The Haunted Earth

by Dean R. Koontz

  "And you can't manage to give it up — this terrorizing of the young?" Jessie asked.

  "You know how it is," Mabel said, shrugging shapeless shoulders. "The myth of the Shambler guides the reality of the Shambler. The myths say our compulsion is to terrorize; therefore, we actually are compelled to do just that. Now, though, we have to get out and work, earn credits to pay for the satisfaction of this urge."

  Remembering what Count Slavek had said earlier, Jessie asked, "Was it better, do you think, before people opened relations with the supernaturals, before they recognized your existence?"

  "Definitely not," Mabel said. "Oh, I have problems now, sure, but I had worse problems back then. You see, I could pick and choose lads to terrorize — but if one of those brats was a nut on ghost stories, he might know the proper chant or prayer to disintegrate me. With a few words, he could put an end to me for good; that was what the myths said, so it was true. Now, however, since the establishment of friendly relations between flesh-and-blooders and supernaturals, laws have been set up to keep such murderous material out of the hands of kids. Very few kids know those prayers anymore. And before you pay the parents for the right to scare their kids, you can demand and receive proof and guarantees, in pledge and contract form, that the brat doesn't know any chants that can hurt you. Oh, certainly, being a Shambler is more mundane now than it once was — but it is also considerably safer."

  "I see," Jessie said.

  "Now, sir, may I escort you to Mr. Kanastorous' table?"

  "Yes, please."

  "Walk this way," Mabel said, shambling through the mirrored door into the club proper.

  Unwittingly, she had given Jessie one of the hoariest lines he had ever heard, but he resisted trying to trudge like a Shambler. He and Brutus walked as they always walked, into the huge, circular nightclub, past the oval stage in the center of the room where a weird assortment of human and maseni supernaturals were playing bi-world music, between tables of colorful diners, to a back booth, in the shadows, where Mr. Kanastorous waited for them.

  "My old friend, the gumshoe!" Kanastorous exclaimed, standing on his seat and reaching across the booth table to shake Jessie's hand.

  "How are you, Zeke?" the detective asked, accepting the scaly, four-fingered mitt and pumping it up and down.

  "Prosperous!" Zeke said, smiling, happy with himself, his horny lips parted to reveal a hundred tiny, razor-sharp teeth and a long, restless, green tongue. "Sin merchants have always been popular and wealthy. Now that sin is legal, we're more popular and wealthier than ever." He looked at Brutus as the hell hound clambered onto the booth bench beside Jessie and said, "How is my friend, the nightmare beast?"

  "Thirsty," Brutus grumbled. "Can we get a drink in this dump?"

  "Most assuredly!" Kanastorous said. He punched the intercom beside the booth and ordered their drinks. "This one on me," he said, typing on the keyboard under the intercom and pressing his hand to the scanner plate.

  "Thank you, Zeke," Jessie said.

  "He can afford it," Brutus said.

  The demon turned to the hell hound and grinned. "Same old bastard you always were, huh, Brutus? I think you were the most cantankerous hell hound I ever worked with."

  "You two were in Hell together?" Jessie asked.

  "Of course," Kanastorous said. "Didn't you know?"

  "I didn't, no."

  "We worked together for — what was it, fifty years?"

  "An eternity," Brutus said.

  "Fifty years," Kanastorous said, nodding his small, round, scaly head in agreement with himself. "We were on a project to corrupt the morals of teenage girls, I believe."

  "A study group," Brutus said.

  "Interesting work," Kanastorous said. "Sort of a think-tank operation with some first-hand field work, as well."

  "Stimulating," Brutus agreed.

  A Tibetan wolfwoman brought their drinks. She was nearly six feet tall, though she walked with a slight stoop, because of the nature of her haunches. Dressed only in her silver pelt, she was quite lovely with eight bare teats slightly rouged along her soft belly.

  They sipped their drinks and watched her until she was out of sight among the tables.

  "Well, this must be a strange case you're working on now, my private-op friend," the demon Kanastorous said, the first to regain his senses from the unintentional spell the wolf woman had. cast over them.

  "It's unusual," Jessie admitted.

  "Care to tell me about it?"

  "No."

  "Instead, why don't you tell us about this hot little number who's on her way here to talk to us?" Brutus suggested, raising his snout from his drink dish and looking across the table at the demon. Droplets of liquor hung in his bristly, gray muzzle fur, glistening like drops of dew.

  Kanastorous reached for a pretzel from the bowl in the center of the table, plucked one up and promptly dropped it. "It's so awkward, not having a thumb," he said, apologetically. "I wish there were some way I could have a thumb, but the myths say a demon is four-fingered. And these long claws are no help either, so far as coordination is concerned."

  "About the girl," Brutus said.

  Kanastorous nodded, picked up the pretzel and took a bite of it, swallowed without chewing. "When you called me from your office a couple of hours ago," he said, "I knew one of my girls would be able to help you, for the right price, but I wasn't sure which one." Kanastorous managed about fifty succubi whom he rented out to horny, flesh-and-blood men and women. "Then I remembered Gayla."

  "Pretty name," Jessie said.

  "Gorgeous girl," Kanastorous said. "She's strictly a one-way succubus."

  "One-way?" Jessie asked.

  "You don't know about succubi?" the demon asked, finishing his pretzel and reaching for another. He dropped it.

  "I've never required one," Jessie said.

  "Well, a one-way succubus is one which can only be either male or female. As you may know, the majority of succubi can appear as voluptuous women when in bed with men, and as virile men when they are in bed with women. They transfer sperm from one human lover to another in an alternating and quite unholy manner. Occasionally, however, because myth requires it, you find a succubus that cannot change forms, that can be only one sex. Gayla is such a one; she can only be a woman."

  "Has this some special importance, so far as we're concerned?" Jessie asked the demon.

  "Yes," Kanastorous said. "When you called me, you said you wanted some supernatural creature with access to the maseni embassy compound, that you wanted an informer who could obtain certain restricted information — not a sort restricted by law but by bureaucratic perogative."

  "That's right," Jessie said.

  "Well, Gayla is under contract to Willard Aimes, a human attache to the maseni embassy in Los Angeles. She sleeps with him most every night. And because she is a one-way succubus, she is just perverse enough to double-cross him. You see, one-way succubi are, for some reason, perhaps because they feel inferior or inadequate, far more perverse than their two-way brothers. Or sisters. Or whatever."

  Just as Kanastorous finished, a stunningly beautiful child-woman, in her mid-teens, stepped up and said, "Hi, Zeke!" She patted the demon on his scaly head and slid into the booth beside him, directly across from Brutus and Jessie. She was perhaps five-two without heels, and a hundred pounds. Her hair was red and plaited in two pigtails that hung to the middle of her back. Her face was childish, cherubic and sensuous all at once: full lips but braces on her teeth, round cheeks, enormous blue eyes and thick lashes but no make-up, a sprinkle of freckles on flawless, creamy skin…. She wore a pair of tight yellow shorts with her name embroidered on each back pocket, and a thin, white tee-shirt against which her budding breasts pressed insistently. Her nipples were sharp little, teasing points that moved as the flesh beneath them bounced and jiggled.

  "Arf, arf!" Brutus said, grinning.

  Gayla giggled and said, "You're cute."

  "Arf, arf," Brutus said, again.

/>   Kanastorous introduced everybody, finished his drink in one gulp, dropped the plastic glass, excused himself, cursed his missing thumbs, and ordered a new round for everyone — a malted milkshake for Gayla.

  The wolfwoman brought the order, but no one paid much attention this time.

  "Are you two going to take out a contract on me?" Gayla asked, smiling so all her braces showed.

  "We might," Brutus said.

  "And we might not," Jessie said. "Chiefly, we're interested in information."

  Gayla lifted her milkshake and took a long, cold drink. When she put the glass down, she had a white ring around her mouth, which was the most obscene thing Jessie had ever looked at. "Information, you said?" She seemed oblivious of the milky circle.

  "You're contracted to a man named Aimes," the detective said. "He works at the L.A. maseni embassy."

  "Willard!" she said, giggling. "Oh, Willard is a naughty boy."

  The detective sipped his drink.

  "Arf, arf," Brutus said, grinning.

  Gayla giggled again.

  "Does Willard talk to you much, about his work?" Jessie asked.

  "Oh, my, yes," Gayla said. "He puts his woolly head right here every night, and pours out all his troubles to his big sister Gayla." She patted her small, round breasts.

  "Good, good," Jessie said. "Now, do you recall if he's mentioned a maseni named Tesserax any time within the last couple weeks?"

  "Tesserax?" she asked, puckering her lips.

  "Tesserax," Jessie said.

  "The name's not familiar."

  "They both work at the embassy — Aimes and the maseni," Jessie said. "Lately, there's been some trouble with this Tesserax. Are you sure Willard never mentioned him?"

  She put a finger to her lips, in thought, discovered the ring of milk, wiped it off with the finger and licked her hand clean. "I'm sure he hasn't said anything about a maseni named Tesserax," she said at last.

  "Do you think you could keep an ear open, in case he does?" Jessie asked. "In fact, could you prod him about this Tesserax, subtly of course, and then report back to me on his reaction?"

  She turned her head quickly and looked at the demon Kanastorous, her red pigtails bouncing on her back. "Can I do that, Zeke?"

  "If you're contracted to do it, and if you want to do it," Zeke said.

  "Oh, I'd very much like to," she said. She looked at Jessie and grinned winningly. "It sounds like fun, spying on the embassy, snitching on old Willard. It appeals to me. I'm really sort of perverse."

  "I've heard," Jessie said.

  "How much you willing to pay?" Zeke asked.

  Jessie said, "That depends on how soon she can get back to me with Aimes' reaction."

  "I'm supposed to see him in a little while," Gayla said. "I can bring it up then, when he's in the right mood, and be back to you by dawn or a little after." A succubus could come and go in both darkness and daylight.

  "That would be fine," Jessie said.

  "How much?" Kanastorous asked again.

  "A hundred credits?"

  "Impossible. Five hundred as a minimum."

  The detective looked at the hell hound and said, "Well?"

  "I know this greasy little fiend," Brutus said. "We spent half a century together, corrupting virgins. He'll settle for the hundred, but he'll be pissed off. Give him a hundred and fifty to soothe him."

  "A hundred and fifty," Jessie told the demon.

  Kanastorous sighed, reached for his drink, knocked it over, grabbed for it and, in his clumsiness, knocked over Gayla's milkshake as well. As the succubus giggled and Kanastorous cursed his missing thumbs, a waitress mopped up the mess and brought them fresh drinks, with a warning to the demon to use both hands in lifting his glass.

  "Where were we?" Kanastorous asked, warily lifting his glass to take a sip of his martini.

  "A hundred and fifty credits," Jessie said.

  "Five hundred," the demon insisted.

  "You heard Brutus."

  Kanastorous looked at the hound and made a face, his pointy teeth biting into his hard lips and drawing no blood. "It is a damnable thing to have to do business with old friends."

  "A hundred and fifty credits," Brutus said.

  "When I take my commission," Kanastorous said, "the girl is left with only a hundred and five credits — and me with only forty-five."

  "A hundred and fifty," Brutus insisted.

  "I'm sure that Gayla, here, makes out quite well from Willard Aimes. And other contractees, I wouldn't doubt."

  "She has eight contracts to fulfill," Kanastorous admitted, rather like a proud father.

  Gayla giggled and drank more of her milkshake.

  "Then it's settled at a hundred and fifty?"

  "Okay," the demon said. "For you, my licensed snoop, a special price — but the whole hundred and a half up front, now."

  Jessie dialed for an open, public channel on the booth's computer keyboard, made the transaction.

  "Well, I better be off to see Willard," Gayla said, finishing the last of her new milkshake, wiping at her mouth and getting up. She did a modified curtsy, her little breasts jiggling, and said, "I'll see you after dawn, Mr. Blake."

  Then she was gone, pigtails bouncing, tight little behind twitching.

  "She isn't what I think of when I think of a succubus," Jessie said.

  "Well, most of my girls are the voluptuous types," Kanastorous said. "But not all my customers have the same tastes."

  Brutus said, "Arf, arf!"

  Chapter Five

  When they got to Blake's high-rise apartment in downtown L.A., it was nearly five o'clock in the morning, not much more than half an hour until sunrise, and little more than an hour or two before Gayla would drop by to report what she had learned from Willard Aimes. Jessie made breakfast, had a bloody mary to top it off, and decided to stay up until he got word from the succubus.

  Seven o'clock came and passed.

  Seven-thirty.

  Eight o'clock.

  "I wonder where she is?" he said to Brutus who was curled up in front of the fireplace, nose to tail.

  "If Aimes is smart," the hound said, "she's in his bed."

  Nine o'clock came.

  "She should be here by now," Jessie said.

  "Depends on how much stamina Aimes has," the hound said.

  By nine-thirty, they were both aware that something must have gone wrong, or that Kanastorous was cheating them, somehow.

  "Call the greasy little fiend and find out," Brutus said.

  In his den, Jessie activated the nether-world telephone and typed out Kanastorous' home number. After a long pause, while the call wailed down the ethereal line, the demon answered.

  "Where's Gayla?" Jessie asked.

  Sheepishly, Kanastorous said, "I was about to call you about that."

  "Are you trying to back out of your contract?" Jessie asked.

  "Not at all!" the demon said. "It's much more complicated than that, my pistol-packing friend."

  "How complicated?"

  "I can't tell you now," Kanastorous said,

  "When can you?"

  "Dinner tonight?" the demon asked. "Same booth at the Four Worlds, say at six o'clock?"

  "I'd like to know what's up. I'd like to know now."

  "What good will it do you to know now instead of later?" the demon asked. "You're only going to bed for the rest of the day anyhow. Isn't that right?"

  "Yes, but—"

  "Besides, this line is too public."

  Grudgingly, Jessie said, "Okay, tonight at six, at the Four Worlds."

  When he hung up and turned around, Brutus was standing in the doorway, scowling. "I sense very strong forces moving in the background," he growled. "Someone has made Kanastorous shut his mouth, and that's not easily done."

  "We'll know tonight, at six," Jessie said.

  "We'll know what Kanastorous wants us to know," the hound said. He padded away into the living room.

  Chapter Six

  After s
even hours of sound sleep, Jessie and Brutus (who had not slept at all and did not need to) returned to the Four Worlds Cafe, where a group of Pure Earthers had just begun a sit-down demonstration before the big, revolving doors. There were about thirty of them, chained together, and Jessie recognized the old woman to whom he had spoken the night before. She was at the end of the line, one arm chained to a comrade, the other to a fire hydrant.

  "I ought to go say hello to her," Jessie said.

  "If you do, I'll use that fireplug she's chained to."

  "You wouldn't," Jessie said, shocked. "Anyway, you couldn't. The hell hound myth indicates you can ingest whatever you want, but there isn't a word about elimination."

  "Well, it would be a symbolic thing," the hound said. "I'd just let out a stream of ectoplasm."

  "I think we better forget it," the detective said, stepping over the chained arms in front of the door and going inside.

  In the mirrored foyer, a golden boy with huge wings and a halo rakishly over his head approached them and said, "Good evening, gentlemen. I am Robert, your host." He was wearing white robes and leather sandals, a very winning angel.

  "What happened to Mabel?" Jessie asked.

  "The Shambler?"

  "Yes, her."

  "Mabel comes on when it gets dark and goes home before dawn. She's a night beast, you know."

  "I guess I knew, but I forgot," Jessie said, punching out a tip on the angel's stand and letting the scanner have his thumbprint. "How does she find time to terrorize children if she works during the night and hides from the sun during the day?"

  "She's off on weekends," the angel said. "Saturday and Sunday nights, she terrorizes."

  "I see," Jessie said.

  "May I take your coat, sir?"

  "I'll keep it, thank you. Just take us to Mr. Kanastorous. He ought to be here already."

  "Yes, of course," the angel said. "That round-headed little—"