"So thats what I found."

Ingrid punctuated her words by drawing on one of her long, ghastly, cigarettes. The stench of them warped around her as she exhaled, puffing a cloud of smoke into the cool air between them. Silence followed, hungry, in the dim alley behind the club. Music throbbed from within like a faint rumble of distant thunder. To one side, the dark alley opened, letting in the light polluted night air of the street.

The Darkling wore he peaked cap low and shadows hid her eyes. Her lips, thick with a dark colour she was trying out, quirked into a mask of disappointment and calm neutrality.

"So. To sum it all up... I think Mark had found his first love. The... ah... as you say, new experience must have been overpowering for him and I guess he lost his sense of proportion. The woman was already into this mystical stuff and he naturally followed. As you say, he was quite a loner. He would have been unfamiliar to the sense of belonging that a group can provide - and in this one, he shared not only a new love but probably got a sense of fulfilment. You say he had a gift for putting things together logically, right. Normally thats a great skill to have... But not when mixing with conspiracy theories..."

The Darkling waited while Sarah, Marks sister, made her protests. Ingrid would agree with them under normal conditions but these were not normal conditions.

"I'm not saying Mark is stupid. I'm saying that in his mind, he had valid reasons for accepting what he was being fed. His new peers. Yes, peers. His new peers surrounded him with information that supported their world view. Thats how he was drawn in. No. I'm not saying he was stupid. Just saying that the evidence I have suggests he was drawn in."

She drew on her cigarette again. It was better than raising her voice and loosing her cool. Sarah was a tough customer and this was always going to be a hard sell.

"I don't think anyone in the group was expecting what happened. Mark died while trying to put into practice what the little clique preached - and to be fair, it might have worked in the past. This time it didn't. And I'm sorry to say, it was your Mark who paid the price."

Now Ingrid paused and let the weight of it drop on Sarah.

"The group has since broke up. Guilt and fear. I wasn't able to put all the pieces of the puzzle together in time... And if someone hadn't clumsily gone after them herself, they would not have been tipped off! And what happened... might not have gone down quite the way it did. We might have had someone to stand tall for this fucking tragedy."

Oh yes. Ingrid used that against Sarah. The strong willed sister had reacted as expected when Ingrid had let that little morsel slip earlier. Of course, Mark's associates had been on the run by then, rendered weak and helpless by lack of sleep as the nightmare hunted them. Sarah's actions had shattered whatever cohesion the members of the secretive club had left.

And now the nightmare or whatever it was could feed in peace. The mortals were totally at its mercy now with their social support shattered. But at least the Darkling has closed the circle: Funderland was out of the picture and the evidence that directly linked to the Hedge cleared away.

Job well done. So why was Ingrid disgusted with the lies she had been forced to spin.

This was an epilogue for the Sweet Dreams plot. Its been sitting at the back of my mind for a while.