Differently Morphous

by Yahtzee Croshaw

  Alison politely gave the forest a few seconds to reply before doing so on its behalf. “Who’s Chris?”

  “No one,” said Badger gruffly, trudging after the deer.

  “That woman in Doncaster,” recalled Alison, partly to herself. “She said the Fluidic Killer flat was rented to someone called Chris.”

  “Lots o’ people called Chris.”

  “But what Chris are you thinking of?”

  Badger heaved an exasperated sigh. “Mate of mine. Messes about with animals.” He saw Alison’s eyebrows go up. “I mean, their heads. He’s got one of them magic powers; he can control them.”

  “So he’s here, and he’s a friend of yours, and he might be the person who rented that flat,” summarized Alison. “And you’re still saying you don’t know anything about who the Fluidic Killer might be.”

  Badger broke into a jog, in an unsubtle attempt to evade her questioning. “Look, could you drop the bloody Columbo act at least till I know me boy’s all right?” he puffed. “ ’Cos I’d like him to not be about when Chris Cockburn comes across a bunch of government agents.”

  52

  “Hang on, can you be harmed by your own fires?” said Adam. He and Victor had gone nowhere. Adam had made one attempt to stand up, only to find that his plastic handcuffs were connected to a ceiling support by a loop of electrical wire.

  Victor spoke slowly and carefully. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t say that word.”

  “No, seriously, though.” Adam shuffled a few inches forward on his buttocks. “You make little fires in your hands all the time, and you don’t get hurt by them.”

  “Yes, because at that point, it’s still my fire,” said Victor, still staring at the puddle on the floor. “If this all went off, it would also be the petrol’s fire. Do you understand?”

  “I think so,” said Adam gloomily. “Funny, I can’t remember the last time we actually sat down and talked about ourselves like this.”

  “Perhaps we could talk about it some other time. I was finding it a lot easier to stay calm before you woke up.”

  In the pause that followed, they heard the rhythmic crunch of boots on dirt, coming from directly outside the door of the crypt. Victor instantly tensed up further, so Adam alone watched the door slowly peel open.

  A shaft of moonlight shone through the doorway, enhancing the surroundings if not totally illuminating them, and a man entered. He was built stockily with quite an intimidating height from Adam’s perspective—which was, admittedly, at floor level—and was dressed in an old duffle coat and jeans. A large brown dog stood loyally at his heel, and there was one alert-looking squirrel on both of his shoulders.

  “Ye both awake?” he asked, in a thick local accent.

  “Yuh?” said Adam. Victor kept his head bowed between his knees.

  “Good.” He sat down on an upturned bucket that his dog had pushed into position behind him and released a contented sigh that came out in a blast.

  It being the only card in his hand, Adam did a sweep of the situation with his enhanced vision. “You’re magically infused!” he concluded.

  “Aye. And you’re from the new Ministry down south.”

  “You’re a freelance agent?” asked Adam.

  “Aye.”

  “Oh, thank Christ. You need to untie us, quick. Some lunatic’s trapped us here and covered Victor in petrol.”

  “Adam,” said Victor flatly.

  “What?”

  “He’s the lunatic that did it.”

  Adam did another magical scan. It took him a moment to remember what the colors sprouting from the newcomer’s body indicated, but the shimmering strings that connected him to the dog and squirrels gave it away. “Midtier mind controller. Animals. Those deer belonged to you?”

  “Aye.”

  Adam waited for the man to elaborate, but he was silently fishing around in his coat pockets. “Why are you doing this?” Still no reply. “We’re on the same side!”

  “That’s the whole thing, isn’t it, with you Ministry nobs,” said Chris Cockburn. “You think just because you trained me and pay me money, that means you can boss me around and tell me what to do?”

  “Well, yes,” said Adam, eyes darting. “That’s . . . that’s literally what a job is.”

  “You posh boys,” muttered Chris. He was hunting around inside a tobacco pouch. “Bet you were right little swots at the school, weren’t yer. Yes sir, no sir, can we march up and down for a few more hours, sir. Turned you into nice little robots for the state, didn’t they.”

  “Look, what do you want?”

  “Just want to ’ave a little chat.” He rolled himself a cigarette, sticking his entire tongue out like a fat, skinned whale and delicately brushing the paper across it. “ ’Ave a little staff meeting. Talk about some of the concerns us down ’ere on the coal face have about the direction the company’s taking.”

  “We’re just field agents as well,” sputtered Adam. “We don’t make those sorts of—”

  His voice died quickly as Cockburn lit a match, the scratch of sandpaper and burst of flame as loud as a gunshot. The sound was followed by the dull click of all of Victor’s joints locking into place.

  Cockburn casually lit his cigarette, blew out the match, then flicked it idly towards the two agents. Adam flinched as it landed harmlessly to his left.

  “Come off it,” said Chris, after taking two luxurious drags. One of the hypnotized squirrels on his shoulders gave a squeaky cough. “You’ve got yer own office. Yer talk to the biggest knobs directly. You get to order around blokes like me, the blokes doing the actual work up ’ere. Don’t tell me you’re not part of the system.”

  “I wouldn’t contradict him anymore,” advised Victor, under his breath.

  “All right.” Adam attempted to make a conciliatory gesture with his elbows. “We’re senior agents. In the system. So why don’t you tell us what problems you have, and maybe we could pass them on?” He licked his lips nervously. “To the system.”

  Cockburn leaned slowly forward, resting his elbows on his knees. His dog lay down, settling its muzzle onto its forepaws in mimicry. “Right then,” he said gravely. “Where do they put the chips?”

  Victor finally looked up so that he and Adam could exchange a baffled glance. “What chips?”

  “The tracking chips,” said Chris impatiently. “I’ve ’ad most of me body x-rayed, and I got one of them MRIs done once, but I still ’aven’t found it. And now my doctor’s figured out that I’ve been making stuff up. So just tell me where it is.”

  “You think . . . the government puts chips in everyone?” asked Adam, teasing out the question the way a bomb-defusal expert would explore the workings of a device.

  Chris tutted. “No, o’ course not. I’d be pretty bloody paranoid if I thought they put chips in every bugger, wouldn’t I? No, just us lot. The ones who went to the magic school.”

  “They didn’t put any chips in us at the school,” said Adam.

  Chris said nothing. Instead, he took out his box of matches and started tapping it rhythmically against his knee like a makeshift maraca.

  “On the other hand,” said Victor hastily. “They did so many different things to us there, I wouldn’t be surprised if a little thing like a . . . subdermal implant could have been slipped in without us noticing . . .”

  Chris looked at the floor sadly. “You think I’m barmy, don’t you.”

  “No, no . . .” said Victor and Adam in unison.

  “I’ll tell you what’s barmy,” Chris looked up again with a glint in his eye. “Going to a secret magic school run by a secret government agency where they flat out tell yer they’re trying to control yer, and thinking that putting tracking chips in yer while yer there would be just a bit too barmy. You know what I think? I think they took out our memories of them putting it in. They put the chip in the place where the memories were. They’re clever sods like that.”

  “That’s . . . I don’t think that’s possible at al
l,” said Adam, lip quivering.

  “And who told you that?” said Chris contemptfully. “The system did, din’t it. That’s what I’m saying. Pay a-bloody-ttention. Obviously it’s not like one of them normal computer chips, or the x-rays would show it. Must be some kind of biotech. Probably got it from their alien lizard mates.”

  “W-what?!” said Victor, momentarily forgetting himself.

  Cockburn gripped the matchbox in one fist, extending a single accusing finger. “Don’t give me that. We’ve got magic demons from another dimension stuck in our ’eads, and now yer gonna tell me the alien lizard people is the daft idea?” He dropped the matchbox clumsily to search his pockets. “Lemme show you some of these photos they put on the internet.”

  He froze, as if hearing a sudden noise, then looked over his shoulder at the cemetery. His dog and squirrels all followed his gaze. There was no sound but the wind that whistled between the gravestones.

  “Did you bring any mates?” he asked, not looking away.

  “No,” said Adam immediately. Victor shook his head rapidly, showering the surrounding area with petrol droplets.

  Frowning, Chris stood up without a word and went to the door. The Danvers cemetery was quite well maintained and surprisingly small, situated in an island of cleared grass in the middle of the wilderness like a giant’s footprint. The senior members of the Danvers line were all interred in the family crypt, while the surrounding graves represented a small selection of distant relations, devoted servants, and the occasional beloved dog.

  Atop a small rise on the far side of the cemetery, a black figure stood. Their shoulders were broad and their feet were tightly together, so with the full moon aligned with the top of their head, they looked to Chris like a gothic ice-cream cone.

  Chris took a step back, and when he was satisfied that he was unseen in the shadowy interior of the crypt, he began toying with his fingers. Almost immediately, three deer emerged from their hiding spots around and throughout the cemetery and scampered playfully towards the stranger.

  The lead deer stopped abruptly two meters from their target, recoiling their head as if struck by a powerful blow. The other two deer swiftly tripped over their fallen fellow and created a fuzzy pileup. The dark figure hadn’t moved an inch.

  Chris’s fingers froze in surprise. He made a sweeping gesture, and his dog obediently bolted for the stranger with an enthusiastic woof.

  This time, the animal was moving fast enough to almost get within a yard of the figure, before decelerating rapidly and snapping back as if attached to a bungee cord. It landed with a yelp in the small pile of stunned deer.

  Chris was facing the uncomfortable situation of having to confront someone in person. He left the crypt, making sure to close the door behind him. “Hey!” he called, pretending not to notice the pile of unconscious animals. “Ye can’t hang around ’ere. This is private property.”

  He stopped in his tracks when Diablerie spun around, his cloak billowing impressively in the breeze, and pointed a finger towards him like a beckoning Grim Reaper. “If you would appeal to authority, tainted one,” he declared, his voice enhanced nicely by the windy atmosphere, “then worry more for yourself, ye who would endungeon agents of the Crown.”

  Chris shivered but kept advancing. “I don’t know what you’re on about. Maybe you should mind your own business.”

  “The due punishment of the guilty is the business of an avatar of Justice,” boomed Diablerie. “And thou art facing such a one this eve. This vile act, did it come as easily to you as the torment by squirrel? As the extermination of the two fluidics, for which act you are surely damned?” With perfect timing, the wind picked up noisily.

  Chris was fully shaking now, but he remained suspicious of the way his accuser had not attempted to move from his spot. He quickened his walk, squaring his shoulders to use the full, intimidating mass that so often worked to his favor outside the local pub on busy nights. “I don’t know who you are, mate, but if I thought you knew what you were going on about . . .”

  As he neared Diablerie, he heard a strange noise on the edge of earshot. Something nearby was making a sound like a muffled voice chanting indistinct syllables. Chris was glancing around, trying to see if there was someone hiding behind a gravestone, when he walked straight into the invisible barrier.

  It wasn’t like a solid wall. He was pushed back by the kind of force one feels when trying to press the positive ends of two magnets together. He flattened his hands against thin air like an inefficient mime. “ ’Ow are you doin’ this?”

  Diablerie, mere feet away, shifted his weight onto his walking cane smugly. “Do not trouble your simple mind, villain. There are mysteries in this world far beyond your petty magical tinkering.”

  Chris looked down and saw that the invisible wall was marked by a thin white line on the ground. He looked closer. It was a length of string, with miniature runes drawn along it in an extremely fine pen. It was tied into a six-foot-wide circle, in the center of which Diablerie was standing.

  “ ’Ave you trapped yourself in there?” asked Chris, confused.

  Diablerie’s smug smile became a little tighter. “There are complexities to my scheme that your kind could never grasp.”

  Chris noticed that the mysterious chanting was now louder than ever, and that the tiny symbols on the circle were pulsating slightly with each repetition. He followed his ears, then spotted the source of the sound: a smartphone on top of a nearby tombstone.

  “Is this what makes it work?” he said, picking up the phone.

  “Give up your futile struggle,” suggested Diablerie, hand on hip. “You are helplessly caught in the web of my enigmatic contraptions.”

  Chris touched the off button on the top edge of the smartphone, and the sound ended instantly.

  “Then again, some learn faster than others,” added Diablerie, not moving.

  The magic that had been gathered by the rune circle hung in the air for a moment before all of it dispersed at once with a sound like an underwater explosion. A wave of kinetic force radiated out from the circle, causing Diablerie to totter slightly as it hit him from every direction, and Chris Cockburn to be thrown off his feet.

  Diablerie marched forward and smartly pinned Chris’s struggling torso in place with his cane. “Now, confess, Fluidic Killer!” he commanded, with mad smile and wide eyes. “Afore I break my cane across your bones and add criminal damage to your list of crimes.”

  A squirrel hit him in the face, launching itself with all four limbs outsplayed. He staggered back, shaking his head to dislodge it, but its forepaws found purchase on his mustache. He tripped on a low gravestone but managed to grab it before it sent him sprawling.

  By the time he had prized the squirrel off his face, the second one was in midair. He swung his walking cane in time and managed to smash it away with a thump and a squeak of despair.

  This left him with no free hands with which to defend against the third incoming missile, which turned out to be Cockburn’s fist. It smashed into Diablerie’s cheek and sent him onto his back, dazed.

  Cockburn was quickly crouched over him, holding him in place with one knee. He balled up Diablerie’s scarf in his fists and pulled his lolling head to within inches of his own. “What the ’ell are you playing at?!” he yelled.

  There was blood at Diablerie’s nostril and his eyes were slightly glazed, but he managed to keep up his knowing smile. “Ha, ha, ha, ha,” he said.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “With every move you make you worry yourself deeper into my snare,” said Diablerie smugly, sniffing the blood away. “You are already defeated and yet blind to it.”

  Cockburn looked around, concerned. There was nobody else in sight, and the door to the crypt hadn’t been disturbed. He shook Diablerie violently. “What are you on about?!”

  “Ha—ha—ha—ha—ha,” repeated Diablerie as his head flew back and forward. “Struggle in the webs of the fly, little spider. They draw tighter w
ith your every breath. Your downfall is but moments away.”

  “You’re bluffin’.”

  Diablerie managed to focus on Chris’s face for a moment, and his smile widened. “Am I?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure you are.”

  “am i?” repeated Diablerie, emphasizing harder.

  “Stop it!”

  “I shall not! For I am basking in my moment of triumph.” His voice became noticeably slower. “I believe I shall . . . continue basking . . . for a bit longer. Before I . . . reveal . . . my masterstroke. Which will be coming . . . any . . . seeeecooooond . . .” His last word and the ensuing pause lasted a full fifteen seconds.

  “Hey!” cried a new voice from near the cemetery gates. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “Now!” said Diablerie, before Chris let go of him and his head fell into the dirt with a thud.

  “Mike?” said Chris, as Badger bore down on him, shotgun drawn. “What are you doing ’ere? I thought you were watching the ’ouse.”

  Alison appeared behind Badger’s form, like a mouse peering out from behind an overstuffed leather couch. “Doctor!” she cried, running to Diablerie’s side.

  The moment Diablerie registered her presence, he leapt away from Alison’s outstretched hand as if it were a red-hot poker and was back on his feet in an instant, leaning on his cane with hand on hip. “Ah, girl,” he said, voice breaking only slightly. “Took you long enough to get here. How large a deluge were you mopping up?”

  “What?” said Alison. “I didn’t know where you—”

  Diablerie coughed loudly to interrupt. “Yes, our investigation is at an end, it seems!” He thrust a haughty finger towards Chris Cockburn’s startled face. “The identity of the shoggoth killer is revealed at last!”

  “Me?” said Chris, pressing a hand to his sternum. “Don’t be daft.”

  “Do you deny that, even as we speak, you hold two agents of the Crown hostage within that very crypt, as part of an effort to conceal your dastardly crimes?”

  “What?!” reiterated Alison, hurrying to the crypt.