The Haunted Earth

'What, sir?'

'How does a Shambler spend her credits? What does she buy?'

The Shambler relaxed, as if she had been expecting something far more personal than this and was relieved… 'According to maseni myth,' Mabel said, 'a Shambler is a night prowler who comes after little children who have been behaving badly during the day. A Shambler moans at their windows.' Mabel paused, hunched over and moaned loudly.

'I see,' Jessie said.

'Or a Shambler tries to force in their bedroom doors. It hides in their closets and springs out at them. If they're out past dark, when they shouldn't be, a Shambler chases them home, snarling horribly behind them.' She bent over again and snarled, ferociously.

Brutus snarled back.

Mabel stood again and sighed. 'However, ever since we supernaturals and the flesh-and-blood maseni have opened ordinary relations — centuries ago — the law hasn't permitted us to indiscriminately terrorize children. Now, we have to conform to the monetary-service exchange system, like flesh-and-blood citizens. We have to advertise for parents who wouldn't mind having their children frightened now and again — and we have to pay them for the privilege of moaning at their brat's window or chasing him along a darkened street, or hiding in his closet to spring out at him.'

'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.'