The Haunted Earth

'Mabel?' Jessie took one tentative step toward the thing, as Helena held desperately to his arm, trying to drag him back beside her.

The beast stopped, its mottled black-brown hulk shifting and changing, growing knobs and protrusions, then losing them as concavities took their places and other protrusions formed elsewhere on its hide, expanding and contracting like a sackful of lively eels.

'Is it you, Mabel?' Jessie asked, stepping closer, not quite so frightened as he had been moments ago.

The Shambler said, 'I go by that name, yes. But I can't place who you might be, sir.'

'I think I'm losing my mind,' Helena said.

Jessie said, 'Not at all. Mabel's a hostess at the Four Worlds, downtown.'

'Hostess?' Helena asked.

'She's the night hostess. She has to hide during the day.'

'I'd disintegrate, otherwise,' Mabel said.

'Haven't you ever seen her at the Four Worlds?' Jessie asked.

'No,' Helena said. 'And I go every Saturday, usually.'

'Mabel doesn't work weekends,' Jessie said.

'I have weekends off, for the children,' the Shambler agreed.

'Children?' Helena asked.

'She terrorizes them,' Jessie said.

'Her own children?'

'No, no,' Mabel said. 'Just children in general — anyone's children so long as they'll give me a contract.'

'Mabel's a maseni supernatural,' Jessie explained, as the Shambler gurgled and resettled. 'According to her mythos, she terrorizes young children who have been bad.'

'I see,' Helena said. She put a finger to the corner of her mouth and shook her head and said, 'No, I don't see. Look, we're not children—'

Mabel sighed loudly and settled her great bulk. Her 'legs' ceased to exist as her jellied flesh flowed into a gum-drop-shaped lump. 'I know you're not. And believe me, I haven't had much fun here, tonight.'

'What's going on here?' Brutus asked, stalking back to them from the second hill, his eyes a furious crimson. He looked at the Shambler and said, 'How are you, Mabel?'

'Not good,' the Shambler said.

'Why aren't you out terrorizing children?'

'That's what we asked her,' Helena said.

'I was assigned to the graveyard tonight,' Mabel said. She grew a big, bubbly head, then lost it as her body shifted, changed. 'They came to me and told me my services were needed here, tonight, that I was to terrorize a couple of adults.'

'They?'

'Some people who are pretty far up in the maseni supernatural hierarchy,' Mabel said. 'People who would know the chants that could destroy me. They didn't make any direct threats, but they strongly hinted that, if I did not cooperate, I'd find myself disintegrated.'

'That's pretty low,' Brutus growled.

Mabel throbbed with indignation; she pulsed and pounded with indignation. 'Isn't that just the case; isn't that exactly how it is: pretty damn low?' She appeared to turn around so that she could look more directly at the detective, though she had no eyes with which to see and could probably have sensed him as well facing one way as the other. 'I remember you now, sir,' she said. 'You came to the Four Worlds Cafe not more than a night or two ago, to have dinner with a demon — Kanastorous, I believe. You gave me an especially generous tip.'

A vampire bat swooped by, invisible in the darkness twenty feet overhead and slightly off to their right; it was identifiable by the sharp chatter it gave out for the benefit of its unholy mates who were searching elsewhere in the cemetery. It had missed them, now, as they stood in the shelter of the double row of canted maseni tombstones. It would soon swoop lower, search the denser shadows that even vampire eyes had trouble with; and then they would be caught.

'Look,' Jessie said to the Shambler, 'we haven't got long before Slavek and his friends will be onto us. In five minutes, we'll be surrounded by bloodsuckers, sorcerers and whatever else they have out tonight Maybe you can help us.'

'How, sir?' the Shambler asked. 'Believe me, I will help so long as I don't jeopardize myself. I'm not pleased with the law-breaking that's going on here tonight. And I don't want to alienate a good tipper, like yourself; I can't afford to if I'm going to take a few contracts, each week, to terrorize bad children. On the other hand, I don't want them to find out I've helped you in any way. I don't want to be disintegrated.'

'That's perfectly understandable,' Jessie said. 'You don't have to become directly involved with us. Just provide me with a bit of information, and you can go away and pretend that you never ran into us at all.'

Mabel considered this for a moment, forming and reforming her heavy body while she formed and re-formed her no doubt equally heavy thoughts, all the while gurgling gently in an infectious, syncopated rhythm. 'What would you like to know, sir?' she asked at last.

'What's the mystery behind this Galiotor Tesserax? What's going on here that would compel otherwise honest supernatural to break the laws as they're doing?'

Mabel sighed. 'I haven't the vaguest idea, sir.'

'You've heard of Tesserax?'

'Oh, yes!'' the amorphous lump of dark ectoplasm said. 'The rumor mill is grinding away at top speed. But it's all just that — rumor, easily seen through. But you'll have to question the supernaturals higher up in the maseni nether-world hierarchy if you expect the truth. They strongarmed me into this, without telling me why.'

'Okay,' the detective said. 'I didn't really expect that you'd know, but asking the question has become a habit. Let's get more practical. Can you tell me how well-guarded the rear gate is?'

'They have a sorcerer stationed there,' the Shambler said. 'Just as they have on the front gate.'

'Then that's out,' Brutus said.

'For all of us,' Helena added. 'Listen, couldn't we send Brutus out on his own, let him phase through the wall anywhere and get help. If—'

'Another thing,' the Shambler began.

'Yeah?' Jessie asked. He was aware that Mabel was about to throw cold water on Helena's suggestion — aware, too, that Helena's suggestion was really the only good idea they had left.

'They must have been expecting you to raid the cemetery sooner or later, because they had guards posted. You managed to slip by them on your way in, but they spied you before you got that grave completely open. They called in the heavy artillery — which includes a street-cleaning truck that's been circling the graveyard spraying holy water on the outside of the wall. No human supernatural is going to phase through that wall again until they're willing to let him through.'

'Trapped,' Brutus grunted.

'They can't have thought of everything!' Jessie said. He began to pace, his hands shoved deep in his pockets, kicking up clods of grass and dirt from the rounded mounds of the old graves.

'I'm afraid they have,' the Shambler said. She had grown taller in the last minute, legs forming under her, arms sprouting out of the brown-black mass once more. 'And I better get going before they catch me here with you and discover that I've gone over to the enemy.'

'Thanks for your help, Mabel,' Helena said.

'It was nothing.'

Groaning, hunched forward, massive 'shoulders' drawn up around her blocky 'head,' she shambled away into the darkness between the big stones, arms swinging at her sides, blobby hands nearly scraping the ground.

'What now?' Helena asked.

Jessie said, 'If we try to get out of the graveyard, they'll locate us and put an end to us — they'll disintegrate poor Brutus's soul, and—'

'— give us an unsanctioned bite in the neck,' Helena finished, putting one slim hand against her jugular.

'Quite right,' Jessie said. 'On the other hand, if we just sit tight, they'll still locate us and put an end to us — only they'll need a few extra minutes to finish the job.' He paused for effect, and as he did the clouds cracked, bringing a thin wave of moonlight across the shadowed cemetery hills. The three of them