by Jae Vogel
Karanzen stood there, unable to believe this smarmy little toad was dismissing him from the mall. There had to be some kind of mistake. He’d talked to Seth Bach recently and no mention was made of instant termination. What was going on here?
He ignored Matt and went over to the desk, grabbing the phone from the other side. Karanzen punched out the emergency number for the clock tower, but the phone continued to give him a dial tone.
“You are wasting your time,” Matt informed him. “The phone now runs direct to the tower. If you can’t dial a number it means they don’t want to talk to you.”
“Who are you to come into my office and give orders to me?” Karanzen yelled at Matt. “I have served in places where they would’ve fried you up on a plate. The only reason you are here is because you do Seth Bach’s dirty work for him.”
“Indeed I do. As a matter of fact, this whole rapid dismissal was my idea. I told Bach it was a better idea to get rid of you and find someone else.”
“What did he say when you came up with it?”
“He gave me full support; notice the signature at the bottom of this letter.” Matt held it up so Karanzen could see it. There it was: the cursive handwriting of the mall owner.
The now former security chief looked down at the corporate tool beneath him and thought about the many things he could do and no one would be the wiser. However, someone had to know he was down here. Which meant the little dung pile would be missed. The sort of thing Karanzen wanted to do only took place in movies and TV shows where rain coated police detectives hummed the conclusion twenty years later. Real life was undergoing the humiliation of leaving the office with a pile of boxes in his hands.
He knew it was about to come to this. The mall management hadn’t listened to him and refused to do what was needed to keep Dion out. The kid managed to get in somehow and was on his way to meet the last elemental grandmaster. There was very little he could do right now other than plant something on Dion and call the cops. He wasn’t above doing that; it had worked for him several times before. He couldn’t unleash his own supernatural abilities on Dion since the kid was an advanced elemental master. Right now, the only one who could oppose him at that level was his uncle.
“I still want to talk to Seth Bach,” Karanzen said. “I want to hear from him personally that I’m sacked.”
Karanzen handed the phone to Matt. “As a matter of fact, I want you to call him on whatever secret number you have at your disposal. I’m sure you have an unlisted line that you can use. Since you are such an important person around here, Matt, you should have no trouble doing it.”
Matt hung the phone back up on the cradle. “I don’t think so, Karanzen. He no longer wants to speak to you. Your term of service is over, don’t you get it? Now just pack your things up and get out of here before I have to call the police.”
“Call the police?” Karanzen returned to him. “I think they are the last people you would want to come here. What a scene in the parking lot it might make! Former security officer led off in cuffs because he failed to keep one young kid out of the mall. People might want to know why this local kid was supposed to be kept away from the mall. They might learn he is related to the man who owns this mall. I could see all kinds of trouble from the police because of me.”
“You have more to lose than anyone here, Karanzen. You forget we have all your service records on file. You want us to make them available to the right people? I think some of the men you abandoned in Korea might still have families around here. They’d like to know the full story of what happened at the Chosin Reservoir.”
“I’m sure they might,” Karanzen countered. “Just as all kinds of federal agencies might want to know about the abyss this mall sits over. I’m sure you’ll have all kinds of people want to come here when they learn the mall is located over a gate to hell.”
Karanzen sat down in a chair next to the desk and looked at Matt. “So why don’t you call the big man and get him on the phone and we can talk like adults. I don’t know why he has to send a boy to do a man’s job.
The door flew open to the antechamber and Karanzen got up to see who it was. He assumed it was one of his dismissed guys on his way back to pick up a missing personal item. All of this would have run smoother if he had his own clerical support, but, like everything else, Seth Bach wanted it all to run through the clock tower. In the beginning, he was told there would be more help as needed, but it never seemed to materialize. Karanzen decided it had to do with budgetary concerns as the early stage, but he noticed items his employer wanted that didn’t generate profit could always find a place in the budget.
“Just wait a minute,” Karanzen said to Matt. “Somebody’s walked into the office and I need to see who it is. Don’t you go running off now.” He turned and walked into the main room.
The door was still open when he walked into the next room, although there was no one in it. The outer office appeared to be in the same state he’d left it earlier in the day. The same faded curtains were against the wall, although it didn’t have a window. Most of the files were kept in his office, so there was none of the bulky cabinets in most places which carried out the same function. He looked down at the floor and realized it needed cleaning, but the condition of the office was not in the front of his mind.
Karanzen walked over to the door and placed his hand on the knob. Who had tossed it open? Was it some kid trying to cause trouble again? Just let them try to maintain order around here without him keeping things under wraps. He could see Matt in a uniform as he attempted to explain to a ten-year-old kid that he couldn’t walk out with whatever he wanted. Or break-up a fight between a clerk and a customer who got in his face. This is what they employed him to do and his team was experts in keeping incidents under control. What would happen when those red-haired zombies were in charge? No one would even consider the mall if they were all over it.
He decided to have a look in the hall before he closed the door. Just maybe there would be some punk in flight down the hall. Usually the little miscreants weren’t smart enough to consider what would happen If he caught up with one of them.
The whole world seemed to change faster than he could manage. Just the other day he’d ran into a lady in the parking lot living out of her car. Her only companion was a small wiry dog. He’d noticed them parked out on the edge of the lot and walked over to see what they were doing there. This was before the entire parking lot was under his guards’ surveillance, but he was still trying to keep that kid Dion out of the mall when he saw her.
The lone car, a station wagon, struck him as a little bit strange as it sat out there by itself. Instead of sending one of his guys over to check it out, Karanzen decided to look into it himself. The car wasn’t in the best shape, but he’d seen worse ones in the lot. Even owned by people with money.
As he approached the car, Karanzen heard the dog yapping at him. He nodded at the person behind the wheel, unsure of what sex they were. They driver was slight and had an army cap on, but didn’t appear to be a veteran.
“That’s a pretty dog,” he said to her. “Are you okay? Do you need any help?”
“Oh, no,” the driver laughed. “I just came by to pick up some clothes.” By the voice, he could tell he addressed a woman. She had her head shaved close, something he’d never seen before, but it was hard to tell with the cap pushed down on her head. Her ears were pierced in several places, something else he’d never seen before.
Karanzen petted her dog, which seemed friendly enough. After a few minutes, he deduced she was some kind of traveler who went from one campsite to the next. She was young enough to have the luxury to wander the earth. He would have liked to discover her backstory, but there wasn’t time. He told her to check in with the security office if she needed any help, but the woman assured him her car was in excellent shape. As a matter of fact, she was a part-time auto mechanic.
Karanzen had her on his mind as he stepped out into the hall. He was thinking about the woman when he look
ed down the hall and encountered the mob of security guards, all of whom were dressed in grey with red hair. There had to be about twenty-four of them in the hall outside the office.
Before he could say another word, the guards shoved him back into the office. The sheer force of the bodies sent him flying backwards into the wall on the other side of the room. Karanzen slammed into it as the guards flowed over him, grabbing his arms and pinning him in place. Any six of them he could’ve handled, but he was outnumbered by the mob. As he swore curses on their future and past generations, the guards grabbed him and pushed him along into the inner office. His inner office, which was occupied by Seth Bach’s chief stooge, Matt.
“I told you,” Matt said to the struggling form of Karanzen, “things have changed in the way this mall is administered. You are no longer in charge of security. You’ve forced me to take drastic measures and now I have to decide what to do with you because you wouldn’t go. Why did you force me to do this?”
“Do what, you little punk?” Karanzen struggled to say something to Matt. “Tell these creeps to let me go or I’ll show you what I can really do.”
“I’m afraid you still don’t understand, Karanzen,” Matt sneered. “You are no longer able to give anyone a scare. Don’t you realize who we are?”
Karanzen looked at the crew around him who held him in place. They were all elementals. It was the only explanation he could come up with. The new guards had to be some kind of fire elemental.
“They’re all fire salamanders, aren’t they? I should have figured out by the way they looked. The temperature is already too high in this place. You’ve found some cheap elementals to work security and think you got a good deal on them. Well guess again, Buck-o, because they will never replace humans for the job. I don’t care how hot this place can get because the temperature doesn’t affect me. What happens when you get a whole room full of them in your glorious mall? They’ll set off every fire alarm in the place. What happens when they decide they don’t want to play by your rules any longer? You’ll end up with the entire mall in flames.”
“You just don’t like it you’ve lost another command, do you? “You’re done, old man. We no longer want or need you in this place.”
Matt was another kind of elemental, one Karanzen didn’t have any experience with. Matt was a sphinx, but the security chief didn’t know it. Just as Karanzen kept his real form private, so did Matt. His natural form was part lion and part eagle. Matt guarded the tomb of a pharaoh from beyond the circles of time and did so for the ten thousand years. He did his job so well, no one dared approached the tomb during the time he kept watch over it. It was a dull job, but he enjoyed it.
Every few years, someone was stupid enough to try to pry into the tomb. Matt would eagerly await their approach and hide himself behind a rock or in a sand pit. There were plenty of those in the valley where he dwelt. Once he got the job, the management preferred he didn’t bother them with the petty details on how many tomb robbers were intercepted or what he had to do to eliminate them. Should any they’re make it past his watch, his career would be finished and he sent back to the abyss... So long as he kept them out, he could always count on employment.
He grew to play with his victims after a few thousand years. The first thousand or so he spent perfecting his technique. It wasn’t for at least the second hundred years the humans learned to quit the direct approach to his jurisdiction. The poor pharaoh was only dead five days when the first fools decided to break into the tomb and loot it.
They didn’t even make it to the front door.
Matt remembered that one very well. One man had a mattock over one shoulder and a rope coiled around his body. Another carried several bags with him, as they intended to use them to haul off whatever gold could be claimed. It was night when they approached the tomb and Matt let them walk within ten yards of it before he made his move. After all, the men might have been in route to some other tomb. There were plenty of tombs in the valley, which didn’t employ supernatural guards. Most were looted soon after their occupant was interred. Some of them couldn’t afford the cost of the upkeep and they fell into ruin. Some had guardians that did little more than harass the thieves.
But the pharaoh who hired his services could afford the best and made sure he had the most effective security he could buy. So when the first thief approached the tomb, Matt was ready. The man pleaded with him, but Matt would have none of it. He knew the law and what happened to tomb thieves who broke it. If he hadn’t taken the stories seriously, perhaps others would in the future. In fact, when Matt sent the bodies back to the next of kin, no further tomb thieves attempted to break into the Pharaoh’s crypt for another five years.
But it never stopped them. Eventually someone would get the bright idea they could dance into the tomb and take whatever they wanted. And then Matt would appear. By then, it was too late. Only once in the years had he overlooked the sins of a tomb thief. He remembered her very well because he stopped her from walking into his territory.
Each of the tomb guardians had a specific area they monitored. There were no guardians at any of the tombs next to the one he watched, so Matt spent many evenings sitting on top of the pharaoh’s tomb and watched thieves break into the ones next to the one he guarded. They quit doing it after the first thousand years because everyone knew they were empty by then. The thieves would stare at the tomb he watched, decide it wasn’t worth the risk when they saw the bones that which surrounded it, and leave.
But one young lady decided to make the attempt five thousand years into the job. Matt watched her walk up the trail and stop to look at the bones he used to decorate the perimeter. Bones lasted a long time and served as the best “Keep Out” sign imaginable. He could see her think about it from his location. As she put her foot on the line etched in the sand, Matt made his appearance.
“You really don’t want to do that,” he told her. He’d used his standard human form, because it seemed she should have the option of using free will to determine whether or not to cross the line. As long as he gave her a warning, he might as well do it in human form.
She was startled and backed up. “Why is that?” she asked him.
Matt gave her credit. She didn’t panic and run as he’d expected.
“Because if you don’t, I get to eat you,” he informed the potential tomb robber. “There hasn’t been anything of value in the tombs around the one I watch in thousands of years. But the one I watch is still intact since I’m on a long-term contract. Now turn around and leave before I change my mind. You have crossed the line and it’s within my contract to consider you fair game.”
The woman turned and fled. He never made the same offer again for some reason.
“So you’re also an elemental,” Karanzen said to the grinning figure of Matt. “I can’t imagine how he got control of you. At least these ginger boys have an excuse; he’s worked some kind of spell over them.”
“Some of us don’t have to be bound,” Matt said. “Trust me, I like this job better than the last one I had and the pay isn’t too bad.”
It was sometime during year eight thousand that Matt decided the job was no longer fun. The idiots who approached the tomb thinned out by year five thousand and he was forced to get creative by year six thousand. He came up with the questions by year seven thousand. As a sphinx, Matt had access to all manner of forbidden knowledge the humans didn’t. It dawned on him that to allow the robbers a chance to answer a question would make the assignment interesting for a change. He consulted a few other sphinx guardians who told him they’d done that too for several thousand years and only once had a human beat them.
Matt liked those odds and compiled a huge list of questions to ask anyone he caught who attempted to break into the pharaoh’s tomb. Since he knew ten other sphinx guardians who’d done the same thing for thousands of years, it didn’t take him long to come up with his list.
The way it worked was simple. If a thief answered his question correctly,
they could live. They wouldn’t be allowed to take any treasure with them; such a thing would violate his contract. But they could live to tell their friends and family what happened when they ventured into the land around the forbidden tomb. If they guessed wrong, the thief was added to the pile of bones which surrounded the tomb.
For some reason, no one ever answered the questions he put to them correctly. Ever riddle he hit them with was answered wrong. This puzzled him for a long time until Matt realized the thieves were not from the most educated classes.
One day, a man appeared at the entrance to the tomb. The bones formed an entire wall around the pharaoh’s tomb by then and Matt was forced to wait for the occasional fool who tried to scale them. He hadn’t had a break-in attempt in months. The last victim agonized for two hours over the question he put to him and Matt was forced to end it when it was painfully obvious he didn’t know.
The man pushed the bones aside and walked into the perimeter of the tomb’s territory. Matt watched him come over the rise from the next tomb, which was crumbled by neglect, when he saw the man walk past the wall. Thrilled to have some new entertainment, Matt appeared next to him in full terrifying sphinx form.
“If a ship sank on the border between Egypt and Libya,” Matt asked him. “Where would the survivors be buried?”
“The survivors would not be buried anywhere because they survived,” the man said to him with a big smile on his face.
Matt was stunned. Never before had anyone answered one of his riddles correctly. He’d used that one twelve times, but no one ever figured out the paradox inside it. Perhaps the sudden appearance of a sphinx unnerved them, but they never once got it right.
“Very good,” Matt told him. “You get to live. You should also know that you are the first person who has ever solved one of my riddles.”
“You must have some really stupid people coming in here,” the man said to him.
“You have to wonder how bright a person is that would rob a tomb guarded by me,” Matt agreed. “And they all know I’m guarding the pharaoh’s tomb. What idiot tries to make it past me just for a chance at some gold cups?”
