The night passed quietly and without incident. Zoe was allowed to sleep in next morning because of her recent trauma. When she did awake, she was annoyed to see the bedside clock registering that it was ten o’clock.
“Why didn’t you wake me earlier?” she demanded of her mother when she finally got down for breakfast. “Half the day has gone and I’ve got things to do.”
“What things?” asked Mrs Marshall.
“Oh just things,” said Zoe, being deliberately vague as she didn’t want her mother to know where she was going. “You know… stuff for college and the like.”
“Well, you be careful and don’t overdo it,” her mum asserted. “And I didn’t wake you because I thought you needed to sleep after what you’ve been through.”
“Mum,” cried Zoe, “I’ve been sleeping and lying in hospital for nearly two weeks. The last thing I need now is to stay in bed.”
“Are you going to college then?” asked Mrs Marshall, ignoring her daughter’s rant. “I don’t think you sh… ”
She was interrupted mid-sentence by Zoe, her exasperation showing clearly in her voice, “Look Mum, I appreciate what you’re trying to do for me but I’m not sick… and I don’t need this. So back off please and start treating me as you do normally.”
“Okay, if that’s what you want,” said her mum, huffily. “I’m off to work then, but you need to look after yourself.” She gave Zoe a kiss on the forehead, picked up her bag and left the house.
Zoe ate her breakfast thinking about what she was going to say to Benson. She decided that she had to be very careful because if he had played ‘Being There’, he wouldn’t be the Benson she had known from the time they spent together in the Soul Snatcher’s spacecraft. The one thing in her favour would be that because she had been only part conscious and unable to speak on the night he’d been in her bedroom and plugged her into the game, he couldn’t possibly know whether she was hypnotised or not, so she could pretend to be so if the need arose.
When Zoe arrived at Cristelee Police Station, she asked the desk clerk if she could see DS Benson.
“It’s DI Benson now, Miss,” said the clerk, before picking up the phone to contact him.
“You got a promotion?” said Zoe, when they were seated in Benson’s office.
“Yes,” replied Benson, “it was after the Soul Snatcher Case. How about you? What are you doing now?”
Zoe told Benson all about her college course and her A level studies. As she talked, she could tell that he was still the same. He hadn’t played ‘Being There’. She was relieved, but it raised a serious question.
“Why did you come to my room and try to force me to play a computer game?” asked Zoe, suddenly.
Benson looked astonished. “Me?” he asked. “I was in your room? I don’t think so. I don’t even know where you live and if I did, why would I want to visit you? And why would I want to force you to play a computer game? I don’t even like computer games.”
Zoe relayed the events of that night to Benson. He listened intently. She told him too about ‘Being There’, what it had done to her family and what she’d seen in other people. She told him about Jake’s injuries that looked like bullet holes and she told him about the dates going backwards and the repeated news items and newspaper stories. Finally, she also told him about her visit to Mr Araz.
When she had finished, Benson sucked in his cheeks and then let out a low whistle. “That’s a lot of stuff to get my head around,” he said. “I have to say I have noticed a few strange things happening recently. Both of my sons have played that game and I can see what you mean – their behaviour has changed since they played it. They’ve both become calm and placid, not like them at all – although I have to say, I do prefer it to what they’re normally like.”
Benson grinned as he said the last bit, but his thoughts were focused on what Zoe had said. There were a lot of things there that could be put down to coincidence, but he remembered his old boss Cedric Chalk and his favourite saying ‘I don’t believe in coincidences Benson’, and he wondered if Cedric maybe had a point.
“Have you noticed the weather lately?” asked Benson.
Zoe frowned. “What’s the weather got to do with it?” she responded.
“Have you seen any rain lately?” asked Benson, ignoring Zoe’s question.
Zoe shook her head.
“No,” Benson continued, “because there hasn’t been any. It never rains any more. Even when the skies are really dark, all we ever get is cloud… or weak sunshine, despite the sun being quite near to its hottest at this time of year. There’s no wind either. I’ve got a weather vane on my roof and it hasn’t moved in weeks. So, what’s going on?”
Benson looked at Zoe in a quizzical manner as he stopped speaking. Then he began again. “Zoe Marshall, can I trust you?” he asked.
Zoe nodded. “Of course you can,” she answered. “Look what we went through together in that alien craft. Besides, I want to find out what’s happening and put a stop to it just as much as you do.”
Benson told Zoe that he was working with some astrophysicists from the local university, led by Professor Tompkins. “He’s a leading astrophysicist and space scientist,” Benson explained, “and he’s been concerned about certain activities that began about three years back. He says that at first there were only minute traces of extraterrestrial influences on our weather, and in other aspects of life elsewhere locally. But recently, the activity levels have risen sharply and significantly, and now Cristelee appears to be the centre of something big that is interfering with weather patterns, television, radio and Wi-Fi signals. Whatever it is, it is affecting people’s behaviour too. Not only that, but this phenomenon appears to only be occurring here. The rest of the country is unaffected.”
“What do you think it is?” asked Zoe.
“I don’t know,” replied Benson, “but I’d like to check out your Mr Araz. However, I can’t access the police computer because of the disruption to Wi-Fi – although, strangely, the phones are still working even though you can’t make calls to places outside Cristelee.”
“We’ve got cable, that’s not affected,” said Zoe. “I should know as you… well, the person who looked like you, used my computer for that game.”
“That’s just a game,” said Benson. “It might not mean that your computer is picking up outside signals.”
“We could go and see,” said Zoe, excitedly. “There’s no one in my house at the moment. Come on, let’s go.”
She stood up. Benson followed and soon they were in Zoe’s bedroom trying out the computer. It seemed strange to Zoe that less than two weeks back she’d witnessed Benson dragging her across this same floor and forcing her onto the computer chair, and now here he was in her room again. She shook her head vigorously to clear the bad memories and watched as his fingers sped across the keyboard.
“We’re in luck,” he said. “I’ve got into the police records.” When he’d finished, he turned to Zoe. “That’s odd,” he said.
“What’s odd?” asked Zoe, feeling a combination of nervousness and excitement.
“According to our records, Mr Araz didn’t exist until three years back. Then his name suddenly appeared as a computer technician, or something similar, at McConnell’s Electronic Games Empire. He bought the company just over a year ago and changed its name to the Lazar Virtual Reality Computer Games Company.”
“Three years ago!” Zoe exclaimed. “That’s the time when the Soul Snatcher was here.”
“But we saw his spaceship destroyed with him inside it,” said Benson, “so it can’t be him.”
“What if he escaped?” asked Zoe.
“How?” asked Benson. “He couldn’t have… we were watching all of the time as the ship sank in on itself. If he’d escaped, we would have seen him.”
Zoe looked disappointed. She sighed, but then her face brightened. “Not necessarily,” she squealed, excitedly.
“What do you mean?” asked Benson.
“He said he was a shape-shifter,” said Zoe, “and that means he could become anything he likes. It doesn’t have to be a human shape. He could be an animal, a bird, an insect… anything. What if he did something like that and got away?”
Benson thought about it for a moment. His mind drifted back to the demonstration the Soul Snatcher had given him when they were in the spaceship. He’d been a lion, a boy… and Benson!
“He was me!” he gasped.
“Who was you?” asked Zoe, completely lost at Benson’s statement.
“The Soul Snatcher… in his spacecraft… he changed into different things to show me he could do it… and one of them was me!” Benson yelled excitedly, thumping his right fist into the palm of his left hand.
Zoe thought for a while, then blurted out, “That means it could have been him in my bedroom… disguised as you… and he could have been the spider too.”
“But why?” asked Benson. “What is he up to? Assuming it is him – though the jury is still out on that as far as I’m concerned, as I don’t think he could have got out of his ship in time… not with so many policemen watching.”
“Wait,” said Zoe, animatedly. “What did he tell us his name was? Kizzer… Kizal… Kazal… Kazzaar… that’s it, Kazzaar.”
She grabbed a piece of paper and a pen from off her desk and began to scribble furiously. She wrote down the letters K.A.Z.Z.A.A.R
“Look,” she cried out. “It’s an anagram. Zak Araz is an anagram of Kazzaar. Now, what did he say his planet was called?” Zoe thought for a moment and then blurted out, “Zaarl, that’s it.”
She wrote the letters down again, this time Z.A.A.R.L, and then shoved the paper almost under Benson’s nose.
“Look!” Zoe could scarcely contain her excitement now. “You can make Lazar out of those letters. Zak Araz of the Lazar Games Company is Kazzaar from the planet Zaarl, aka The Soul Snatcher!” she shouted, triumphantly.
“That does it for me,” said Benson, now convinced, and impressed, by Zoe’s detective work, “but we need to find out what he’s up to, and we don’t want him to know that we’ve recognised him.”
Zoe showed Benson the ‘Being There’ game that had been left in her room on the night she’d been visited by whoever.
“Can I take this?” asked Benson.
Zoe nodded slowly. Her face registered concern. “You won’t play it though, will you?” she asked, her voice filled with anxiety. “I couldn’t bear it if you became like the rest of them… and, anyway, how would I know who else to trust if you did?”
Benson laughed. “No Zoe, I won’t play it. I want to run some tests on it and then I’ll give it to Professor Tompkins to see what he makes of it. He may be able to find out exactly what it is within the game that creates the hypnotic effect you’ve talked about.”