She turned his face in Aarin’s direction. “See, Aarin? He thinks Clayton isn’t as tough as he looks.”
Aarin looked up from her packing. She looked much more like herself now. She had completed her makeup, adding black lipstick and dark eyeshadow, and was wearing black shorts and knee high black boots with silver buckles.
Aarin saw the rock’s chalk line face and arched her pierced eyebrow. “Very cute how you keep changing its face while I’m not looking. And you can tell your rock that I think Officer Clayton looks formidable. Also, he’s not wearing a wedding ring which means he’s single.”
“He’s way too old for you. You’re still a kid,” Agatha told her, placing the rock on the bed next to her and picking up her knitting.
Aarin sent a cautious glance out her window before going back to putting clothes into her suitcase. “That was a joke. Look, Aggs, I’m just glad he’s here. Warrior or not, he’s got a gun.”
Agatha frowned at her. “What did you call me?”
“Aggs,” Aarin said. “Isn’t that what Asher used to call you?”
“No. He calls me Aggie. My friends and family call me Aggie,” Agatha said with a scowl. “You can call me Agatha.”
Aarin snorted. “Harsh. Why are you being so mean today? When I met you at the mall you were much nicer. Even made me this hat.”
Aarin had a point. The gray knitted hat looked good on her too. The way that the maroon-dyed tips of her hair stuck out from under it was cute. Agatha couldn’t explain why she found that so annoying at the moment. To make things worse, even Reginald thought she was being tough on the teenager. His chalk face was giving her a disapproving look.
“I don’t know why,” Agatha told her. Then, irritated at Reginald for taking Aarin’s side, opened the drawstring on his cozy to put him inside it. The elemental didn’t particularly dislike being inside the cozy, but the symbolism of putting him away as a punishment felt satisfying to her.
The cozy sagged a bit as she lifted it and there was a soft tinking sound from inside. She shook it out into her hand and was surprised when three pebbles fell out of it and onto her palm. Each pebble was marked with a tiny red rune. Agatha wrinkled her nose. “Eww. Reginald!”
“Seeds,” Reginald said mentally, hurriedly assuring her that these were not his poops. Nevertheless, Agatha forgot about putting him away and dropped the pebbles back into the cozy, then wiped her hand off on the bed spread.
Aarin, of course, couldn’t hear his side of the interchange. She shook her head in amusement. “You’re a weird kid, Agatha.”
“Me?” Agatha scoffed. “Why am I weird when you’re the one scared of secretaries?”
Aarin’s eyes narrowed. “You talk to your pet rock. Also, she’s not a secretary. She’s a receptionist. And I’m not embarrassed that I’m afraid. That’s why I’m glad that Officer Muscles is here watching over us! Believe me. If you’d seen her you’d be just as scared.”
“Why? Because she’s got big teeth? That’s not scary.” said Agatha. She cocked her head. “Wait. Are they sharp teeth?”
“No.” Aarin zipped her suitcase closed and moved over to the desk where she did her makeup. She pulled a travel bag out of the bottom drawer of the desk and began putting things inside of it. “They were normal shaped teeth, but just big. Bigger than a human’s mouth.”
A picture formed in Agatha’s mind. It was a matronly secretary with horn-rimmed glasses and a mouth full of horse teeth. A giggle burst from her lips. The more she thought about it the more funny it seemed and the giggle turned into a fit of rolling laughter.
“What?” said Aarin, turning in her chair to look back at her, a confused grin on her face.
Agatha tried to reply, but there was no use. She fell back onto the bed, laughing so hard that her face went red. It had become one of those uncontrollable wheezing fits where the laughter is combined with the panicked realization that it was now more painful than funny. If this was Mary Poppins, she would have been trapped on the ceiling.
Aarin shook her head and returned to her packing.
Reginald was jolted and bumped as she shook on the bed next to him. At first the elemental merely observed her undignified state with mild bemusement, but then his thoughts jolted hers with sudden alarm. “Danger!”
Agatha herself was feeling in danger of passing out as it had grown hard for her to bring in as much air as she was expelling. Reginald pressed an urgent series of concepts on her. This danger was something far more tangible. Agatha rolled to her side and looked out the bedroom’s rear window.
Her laughter suddenly stopped.
The receptionist was standing on the ground outside of the house, looking in, her face inches from the window pane. Grinning.
This looked nothing like the horse-toothed old lady that Agatha’s mind had conjured. She had the face of a generally attractive 30-something woman with professionally coiffed auburn hair and cherry lipstick. But Aarin had been right. The teeth in the woman’s mouth were far larger than any normal person’s. Even stranger than that was the symmetry of her teeth. The woman’s bottom teeth were identical in size and shape to her top teeth.
“Not a human,” Reginald confirmed and he urged her to move away from the thing.
But Agatha was frozen in place by fear, her eyes fixed on that grin. Then the receptionist’s head lowered slightly. Agatha’s gaze moved away from the thing’s teeth and latched onto its eyes. They were human eyes, hazel in color, but soulless. Like the eyes of a bird.
No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the receptionist’s head pivoted on her neck, a bird-like motion that caused Agatha to cringe. The woman’s teeth parted slightly, then snapped back together.
Agatha scooped up Reginald and scampered backwards off of the bed. She managed to suck in a breath and whimper, “A-Aarin?”
“I’m done,” Aarin said, zipping the bag shut. “I’ll just grab my pillow and we can go . . .” She turned to look at Agatha and her voice trailed off, her face going white as she saw her nightmare in the window.
For several moments the room was filled with shocked silence, as both girls were petrified with fear. They watched wide-eyed as the receptionist’s lips pulled further back from her teeth. The teeth began to grow longer, then to protrude from the front of her face. They stretched outward yet remained clenched together, forming a beak-like wedge. The receptionist’s head reared back and shot forward, its teeth striking the window hard enough to send cracks along the glass.
Both girls screamed.
Agatha then realized that Reginald had been yelling in her mind over and over again, telling her to run. She turned around and moved past the still-frozen Aarin and grasped the door knob. She opened the door just in time for Officer Clayton to rush inside.
There was a look of concern on the officer’s stoic face. “What is-?”
His breath caught in his throat as he saw the monstrosity outside the window. The receptionist’s mouth was stretched so wide that it could no longer be called a grin. In fact, she wasn’t recognizably human at all. Her head was all protruding teeth and gums, her eyes having slid around to the sides of her head where her ears should have been.
The receptionist’s head darted forward again on an elongated neck and this time her teeth shattered the glass.
“The hell?” cried Officer Clayton.
He may not have been the type of warrior that Reginald respected, but Officer Clayton’s police training took over. He stepped in front of the girls and drew his service pistol. “Stop! Back away from the window!”
The receptionist’s head tilted allowing one eye to blink at the officer. Then it reached its arms into the room. Its manicured red fingernails stretched and turned into cruel talons as it grasped either side of the window frame. The jagged pieces of glass that still clung to the edges of the frame seemed to bother it not at all as it began to pull itself inside.
The officer fired twice, the sound of the reports deafening in the enclosed space. One bullet
glanced off of one of the thing’s teeth. The other struck it in the eye and burst out the other side of its head, splitting its flesh. There was no bone or skull structure, just a spray of red and pink matter.
The creature didn’t fall. It didn’t even stop its movement. It pulled its torso into the room, one leg bending unnaturally to step over the shattered window frame. One high-heeled foot touched onto the floor.
Aarin finally broke free of the fear that held her. She grasped Agatha’s arm and pulled her from the room just as Officer Clayton fired again, emptying the clip in his pistol.
The bullets ripped into the receptionist’s torso, but with less effect than his shots to its head. It stood now fully into the room. It made no sound as its head began to change once more, the gaping bullet hole closing and its teeth shrinking down. The rest of its body remained distorted as its face reformed into a shape that seemed more human.
Clayton backed towards the doorway. He ejected the spent clip and grabbed another one from his belt. The receptionist, its head now vaguely female again, opened its mouth, exposing a pointed purple tongue.
Its head darted towards the officer and its tongue shot out from between its teeth, striking the officer in his gun hand. The sharpened appendage cut through muscle and sinew. Clayton’s weapon fell to the ground as the receptionist surged towards him, its hands forming into blades.
Aarin screamed and dragged Agatha down the hallway, covering the child’s eyes as the creature stabbed and sliced the policeman, its arms in a constant state of change. Clayton cried out.
“Stop,” said Reginald in Agatha’s mind. His thoughts assured her that they would not be able to outrun this enemy. They needed to stand firm. If they did so, he could protect them.
There was something about the calm tone in his thoughts that spoke of ancient experience and Agatha found her fear evaporating. She knew he was right. But Aarin continued to drag her. Agatha struggled and twisted, wrenching herself free from her nanny’s grip.
“Throw me,” Reginald said, his chalk line face set in determination.
The officer let out one final gasp and collapsed to the ground. The receptionist looked up from his torn body. Blood dripped from the creature, somehow rolling off of its form as if repelled by the transformative properties of its flesh. It grinned at her.
“Aggie!” Aarin shouted.
Agatha threw the rock.
Reginald was only the size of a river stone, weighing perhaps half a pound, and Agatha was eight years old. Her aim was off. Her throw was weak. It didn’t matter.
The moment he left Agatha’s hand, Reginald swelled to the size of a basketball. He hurtled towards the creature, gaining speed, his face a chalky snarl. He struck the receptionist’s chest like a fifty-pound boulder fired from a cannon.
The creature was blasted back out of the window from whence it had come, tearing a large chunk of the window frame along with it.
Aarin’s jaw dropped. So did Agatha’s. She raised her small hand in front of her face and looked at it in disbelief. She had done that?
Aarin grabbed her arm and pulled her back towards the front of the house. “Come on! We’re going to your dad!”
Agatha didn’t drag her feet this time. They ran to the front door and flung it open, then bolted into the quiet heat of the day. Though it wasn’t yet noon, the neighborhood was silent. The neighborhood’s children were indoors, their mothers preferring that they play videogames or watch mindless TV rather than be outside after the murder that had been discovered the day before. Likely, the gunshots had been noticed as well.
The two girls ran towards the street. Seeing the police car parked next to her father’s sedan dragged a lump into Agatha’s throat. She slowed slightly. That poor man was probably dead.
“Agatha!” Aarin barked. She looked back over her shoulder and as she did so, a yelp escaped her lips.
Lurching around the corner of the house and trudging towards them on misshapen legs was the receptionist. A huge fleshy hole gaped in the center of its chest where it had allowed Reginald to pass through it. It was evident that the clothing it wore wasn’t made of real cloth. The pink business suit hung from its body, glistening like tattered flaps of skin.
Despite the massive wound, it didn’t act badly injured. The hole was closing and the receptionist was grinning again, its mouth slightly open, the pointed tip of its purple tongue protruding from between its teeth.
Agatha felt a sudden weight at her belt, the knitted cozy now filled once again.
“Throw me again,” Reginald urged.
Agatha came to a stop in front of her father’s car and fumbled at the drawstring of the cozy. She had no idea how the elemental had gotten back in there, but she pulled him back out and saw a look of fixed anger on his face.
Aarin stopped in the middle of the quiet street, “What are you doing? Come on!”
Agatha turned to face the receptionist, her face a scowl of determination as she raised Reginald again. The creature saw her making the motion and it came to a stop, its tongue flickering warily as it watched her with squared shoulders, its fingers stretching out to become long and needlelike.
Agatha threw Reginald once more. He swelled again and hurtled towards the creature, but this time it was ready for his approach. It dropped to the ground to allow him to pass harmlessly by.
But Reginald stopped in midair above its crouching form. Suddenly, he wasn’t the size of a basketball. Reginald was now an enormous boulder ten feet in diameter. His chalk face fixed in a growl, he fell straight down with a heavy thud.
The receptionist tried to dart aside at the last moment, but he was too large to avoid completely. The weight of him crushed one of its legs, pinning it to the ground. It strained, its mouth gaping in a silent scream of rage.
“Holy . . .” Aarin returned to Agatha’s sided. Her hand settled on the younger girl’s shoulder. “How did you do that?”
Agatha blinked. “It was Reginald.”
The receptionist shuddered and with a soft tearing sound, pulled free from the elemental’s weight. It left one leg behind, but rose up on its remaining limbs, it’s jagged stump already forming a new one. It shambled across the lawn towards them at a surprising speed. Its mouth opened wide, its purple tongue distending.
A sudden crack split the air and a bolt of lightning streaked horizontally from the road behind them to catch the thing in the torso. The receptionist tumbled into the bushes next to the house, its limbs flailing and jittering.
Agatha saw her Uncle Tallow running across the street towards them, his cane still pointed at the quivering creature. Her daddy was with him, making a beeline for her.
Douglas picked up his daughter in his arms and squeezed her tight. “Aggie! Aggie, are you okay?”
She held tight to him, unable to speak.
“Sh-she’s not hurt, Mr. Jones,” said Aarin, drawing near to him, her voice quivering.
Douglas looked to Tallow. “What is that thing?”
Tallow didn’t answer right away. He walked slowly towards the bushes where the creature had grown still. He paused and placed his hand on the enormous boulder, whose eyebrows were now lines of caution.
“Yeah. I know it’s not dead yet,” he told the boulder. “Yes. You did a good job.”
The bushes shook as the creature, blackened and smoldering, erupted into motion. It pointed it charred teeth at Tallow, but paused as it sized him up. It turned to flee. The wizard wasn’t having that.
Tallow pointed his cane and white electric energy surged along its length. Another bolt of lightning arced from the cane’s silver tip and blasted the creature, throwing it back into the bushes and causing it to smoke and convulse.
“Electricity stuns these things, but it won’t kill them. They are really hard to kill. They’re resistant to magic and they can recover from most any wound.” Tallow raised a finger, his voice taking on a scholarly tone. “They’re much like a single celled organism. Their outer flesh doesn’t matter. It ca
n be re-formed. The small nucleus, their brain, is their only weak point. Hit it and they die, but they can hide it anywhere in their body. The trick is finding the right spot.
He pointed his cane at it again. “I prefer the shotgun approach.”
This time a flurry of tiny invisible blades of air magic shot from the tip, making a sound like a bunch of tiny whistles. The convulsing creature was sliced apart. The bushes behind it splintered and scattered to pieces. The attack went on for several seconds.
Finally, Tallow nodded. He turned back to his nephew and the two girls and noted their shocked gazes.
“Right. I didn’t answer your question before. That, everyone, was a basilisk,” Tallow said as the pieces of the creature turned to stone.
Chapter 19: Tallow's Tale
“A basilisk?” said Douglas, in confusion.
“They’re shapeshifting assassins,” Tallow replied. He walked away from the petrified remains towards Douglas and the girls, continuing his lecture. “Great mimickers. They can turn themselves into anything. Animals, trees, a chair. The only thing they have difficulty mimicking is people. They can get our bodies down, but they don’t understand the intricacy of human emotion. They always get the facial expressions wrong. Also they can’t talk. Their specialty is getting close and lying in wait for their target.”
“I think I’m dreaming,” said Aarin, her eyes wide and unblinking. “Or I’m having an aneurysm. Am I too young to have an aneurysm? Maybe I’m just going crazy.”
“Nope,” said Agatha. Hearing the creature explained in such a scholarly manner took some of the scariness out of the situation for her. Agatha released her grip on her father and took Aarin’s hand. She looked up and met the older girl’s eyes. “You and me both saw that thing. Also, my rock’s got powers and Uncle Tallow is a wizard. It’s all real.”
Aarin’s shoulder slumped in disappointment. “I was rooting for the dreaming angle.”
“Too bad.” Agatha turned her gaze to her great uncle. “I thought basilisks were lizards with chicken heads that had death ray eyes.”
Tallow Jones: Wizard Detective (The Tallow Novels Book 1) Page 21
