Dick Shandley and the Altamont Divide

Dick Shandley was an unassuming man. He made it a point never to judge people. Never to think good or ill of them or their choices. That wasn’t his job. His job was to insert himself into their lives and expose them as liars and frauds. Dick was a private investigator.

Because of his unassuming nature, he regarded the nervous little man sitting in his office with polite detachment. So what if his eyes had the unsettling quality of never really settling on one thing, instead ceaselessly darting around the room, like a staccato metronome set on “crazy?” Dick knew that this behavior usually indicated that the speaker was lying, just like the beads of sweat at the mans brow, the nervous shuffling of his feet, and the fact that he was wringing his hands so hard he could have crushed walnuts into diamonds. But because he was a man of an unassuming sensibility, he ignored all of this. He ignored, but he also kept his hand on the gun in his pocket.

The man in the chair was in his 50s, with an actively receding hairline and large, thick glasses. What was left of his hair was black, too black, and greasy. He was wearing a dark-colored suit that he seemed to have borrowed from someone two sizes larger than him, and the one thing that bugged Dick was that one of his socks was a slightly darker shade of brown than the other. He jotted down a quick note on his notepad, “Investigate socks.”

“And that’s when the trouble started,” the man said. Dick nodded his head. He wasn’t actually paying attention to what the man was saying, because he was too busy writing down the sock comment, but he knew if he asked him to repeat it, it would hurt the image of his unassuming nature. So he acted as though he had been paying attention all along, and asked the man to continue.

“I trust you know of the incident on the Altamont Speedway on December 6, 1969?” asked the man.

“Of course,” replied Dick, “Hell’s Angels, a handful dead, several injured. It was the end of free love, ‘the day the music died.’”

“Well spoken. Well, as I’m sure you know, the fortieth anniversary of the event is coming up soon, two weeks from now, in fact, and as it gets closer the… incidents have started occurring more often.”

Incidents? Dick wondered what the hell he could mean by incidents. If only he had paid attention earlier. He looked into the man’s eyes for some sort of clue, but they refused to meet his, instead continuing to dance around the room. As he watched, he noticed that the mans eyebrows almost came together to join into a single brow, save for a perfectly circular patch of bare skin in the center. This was interesting, he would have to write this down. He did so, and then looked up again at his client.

“--and then they just vanish. So, Mr. Shandley, what do you think?”

Shit, he had done it again. He would have to continue to fake his way through the conversation.

“Uh, first why don’t you tell me what you think?”

“Well, as I mentioned before, I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, but as I understand it, spirits can be drawn to areas of strong emotional events.”

Ghosts! Aha!

Dick breathed a sigh of relief, because now he knew what the case was all about. The paranormal was something of a specialty of his. Most of his cases were paranormal in origin, a decision he had made because they were the easiest cases he had ever gotten. Ninety percent of the time, he could simply pull out an old walkman he had glued some aluminum foil to, wave it around, say some spooky things and then declare the apparition evicted, and collect his fee. The other ten percent, well, those required some quick thinking.

“So you want me to head out to Altamont to hunt some ghosts, right?”

“Well, that’s not exactly how I’d put it, but yes.”

“I can be on a plane tonight.” Dick leapt to his feet, shook the man’s hand, grabbed his hat and coat and rushed out the door. The man was left standing in Dick’s office, alone and confused. He wondered if Dick had forgotten to lock the door, but looking around, realized that there was not anything worth stealing. Once he had waited long enough to be sure that Shandley wasn’t coming back, he too walked out the door.

---

Dick Shandley arrived at the Altamont Speedway early in the morning, to make sure it was empty. He didn’t want a lot of people around to wonder what it was he was looking for. Actually, Dick wasn’t so sure himself what he was looking for, but he knew he was looking for something, and that set his mind at ease.

He remembered his client saying something about people going missing, but he wasn’t really sure how to check that out. Dick didn’t trust the police, and it was too early for the library to be open to check the newspapers. Well, if he couldn’t follow his only lead, he would have to create one himself. He turned his attention toward the only other person he could find, a man half-heartedly pushing a broom around.

“Hey, buddy,” he shouted, “you know anything about these disappearances?”

“Yeah, my brother disappeared last week!”

That was convenient.

“Anything you can tell me about his disappearance?”

The man moved closer to him. “Yeah, it happened right over there.” He pointed at a small empty space between two portable toilets.

“What do you mean it happened over there?”

“Well, I saw it. He was standing over there, then there was a flash, and then he wasn’t standing there no more.”

“And the place he was standing, it was that little nook between the port-a-potties?”

“That’s it.”

“Why was he standing there?” Dick rightly asked.

The man shrugged. “Derek was always fond of tight, smelly places.” Dick could have used this opportunity to make a crude joke at the man’s expense, but he refrained, instead thanking him for his time.

Dick quickly worked his way into the small gap, wedging himself into a very stinky crevice. Realizing the impact of what he was doing, but unable to come up with a suitable witticism, he simply muttered the word “anus” under his breath. The moment he spoke it, he was instantly blinded by a bright light, and he felt his stomach pulled sharply downward. Before he knew it he was falling freely, surrounded by total darkness. This was particularly surprising, as he had still been trying to come up with poop jokes, and was having a little trouble processing this all.

Before long, the falling stopped, and Dick’s eyes had to readjust to the white room that had formed around him. The first thing he noticed was the eerie quality of the walls, if you could call them that, because they did not seem to have any substance, just endless white, stretching off into the distance. He also was not sure what he was standing on, as there was really no discernable floor. The second thing he noticed was that he was not alone.

Standing near him was a silver-haired man wearing a dark suit. The suit, like the man, had something of a timeless style about it. It had no buttons, yet that did not stop it from remaining firmly closed. An odd thought entered Dick’s head, that it was as though the suit had evolved beyond the need for buttons. He wasn’t sure where it came from, but that was unmistakably the impression he got. The man seemed young, monochrome hair aside, yet there was an ancient and knowing quality about his eyes.

“Good evening, Mr. Shandley,” said the man. His voice was soft and reassuring, yet there was a kind of menace there too, like the translation of a nightmare. “It was very nice of you to visit speak the ancient word so you could visit me.”

Dick was curious about how the man knew his name, but there was one thing he was even more curious about. “The ancient word is ‘ANUS?’”

“Oh yes, you see I was imprisoned here long ago in this place, the Trilogic Dimension. Those who trapped me here sealed the rift with a word that they knew nobody would ever say. The most unpleasant word they could think of.”

“Well, apparently they fucked up. After all, I said ‘anus’ and I’m guessing all those other people who I think might have gone missing, maybe. Right?”

“Indeed, you are correct, Mr. Shandley. These others you speak of, they became my prisoners. You see, I am the Game Master, and the only way out of this place is to defeat me in a game of skill!”

Shandley let out a deep laugh. “Are you serious? The Game Master? Did you come up with that name in your parents’ basement?”

“Fine. My name is Steve, okay? Are you happy? To leave this place you must defeat the ancient and powerful Steve.”

“So to get out of here I have to play Dungeons and Dragons with the Great Steve?”

Steve laughed. “If you’ll recall, I said we would play a game of skill.” Steve snapped his fingers, and suddenly a table appeared, with what appeared to be a chess board with triangular spaces, and a sawed off shotgun next to it.

“The game,” declared Steve, “is known as pan-dimensional shotgun chess. The rules are similar to standard chess, except each space has a light component, and a dark component. This affects which pieces can be captured, and when. Also, the knight moves six spaces instead of the standard five, the queen can only capture while moving diagonally, and the bishop must change between light and dark configurations on every turn. Do you understand?” Dick did not understand.

“Don’t worry,” Steve continued, “either you will pick it up when we start playing, or you will lose and be trapped here forever. Another thing to be aware of is that at the end of each turn, you will be transported to a sub-dimension where you must face a challenge of both wits and physical ability. Try not to die during these, because they can be quite dangerous. Finally, you will notice the shotgun on the table. This can be a great asset to you, but be aware you can only use it once, so make it count. In order to use the shotgun...”

He did not finish, because at this point Dick picked up the shotgun and fired it into Steve’s chest, killing him instantly. As soon as Steve’s bloody corpse hit the ground, a rope was lowered from the sky. Dick climbed it, and soon found himself back at the Speedway.

Dick Shandley wasn’t sure exactly what had happened, but then again that would be an assumption, and Dick Shandley was an unassuming man. He hadn’t found the missing people, and he wasn’t even sure that more wouldn’t wind up missing. But then, Dick knew that chasing perfection never led to anything but madness. There were just some mysteries better left unsolved. With that, Dick made his way to a little restaurant to get a bowl of clam chowder, and then returned to his hotel one last time to steal the sheets before catching the next flight home. It was a good day.