Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

He shuddered and placed the medallion aside, like a plate of food he couldn’t finish. “It’s an interesting find, but I’m afraid I can’t provide much more help than that. I have no intention of buying what this medallion is selling.”

  The twin pouts directed at Professor De Glough functioned as illustrations in the fine art of transforming rich lower lips into jutting shelves, upon which the ladies implied the myriad disappointments of an unfair world. “Why not?”

  “Because I believe it,” De Glough said. “I think this artifact is genuine and that the apocalypse it promises in exchange for fleeting material gain is not worth any price. I would urge you ladies to take a nice cruise, somewhere out where the waters run deep, and toss this little obscenity overboard so it can never pass through the hands of Man again.”

  This was precisely the kind of moment that cried out for the speechmaker to grab his hat and place it jauntily on his head before nodding and walking out. De Glough actually looked around for a hat before remembering that he didn’t own one. He made it up with that nod, which was firm and wise and served the purpose of the missing headgear in that it put the cap on the conversation.

  But when he walked out, Tammi N’loghthl and Septima Fowl ran after him, catching up on the stairs and bouncing alongside him with an enthusiasm that brought a swoon from the male neighbor ascending those same stairs with a basket of laundry. “But Professor! Your reputation!”

  “Is excrement, and I’m so well accustomed to being inundated by entire fathoms of scorn that being summoned to the surface for public vindication might well rupture all my tissues with a case of the bends.”

  “The importance of this find!”

  “. . . is akin to the importance of a venomous snake that has slithered into a backyard tool shed I never use, in that I appreciate knowing it’s there and understand that it can change everything should I be foolish enough to go to the trouble of discovering it, but I am wise enough to know I can also sleep quite well and continue to happily draw breath without ever giving that discovery my seal of approval.”

  This much is true: even Elder Gods walking among mortals in human form are vulnerable to the dizzying effect of tortured metaphors. Tammi N’loghthl and Septima Fowl paused in midstep, their beautiful masks slipping just a tad as the ancient beings behind them caught up with the conflicting imagery. Had De Glough been looking at them at the moment this occurred, he would have seen Tammi N’loghthl’s perfect lips part, a crack spread across both her cheeks like a crevasse ripping open in a glacier, and a mass of writhing cilia within gorge with infuriated blood. He would have noticed Septima Fowl’s doll-like perfection shimmer and fade, becoming a ravaged flaming skull that was, for some reason, still wearing lip gloss despite the absence of lips.

  But De Glough did not turn around and as a result did not see either of these things.

  By the time the two faux ladies had seized control of their temporarily ravaged appearances and succeeded in wresting their attractiveness ratings back into the realm of positive numbers, the Professor had made his escape.

  “Shit,” said Tammi N’loghthl.

  By now you should know that the word emerging from that mouth was not actually shit, but some oath of infinitely greater blasphemousness that would have caused the skin of any human eavesdropper to bubble and run like hot wax.

  “He should be frayed for his impudence,” said Septima Foul.

  Tammi N’loghthl inquired, “Don’t you mean ‘flayed’?”

  “I may be wearing this ridiculous body, my brother, but I know exactly what I said. Mere flaying is too merciful a fate for him. Instead, the little worm should be frayed, one loose thread at a time.”

  Tammi N’Loghthl considered that and found it pleasing. “Later. I will provide the”—and here, the being inside the comely flesh referenced an implement of torment never imagined by Man, that would have made the most treasured toys of Torquemada look like a pair of toenail clippers purchased at Walgreens. “But until then, he is still our most likely prospect, and he still needs to be lured . . .”

  • • •

  Plan B, as the brother gods would have called it had they utilized any alphabet we know, went down one midnight two weeks later, at the precise moment when the Professor was crossing a busy intersection midway between the dank basement where he kept office hours (and had indeed gone more than a decade without ever being consulted by a single student) and his home (which was just as dank though not, strictly speaking, a basement). The Professor staggered a little, as the weekend was coming up and he was bringing home his latest opus, the seventh volume of a work in progress classifying the various flavors of ichor. He also had a paper clip in his shoe, which kept jabbing into his big toe and which he would have stopped to remove were it not also in the innermost of three layers of sock. The Professor’s firm policy of always wearing a green sock inside a red sock inside a black sock was the least of his many eccentricities and would require a significant digression to explain, though we can say that it was a habit driven by his many years of scholarship and was prompted by a warning in the memoirs of an apothecary from a civilization that had crumbled some ten centuries before Atlantis; to wit, it always pays to wear protection. The apothecary had been referring to prophylactics, of course, but the Professor was fuzzy about such things, one reason he was always so scrupulous about keeping his toenails filed.

  As he limped north toward that intersection, it was impossible for him to avoid noting the two strange girls from the prior lecture, strolling toward him on the opposite side of the street.

  It was equally difficult for him to avoid observing the black van that whipped around the corner to cut them off.

  The girls clutched each other and shrieked prettily as a pair of thugs burst from the passenger doors.

  At this point, the word thug is probably leading you to imagine a pair of gun-wielding American hit men, but no, they were thugs, as in thuggees, as in members of the Kali death cult from nineteenth-century India. They were two half-naked guys in diapers, shouting angry declarations that only a human sacrifice could possibly punish the nonbelievers for their effrontery.

  The world of academia being what it is, this was the fourth time the Professor had seen something like this happen on campus.

  The girls made no visible attempt to escape, but rather continued to just clutch each other and shriek, inviting rescue as the two little guys in diapers advanced upon them. The speed of their villainous advance was no greater than the speed of a tourist in Hawaiian shirt standing in line for the roller coaster at a theme park; it was in fact a speed designed to allow the Professor to heroically dash across the street and, with a few wild swings, send the cultists flying and rescue the girls from a fate worse than death.

  The Professor rendered this plan unworkable by not dashing across the street to rescue the girls from a fate worse than death.

  Nor did he stir as the two guys in diapers each seized one of the girls by an upper arm and tugged her toward the van, still at the speed of a mobility scooter straining to navigate a curb.

  It wasn’t that the Professor possessed no streak of heroism. He very well might have. But skilled as they traditionally are at lying, Elder Gods are crap when it comes to acting, and even worse when it comes to choreographing action scenes. The Professor’s failure to manifest as hero only made this worse. The scene they had choreographed slowed to a near stop, begging for interruption, until the girls and their supposed kidnappers were all forced to shuffle along like people with thirty-pound weights strapped to their ankles. The pathetic cries for help became less oh-God-oh-God-won’t-somebody-save-us, and more the complaint of actors aware that a scene has completely gone south but wholly unsure why the unseen director hadn’t yelled Cut yet.

  Eventually, when the girls and their thugs had put off their actual departure for as long as they reasonably could, the van doors slammed and the vehicle remained idli
ng at the spot long enough to establish that the key concern of whoever sat beyond the wheel was not a frenzied escape but the concoction of another strategy that might induce the Professor to get involved.

  After a moment the van carefully pulled away from the curb, proceeded to cross the intersection, and, in a wholly laughable attempt at simulating a skid, deliberately steered itself toward a light pole. The result was less a crash than a gentle whump, but it was enough for Tammi and Septima to burst from its doors in tops now ripped to accentuate their cleavage and, running like people who had no idea what to do with their arms, flee toward the Professor in the theory that proximity might accomplish what spoon-fed opportunity would not.

  “Omigaaaaaaahd Professor De Glough thank Gaaaaaaad you’re here, you’ve got to help us they know we have the medallion they want to sacrifice us help help help you’ve got to HELP—”

  The girls huddled behind the still nonplussed Professor, treating him like a tank capable of repelling assaults from vastly superior numbers even though he was older, smaller, and not nearly the paragon of health and vitality they clearly seemed to be. Three thugs emerged from the van, which had not suffered so much as a dent from its gentle impact. All three looked spectacularly confused and indecisive over what the script was now. One muttered something to the other, who responded with a shrug so clearly what-the-fuck in its philosophy that it might have been visible from orbit. What the fuck, right?

  They began waving their daggers and crying, “Blasphemers, blasphemers.”

  Halfway across the street it began to occur to them that the Professor was neither advancing nor retreating, and their dagger waves grew halfhearted and almost embarrassed, their cries of “Blasphemer!” as without heart as the sales pitch of a teenage kid who’s been talked into becoming a door-to-door Fuller Brush salesperson for the summer. That kid thinks, Yes, I know this is bullshit, but at least say so before I get through too much of this, and I’ll be out of your hair and on to the next house. These allegedly menacing thugs wore the same expression and conveyed the same attitude.

  The Professor rolled his eyes and delivered his expected line with an equal lack of conviction. “Stop where you are,” comma not exclamation point, “these girls are under my protection,” comma not exclamation point, “to get them you’ll have to go through me,” period and full stop, with not one syllable uttered at any register more frenetic than the deeply bored.

  This completely unmanned the thugs, who on cue shouted “Aiiieee” and “Flee, my brothers” and the rest of that rot before piling back into the van and, judging from the noticeable delay before they pulled away, scrupulously fastening their seat belts.

  Tammi N’loghthl threw her arms around the Professor and smothered him with kisses, proceeding with the pretense that he had just pulled off the bravest thing she’d ever seen. “Oh! Professor! You saved our lives! But what will we do if they come back?”

  He gently disentangled himself. “Young lady, I have spent the past two weeks fantasizing about the two of you, but please don’t think I’m as big an idiot as you’re treating me. That display was downright pathetic.”

  “B-but look!” Septima wailed. “Our clothes are ripped and everything!”

  “Yes, I see that. I also see how artfully they’re ripped. I’m insulted when people who seek to con me don’t put on a better show than that. I gather that I’m now supposed to buy that the two of you have become the targets of some vile international death cult because you toyed with forces beyond your ken, and immediately drop everything I’m doing to follow you to Ecuador, or wherever you claim to have found that medallion.”

  “We said Nicaragua,” said Tammi N’loghthl.

  “No,” said the Professor, mildly but with the finality of a slamming door, “actually, you said Guatemala. Feel free to see me during office hours.”

  Tammi N’loghthl and Septima Fowl gaped as he stormed off, having resisted their blandishments not just once, but twice.

  “He should be filleted,” said Septima Fowl. “Not flayed or frayed, but—”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Tammi N’loghthl.

  They returned to their lair to gnaw on a frat boy’s leg as they discussed their remaining options.

  • • •

  The final and most apocalyptic act in this clash of wills took place a week later, during the Professor’s scheduled office hours, in what was until that point reliably the very quietest and most uneventful room on campus.

  The girls didn’t show up and offer him their undying gratitude. They didn’t appeal to his sense of male gallantry. In fact, they didn’t even show up as girls. Mostly. Instead, they manifested, not quite as large as life but certainly larger than they had manifested so far, their eyes burning embers and their lips dripping cocktails of pus and maggots. Perdition’s flames rose from their shoulders. Their otherwise still-perfect breasts, bared for the occasion, now displayed the faces of past damned souls, gibbering in madness, where other ladies have areolas. This was a rather off-putting feature.

  Professor De Glough, who had been sitting behind his desk poring through many a volume of forgotten lore, slammed the latest on the stack with a force that sent clouds of dust billowing from its antique pages. “Ah. Here we go.”

  “SEDUCTION FAILED. APPEALS TO YOUR INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY FAILED. APPEALS TO YOUR SENSE OF CHIVALRY FAILED. NOW WE SHALL APPEAL TO YOUR SENSE OF FEAR. YOU SHALL HELP US FREE OUR SLEEPING BROTHER AND END OUR GAME, OR YOU WILL KNOW TORMENTS LASTING TEN THOUSAND LIFETIMES.”

  “Aha,” said Professor De Glough. “That is what this is all about? A game?”

  “THE RULES OF THE GAME WE HAVE PLAYED WITH OUR BROTHER REQUIRED HIM TO BE FOUND, WITHOUT ASSISTANCE, BY AN UNWITTING MORTAL. WE HAVE ALREADY BROKEN THOSE RULES BY PLYING YOU WITH BLANDISHMENT AFTER BLANDISHMENT. WE INTENDED TO PRESERVE THE GAME, IN SPIRIT, BY LURING YOU TO THE TOMB IN NICARAGUA—”

  “Guatemala,” the Professor said.

  A firestorm of sheer coruscating hatred blasted all four walls with a blast of hellfire sufficient to blacken the walls and reduce all of the Professor’s office furnishings, save for his desk, to ash. “WHATEVER.”

  “My word. It certainly looks bad for me.”

  “IT LOOKED BAD FOR YOU FROM THE VERY MOMENT WE TURNED OUR OMNISCIENT EYES IN YOUR DIRECTION. HOWEVER, YOU HAVE TRIED OUR PATIENCE AND EXHAUSTED OUR ENTHUSIASM, SO WE WISELY FORGO THE INFINITE SERIES OF FRUSTRATIONS THAT WOULD NO DOUBT ACCOMPANY ANY ATTEMPT TO SHEPHERD YOU TOWARD THE ORIGINAL INTENDED SITE OF YOUR DESTRUCTION. OUR DEAREST WISH NOW IS ONLY FOR THIS STUPID WAGER TO BE OVER. SO WE HAVE LOOTED THE TOMB, EXTRACTED THE ACCURSED CHEST OURSELVES, AND NOW PLACE IT BEFORE YOU. YOUR SOLE RESPONSIBILITY IS TO OPEN IT. OUR BROTHER WILL KNOW THAT WE CHEATED, BUT THAT IS A SMALL PRICE TO PAY, JUST TO BE DONE WITH THIS BULLSHIT.”

  The Professor tented his fingertips and rested his chin upon them, as he inspected the small stone box that had just materialized on his desk blotter, like a bowel movement abandoned there by some stray dog. It was a most unlovely chest indeed, with carvings that resembled steaming viscera and jewels of unfamiliar origin that might have been the gallstones torn from some species of great antiquity. It was so redolent of evil power that he did not have to open it to know that the creature inside was terrible in a fashion that rendered even the terrible creatures before him insignificant by comparison.

  “And that ‘bullshit,’” he inquired, “that you seek to be done with, and that you would in fact make sure you were done with once your brother was released, would include my life, my civilization, my world, my species, everything we have ever striven for, or sought to build?”

  “CORRECT.”

  “Then no.”

  The two entities before him combined into a single vision so blasphemous that any true heaven, beholding it, would have turned all of creation into a single container of bleach. “FOOLISH MORTAL—”

  “Mortal, yes.
Foolish, perhaps. Stupid, no. I may be a crackpot, but I am also a very intelligent man. And it strikes me that what I hear from you is the true source of bullshit in this room.”

  “YOU DARE—”

  “Please. The game cannot be about drawing some random mortal man to some buried tomb where your sleeping brother awaits, because there are easier ways for two seductive women to get gullible males to follow them to the ends of the Earth. Nor can it be about opening this pathetic box, which is such a simple artifact that any human being other than myself could have pried it open at any time. No; in either case, were that all this was about, you could have reacted to my prior refusals by shrugging your then-pretty heads and finding some more tractable target for your wiles. But you haven’t, and so it strikes me that you must then need me, and only me, as your ally, for some reason central to your purpose. From there it is just a short logical leap to the realization that the most secure hiding place is not some little casket of stone, but the power of sheer human obstinacy. Your brother does not lie secure beneath earth or stone or any lock that can be opened by a key. He would have been found long ago if that were so. He lies behind my own initially instinctive, and now wholly reasoned, refusal to help you. It is the greatest of all possible hiding places, and I tell you now, it shall remain secure . . . for I now believe I was built by him to refuse you, and refuse you I always shall.”

  N’loghthl and The Septic Breath Of All Existing Foulness raged, their fury growing far too great to be bounded by such a mortal space. The building above caught fire and was reduced to an ashen skeleton. The campus became a blackened crater, miles across, forever toxic to any who would ever dare to cross its outer rim.

  The Professor’s tweed suit vaporized, and he remained where he sat, just as tweedy when naked, blinking at the fury of two spoiled gods, while remaining untouched by their tantrum. “Are you quite done?”

  “YOU ARE AN INSIGNIFICANT HUMAN GNAT!”

  “Significance,” he said, “can be measured by the ability to affect powers greater than yourself. A microscopic blood clot is hardly insignificant when it induces a fatal stroke in an emperor. I am far below you in aggregate power but clearly above you in influence, and therefore hardly insignificant by any standard. It seems, in fact, that in playing my role as your brother’s surrogate in this matter, and doing it well, I have defeated you. Your game is over. All that remains is for you to concede defeat.”