I COULD HAVE BEEN A DREAMER

“Don Wingus!” I said. “I should have known. So it is you that has called forth the power of Hypnos, the Greek god of sleep and dreams. He was actually one of the Olympianoids, that alien race which visited Earth’s Mediterranean region during the Bronze Age and were worshipped as deities, hmmm? Hypnos was a scientist who did research on human psychic abilities, including experiments with lucid dreaming.”

I was clad in my usual finery, including a frilled poet shirt, purple velvet suit, jungle boots, panama hat, Star of David necklace, and one of my favourite opera capes. My companion, known as Miss Millie Drake, was at my side. She is an exceedingly beautiful young lady with luxurious chestnut hair, enchanting violet eyes, and sun-kissed skin. The electric blue dress she wore only served to highlight her slender figure.

“Oh my gosh, Daniel!” Millie exclaimed as we stood in the villain’s secret lair in the backroom of a downtown nightspot known as Club Orpheus. “So it’s Wingus who has been putting those strange dreams into the minds of people in New York City?”

“Quite so, my dear Mills,” I affirmed. “It is no doubt another of his plots for world domination.”

“Nothing so prosaic this time, Rumanos,” sneered my foe, wearing his black vestment robe as the darksome energy swirled around him. “I have recently visited our home-world of Daemonia, and things have changed. Using my secret contacts, I managed to penetrate into the deepest recesses of the knowledge stored there, and  have uncovered secrets about our people, the very Watchers of Algol, that have changed my perspective. You see, I have revealed the lie that our society was based upon, and at this revelation I beheld the very cities of the Watchers crumble to dust. They are no more!”

“Daniel,” whispered Millie to me, “is that possible? Is he telling the truth?”

I looked intently at the evil Magister Don Wingus, my oldest and bitterest enemy, the renegade Algolite who has become the most wanted criminal in all of Time and Space. As usual, he appeared to be a man of middle years, his countenance still showing a certain handsome distinction despite being marred with the effects of untold lifetimes of extreme unhallowed wickedness. His hair was long and dark, and his face decorated with a thin moustache and goatee beard. Most of all, his eyes shone with an absolutely mesmerising glare.

“I assure you, Miss Drake,” said Wingus, “I have no reason for untruths in this matter. The Society of the Algolites is no more. Now there is only us, and this is our final battle!”

With this, Don Wingus raised his arms and the whirling Hypnos energy suddenly shot forth. I heard Millie cry in pain as it hit her. She fell to the floor and lay motionless.

“Wingus, you unholy fiend!” I exclaimed. “If you have harmed her, I swear… !”

“There is no need for such theatrics, Rumanos,” countered my foe. “She is unharmed and merely asleep. It shall give us a chance to talk, ‘old friend’.”

“I do not see what we have to discuss,” I said. “I am most certainly aware of the recent tragedy on Daemonia, although I have communicated this information to no one. It actually changes little. I am still a Watcher of Algol, and shall continue the mission entrusted in me by the Kosmikos organisation. This includes the protection of planet Earth and its people from invasion.”

“The Kosmikos?” Wingus replied with wicked smile. “You still pretend to believe the lies? There is no Kosmikos, just as there were never really any Watchers of Algol. The entire concept was an illusion masking the true import of the Daemon-Star as the stellar home of Satan -- the prime source of magic power of which you are the one and only scion!”

“Wingus, you…”

“‘Fiend’? Is that what you were going to again call me, Rumanos? Really, is it? How grotesquely ironic. No, it is you who are literally the fiend, the son of the devil, the only offspring of the Daemon-Star who engendered your appearance on Earth. All the society of Algol -- myself included! -- are simply figments of your mind, creatures of your thoughts. I only continue to exist because I uncovered the secret, and even I will soon fade into nothingness. After all, I was just a projection of your darkest thoughts, the manifestation of your Satanic Darksoul so that you could bear the knowledge of your own existence. Your transonic devices, your silly robot cat, your borrowed spaceship -- all toys to keep up the fantasy. It is fitting that I have evoked the power of Hypnos in this, our final confrontation, since you, Doctor Daniel Rumanos, could have just been a dreamer in some obscure corner of the Universe. But no, you had to play out your caprices for the audience of all existence. Always the entertainer, always the magician, right? Though I suppose you could not help it. It befits the child of the prince of lies; you, Daniel Rumanos, THE SON OF SATAN!”

Do you see the horror of this situation? There I was, facing  my long-time enemy, Don Wingus, as he told me a darkling tale of discovering the eldritch secrets of my own existence.

“You are the very Son of Satan!” taunted Wingus. “You, Daniel Rumanos, who try so hard to ‘do good’, are in reality the very essence of evil.  Just wanted to tell you I know this before I cease to exist. I want you to realise that no matter how hard you try, you are yourself the ultimate creature of darkness, forever plagued by your own Satanic Darksoul!”

I stood facing him, and I felt the power rising; the power from deep within my being. My eyes glowed an hellish deep red of colour, and I raised my hands to-wards Don Wingus.

“So does rise the Darksoul,” I said, “and using it I do exorcise the energy of Hypnos, and with it the illusion known as Magister Don Wingus!”

“That is it, Rumanos!” exulted Wingus amongst peals of utterly mad laughter. “What a wonderful night for an exorcism! It serves to bring us closer together -- to again make us One!”

By now the infernal flame was flowing forth from me, the hellish Soulfire that blazed with a reddish hue at once bright and darker than darkness. It burned forth and surrounded Don Wingus, destroying him from within. I heard one last noise of his mocking laughter as he disappeared from view -- forsooth, as he vanished into nothingness... forever?

I then heard Millie Drake’s voice as she awakened. “What… what happened? Daniel, I had the strangest dream! You were in it, but you had horns on your head, just like the…”

“Worry not, love,” I interrupted, helping Millie to her feet. “Don Wingus is gone. I shall explain later.”

“But, Daniel,” she said; “those things he said; about Algol, about the Watchers being destroyed. Was any of that… Was it real, or… ?”

“All is well, my dear,” I told her. “Evil tells lies. Let us go and have some dinner, hmmm? There is a nice kosher steakhouse hear here.”

As we left the nightclub that fateful evening, Millie Drake did not notice the one final glance I gave back at where Don Wingus had stood. She did not see the flash of the deepest red Hellfire in my eyes.

***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN

JERUSALEM OF GOLD

The Daniel Rumanos Mysteries: Jerusalem of Gold

My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears as magic to lesser beings. I am a sorcerer of the stars, a detective of the weird and the profane, a wanderer between worlds who has faced down ancient evils, extradimensional horrors, and more than one tentacled abomination that thought it could hide from the light of the Daemon-Star. ...

It was a sweltering afternoon in Jerusalem when the call came. Not the usual sort of call — no frantic text from a client, no encrypted message from an old contact in MI6 or the Vatican. This one arrived as a shimmer in the air itself, a golden ripple that coalesced into a holographic projection above the antique desk in my temporary lodgings near the Jaffa Gate. The image was that of an elderly rabbi, his beard white as mountain snow, his eyes burning with an urgency that transcended mere human panic.

"Doctor Rumanos," he intoned, his voice carrying the weight of centuries. "The Yerushalayim Shel Zahav is awakening. The crown is incomplete. If it is not restored, the city will burn — not with the fire of war, but with something far older. Something that devours light itself."

The transmission ended before I could reply. I did not need more. "Jerusalem of Gold" — the song, the symbol, the ancient promise. Naomi Shemer's anthem had captured the soul of a people, but this was no poetic metaphor. Algolitish sensors in my bloodstream had already begun to hum with warnings of trans-dimensional flux centered on the Temple Mount.

I stepped out into the Old City as the sun dipped low, turning the limestone walls to molten gold. Tourists and locals moved through the narrow streets, oblivious to the subtle wrongness threading through the air like invisible smoke. The scent of spices and incense mingled with something sharper, metallic. Like blood mixed with starfire.

My assistant on this case was a young lady named Leah Mosbacher, a brilliant archaeology student and junior operative for certain discreet branches of Israeli intelligence. She had contacted me weeks earlier about anomalous energy readings near the Western Wall — readings that spiked whenever the song "Jerusalem of Gold" was performed nearby. I had dismissed it at first as residual psychic echoes from the Six-Day War, when the melody had become a battle cry and a prayer of triumph. I was wrong.

"Daniel," Leah said, meeting me near the Chain Gate, her dark curls framing a face etched with worry. "The cisterns. They're drying again, just like in the original lyrics. But it's not drought. Something is drinking the water from below."

We descended into the ancient tunnels beneath the city, places where layers of history piled upon one another like the pages of a forbidden grimoire. Roman, Byzantine, Herodian, and older still—traces of Canaanite and Jebusite foundations that whispered of pre-Abrahamic rites. My Algolite senses detected a rift forming, a tear in the fabric of reality anchored to the concept of the "Jerusalem of Gold" itself.

According to legend, the phrase originated with Rabbi Akiva, who promised his wife a crown shaped like the walls of Jerusalem wrought in pure gold. That image had become a symbol of longing during exile, of the city's spiritual radiance. But symbols have power, especially in a place as charged as this. Some force — an entity that fed on unfulfilled desire and collective memory — had latched onto the archetype. It was twisting the golden dream into a devouring maw.

Deeper in the tunnels, the air grew thick. Golden motes danced in the beam of our lights, but they moved with unnatural purpose, coalescing into fleeting shapes: the silhouette of ancient battlements, the gleam of a crown, the sorrowful eyes of a bride waiting two thousand years. Leah gasped as one of the motes brushed her hand, leaving a burn mark shaped like a tiny turret.

"It is manifesting," I muttered, activating the Daemon-Star sigil that glowed faintly on my palm. "The entity calls itself the Crownless One. It was banished here millennia ago by the Watchers who helped shape early human civilizations. It feeds on the ache of holy cities — the gap between what a place is and what its people dream it could be."

A low vibration began, the distant strains of "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" echoing as if sung by a choir of ghosts. The cisterns ahead had gone bone-dry, their ancient stones cracked and glittering with unnatural crystalline growths that pulsed like veins.

The creature emerged where the tunnels opened into a vast subterranean chamber, a place that should not have existed according to any map. It was beautiful in the way a nightmare can be beautiful: a towering figure of liquid gold and shadow, its "face" a shifting mosaic of Jerusalem's skylines through the ages — Second Temple glory, medieval domes, modern spires — all melting and reforming. Where its eyes should be were empty sockets filled with the void between stars.

"You come to claim the crown, Algolian?" it hissed, its voice a chorus of lamenting voices. "But there is no crown. Only hunger. The Jews longed. The Christians longed. The Muslims built upon it and longed in their own way. All that yearning is mine to consume. Soon the city above will mirror this emptiness. Stone by stone. Soul by soul."

I stepped forward, the power of the Daemon-Star surging through my veins. Blue-white energy crackled around my hands. "Longing is not yours to own. It is the fuel of human resilience. You twist it into despair, but you have forgotten the triumph that follows. The reunification. The song completed."

Leah began to sing — softly at first, then with growing strength. The Hebrew words of "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" filled the chamber. Avir harim tzah, u-reiach oranim... The air of the mountains is clear, and the scent of pines...

The entity recoiled as if struck. The golden motes that formed its substance began to fracture. I channeled Algolitish sorcery into the song, amplifying it with harmonics that resonated on frequencies beyond normal hearing. The rift trembled.

"You cannot silence two thousand years with shadow!" I shouted. "This city has survived worse than you."

The Crownless One roared and lunged, sending waves of golden fire that burned with the pain of exile. I countered with a barrier of stellar plasma, but the creature was strong here, empowered by the psychic residue of countless prayers, laments, and hopes focused on these very stones.

Leah's voice never wavered. As she reached the verse added after the Six-Day War — the triumphant one celebrating the return to the Wall and the Temple Mount — the entity's form began to solidify into something brittle. I saw my opening.

With a gesture, I summoned the full might of my heritage. A lance of pure Algolitish light, bright as the Daemon-Star itself, pierced the heart of the golden abomination. At the same moment, Leah's song crested: Yerushalayim shel zahav, shel nechoshet ve-shel or... Jerusalem of gold, of copper, and of light...

The creature shattered. Not with an explosion, but with a sigh — like the release of breath held for centuries. The golden fragments dissolved into harmless sparks that rose upward through the rock, emerging somewhere above as a brief, miraculous aurora over the Old City that witnesses would later describe as "the sky remembering."

The cisterns began to refill with clear, sweet water. The unnatural cracks in the stone sealed themselves.

We emerged into the evening air as the stars came out over Jerusalem. The city felt lighter, as if an ancient weight had been lifted. Leah looked at me, exhausted but radiant.

"Was that really an alien monster feeding on Jewish longing?" she asked.

"Something like that," I replied. "Or perhaps it was the shadow cast by too much history in one place. Either way, the song won again. As it always does when people remember what they are singing about."

We walked back toward the Western Wall, where a group of young soldiers and civilians had gathered, singing the same melody under the floodlights. Their voices rose strong and clear, carrying the dual weight of sorrow and victory that defines this eternal city.

I smiled faintly. The Watchers of Algol had long observed humanity's capacity to turn pain into beauty, exile into homecoming. In Jerusalem of Gold, that alchemy was at its most potent.

My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I have seen wonders and terrors across the galaxies, but few places hold the raw power of human dreams quite like this one. And as long as that song echoes among these stones, the Crown will remain where it belongs — in the hearts of those who refuse to forget.

***** THE DANIEL RUMANOS MYSTERIES *****

CHILDREN OF THE SEA

A Daniel Rumanos Mystery

It was a grey, windswept afternoon in late autumn when the call came through to our headquarters hidden in the heart of New York City. The instruments in the control room — a blend of Algolite crystal tech and human computer arrays — began to pulse with an otherworldly rhythm, like the distant heartbeat of some colossal leviathan. Millie Drake, my lovely young assistant with her bright eyes and quick wit, looked up from her console.

“Daniel,” she said, her voice crisp with concern, “something’s interfering with the oceanic monitoring grid. Reports are flooding in from the Atlantic coast — strange lights under the water near Montauk, disappearing fishing boats, and… children. Local authorities are calling them ‘sea children.’ They appear on beaches at night, speaking in languages no one recognises, then vanish back into the waves.”

I adjusted the cuffs of my purple velvet smoking jacket. “That sounds like more than just a few lost kids on a lark, love. It could be extradimensional incursion or worse — something using the sea as a gateway. Let’s take Lizzie and head out. Montauk Point should give us a good vantage.” ...

My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears as magic to lesser beings. Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an operative for an organisation known as the KOSMIKOS. Assisted by the wonderful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am — the Daemon-Star!!! ...

Lizzie, my canary-yellow Edwardian roadster equipped with cloaking fields and mach-five propulsion, hummed to life as we sped eastward along the Long Island Expressway. Millie scanned reports on her tablet whilst I focused on the road, my Algolite-enhanced senses picking up subtle shifts in the electromagnetic field. By the time we reached the windswept bluffs of Montauk, night had fallen, and a thick fog rolled in from the Atlantic like a living thing.

We parked near the lighthouse and made our way down a rocky path to the beach, the crash of waves providing a constant, ominous soundtrack. The air tasted of salt and something sharper — ozone mixed with an alien pheromone that made my skin prickle. Suddenly, a soft glow appeared offshore, perhaps a hundred yards out. It pulsed in hypnotic patterns, blue-green and violet, like bioluminescence from another world.

“Look!” Millie whispered, pointing.

Several small figures emerged from the surf — children, or what appeared to be children. Their skin had an iridescent sheen, and their eyes reflected the glow like polished pearls. They moved with unnatural grace, almost floating across the wet sand.

I activated my transonic mezuzah, a compact device of Algolite design. “They are not human, Millie. Their genetic markers show hybrid DNA — terrestrial baseline mixed with something from the abyssal trenches of a water-world in the Procyon system. The Children of the Sea, indeed. But why here? Why now?”

One of the children turned toward us, a boy with webbed fingers and hair like flowing kelp. He spoke in a melodic trill that bypassed normal hearing and resonated directly in the mind: “The Deep Ones awaken. The veil thins. Join us, or the tide will claim all.”

Before I could respond, the sea erupted. Tentacles thicker than telephone poles burst from the water, glistening with bioluminescent suckers. They belonged to a creature that defied earthly biology — a colossal entity, part squid, part jellyfish, part something far older and more malevolent. Its massive eye, glowing with malevolent intelligence, fixed upon us. This was no mere sea monster; it was a herald, a living portal for an invasion force from a parallel oceanic dimension.

“Millie, get behind me!” I shouted, channelling the Daemon-Star energy that coursed through my veins. A bolt of crimson force lanced from my outstretched hand, striking the nearest tentacle and cauterising it with a hiss of superheated steam. The creature roared, a sound like a thousand drowning screams.

The hybrid children laughed in eerie unison, their voices echoing across the beach. “Father calls! The sea hungers!”

More tentacles lashed out, smashing against the rocks and sending sprays of seawater high into the air. One wrapped around Millie’s ankle, dragging her toward the surf. She screamed but kept her composure, drawing on her own budding Algolitish abilities. A precise energy shot severed the appendage, freeing her.

I leapt forward, my cloak billowing like wings. With a gesture, I summoned a force field of pure Algolite energy, shielding us both while I analysed the creature’s weak points. My mezuzah's scanner revealed the truth: the entity was a “Spawn of Kuthalu,” an ancient being from the depths of a drowned reality, using the hybrid children as anchors to pull its full mass into our world. The children had been taken years ago, their human forms altered in submerged caverns where time flowed differently. Now they served as psychic lures, calling more victims — and worse, preparing the way for a full dimensional breach that would flood coastal cities and transform humanity into aquatic slaves.

“Daniel, the children!” Millie cried. “They’re not evil — they’re victims!”

She was right. Beneath the alien influence, faint human essences remained. I had to sever the link without harming them.

Focusing my superior intellect, I generated a counter-frequency using my voice — a harmonic resonance keyed to Algolite mathematics. I sang a counter-melody to their eerie trill, weaving in ancient Watcher incantations that sounded like operatic thunder. The hybrid children faltered, clutching their heads as the psychic hold weakened.

The Spawn roared in fury, its tentacles converging on me in a frenzy. I dodged with superhuman agility, leaping from rock to rock while firing bursts of Daemon-Star energy into its central mass. Each strike disrupted the dimensional anchor, causing reality to flicker around us — glimpses of an underwater nightmare world where cities of coral housed horrors beyond description.

One tentacle caught me off-guard, slamming me into the sand. Pain flared through my ribs, but my enhanced physiology healed it almost instantly. I rolled to my feet and thrust both hands forward, unleashing a concentrated beam that pierced the creature’s eye. It shrieked, the sound shattering windows in distant beach houses.

As the Spawn began to dissolve back into its native dimension, the hybrid children collapsed on the sand, their iridescent sheen fading. Their skin returned to normal human tones, though faint gill slits remained on their necks — permanent reminders of their ordeal.

Millie knelt beside the boy who had spoken first. “You’re safe now,” she said gently. “We’ll get you home.”

I contacted local government agents and Coast Guard personnel to handle the aftermath — medical care, memory adjustment where necessary, and cover stories about a “freak tidal anomaly.” The children would need monitoring, but with proper support, many could reintegrate. A few chose to return to the sea, forming a protected enclave where their unique gifts could serve as bridges between worlds rather than tools of invasion.

As dawn broke over the Atlantic, painting the waves in gold and rose, Millie and I stood on the bluff watching the last traces of the otherworldly glow fade.

“Another close one, Daniel,” she said, leaning against me. “The sea holds so many secrets. Do you think there are more like them out there?”

“Undoubtedly, love,” I replied, my voice steady with the confidence of ages. “But as long as the Daemon-Star watches over this world, humanity — and its wayward children — will have a fighting chance. The Universe is vast and strange, but courage, intellect, and a bit of magic can hold back even the deepest darkness.”

We walked back to Lizzie arm in arm, the salt wind at our backs. The planet Earth was safe once more — thanks to the Daemon-Star and his beloved companion.

***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN

DEMONIC CONVERGENCE

The fog rolled off the Patapsco River like a cold, grey shroud, settling into the brick-lined alleyways of Baltimore with an unsettling weight. I stood outside the heavy iron door of the old warehouse, adjusting the cuffs of my jacket. In my pocket, a deck of cards offered a familiar, tactile comfort — a magician’s habit for a writer’s life. The mystery of "Demonic Convergence" had not started with a pentagram or a sacrifice; it had started with a series of frantic, ink-stained letters sent to my desk, claiming that the very fabric of the city was thinning.

The air inside the warehouse smelled of ozone and ancient dust. I stepped over a rusted coil of wire, my flashlight beam cutting through the gloom. At the center of the vast, hollowed-out space stood a man I recognized from the frantic sketches in the letters. He was hunched over a massive, circular chalk drawing on the concrete floor — a geometric nightmare of intersecting lines and sigils that seemed to vibrate under the light.

"You’re late, Doctor Rumanos," he croaked without looking up.

"I had trouble finding the entrance. The city’s geography seems to be playing tricks tonight," I replied, keeping my voice steady. "What exactly are you trying to converge here?"

The man, whose name was Godiner, finally stood. He looked as though he had not slept since the turn of the century. "It’s not what I’m bringing together, Doctor. It’s what is already pulling itself toward us. The Daemon-Star, Algol, is in a rare alignment. The barriers between our reality and the darker echoes of the Victorian era are collapsing. Can’t you feel the weight of the past?"

I felt it. It was a sensation not unlike the tension before a stage trick — the moment the audience holds its breath, suspended between belief and skepticism. But there was no trapdoor here.

Suddenly, the temperature dropped. The chalk lines on the floor began to glow with a faint, sickly violet light. From the corners of the room, shadows began to detach themselves from the walls. They were not just absences of light; they were oily, three-dimensional shapes that moved with a predatory grace.

"The convergence," Godiner whispered, his eyes wide. "The demonic entities aren't coming from Hell, Doctor. They’re coming from the collective nightmares we’ve written into existence."

As one of the shadows lunged, I did not reach for a weapon. I reached for my cards. With a flick of the wrist, I performed a classic back-palm vanish, then fanned the deck out in a sharp, snapping arc. The sound — the physical reality of a real, practiced skill — seemed to ripple through the room.

"You are trying to manifest a fiction," I said, my voice projecting as if I were center stage at a theatre. "But I know how stories work. And I know how to control the narrative."

I stepped into the circle, ignoring Godiner’s warning shout. Using the heel of my boot, I smeared a crucial intersection of the chalk lines. The violet glow flickered. The shadows recoiled, their forms blurring back into the darkness.

"Every mystery has a solution," I continued, pulling a silver coin from behind Godiner’s ear and tossing it onto the concrete. The metallic clink grounded the room. "And every demon has a tether. You’ve built this out of grief and old books, Godiner. But the 'Demonic Convergence' ends when the lights come up."

The warehouse fell silent. The oppressive weight lifted, replaced by the mundane smell of damp wood and old machinery. Godiner slumped to his knees, the madness draining from his face to be replaced by a profound, weary clarity.

I walked back out into the Baltimore night. The fog was still there, but it was just weather now. I pulled out my notebook and began to jot down the opening lines for the next installment of the mysteries. Sometimes, the most dangerous demons are the ones we invite into the room just to see if we can trick them into leaving.

***** THE DANIEL RUMANOS MYSTERIES *****

APOCALYPTIC

The rain hammered the rooftops of Baltimore like the fists of an angry god. I -- Doctor Daniel Rumanos, occult investigator -- stood at the window of my third-floor office on North Charles Street, a half-empty bottle of rum in one hand and a smoldering cigar in the other. The city lights blurred into blood-red streaks across the glass. Three weeks of omens: fish washing ashore with human faces, the Patapsco River running black at noon, and a perfect solar eclipse that no almanac had predicted. The tabloids called it climate change. I knew better. I had seen the same signs once before — five years ago, the night I hurled Magister Don Wingus into the Nether Realm through a rift torn open above Federal Hill.

A single knock rattled the frosted glass of his door. I did not bother turning around.

“Come in, Miss Vale,” I said.

The lady who entered was small, pale, and soaked. Emily Vale, graduate student in comparative religion. Her brother Jacob had vanished after attending three meetings of the Church of the Final Revelation. She clutched a crumpled flyer in her trembling fingers.

“They meet at the old Mount Vernon cathedral,” she whispered. “The leader… he wears a white suit. Calls himself the Magister. When he speaks, the stained glass bleeds.”

I finally turned. My eyes narrowed. “Describe the voice.”

“Like honey poured over broken glass.”

Wingus.

I extinguished the cigar in the ashtray. “Stay here. Lock the door. If I am not back by dawn, burn every file in that cabinet and run.”

I took the stairs two at a time, cloak flapping like bat wings. Outside, the rain had turned to sleet. My black ’67 Cadillac growled to life, and I tore north through empty streets whilst the radio spat static and fragments of emergency broadcasts: “Mass hallucinations reported in… seismic activity off the coast… the President has been moved to…”

The cathedral loomed at the end of a dead-end block, its spire piercing the bruised sky. Every window glowed crimson. I killed the engine half a block away and approached on foot, silver-plated revolver loaded with bullets etched in Enochian sigils tucked beneath my jacket.

Inside, the nave had been transformed. Pews shoved aside. A colossal obsidian altar rose where the crucifix once stood. Cultists in white robes chanted in a language that hurt to hear. At the center, arms raised, stood Magister Don Wingus.

He had changed. Taller now, almost seven feet, skin stretched too tight over sharpened bones. The white suit was immaculate, but the eyes were the same — cold, amused, ancient. The Apocalypticon, a bronze book the size of a tombstone, floated above the altar, its pages flipping themselves in a nonexistent wind.

“Rumanos,” Wingus purred without turning. “You always did have a flair for dramatic entrances. Come to watch the end?”

I stepped into the light, revolver steady. “I came to finish what I started in 20--. You are supposed to be rotting in the Nether.”

Wingus laughed, and the laughter cracked the stained-glass saints overhead. “Rotting? I was learning. The Nether is an excellent library. While you played detective, I studied the final page of existence.”

He snapped his fingers. The Apocalypticon flared. The building shook. Outside, thunder rolled like artillery.

I fired twice. The sigil-bullets struck an invisible shield and burst into green fire. Wingus flicked a wrist; a wave of force slammed me backward into a pillar.

“You see?” Don Wingus continued, circling the altar. “The alignment is complete. Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. I merely open the book. Humanity ends not with fire or flood, but with revelation. Every secret exposed. Every sin made visible. They will tear each other apart long before the stars fall.”

I pushed myself up, coughing. “You always were a showman, Wingus. But you forgot one thing.”

I reached into my jacket and pulled out a small, battered book — my own copy of the Douay-Rheims Bible, the one Father Hal Barkley had given me the day he died. Inside the cover, a single Enochian glyph glowed white-hot.

“I never throw anything away.”

I hurled the book. It struck the Apocalypticon mid-air. The two tomes collided with a sound like the universe clearing its throat. White fire exploded outward. Cultists screamed and fled as their robes ignited. The cathedral’s foundations groaned.

Wingus shrieked in rage, lunging for the artifact. I met him halfway. We crashed together, fists and sorcery. Wingus’s claws raked my cheek; I drove an elbow into the Magister’s throat. For a moment we were just two men, hating each other across so many wasted years.

Then the Apocalypticon slammed shut. The red light died. The tremors stopped.

Wingus staggered back, white suit scorched, face suddenly old. “This… is not over, Rumanos. I am the end. I always return.”

“Not today,” I said, and pulled the trigger. The final sigil-bullet took Magister Don Wingus square in the chest. He folded like a paper doll and vanished in a swirl of black ash that smelled of ozone and regret.

Silence fell. The cathedral was only a cathedral again — dusty, broken, ordinary.

I found my way outside. The rain had stopped. Stars, real stars, shone above the city for the first time in weeks. Sirens wailed in the distance, but they were the ordinary kind.

I spoke to the empty night. “Next time, Wingus… bring better tricks.”

Emily Vale was waiting on the office steps when I returned at 4:18 a.m. She handed me a cup of coffee. It was black and strong, the way I like it.

“Your brother is alive,” I said. “They all are. Just… confused. Tell them the world ended. Then tell them it changed its mind.”

She hugged me fiercely. I let her.

Later, alone at mt desk, I opened the bottom drawer and stared at the empty space where the Douay Bible had been. A new file already waited on the blotter: reports of crimson lightning over the Inner Harbor and a tall man in a scorched white suit boarding the last train to Washington.

I closed the drawer.

“Apocalyptic,” I muttered, and smiled without humor. “Chapter One.”

The rain began again, softer this time, like the universe exhaling after holding its breath too long. In the distance, church bells tolled — not for the end of the world, but for the stubborn, stupid persistence of morning.

***** DANIEL RUMANOS MYSTERIES *****

BALLROOM BLITZ

A DANIEL RUMANOS MYSTERY

The following account, concerning as it does the sickening neo-Nazi now known to eternal damnation as Meredith Brown, includes imagery that may be disturbing to some viewers. Your discretion is advised. ...

My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears as magic to lesser beings. Assisted by the beautiful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am — The Daemon-Star!!! ...

It was a glittering night at the Grand Imperial Ballroom in midtown Manhattan. Crystal chandeliers dripped light like frozen stars over the polished oak floor. The annual Unity Gala drew the city’s elite — politicians, philanthropists, artists, and a smattering of old money who still believed in polite society. Millie and I were there on KOSMIKOS business. A tip from our orbital monitors had flagged possible alien-tech interference at the event. Nothing overt yet, but the readings were off: a faint tachyon echo suggesting preternatural disruption.

Millie looked radiant in a sleek violet gown that matched her enchanting eyes, her chestnut hair swept up in a way that made half the room forget their dates. I wore my usual black tuxedo with the opera cape draped dramatically over one shoulder and my panama hat tucked under my arm. We moved through the crowd like we belonged — which, in a cosmic sense, we did.

Then I saw her.

Meredith Brown.

She lurked near the champagne fountain like a toad in a tuxedo dress. Easily three hundred pounds of sagging, sweat-slick flesh stuffed into cheap black satin that strained at every seam. Her skin was pale and greasy, dotted with angry red pimples and a constellation of poorly inked swastikas peeking from the neckline and sleeves. Stringy brown hair hung in limp clumps around a face that looked like it had lost a fight with a meat grinder — crooked nose, bulging eyes, and a permanent sneer that exposed yellowed teeth. She reeked of body odor, cheap cigarettes, and something worse: the sour, unwashed tang of pure ideological rot. Every few minutes she scratched at her armpit and muttered under her breath, her voice a phlegmy rasp.

“Filth,” she hissed as a Black couple danced past. “Race traitors. This whole place needs to be cleansed.”

I tuned my Algolite senses. No immediate energy signature from her, but her cheap clutch purse hummed with something metallic — low-grade, but wrong. Human-made, yet augmented. A crude explosive laced with a neural disruptor. Neo-Nazi trash playing with fire she did not understand.

“Daniel,” Millie whispered, squeezing my arm. “That woman’s giving off vibes like a week-old corpse.”

“Stay close, love,” I replied. “She is our target tonight.”

We drifted nearer. Meredith Brown noticed us and her piggy eyes narrowed with hatred.

“You,” she spat, loud enough for nearby guests to flinch. “Rumanos. I know who you are, you alien freak. And your little whore.” She jabbed a sausage finger at Millie. “Mixed blood. Degenerate. The Master Race will rise tonight, and none of you mud-people or space-jew enablers will stop it.”

A few guests gasped. Security started moving in, but I waved them off with a subtle flicker of my ring — the Daemon-Star sigil glowing just enough to suggest authority.

“Madam,” I said calmly, “your ideology is as outdated as it is repulsive. Surrender the device in your bag and we will let the authorities handle your bigotry. Or we can do this the fun way.”

She laughed — a wet, choking sound like a drain unclogging — and hurled the clutch across the dance floor. It skittered under the feet of the orchestra and exploded in a silent pulse. The neural disruptor activated. Dancers clutched their heads, eyes glazing over as waves of engineered rage flooded the room. Fists flew. Screams erupted. The ballroom blitz had begun.

Meredith waddled toward the stage, pulling a hidden pistol from her cleavage.

“Sieg Heil!” she bellowed, spittle flying. “White power! Burn it all!”

I moved like lightning. My Algolite physiology let me cross the floor in a blur. I snatched the pistol from her sweaty grip before she could fire. She swung a meaty fist; I sidestepped and tapped her forehead with the Daemon-Star ring. A burst of concentrated cosmic energy — harmless to humans but enough to scramble her primitive nervous system — dropped her like a sack of rancid potatoes.

Millie was already at the clutch, her delicate fingers disarming the remaining trigger with a hairpin and a touch of the portable stabilizer I had slipped her earlier. The neural field collapsed. Dancers blinked, confused, as the artificial hatred evaporated.

Meredith Brown lay wheezing on the floor, her dress riding up to reveal more hateful tattoos and rolls of pale, dimpled flesh.

“You… you can’t stop us,” she gasped, voice thick with mucus. “The Reich… the Fourth Reich… will rise. We have… friends in high places…”

I knelt beside her, my expression one of pure contempt. “Your ‘friends’ are as pathetic as you are, Meredith. Neo-Nazis always are — clinging to dead empires and dead ideas while the universe moves on. Earth is under my protection. Try this again and next time I will not be so gentle.”

NYPD swarmed in moments later, cuffing her and hauling her bulk away. She screamed obscenities the entire time, calling everyone “race traitors” and “Zionist puppets” until the doors closed behind her.

The gala resumed after a brief, awkward pause. Millie and I danced once under the restored lights, her head on my shoulder.

“Another disgusting chapter closed,” she murmured.

“Indeed, my dear,” I replied. “But the galaxy is full of them. Human or otherwise.”

The planet Earth was safe once more — thanks to the Daemon-Star and his wonderful companion.

***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN

WHERE GOOD GIRLS GO TO DIE

In the fetid darkness of a concealed basement beneath an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of Atlantic City, the air reeked of incense, blood, and something far worse -- the cloying sweetness of corrupted innocence. Candles of black wax flickered around a crude altar draped in crimson velvet, their flames casting long shadows that danced like imps across the walls scrawled with inverted pentagrams and crude sigils of Baphomet. Strapped to the altar, gagged and wide-eyed with terror, was teenage Emily Hargrove -- a “good girl” in every sense of the word. Straight-A student at the local Christian academy, volunteer at the soup kitchen, choir singer whose pure soprano had once filled the Sunday services with light. Her white sundress was torn at the shoulder, her sun-kissed blonde hair matted with sweat.

The killer -- a tall, gaunt man in flowing black robes embroidered with silver goats’ heads — circled her slowly, a ceremonial dagger glinting in his hand. His face was hidden behind a goat-skull mask, but his voice was smooth, cultured, almost fatherly. “The Master demands purity, Emily. Your goodness will fuel His rise. First, we break it… then we take it.”

He set the dagger aside and began the ritual chant in bastardized Latin mixed with Enochian gibberish, his hands roaming over her trembling form in a mockery of blessing. The girl’s muffled screams echoed as he violated her there on the altar -- a deliberate desecration to taint her soul before the kill. Blood welled from shallow cuts along her thighs as he worked, symbols of the Left-Hand Path.

“Satan… Lord of the Fallen… accept this offering of the pure!” he intoned, reaching for the dagger once more. The final thrust was swift, brutal. Emily’s eyes glazed over in death as her heart’s blood sprayed across the altar. The killer stepped back, panting, as a low rumble shook the room — the first stirrings of the demon he sought to summon. ...

My name is Doctor Daniel Rumanos. I carry within my blood the vastly superior genes of the mysterious Watchers of Algol, the most intellectually advanced race in all of the known galaxies, whose technology is so sophisticated it appears as magic to lesser beings.

Whilst most Algolites live in elitist seclusion from the rest of the Universe, I am an operative for an organisation known as the KOSMIKOS. Assisted by the beautiful Miss Millie Drake, I protect Earth from all manner of menace. I am — The Daemon-Star!!! ...

Three such “good girls” had vanished in the past month, their mutilated bodies turning up in public parks with satanic markings carved into their flesh. The police were calling it the work of a cult, but I knew better. This was no mere human psychopath. The psychic residue I detected at the crime scenes screamed of genuine infernal invocation -- a serial killer using ritual rape and murder to bargain with the Pit itself for power. The latest victim, Emily Hargrove, had been reported missing only hours earlier. Time was short.

We were in our secret headquarters, located as it is in the golden trapezoidal roof of the Gateway Hotel in Atlantic City, and which contains numerous alien artefacts from our career as protectors of planet Earth. I was clad in my usual finery, including a frilled poet shirt, purple velvet suit, and jungle boots. My panama hat and opera cape hung from a nearby hallstand.

My companion, Miss Millie Drake, is an exceptionally beautiful young lady -- petite and perfect with luxurious chestnut hair, enchanting violet eyes, and sun-kissed skin. The royal blue dress she wore only served to highlight the shape of her wonderful adolescent figure.

Also with us was Kit-10 -- our mobile personal computer that resembles nothing more or less than a small mechanical cat.

“Daniel, this is horrible,” said Millie, her voice trembling as she reviewed the police reports on the holographic display. “These girls… they were all so innocent. Church girls, straight-laced, no enemies. Why target them specifically?”

“Precisely because of their innocence, my dear Mills,” I replied, twiddling my frills. “In classical Satanism — the real kind, not the theatrical nonsense peddled by poseurs -- purity is the ultimate currency. The killer is draining their life essence through desecration and sacrifice to open a gateway. If he completes the septenary rite -- seven victims -- he will summon something ancient and ravenous. Something that makes the average demon look like a Sunday-school prank.”

“Choronzon again?” asked Millie, referencing a previous case.

“Worse. This feels like Asmodeus or one of the Goetic princes. We must act now. Kit-10, trace the occult signatures from the latest crime scene.”

The robotic feline meowed affirmatively and projected a map. A glowing red pin appeared over the old industrial district. “Target acquired, s--. Residual infernal energy matches known black-mass hotspots.”

We sped there in Lizzie, our specially-modified canary-yellow Edwardian roadster. Millie clutched her seat as I drove, her violet eyes fierce with determination. “I won’t let another girl die like that, Daniel. Not while we can stop it.”

The warehouse loomed like a tomb. We slipped inside through a shattered loading dock, following the stench of blood and sulfur. Chants echoed from below. We descended a rusted stair into the ritual chamber just as the killer raised his dagger over a second bound girl — another “good girl,” this one a shy brunette named Sara from the same academy.

“Hold, fiend!” I thundered, my voice amplified by Algolite vocal modulators. The killer spun, mask slipping to reveal the face of Brother Elias Carrick — a disgraced former youth pastor turned underground occult celebrity. His eyes burned with madness and genuine possession.

“Rumanos!” he spat. “The Daemon-Star himself. You’re too late. The blood of the pure has already awakened Him!”

The room shook. A rift tore open in the air — writhing tentacles of shadow and flame coalescing into a hulking form with goat horns and a maw of jagged teeth. Asmodeus, Prince of Lust and Revenge, manifested in partial glory. The demon’s psychic assault slammed into us, flooding the chamber with visions of depravity.

Millie screamed but stood her ground, holding a Kosmikos protective amulet I had given her.

I channeled the power of my Watcher heritage, my eyes glowing with stellar fire. “By the Algolite Seal and the authority of the Kosmikos, I banish thee!”

The Daemon-Star energy erupted from my hands in a blazing purple torrent, striking the demon’s core. Carrick lunged at me with the dagger, but Millie tackled him, her small frame surprisingly strong. “You won’t touch him, you monster!”

The killer’s mask fell away completely. “The girls… they begged for it in the end. Their goodness fed the Dark One. Where good girls go to die — that’s my temple!”

I wrestled the dagger from him as the demon roared, its form destabilizing. One final blast from my hands — pure cosmic force disguised as sorcery — tore the rift asunder. Asmodeus howled and imploded back into the Abyss, taking Carrick’s soul with it in a vortex of black fire. The man aged a century in seconds, crumbling to dust mid-scream.

Sara was freed, sobbing but alive. The police would find the lair and the evidence, but the true horror would remain classified. Another satanic serial killer erased from the Earth.

As we drove away under the Atlantic City lights, Millie leaned against my shoulder. “We saved her, Daniel. But how many more ‘good girls’ are out there, waiting for monsters like him?”

“Too many, love,” I said softly. “But as long as the Kosmikos stands, so do we.”

***** DANIEL RUMANOS AND MILLIE DRAKE SHALL RETURN