our guests, but this one is very demanding."

The buzzer went off again, and Catalina gave me a quick look-over. "Say, you're pretty strong aren't you?"

I was flattered by her remark; it was kind but untrue."I try to stay in shape," I replied.

"Come along, then." Catalina waved at me to follow her and we walked down the carpeted hallway. This time we took the elevator to the upper floor. It was only large enough to fit the two of us, but still we had to stand close together, which made me feel a little uncomfortable. I was convinced my breath still reeked of cheap Bourbon, so I pretended to cough into my sleeve and tried to smell my breath to make sure.

"Hey, don't rock the elevator," said Catalina. "You'll make it stop between floors."

"You're kidding me?"

"One of the sensors is a bit... hypersensitive."

I loathe elevators; they make me claustrophobic and getting stuck between two floors is not on my bucket list, so I stood like a statue for the remainder of the short ride.

Room 210 was right above my own room, at the very end of the hall facing north.

There were three people inside: Jack Tell, his son and a nurse. Tell was an overweight man in his late thirties. He wore a blue shirt two sizes too small that was buttoned up all the way to his neck. It made his double chin spill over the collar like a curtain of meat.

"Chris wishes to sit by the window," said the nurse. "But the bed is in the way."

The voice of Mr tell cut through the conversation like a rusty saw-blade.

"I'm not paying fifty bucks a day for a blocked view; I want that bed moved out of the way."

The bed was pushed all the way up to the window, leaving no room for the wheelchair, so Catalina and I pulled the bed further into the room. It wasn't an elegant solution, but now the boy could enjoy the view over the small field of rye just outside the hotel. The nurse wheeled his chair up to the window, but apart from a slight movement of his head, the boy remained unresponsive. I estimated Chris to be around seventeen. He was tall for his age and thin to the point of being scrawny. I tried to make eye-contact with him but he was completely catatonic. His pupils were fully dilated and looked like black basketballs surrounded by thin brinks of gray mud.

"What's wrong with the boy?"

"They're still working on a diagnosis," said the nurse and wiped off a strand of drool that yo-yoed off his chin. "Chris is such a rare case."

"The kid's lame," intervened Mr. Tell. "His mind doesn't work either." He snapped his fingers in front of the young boys eyes, but he neither flinched or paid any attention to his father's waving hand.

"Hey, snap out of it, boy!" said Tell, but when the boy kept ignoring him, Tell finally sniffed and gave up.

"Some days are better than others. Today he's all in cuckoo land."

---

That night I played in the hotel bar. I was on guitar and Raymundo, a local musician joined me on the keys. Going by the impromptu stage name of Sunny Carter and Rayman, we played a bunch of jazz standards right out of the Real Book. Playing gave me a great opportunity to study my fellow hotel guests from the low stage. In the back of the room, all the way to the left sat Slater with Darleen. He gave me two thumbs-up and raised his bottle of wine-cooler in salute. He whispered something in Darleen's ear, and she waved at me. I was too busy playing to wave back, so I only nodded back at the couple and they went back to studying the menu.

The graying Mr. Tejón sat in the middle of the room by himself, sipping a glass of chablis. I guessed he was the type who ordered his drinks by the glass rather than by the bottle. He was dressed in a blue dinner jacket and freshly pressed trousers. A clean-cut man in his late thirties sat by a round table close to the low stage. I guessed he had to be Artie Phelps, the shoes representative who tipped generously and called his mother twice a day; once in the morning and once in the evening. Catalina had taken a liking to him because he "wasn't creepy, and he loved his mother."

Chris sat in his wheelchair right in front of the stage, along with his nurse. I don't think she was much of a jazz lover, for she kept looking around as if her mind was preoccupied with something else. Now and then she turned her attention to Chris, dabbing drool off his chin with a napkin. I felt sorry for the boy who seemed to be somewhere else most of the time, but while we played, his eyes fixed on me and his mouth moved. I'm not sure if he tried to sing along or if he was talking to someone, but his nurse didn't make any notice of it. For one brief moment, Chris and I seemed to connect, and I got the impression the boy wasn't completely lost, but only hidden away somewhere deep inside his own mind. Then his eyes went blank again.

Mr Tell sat alone at the far right of the room. Unlike his son, Jack Tell was heavy set with a bulging stomach and double chin and he kept making phone conversations while we played.

"I'm not paying you to make guesses" he growled into the phone during Corcovado. "I want delivery!" When he hung up, his face was red and his breathing was labored, his hands shook slightly from excitement or strain and he reached for a bottle of pills, which he downed with a glass of house wine from a clay jar.

Ray and I played two sets of forty-five minutes. Then we said our good-nights and unplugged our gear.

The guests had fallen into casual conversation when Artie Phelps waved at me to join me at his table.

"Gastón," he commanded and snapped his fingers. "Bottle of wine and two times catch of the day."

"I think the word is Garcon when you call for a waiter," I whispered. "Besides, Catalina is a woman."

"Who cares?" laughed Phelps. "As long as they bring me food and wine, they can be boy or girl... or both."

Minutes later, Catalina brought us two plates of home-farmed trout with freshly baked rye rolls.

Holy crap, I thought; everything was home-made. Little wonder the three of them were seeing things. My thoughts were interrupted, when Phelps suddenly let out a loud

"OW!" and spat out a mouthful of fish into his plate. "Fuckit! I bit into something hard." He poked at the half chewed meat with his fork and dug out a little red nugget, while probing his teeth with his tongue. The moment he held up the offending piece of food, I recognized the shape and color; it was an exact copy of the rubies I'd seen in Quinn's office.

"What IS this shit?"

"I think that's a ruby."

"Well it damn near destroyed my molar," cursed Phelps and pushed the plate away. "How did it get into my dinner, anyway?"

I shrugged. "Trouts eat anything. Maybe it fell out when they gutted it."

Phelps sniffed, wrapped the ruby in the cloth napkin and stuffed the bundle into his coat pocket. Then he went back to eating. "Garcon!" he shouted and snapped his fingers. "we need more wine!"

---

I went back to Fernando's office after finishing my meal. On my way, I passed the small TV lounge, where Mr Tejõn was engaged in a low conversation with Darleen. He'd exchanged his dinner coat for a neutral gray suit and white shirt with a thin black tie. He sat across from Darleen on a worn couch and writing something in a spiral-bound notebook, which he closed with a soft snap the moment our eyes met.

"Ah, it's our very own house musician." He put his fountain pen on the notebook without capping it. It was a Mont-blanc pen with a piston knob at the end for refilling, the kind that will set you back five hundred bucks. "You and Mr. Garcia play well together."

Although I'd not previously met Mr Tejõn, I got the impression he addressed everyone by their surname. I didn't even know Ray had a last name, or had cared to find out.

"Glad you liked it," I replied. "The lame kid in the wheelchair seemed to connect."

Tejon and Darleen looked at each other in a way that suggested I had made some kind of Faux pas.

"His name is Chris," said Darleen bluntly.

"Of course."

"Would you care to have a brandy with us, Mr. Carter?" Mr. Tejõn motioned towards a crystal carafe on the table that came with six crystal tumblers. He spoke in a quiet, rich baritone and never seemed to raise his voice more than necessary for keeping the conversation going. I've seen so many shrinks over the years, I recognized his speech pattern as a practiced technique. At some point he had been trained in making people feel at ease and ways to gain their trust. Whatever he was, he was good at it and I really wanted to sit down with them and have a shot of brandy. But the fountain pen was still uncapped and the conversation between him and Darleen wasn't over. So I made my excuses and left. I was only fifteen feet down the hall when I heard Mr. Tejõn chuckle quietly.

"I'll have to write this over," he said. "The ink was wet when I closed it."

---

Fernando was much relieved when I told him about room 203.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing I could sense."

"Madre de dios!" Fernando's lower lip quivered softly and his eyes grew moist. "I thought I was going loco like my uncle Hernandez."

"I did find this, though." I placed the empty 9mm case on the desk before Fernando. He picked it up and twirled it between two fingers.

"It's a bullet?"

"Casing only, the bullet is somewhere else. I figured maybe you took a shot at the creature?"

Fernando shook his head. "I don't know how to shoot a pistol. Even if I did, I could have missed it -and hit Catalina."

I hadn't thought of it, and I felt slightly embarrassed to have brought it up.

"So, no shootings or disturbances of any kind?"

"Take a walk around," he said. "Ra'gasso is a quiet place."

Fernando squinted and peeked into the empty case. "Maybe it fell out of somebody's pocket?" He opened the register book and browsed a few pages back. "There! Mr and Mrs Thomson, room 203 two weeks ago."

"That's not it." I held the case to my nose. The smell of nitroglycerin still stuck to the metal, but it would be gone in a few days. Whoever fired that pistol was still in the hotel.

In that moment, a loud scream rang out from somewhere inside the hotel, and we froze mid-sentence. It was a man's voice, but it wasn't the scream of someone in agony, or a desperate howl of sorrow; It was the long scream of paralyzing horror; a terror so stark, the only way your mind can express it is through screaming, for no human words exist to describe what you are experiencing.

"Caramba!" shouted Fernando, his glass still raised and hovering an inch from his lips.

Seconds later, the scream was followed by the sound of a single gunshot.

"The pistol!"

"Upstairs or downstairs?"

"It's Room 203," gasped Fernando. "This place is cursed."

---

TO BE CONTINUED

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