Skull Ring

"Skull Ring" is the fourth story in The Faceless P.I. by Thom Brannan.

The story opens with The P.I. closing one of his more mundane cases, only to return to his office and find a cryptic note from Simon. This leads to a new client, a new case, and another teaming with Io, at Simon's direction.

The new client (James) tips them off about a stolen artifact, which Io and the P.I. track back to a video game company. They break in and steal some information, and in the process find something very weird. In the course of sifting through the data, they find the names of the people working on a game, and find that all of them have disappeared... except one.

They visit him in a mental hospital, which leads them back to a confrontation with an aspect of Nyarlathotep and a forced adventure in the Dreamlands with the missing software engineers.

Reviews
— Glynn Barrass, author of The King of Deadtown ''I started reading "Skull Ring" knowing only that it was a tale that involved the Cthulhu Mythos. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that not only does it utilize this, but also another firm favorite of mine, the Raymond Chandler detective fiction genre. These two crossed-genres, combined with Mr. Brannan’s ability to spin an exiting tale, have been combined to create a gritty story involving horror, dark magic and sinister technology.''

In "Skull Ring," Mr. Brannan takes us through a world of credible characters forced into incredible situations, describing each character and location (of which there are many) skillfully and with great artistic care.