So here we are at the end. Hope you've enjoyed the ride. Attached to this chapter are the notes that I wrote for this story explaining references to each fandom involved, for those who want to know more, I'd rather do them as a different chapter, but it's against the rules, so they're at the end.

I still don't own Starsky, Hutch, Kolchak, anything from Lovecraft, or the Special Guest Cameo Crossover character in this chapter (and if you can't guess who he is, the notes will explain.)

Thanks to all who took the time to read and review.

Epilogue- Nacht und Nebel

Several days had passed. Both Starsky and Hutch had spent time in the hospital, Hutch for the results of the drugging and the injuries he had received in the abduction, and Starsky for the after-effects of smoke inhalation on his damaged lungs.

May first had come and gone, and the world hadn't ended. Not that Steve had really thought that it would, now that he'd had time to think about it. Just like Hutch had said, it was probably some cult, inbreeding and getting weird over generations.

Today was both Starsky and Hutch's first day back at work after getting out of the hospital, and Hutch and Steve had spent the morning out on the streets. Now they were back in the office to do some paperwork.

No sooner had they entered the room, however, than Captain Dobey stuck his head out from his office. "Hutch! Barlow! In my office, now." He didn't look happy.

Starsky was already there, as was, oddly enough, Kolchak. Steve had seen Kolchak in the police station the day before while the reporter was arranging to get a Bay City police press pass, and knew he'd been spending his time writing up the story. Both he and Starsky looked angry.

There was an additional man in the room as well, a stranger. He had dark hair, craggy, somewhat sunken features, and a supercilious smirk. He was sitting at Dobey's desk with an ash tray. There was a package of Morley cigarettes on the desk beside him which he had apparently been chain smoking, to judge by the ash tray filled with butts. His fingertips were stained yellow from nicotine.

"Hutch, Barlow, this is Agent…" he looked at the stranger expectantly. The stranger took a long drag on his cigarette and puffed out smoke, smiled and said nothing. "This gentleman is from the government," Dobey improvised. "He wants to talk to the four of you about what happened the other day."

The stranger stubbed out his cigarette. "No, Captain, I want to remind your men, and Mr. Kolchak too, of course, that nothing happened the other day. Nothing at all." He lit a fresh one. "Just an unfortunate fire at an empty house. Luckily no one was injured beyond two valiant officers who suffered some smoke inhalation, which is what their medical records will show."

"He's taken all the files," Starsky broke in grimly. "There's no record any more of you being kidnapped, Hutch."

"Why?" Hutch asked coldly. "What's the point of that?"

"Oh come now, Detective Hutchinson. I know you and Detective Starsky have encountered times in the past when things that you investigated had to be covered up for the good of your country. The unfortunate case of poor Alex Drew, for instance. Or the events surrounding the murder of Joe Durniak. This is just another of those times."

"What about the public's right to know?" Kolchak broke in. "People should be warned about the danger of the Deep Ones!"

The unnamed stranger shifted his attention to Kolchak. "Mr. Kolchak, you already have a reputation for making bizarre claims. Really, who in their right mind believes that the government is covering up killer robots, cave-dwelling troglodytes, or," his voice slipped into sarcastic mockery, "UFOs?" He smirked as he took another long puff on his Morley. "Even if we allowed you to publish anything about this, no one would believe it."

"He, he impounded my camera," Kolchak announced to the room in general. "And my recorded notes!"

Just then there was a knock on the office door. "Come in," Dobey called.

A young man in dirtied work clothes carrying a wrapped object came in. Ignoring Dobey he went up to the stranger and gave it to him. "Here you are sir. We just found it. They told me you wanted it immediately and I should bring it right over. We're still looking for the other thing."

"Thank you," the stranger said politely. The worker left, and the stranger pulled the wrapping off the object. Kolchak breathed out heavily.

It took Steve a moment to recognize it, but then he realized that it was the bizarrely carved stone that Kolchak had called "the summoning stone".

"That's what this is about, isn't it?" Kolchak demanded. "You, whoever you people are, you wanted that thing. You want to call the Deep Ones yourselves!"

"Mr. Kolchak, please. What could the US Government possibly want with something like that?" The stranger smiled and blew smoke.

"Anything! Power, gold, who knows?" Kolchak gestured with his hands. "And the other thing they're still looking for, that would be the statue of Cthulhu that you want. God only knows what you can do with that!"

"What about the drug case?" Hutch interrupted.

"That will be listed as closed. That's all anyone needs to know. All three of you will be credited with it."

"I figured that was the least I could do," Dobey added gruffly.

"Yes, but…" Kolchak started.

"That's enough now. Everybody out!" Dobey ordered. "You too," he added to the stranger.

"As long as you all remember, gentlemen, nothing untoward happened over the last few days."

"Yeah, yeah we know, we know," Hutch said coldly.

"Your friend, Miss Polanski, has been contacted and told not to talk about it, either," the stranger added.

"Come on, Kolchak," Starsky said, leading the reporter out. "You too, Barlow. Hutch and me know by now, we never win this stuff."

"Yeah, it's happened to me before," Kolchak said disgustedly. He glowered at the stranger, who smiled back benignly. Steve decided it was best to say nothing at all.

The four men filed out of Dobey's office. The stranger stayed seated.

"Go on!" Dobey said. "You too! I want to air out my office."

"Good day, then, Captain." The stranger smiled again, nodded cordially, and left, carefully cradling the wrapped summoning stone.

Wordlessly they watched him go. Dobey shut his door, but they could hear the sound of windows opening.

"So that's it," Kolchak growled. "Another story killed. The whole thing vanishes into nothing." He sighed heavily.

They sat in silence for a few moments. Finally Starsky roused himself. "OK, guys. Let's go get something to eat. The Pits. On me. I owe both of you for saving me and Hutch."

Steve glanced at Hutch, who nodded agreement. "You did a good job, Barlow. Thanks," he said. "And you too, Kolchak," he added grudgingly.

"Yeah, OK," Kolchak said. "First time the police have ever thanked me for anything," he added, as the four of them headed out to lunch.

Obsessively complete and chatty author's notes

General notes:

Things you should know about Starsky and Hutch before reading this story: This takes place about a year after the ending of the series. I assume everyone knows S&H were police detectives. In the last episode of the series, Starsky is seriously wounded in a murder attempt. His heart stopped for three minutes but he was revived. This story makes mention of a story I wrote concerning those three minutes called The Other Side, but you do not have to read it to understand this one. Starsky and Hutch have been lovers for somewhat less than a year at the point of this story.

What you need to know about Kolchak before reading this story: Kolchak is a reporter for a news service, based in Chicago. During the series, each week he was confronted by a different paranormal danger that he had to defeat in order to save the world, or at least the city. No one ever believed him. This story takes place about five years after the series but not much has changed, except that things have been suspiciously quiet for awhile...

Things you need to know about the Cthulhu Mythos to read this story: Nothing really, it's pretty much explained internally. I should warn readers that this is my personal variant on the Mythos, and is considerably less bleak than the standard.

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to my husband and my older brother for reading and giving advice, to hooloovoo-too for a helpful suggestion, and cosmicbob for an opinion on Kolchak's car.

The quote at the beginning is two quotes from "The Dunwich Horror" put together. And don't let anyone get away with telling you that the Necronomicon is real. Sorry to disappoint, but Lovecraft made it all up.

***

Specific chapter notes:

Chapter one:

Mary Polanski, aka Madam Yram, is canon, of course. She was only in one brief scene in one episode ("The Hostages") but she racked up a lot of fan love. Opinion is split on if she had real psychic powers or not.

"The time he and Hutch had gone camping at Dobey's cabin": reference to "Satan's Witches", in which Starsky seems a lot more nervous and scared of the woods than I would expect.

The quotes are from my story "The Other Side". The mythological references are real, with a couple of exceptions. I think I made a mistake in identifying Hresvelgr with the eagle on Yggdrasil, I think they were two different eagles. And I don't know specifically which tribes believe that that Thunderbird saved them from the sea monster, and picked the Nootka more or less at random since they're in approximately the right area. Also, most references I ran into identified Papa Legba with St. Lazarus, but one did identify him with St. Michael, so that's the one I went with.

The line about the dream Starsky had in February refers to my story "Starsky Enforces His Law".

Joe Collandra is the psychic in the episode "The Psychic", and is one of the few unquestionably supernatural elements in Starsky and Hutch.

Mary's vision references a lot of Lovecraft that's explained in chapter twelve.

***

Chapter two:

The "books of the dead" in the chapter title refers to both the Egyptian Book f the Dead, and the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as well as the Necronomicon itself. Lovecraft meant for the name to mean "an image of the law of the dead', but it's more accurately "concerning the dead".

Every episode of The Night Stalker started with Kolchak narrating into his little tape recorder, which he continued to do throughout the episode. I've kept that in the chapters told from his point of view.

Tony Vincenzo is Kolchak's boss, and, hard as they both try to pretend otherwise, his friend.

Kolchak's dream is to get back to work in New York City. We don't know why he had to leave or why he can never go back. Why he was kicked out of Los Angeles should be obvious.

Ron Udyke is one of Kolchak's colleagues. I don't think I'm straining canon too far to have him come out of the closet. The series was on the air in 1974 to1975, and you couldn't have an openly gay character, but I think it's fairly obvious they were hinting at it. It's only my interpretation, though, that he had a crush on Kolchak.

Monique Marmelstein was a minor continuing character. She and Kolchak disliked each other (he really did lock her in his trunk once) but she had some of the same qualities as Kolchak himself: doggedness, fearlessness, and surliness. I think that if they'd ever gotten over their initial dislike they'd eventually have found a grudging admiration for each other.

Fans are split on if Bay City is Los Angeles itself, or if it's a separate fictional city. Since I don't know enough about Los Angeles to write it right, and since Kolchak is banned from Los Angeles anyway, I'm going with saying it's a suburb.

The Monk was in one episode ("The Zombie"), as was Maria Hargrove ("Firefall"). I always thought it was a pity neither of them were regular sources for Kolchak. Sadly, his only source that we did see more than once, Gordy the Ghoul, just didn't fit into this story.

Sweetstick Weldon appeared in one episode ("The Zombie"), and was played by Antonio Fargas, which explains his resemblance to Huggy Bear. I couldn't resist making them cousins. We know Huggy has cousins everywhere.

Kathy Marshall is the stewardess that both Starsky and Hutch have gone out with, from the episode "Fatal Charm". She doesn't seem to care if she goes out with either or both.

***

Chapter three

Steve Barlow is mine, as is his fiancée Angelina. Steve is also mentioned in my story "Property Of..."

Bay City allowing gay cops: It's stated in the episode "Death in a Different Place" that the gay rights movement is already pushing to allow gay cops. It's my contention that between the publicity from the death of John Blaine in that episode, and pressure from Peter Whitlaw (who in my version of fanon wins the election), they now do allow them.

The guys started house sitting and pet sitting for Prof. Jacobs in my story "The Right and Proper Season."

The information about bufotenine, its sources, uses, and effects, and tetradotoxin is accurate as far as I can ascertain. It was all obtained through the internet.

Rene Nadasy was a mass murderer who took the role of a vampire in the episode "The Vampire". He wasn't a real vampire, but as noted, he didn't seem quite human either. This is one of the episodes that you could argue had real supernatural elements. Or not.

I'm going with the conventional fan timing of Starsky's shooting for May 15th, 1979, the date the episode "Sweet Revenge" aired.

***

Chapter four:

syzygy: the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies (as the sun, moon, and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse) in a gravitational system (from Mirriamwebster . com)

***

Chapter five:

The title refers to chaos theory. Look up "butterfly effect".

"Starsky and I haven't had such good luck with reporters in the past". In fact they've had problems of one sort or another with them in at least two episodes, "Murder Ward" and "Heroes".

Minnie is Minnie Kaplan, a policewoman in a few episodes, and not to be confused with Huggy's Aunt Minnie, mentioned in chapter thirteen.

***

chapter six:

The queen of cups is the tarot card, of course.

***

chapter seven:

synergy: a mutually advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or elements (as resources or efforts).(from Mirriamwebster . com)

The best mechanic in Bay City is Merle the Earle, of course, from several episodes. That he's almost a member of the family is a reference to my story "A Twice-Told Tale".

***

Chapter eight:

Lou Grant: a darn good series from the 70s and early 80s.

Rakshassa, and swamp monster: Things that Kolchak had to deal with, in the episodes "Horror in the Heights" and "The Spanish Moss Murders".

***

Chapter nine:

Eris is the goddess of discord. She's the one who threw the golden apple that ended up starting the Trojan War.

The other cities Kolchak has been kicked out of are Seattle and Las Vegas.

***

Chapter ten:

The title comes from a line in T. S. Eliot's poem "The Wasteland": "I will show you fear in a handful of dust."

Again Mary's vision references Lovecraftian things that are more fully explained in chapter twelve.

Jameson College is the college from the episode "Class in Crime". I thought it was a pretty creepy place, so I gave it an occult library. "Miskatonic University" of course, is from Lovecraft.

***

chapter eleven:

Time and tide wait for no man.

***

Chapter twelve:

The title comes from the Bob Dylan song "Isis": "We came to a high place of darkness and light. The dividing line ran through the center of town."

Henry Armitage is the hero of "The Dunwich Horror", one of the few Lovecraft stories that actually has a hero and a happy ending. He was the head librarian of Miskatonic University. Yes. Really. A librarian. And he saved the world.

Dansforth was one of the characters in "The Mountains of Madness". Miss Dansforth is either his daughter or grand-daughter. Or niece. Unlike the librarian I wrote about in another story ("A Day in the Life, 1993"), she is not me.

This is the info-dump chapter. It's also the chapter that's written in as close to a pastiche of Lovecraft's style as I dared to come. However, I should state again that my interpretation of Lovecraft's creations is not standard. I had to make it fit with the theology that I'd already created in "The Other Side." It's a lot more cheerful than the real thing, which is notoriously bleak. All of the creatures, deities, books, and cult locations that are mentioned up to the time Kolchak stops reading are from either Lovecraft or one of his followers, with the exception of Nazis, which is my addition, just to show that the cultists are even worse than them. And that even Aryans can fall prey to the Old Ones allure. (Let's face it. Lovecraft and some of his early followers do occasionally veer into being racist.)

The Kwakiutl octopus mask is a real object. It resides in the American Museum of Natural History, in the hall of Indians of the Pacific Northwest.

"Pugwis" is or are a real part of Kwakiutl myth, but I have been unable to determine if there's a race of them or only one. The description is something like the Monster from the Black Lagoon, which I figured was close enough to a Deep One to fit in.

The legend referenced is a real one, and indeed scientists now say that it records memories of an earthquake that caused a tidal wave.

Professor Wilmarth was the narrator of Lovecraft's story "The Fungi from Yuggoth", and was just a college professor. But according to my husband, some later writers have expanded his role into more of a champion of Light against the evil Old Ones. I haven't read any of those, but it seemed to fit here.

***

Chapter thirteen

The title comes from the Lord of the Rings, when Tom Bombadil tells the hobbits that "Nothing enters but moonlight and starlight and the wind from the hilltop."

The information that Huggy has about bufotenine and tetradotoxin being used in zombie potions comes from "The Rainbow and the Serpent", which I haven't read. I had come up with mixing those two drugs on my own, and was delighted to discover the voodoo connection and how well it fit with what I'd already planned for the story.

The story Huggy refers to is the two part episode "Starsky and Hutch on Playboy Island", more of which is explained in the next chapter. It's another of the episodes with arguably real supernatural elements, as it's difficult to see how Papa Theodore had such powers otherwise. You could claim it was all drugs and hypnosis, but…

Kolchak knows all about zombies because of the episode "The Zombie", which is also explained in the next chapter.

***

Chapter fourteen:

The rainbow serpent in the title has strong connections to Voodoo, as the snake-god Damballa.

John Raymond Legrasse comes from "The Call of Cthulhu".

Marie Edmonds is from the Kolchak episode "The Zombie". The story she tells of "The Haitian Blood Drinker" is the story of "Starsky and Hutch on Playboy Island".

The Elder Sign as a powerful repellant for evil is only very slightly developed in Lovecraft, and taken up much more by some of his followers.

***

Chapter fifteen:

The title comes from Psalm 91: "The pestilence that walks in darkness".

"the Sea-mother" The Deep Ones, if not matriarchal, at the very least seem to have a deep respect for their female ancestors.

***

Chapter sixteen:

"Beltane, also called Walpurgisnacht" A major festival for followers of the Old Ones, at least in "The Dunwich Horror."

***

Chapter seventeen:

The title comes from the movie "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever" and the title song of the same name, in which it refers to psychic powers.

Ezra Beam ran a fencing ring out of a phony Satanist Church called The Church of the Netherworld in the episode "Terror on the Docks".

***

Chapter eighteen:

"The building was exactly the same". It is. They used the same stock exterior shots for both Madam Yram's house and Ezra Beam's church.

Dagon: In "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" the human/Deep One hybrid cultists use Dagon in the name of their church.

The sub-basement: When I asked my husband his opinion on should the temple and tunnel be in the basement or in a hidden sub-basement, he pointed out to me that in Lovecraft there's always a sub-basement.

Tom Seaver: The baseball pitcher.

***

Epilogue:

Nacht und nebel: "Night and Fog". A decree signed by Adolf Hitler that resulted in his political opponents being arrested, and disappearing into "night and fog" so that not even their families would know what happened to them.

The unnamed stranger is my special guest crossover. Hopefully it should be obvious that he's the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-files. Morleys are his canon brand.

Alex Drew: The rogue agent from the episode "The Specialist". "The events surrounding the murder of Joe Durniak": the two part episode "The Setup".

Killer robots, cave dwelling troglodytes, and UFOs: all things Kolchak had to deal with, from the episodes "Mr. R.I.N.G.", "The Sentry" and "They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…" respectively. Of course Cigarette Smoking Man has been covering up UFOs for years at this point.