The Secret Society

This Tuesday afternoon, the two colleagues from the police's vice squad sat listening to one of the three three representatives from the murder investigation department, who had just said that there was an investigation going on about a sometimes murderous sect, which they didn't seem thoroughly informed about. This was not surprising, since their investigation on them had to be kept confidential, partly because of the sect's brainwashing and seductive capacity, and to a somewhat lesser extent due to their brutality.

“The sect seems,” he said, “to be  -  since fairly long back  -  secretly established the city, and the suburbs. Now, since at least very recently, they are even here in this country town. Some of their murders are so gruesome that we haven't been able to let the public in on that they have happened, not yet, at least. That is we don't see that they will not be able to scare people into silence if we tell abut it. I'm here to tell you that it's very much about those seemingly innocent youngsters that you've been studying for a while!”

He paused for a few seconds. Leslie and Hector from the vice squad looked at each other with some astonishment.

“Therefore I will highly recommend that you keep your minds open for the possibilities that Linda will show you soon. But first I want to be certain on whether or not you both handle weapons quite well?”

Again, the two colleagues looked at each other.

“Do you mean guns?” they asked, interrupting one another.

“Yes, at least that is what I'd hoped for!”

Hector cleared his throat. Then he said: “Well, I've had some basic training, but not too recently right now.”

Leslie said: “It's the same for me.”

The man before them sighed and told them to “start training that! And possibly also something of plain physical combat, if that too is rusty! Moreover you might need some skills for field work that I prefer you ask our superiors on how to handle. I mean that you might have to be working undercover.”

He looked at them, waiting for them to answer.

“We're fairly used to working undercover,” Hector said at last. “We do it quite often. At least I feel that way.” He looked at Leslie, who looked back, before stating:

“Yes, I'm doing some undercover work right now, but I don't even know what it's about! Not yet!”

“Great, then. For the gun training you will need to speak to Charlie, here, after Linda has introduced you to the case.”

While he spoke Linda had risen to her feet.

“Are you finished, Harold?” she asked, looking at the first speaker.

“Yes,” he said. “I'm done for now.”

With that Harold left the white board and desk where he had been standing, and Linda went forward there. With her she brought a small suitcase, which she opened and took out two sheets of paper with handwritten notes on them, four sheets of see-through overhead plastic and a remote control for the projector in the back of the room. While she was doing it, Harold lowered the light in the room a little, and asked if she wanted it “like this, or lighter or darker?”

“I guess this will be just right for now. Thanks, Harold.” She pulled out the overhead projector and put a plastic sheet on it. Then, after first glancing at one of her white paper sheets, she turned it on and targeted it on the projection screen. “This is who we believe to be their guru, or top man. We don't know for certain as of now what his actual name is, nor where he's from.”

The screen showed a man who seemed to be of a mixed origin, perhaps mostly from the countries around the Mediterranean sea. After a few seconds, Linda exchanged the plastic sheet with his picture against another one and continued:

“... and this is what we now know about their hierarchy: As it seems, that guy on top chooses every now and then one of the three subordinates to to lead the sects development into a direction that he - or that could possibly be a she - dictates - or so it seems. The chosen one of those, then in turn chooses one or two of his or her five subordinate for various sub-strategies. It is these subordinates and their inferiors that might seem to you actually may have run into, when you reported that there seemed to be a sect leader or something guiding sex offenders as to how to blame each other or someone else. If you're not unfortunate, neither these people nor those higher up in the hierarchy do not know about these reports you have had for us. We have classified this material.

“Below that third level of their top leader's subordinate leaders there are virtually always at least one more sublevel of leaders.

“I have read in a report of yours that the two of you found that some people that we know are involve with this sect, or secret society or whatever, seemed to be covering for each other, which is true. It is not likely, how ever, that these covered crimes of theirs are by far, even, their worst!

“For the sake of keeping track of these possible worse crimes than you want to imagine, it's advisable that you for a start at least hold back on your comparatively trivial issues of for sex-offence crimes. But do expect, of course, that you will sooner or later you shall return to the thoroughness your usually about for it.”

She now put on her second overhead sheet.

“This here shows the face of the local leader that you were dealing with. As you can see, she is very young, only fifteen.”

Linda changed to her last sheet,which showed her and a man who was seemingly caressing her.

“This man is her closest associate.”

He seemed to be in his late fifties. Leslie herd Hector sigh, while also sighing herself. “What,” she asked after a few seconds, “do they have in common?”

“They seem to have in common mostly that they're both interested in sex that is sadomasochistic. He seems to be her subordinate mostly because he doesn't charm people as well as she does.”

Hector asked: “Does that work the same way elsewhere in the?”

“It seems to be the rule almost all the time for them.”

“Do you know to which extent there might be other hidden hierarchical levels? I mean especially if there are some on top of the ones on the first slide.”

“Hardly,” Linda answered. “But yes, there are probably also at least some loose hierarchical levels here and there in their sect.” After pausing again for a few moments, she moved the overhead projector and glanced through her paper sheets, after which she said: “Now comes the part that almost only, we think now, the uppermost two levels of their hierarchy know about. Harold, let's turn the lights of completely.”

He did. Meanwhile she grabbed the remote control and clicked it. The picture on the screen now showed a highly mutilated male body. “This is one of their victims,” she said, and clicked again. “This is another one. As you can see, she even was pregnant!” She kept on clicking, commenting occasionally for about three minutes. Three of the people shown on the pictures were, she mentioned while showing them, people that the one or both of the two in her audience, fairly likely might know, or at least be somewhat acquainted to, since they were from their precinct. She, their lecturer, was herself from a more central one, which she said that five of the shown victims were from. After finishing with the slideshow, she asked Harold to turn on the lights again, which he did.

Linda looked at Charlie and nodded at him. Then she quickly put the sheets back to the suitcase. The remote she left on the desk.

Charlie stepped forward and passed Linda as she left the desk at the white board and the projection screen, which he soon after raised back up towards the roof.

“Alright, guys,” Charlie said, “I won't be very long!” He looked at the two people in audience. “I'll see to it that you can refresh your shooting skills, especially if you want me to! For now, please just check if you think you'll both be available either at four PM tomorrow, at ten AM on Friday or Three PM on Monday.

Hector was the first to answer: “Friday.”

Leslie thought for a few moments more, then she said. “I too can come on Friday.”

The Paedophiles

Much like most Wednsday mornings, Leslie and Hector were checking Internet traffic between paedophiles, two old men this time, who had seemed to be trading pictures of kids in sexual positions. The kids were mostly boys, from one of them, while the other one sent mostly pictures of girls, back.

“It seems,” Leslie said, amused, “that Joe is unable to make girls horny, while Patty is unable to make boys horny!”

Hector smiled. “Yeah, so it seems!” he said.

“Look at this girl,” Leslie continued. “She is like all over Patty!”

Hector smiled smugly, but he also felt that he could be tempted to go over the line for a proper behaviour if he tended not to protest this kidding around about the pictures. Even so he stayed silent for now, feeling uncertain on whether or not she would continue talking to him in this silly way.

His partner copied this picture to a folder they had called funnies, where they also had a few with guys attempting to be polite about their penile erections. Hector sighed at this. He found it funny, in a sense, but he wanted to be serious about the issue. On the other hand, he felt that it was difficult to feel that he would in general be more serious than her, and therefore he only said: “It's unsafe to say we should be into fun about this pictures, now when there's a murder investigation that they might be connected to!”

Leslie sighed at this. “Murder investigations,” she answered, “are not there for us to be morbid about! Why can't you, like me or my previous partner, have it those pictures are about what we shouldn't connect to our souls, as if they weren't the scum we would never be?”

Hector giggled a little before replying a bit scornfully: “It's not only fun that I want to have - even though their different. And isn't it that you and Diane were recommended to switch partners mostly because you seemed to be into scorning them all too much!?”

“Just like you and Peter, right?”

He sighed. “Yeah, the same, sort of - or so they said!”

She giggled. Then she sighed and started working again. He looked at her, then he too started working, both without saying anything for a while.

But two minutes later there was a picture among those that she found, which she decided to ask him about: “What do you think? To me, she seems to be posing for getting satisfaction from picture taking with that gay Patty, but at the same time she closes her eyes so that it seems to be a trap for a man somehow, don't you think?”

He looked her screen and pondered for a while. “Yeah.” he said at last, “it seems like she's trying to like posses someone!”

“Perhaps she's one of the - potential, at least - local leaders of that sect-like secret society, then?”

Hector swallowed. “Yeah, I guess she could be!”

Leslie copied the picture to a folder she had called “Hypnotic” and then opened that folder. There she had several similar pictures stored. “It's not, is it, corny to say that we have them among their victims?”

He looked at the miniature pictures in her folder. “It's only possible that we have them there!” he said, with a slight scorn to him.

She sighed, scornfully, returning the scorn with an edge of it to her sigh, and in her voice when she asked back: “It's to be stated, right, that these young girls are not as innocent as they seem, if that is so?!”

He looked indignant. “I doubt it that you're not being too speculative!” he scorned.

“Then look at this!” She double-clicked one of the miniatures and then an other one. These two pix seem to indicate that she is very horny, and the third one, which I just showed you seems to say that she can proudly hide it from whoever might be into studying her!”

“Like me, then, you mean?”

“Yeah, mostly from men.”

Hector sighed at this, but stayed otherwise silent. He studied the pictures for a while, before his said to him:

“She seems to be into just pretending to be their victim. Apart from that she has a paedophile against her, seemingly, she could very easily be a molester herself, by the look of it!”

“Perhaps,” Hector answered. “But - at least in a sense - that could be due only to those old men that are molesting her! She seems to be feeling that she can be as bad, and therefore avenging, if not them, then at least whomever there might be that fits in with their rules of when to abuse!”

His partner smiled smugly and thoughtfully. “Yeah. That could be correct. It might be that she works off her vengeance against her abusers on those that she can abuse. ...”

“I guess it's not very easily that leader figure in her anyway, then!”

Her smiled turned into a giggle. “I can't believe that you don't know that she looks a bit like the one they showed us that was the local leader! Not much more than coloured hair, basically, or so it seems, would do the job of this masquerade! And, moreover, the man in the second overhead slide that Linda from murder showed us seems to be Joe's brother in law, and Patty's half-cousin. I think the girl on the picture is she, and that she is the local leader of that molestation and murder syndicate they introduced us to.”

Hector looked at the pictures again. “Sorry!” he said after a while. After a few more seconds he asked: “What about the at least three other girls that are on the pictures that you've been handling?”

“I'm not conclusive about them yet! What about your boys?”

“Similar. But I have been into that one of them has seemed to be aspiring for a chance to become a powerful guy in a sense. ... That is, he's been into pretension about himself as an immature guy for the rich people to have. This shows on the pictures only in that he is posing for them as a man to be reckoned with as a superior in a sense that I think can turn almost all of them on.”

“Mhmm, ... My girl can, I presume, also turn them all on - by being seemingly innocent while still being (so to speak) terrifically evil. ...And, for those murderers, perhaps it's better that she seems innocent of being in power for actually being chosen for it!”

At Shooting Practice

Hector aimed and missed the bull's-eye by four and half centimetres, from a distance of thirty-five meters. Now it was Leslie's turn. She stood and aimed for about a minute, then she shot and missed by about three and a half centimetres.

Charlie smiled. “I can see that neither of you really sucks at shooting!”

Hector now took turn and aimed for about a minute. This time missed the bull's-eye with a full five centimetres. “Perhaps I really need to work on my aim a little bit more,” he said.

Charlie sighed at this. “Yeah, perhaps. but aim in itself is not seemingly a big problem for either one of you! Now it's Leslie's turn again.”

She stood and aimed for about five minutes, after which she hit the bull's-eye.

“Congratulations!” Charlie said. “You seem to be fairly good, really!”

“Congrats!” Hector said.

Leslie smiled.

Charlie looked at them. “You both seem to be just about average, as far as I can see, and it's good that at least one of you can find it in her to really concentrate on the aim!” He looked at Leslie who looked back and smiled again.

Now Charlie pulled out his own gun and aimed for three seconds, upon which he shot and hit the bull's-eye. He looked at them. “I am not a perfect shooter myself,” he said, “but even so, I'll have to test you on some speed shooting now.” Half a second after saying it, he had fired a second shot, which just almost hit the bull's eye. “Now, who of you would like to try first to do what I just tried?”

“I'll go first,” Hector said.

“Alright, make a quick shot!”

Hector drew his pistol, shot in half a second and missed by eight centimetres.

“Alright, now you try!” Charlie said looking at Leslie.

She drew, shot in half a second, and missed by almost twelve centimetres.

“OK,” Charlie said. “That was not too bad of either one of you! Now let's go to the live target practice!” He indicated a door to the right of them and started walking towards it. They followed him through it, to the next room, where there were three initially still human-like silhouettes. “Now, this is what you should do here: Stand on each side of the room, not crossing the line. After a while, one or more of these guys might become dangerous, and you might have to shoot him or her before he shoots you!”

The test began with a target silhouette just moving sidewards, towards the one beside him. “Now tell him not to,” Charlie said. “Stand still!” Hector and Leslie shouted, aiming their gun at him. The silhouette now seemed to draw a gun, and Hector shot him. The third silhouette, which looked like a woman, now seemed to also draw a gun and Leslie shot her. The second silhouette now raised his hands rather quickly, while a few more silhouettes came out of the corners, one woman with her hands raised, the other, and two men, one of whom was carrying a bazooka or something, the other seemingly just walking along,though not with raised hands. Both Leslie and Hector shot the man with the bazooka, while a forth newcomer entered the stage and aimed a shot, which a loudspeaker said hit Hector, who was then aiming at him. Leslie took an aim at the newcomer, but he shot her as well.

Charlie pressed a button on the wall and sighed. “This test is a bit lousy for the standards we should have nowadays, they say. But I haven't been able to get anything better out here yet, that is if you should be able to use your own guns on them! But what we do have here is computer simulations which are much better, apart from that you really need to use pretend guns only!”

Hector snorted almost incomprehensibly. Leslie stood still, looking first at him, then at Charlie. She asked: “How come there are no good training facilities here?”

“Oh, that's partly a financial issue, but on the other hand even some of the rather cheap stuff they sell nowadays is better than this. But for those that we have checked, it still seems that they still aren't quite good enough, any of them, as we see it. Thirdly, there is probably our bureaucracy behind that it doesn't happen that we buy anything.”

“Oh, I feel that I've been almost thoroughly enough tested. After all, I did find out that I didn't have the speed I should have after that guy so-called shot at my partner. So I do know something about what to start thinking about.”

“I think I feel the same, or something similar, that is,” Hector said. “Do you think we should be tested again?”

“Yes, a little. I think each of you should be here on three more occasions.”

“OK,” they both said.

“How about that time on Monday to begin with for you? It's still free!”

“OK,” they said again.

“Good! Then I think there's just one thing left to say: Leslie, I've been asked to tell you what at least some of the undercover work you're doing is about! But as of yet, I think I should talk to you without even Hector hearing it!”

“OK,” Leslie responded.

“OK, goodbye!” Hector said and left.

After a while Charlie said: “It's about that silly old, or was that actually middle-aged, lady you've been doing. They live in that area, the leaders of that dangerous secret spiritualists' society! It's in your best interest to keep your mouth shut about it, though, and take it they are the ones you seem not to be spying on by being that weird old woman!”

Leslie looked amazed. “Thanks! ... OK, stud, and goodbye for now, then,” she said and left.

Studying the Sect

Leslie was going through a file about Suzanne Wiscehl, the fifteen-year old girl that was the supposed third-level leader of the murderous organisation that had been molesting, sadistically raping and killing people - now even in this district. It was described how she seemed to have a grip on how to handle her parents as well as their welfare workers. She insinuated for them that it was needed to let her watch the sadistic porn movies and books from her sect for the sake of challenging those that wanted them done in the first place. This seemed to be good enough of her, even as Hector had put it, when writing these notes from his recent investigation on the her.

After a while, Leslie imagined herself in her place. She could vividly see for herself how the strategy worked, to be half-hearted about evil and totally cautious about good. She could then assume that they would not too easily become quite annoyed with her - as long as she kept on charming them! In the sadistic reading that she had from her sect, there were guides on how to cope with parents once they do get upset. It sadistically was set to that she aught to despise them just enough to intimidate enough for them to stay away from her for a while. It worked, or so it seems, from what Leslie gathered from the notes of her coworker.

With her superior sect members, Suzanne was probably much more careful. They must seem to be capable of rather horrible deeds, and Leslie could assume that Suzanne was intrigued by both fear and their charm tricks into revering them a whole lot more both than her own parents and than the society they all lived in. Probably, Suzanne dared to say only what was expected from her, apart from the kinds of new ideas that these superiors viewed as fun, or at least a necessary boredom.

With sect members on her own level, Suzanne could be into the same kinds of strategies as with her parents and the welfare workers. This way she could reach them without there being an important issue about it, so that she could perhaps be friends with them, but more importantly keep a low profile, and thereby be likelier to avoid reprisals from them if things she wanted turned out to be too dull for them or threatening in some other way.

When dealing with sect people immediately below her, Suzanne would perhaps be into having them seem too inferior for there to be too much ambition in them for her to handle them easily. It was not clear, though, for Leslie, if she was smart at this. Seemingly, Leonard, the middle-aged man that was hugging her on a picture in Linda's slide show the other week, was dangerous in such a way. Perhaps Suzanne was cooping with her by playing others against him?

As Leslie pondered upon this, she ran into a note that said that Suzanne had called her parents the night of a big meeting with her sect. It must have been during a break of some kind, Leslie figured, because the conversation was into that they should not view her as really participating in this, only trying to find out if she really wanted to be part of what they were into. Her father had scolded her for even wanted to be there, saying basically that it was not a place for a young girl to be. She had then scolded him back and said that he wasn't so smart at hiding his own fantasies about becoming a smart guy at being a sadist; she had said that she had watched one of his porn movies and noted that it was almost as naughty as her own. Her father had then said that she was into far too dirty movies for him to say that she was the girl he had expected her to be. “So what!?” she had replied, before hanging up on him.

Now, Leslie could feel it in herself that there was a networking capacity in this youngster. She was presumably able to contact enemies by having it that her father was the person they needed to hate. Undecided on whether or not Suzanne would do this, Leslie decided to have it she was presumably into that as an emergency solution, and perhaps preparing for these things with her immediate superiors in her sect.

Leslie wrote to Hector about her reflections on Suzanne, her sect, her parents and the welfare people they were dealing with. Two days later, Hector handed her a report, which described how she probably already was blaming both her parents for evils of her sect. She had also managed to blame a welfare officer for something of what her parents were doing, which was letting the woods seem to be cover for a smart sex appeal for her mother. It was to be said that the welfare officer was scolded for this but defended herself from it, but that she could not quite prove that she hadn't been trying to have it there was a whole lot of fun in visiting that family, nor come up with any smart enough explanation on how come she had seemingly portrayed it that way for her colleagues.

That afternoon, Hector and Leslie discussed this, and found it likely that that there were hidden subordinates to Suzanne in both her parents and probably even in some of the social workers! Hector said that this would provide explain a fairly good explanation to why they were so successful. Leslie agreed, stating that “Their subordination is to be viewed as very unofficial, and perhaps subconscious in all of them. Right, Hector?”

“Yes,” Hector said, “and what we also might have is then obviously that she might have other such inferiors, right?”

“Yeah!” She looked thoughtful for a while. “I wonder if they have some trick for it, or if there's just that they have a lucky mixture of personalities or something.”

“Yeah, I wonder too!”

“Do you think we can get some of the welfare officers to talk about it?”

“Yes, I do, or at least I think I can.”

“Oh, so you prefer to do that to on your own?”

“No. But I don't think you know them!”

“I would sort of prefer for you to keep on working on them by yourself, though, and then I can perhaps do a little job on the side!”

“Care to tell me what it is?”

“Not yet!”

Undercover

The next day, Leslie was working undercover, dressed up as a very young man. She was sitting at the small café where the youngsters of this town usually met. In her left-hand jacket pocket she had a small microphone that could be very easily manipulated for fairly extreme focus. At the table next to her sat another young police woman, from the murder-investigation unit, dressed up as a fairly ordinary girl for this café.

While drinking a soft drink, Leslie saw two grown middle-aged men entering, one of whom was Leonard. They sat down at a table fairly close to hers, and a bit further from her colleague's. She watched them talking to each other, and did some lip reading, while putting her hands in the jackets pockets. With her left hand she directed the microphone as well as she could towards the two of them.

After a few minutes, Leonard said out loud: “Peter, that college boy is watching us!”

Peter turned around and saw an intellectual looking guy, who then asked them: “Why the fuck are you two at this place instead of somewhere more for older people?”

Peter peered at the boy and asked back: “What fucken business is that of yours?”

The boy shrugged. “Just wondered,” he said.

Now Leonard started speaking to him: “Who do you think you are to ask us such a thing!?”

A few people around them looked up at him, and then at the guy he was speaking to. A girl (whom Leslie had hardly noticed before this) giggled a little.

“I'm sorry,” the young man said.

“Mm. You better be,” Leonard said.

The young man looked towards the girl who had giggled. “is there something I need to know about those two?” he asked.

She giggled again. “I guess they're more fun than you've been imagining!” she said.

The young man smiled at her and asked: “What kind of fun is that?”

The girl looked the two men, then said: “I'm not sure about them, really, but they seem popular with some of the others here!”

The guy she spoke to sighed. “OK,” he said.

Meanwhile, the two men had started speaking to each other again. The Leslie that was undercover still had her microphone targeted fairly well at them. But she expected that the undercover officer at the next table did that more too.

After a while she looked again at the girl who had giggled. “What do you do for fun around here, actually?”

The girl smiled and asked him to come and sit at her table and she would tell him. The young man Leslie was dressed up as did. As he sat down, the said her name was Sally.

“I'm Rick!” he answered.

“For fun, first of all we pretend as if something about each other! Secondly we play with the notion of being innocent enough so that we can get some real satisfaction from it.”

Rick seemed hesitant. “What do you mean by pretending as if something about each other?”

Sally giggled. “We don't try to avoid seeing the inner side of each other, that's all!” she answered.

Rick looked her in the eye, and said: “Wow, that's cool!”

“I see that you have the guts to see that! Great!”

“Yeah!” He smiled.

The Spells

The next day, Hector and the two who had been undercover went through their new material together. Leslie and her coworker, Sonya, had before this worked on syncing their two recordings of the conversation between the two middle-aged men, and reached some preliminary conclusions about them. Their conversation had been surprisingly much about how to keep an air of ignorance going, especially just after they had quarrelled with who seemed to them to be a college boy who had tried to embarrass them about being there. It had seemed likely for to the two police women that the two men even were at the youngsters' café mostly in order to show off some capacity to keep such an air, and probably to test each other about it, Sonya had said. Leslie had agreed, but added that perhaps only Leonard seemed very likely to be quite conscious about testing that. Sonya wasn't too sure about that.

As the two now were speaking to Hector about it, Leslie told her and him that she figured Leonard to be the one to manage to pretend completely to be thoroughly honest. “I feel,” she said, “that he seduces people around him to think so!”

Sonya looked thoughtful for a while. “OK. Perhaps that is true,” she said at last.

“Hm,” Hector said. “That sounds rather interesting!”

“I hope you do find it interesting!” Sonya said. “I have the notion that he tends to have it there's not any way to be defending oneself without agreeing with him. Even I sort of felt that way about him in the sense that I didn't quite think about him as the smart guy at seducing that he probably is!”

Hector looked at her. “Wow,” he said at last. “I wonder how seductive his superiors must be then! He's supposed to be, I hope you know that, second-to-lowest in a hierarchy where charm seductive capacity gains most of the advantages.”

Sonya looked back. “I guess they might be really quite dangerous, then!” she said. “But I already knew that, though I do feel that this has gotten me closer to what it's actually about with their charm!”

After that Leslie told Hector to go through what he had from the social workers, and to, when doing it, if possible focus especially on what to make Suzanne Wiscehl's seductive capacity. He did, and there seemed to be at least some indications of a smart seductress in her. However they were not very impressed by her such skills, because her mother and one of the social workers very often were able to manipulate her back into a position of inferiority, something which she moreover got fairly foolishly upset with now and then.

“Leonard seemed like a guy who could have managed them better than her!” Leslie said.

Sonya nodded.

“Perhaps then,” Hector said, “she able to seduce exactly Leonard, simply!”

“Yeah, I though about that,” Sonya answered.

“Then,” Hector continued, “it seems that she can draw certain conclusions from that capacity that Suzanne aught to be above everybody around her, except when meeting her superiors in the sect!”

”Perhaps,” Sonya said.

“The girl I spoke to yesterday,” Leslie broke in, “seemed to feel it was the other way around! She thought Peter and Leonard both were seducers and that their superiors weren't able to control them!”

“But it doesn't ever quite seem to be that way,” Sonya said. “I've gone through files both about them and about Suzanne, and she seems to almost always get the upper hand on them.”

“And when she doesn't?” Leslie broke in. “You did say just almost always!”

“The very few times she doesn't, that's because they tend to not have anything at issue. It seems that she can otherwise tend to take them as those that are more to blame than she is, if she is accused of something, almost like a cruel mother or something!”

“Really?!” Hector burst our.

“Really,” she answered.

Leslie sounded thoughtful when also replying to him: “Really ... yes! And perhaps that's about that she dominates them by seduction first and foremost, and then can punish them by actually lowering the spell but then introduce some kind of cruelty in its place! ... A show of cruelty that might make them feel both inferior and guilty, I think.”

Hector answered: I guess you mean that that strategy is the ordinary one for this sect, that their charm, or so-called, is - or eventually becomes, rather - more of a spell than just the charm trick that it probably is to begin with!”

“Yeah, I mean something like that,” she replied.

“And she is hypnotized herself, by her superiors, I guess, then?”

“Yeah, that's what I think.”

The Witches' Meeting

A few days later, the boss of Hector and Leslie said that it was time now for the two of them to do some undercover work for examining Suzanne's immediate superior in the sect. He told them to participate at a meeting among sect members that was going to be held at a field fairly close to the city. He showed them on a map. They were to participate as interested possible members.

“You should avoid seeming to know each other there. You, Hector, will like a few times earlier seem to be Robert Williams, a very poor young man from this district, and you Leslie will continue your act as the rather sophisticated college pre-graduate Rick Erwin that you've been into acting as already. But even as him, you will be there more or less in incognito.

“It is important to say that by no means should either of you be into being hypnotic or charming on your own accord, because then they probably through you out! Instead, you must act curiously inspired by their charms and hypnotic tricks, but without seeming, at all, to be into power of your own kind. You need to each bring a gun, but not let it be seen at all, of course! If they try to inspect you, just leave them.”

“OK,” they said.

“The meeting will be held this Sunday from noon till midnight. Is that OK with both of you?”

“Yes, or I guess so.” both responded.

When Sunday came Rick got of a buss an eleven, at a stop that was about three kilometres from the closest edge of the field. He had brought a map and a rucksack with with a a thermos with hot chocolate, sandwiches and a seat cushion. He followed the map to the field, which was almost empty. He seated himself below a tree and consumed the lunch from his backpack.

Eventually people started dropping in on the field in front of him. He took his pack and started walking towards them. When he got there a girl asked:

“Who are you?!”

“I'm a guy who met a girl who said there was this meeting hereabout!”

She looked at him, attempting, it seemed to be scornful, but then changing her mind. Instead she smiled a little when asking: “Who's that girl?”

The young man before her gave a sigh, or was that a snort, while looking down to the ground. “Her name was Maria,” he said.

“It's not exactly for everyone to just drop by and join us!” she said.

The young man sighed. “I hoped there would be some fun really, here, she said to me that there would be!”

“Is she here!?” she asked.

“She said she would be here, but I don't know. ...”

“What's her last name, then!?”

“I'm sorry I don't know,” the guy responded.

The girl turned towards another girl among the people with her. But this girl just shrugged, so the first girl turned towards a boy and tried to get his attention. After a while he looked up, then he said: “There were two Maria's invited here, if that's what you're after!”

“Is there a possible invitation for this guy from either of them?”

He looked at him. “I don't know!”

After fifteen minutes, when some more people had arrived, the guy she had been talking to said to her that “One of the Marias is that girl!” pointing at a black-haired girl with freckles.

She asked Rick, who had not left their company, since he hadn't been asked to do so, if that was the one who invited him. He said it wasn't, and that he hadn't been invited, exactly, just recommended to go and look at the meeting between her so so speak superiors.

“When did this happen?! And why did she ask you to come here!?”

“I guess she wanted me to see how much fun they would be!” the guy said.

She looked a little disgusted. “Where did this happen?!”

“Outside of my new home town, Onsterville. As i recall we were just outside a café when when said that to me.”

She looked at him, examining him a little. “I don't know about that girlfriend of yours, but this is not a meeting for simply having fun!”

”Oh, eh-hum. Sorry! ... but then what is it about!?”

“It's about dignity, and you don't quite seem to fit in!” she said.

The boy (or was that a young man?) she had been talking to looked towards her feet before saying: “I wasn't trying to, exactly, I just wondered if she were right about you!”

“I don't think she can have been, judging from how you behave with me!”

“Is there really a reason to be so boring?”

She peered at him. “Yes, there is,” she said.

“There is?!”

The girl now looked at him in astonishment. “It's not about fun, this part,” she said after a while,and added: “How can you feel that you're welcome when there's no one welcoming you?” She looked at him, letting his eyes move to the rhythm of her blatancy about being a young girl with a commission. Once she had caught his eye for it, she induced the possibility of her thriving on his incapabilities of seducing her.

Rick, no Leslie, snapped out of it. She had almost fallen into the spell of a high priest. She guessed she had been lucky that she though she was a man. Looking in the opposite direction from her, she cleared her eyes, then happened to see a company of four that were apparently discussing something. Catching Rick again, she recalled that she was to be under a spell. Then she turned back around.

“OK, I'll go!” Rick said.