Karloff

Percy Briers ignored the comatose body of his friend and employee, Elliot Parker, as he had more pressing things on his mind. The twelve volume collection of Galland's Les Mille et une nuits, contes arabes traduits en français, to be exact - and such splendid copies they were! The binding in excellent condition, the pages not even slightly foxed, and the illustrations! Beautiful beyond compare. He gathered them up in his arms, and made for the door.

Which was where James Fidler found him, stretched headlong, the books still clasped in his arms.

Meanwhile Elliot was having problems of his own. Who were all these strange foreign folk? Why were they speaking French? Was he somehow lost in the Brighton Pavillion, that everything looked so Arab-ish? Finding no answers to his dilemma, and having no French, he made his way to the Bazaar. There, in the crowd, he spotted another two English people, a man and a woman, apparently trying to get away from a very sinister looking gentleman and not making a good job of it. 'This is a job for British steel', thought Elliot, and he promptly purchased a Damascene dagger from a vendor, offering some of the gold coins he found fortituously in his wallet.

James dragged his unconscious employer down the stairs, convinced that a gas escape was suffocating them all. He managed through heroic effort to get them as far as the kitchen, and had his hand on the door knob when everything went off.

Percy was most perplexed. This didn't look like Brighton at all. Fortunately having a bit of French at his disposal he was able to determine his true location - Baghdad! At least, that was what the vendor said. Moreover he still had the books, or at least he thought he did; he could no longer see them, but could feel their weight in his arms. He wandered aimlessly, and found himself standing outside a very odd looking place. It wasn't at all like the other buildings. More modern, it looked like, and was that concrete?

James, terrified half out of his wits and utterly lost, ran whooping through the crowded alleyways of this strange city, and as luck would have it ran headlong into Percy Briers, scattering invisible books everywhere.

Elliot managed to rescue the couple - Mr Pinks, and Ethel, whose last name probably wasn't Pinks. Dressed in night attire (Ethel's was very frilly), they claimed to have gone to bed only moments before, though Ethel seemed to think it had been longer than that, somehow. Elliot's attention was drawn to another sinister figure, a man impossibly tall and improbably thin, wrapped from head to foot in flowing yellow robes. This newcomer seemed to be interested in them. Elliot thought it prudent not to dilly-dally, and led his new charges out of the bazaar.

'Mister Briers, I don't know where you think we are,' said James, 'But I bet you anything you like they don't all speak French in Baghdad. They speak foreign. And what is this strange building here? Is that writing above the door? I can't read it.'

'Neither can I,' replied Percy. 'Here, hold these; they're valuable. Now, let's have a look in here, shall we?'

They went inside, and found themselves in a chamber that seemed to stretch on forever. Something that shimmered like silk was being woven on looms as large as tree trunks, the fragile glimmering cloth falling down from the ceiling like waterfalls. At the bottom of each silken explosion lay a human figure, peacefully asleep. One of them was their erstwhile bank manager, Mr Ffolkes-Featherby, and he didn't seem to be enjoying himself at all. His belly was fearfully distended, as though stretched beyond bursting, and yet more and more bolts of cloth were being forced down his throat.

'Mister Briers,' James quavered, 'What are those things a-weaving of that cloth? They look like crabs, but that's too many legs, surely. And since when have crabs been that size?'

By good fortune Elliot found himself outside that self-same odd building, with the impossibly tall figure in close pursuit. He too noticed the writing above the lintel, and having been a bit of a dabbler (reading about the Golden Dawn, and suchlike), he recognized some of the Enochian symbols and was able to work out what they meant.

'The Dream Factory,' he read aloud. 'Rum sounding name.'

However the thin man was close on their heels, and he heard what sounded like James and Percy inside the Factory, so in he stepped, and he shut the doors behind him.

'Open up!' screamed James. 'The crab-thing's almost on us!'

'You don't want to go out there,' Elliot told him. 'There's worse than crabs out that door.' Though, as Elliot said it, he did notice that there were rather a lot of the crab-like things.

Meanwhile Percy had caught their bank manager by the heels and was dragging him off, but too slowly. The weaver was descending on its silken trail, and was close enough to reach out to him with one thin leg-or-feeler. He felt it tear the back of his jacket.

In desperation, he began pulling silk out of Mr Ffolkes-Featherby by the handful, and that seemed to do him some good. James threw invisible books at the thing, which did it no apparent harm but did distract it. Elliot, seeing his chance, leapt in with his new-bought dagger, and cut the silk away. At that same moment the weaver scored him across the face, tearing off a slice of flesh the size of half a pound note.

Their surroundings faded away, and they found themselves standing in the kitchen of the Oriental Bed and Breakfast, Brighton.

Percy Briers was aghast. Twelve volumes! In near-perfect condition! Now there were only six.

'Mister Briers,' said Elliot, as he staunched his bleeding wound, 'I want a raise.'