Moments later, in complete alarm and utter frenzy, Cerek hastily bolted back into the mirror. Within a few seconds of his disappearance, the rumbling came to a halt, and once again I found myself almost dumbfounded by what I now understood to be the source of the sound. However, I didn’t have time to dwell on it as I focused on what Cerek had written in the mirror.
It was basically two words, one atop the other, with a horizontal line drawn between them:
MOUSES and KLEOP.
Chapter 37
Given that he had seemed to be under time constraints, it was rather apparent that the two words Cerek had left were clues. Frowning, I wandered out of the bathroom and then sat on the edge of the bed, trying to figure out what they meant.
“Kleop” I essentially gave up on immediately. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen it before, couldn’t recall ever hearing it spoken, and certainly didn’t know what it meant.
“Mouses,” on the other hand, was familiar — to a certain extent. It appeared to be an incorrect pluralized form of the word “mouse.” I spent a moment debating on whether it was a reference to my mentor, Mouse, before deciding that it had to be a coincidence.
Ruminating further on the issue, I had trouble simply identifying occasions when I’d actually heard the word spoken. I recalled having a computer science teacher who always used “mouses” when referring to more than one computer mouse, but that was about it. Considering that I hadn’t seen anything close to a computer in Permovren, I didn’t think that application of the term was practical. Cerek had to be referring to something else.
Was he illiterate? I wondered. That would certainly explain why he’d used “mouses” instead of “mice.” Or was the misspelling intentional, and a clue in and of itself? Likewise, did the line drawn between the two words mean anything?
Groaning in exasperation, I lay back on the bed. There were simply too many questions and not enough answers. Even worse, I didn’t even know where to look to get answers.
I closed my eyes, hoping that a quick catnap would give my brain a much-needed rest and allow me to focus. Still thinking about Cerek (and his need for a grammar lesson on irregular plurals), I slowly drifted off…
*****
I awoke to the feeling that something was off. No, not just off — wrong. I sat up at once and looked around, and almost immediately identified what was out of joint: one of the walls of my bedroom was missing.
Three of the walls were fine, but where the fourth should have been there was a thick, roiling mass of darkness. I was tempted to call it a cloud, but it was more solid than vaporous, more akin to tar than smoke.
All of a sudden, the darkness parted and a figure stepped through. “Stepped,” however, is an inaccurate description; it was more like the darkness slid under the person’s feet and carried them forward, like a moving walkway. That said, it only took me a few seconds to note that the person coming toward me was a man — at least in a broad sense.
He was emaciated beyond belief — so thin that he could almost be a model for stick figures; the tunic and trousers he wore hung loosely off his frame and looked as though they weighed more than he did. His facial features were positively skeletal, dominated by dark, hollow eyes and sunken cheeks that highlighted the bones underneath. (To call him cadaverous would have been generous.) His hair was dark and stringy, and appeared to be falling out in clumps, leaving him with random bald spots all over his head. Finally, his skin was blotchy — distinctly discolored in broad, random patches — as well as afflicted by rashes, warts, and a host of other medical conditions.
As he approached, I felt the hairs on my neck rise. It wasn’t merely because of the way he looked; he broadcast a deadly and menacing vibe that had nothing to do with appearance. In short, if he wasn’t the killer, he was definitely first runner-up.
My immediate reaction was to telepathically contact Rune — tell him to get his butt in here — but I found myself stymied in that regard. Simply put, I couldn’t reach him. I still had my telepathy, but for some reason it now had a very limited range and could extend no farther than a few feet.
Of course, I thought. This guy — the killer — was an Incarnate. He was somehow blocking my telepathy.
My next instinct was to teleport — to simply get away from him. To my shock and dismay, despite a valiant effort, I didn’t go anywhere. As with my telepathy, the killer was somehow stopping me from teleporting (or maybe just redirecting things so that my end destination was where I started).
I shifted into super speed (thankfully, that ability still worked) and then scrambled to the side of the bed away from him — thereby putting it between us — while phasing at the same time. Recalling what had happened with the statues coming to life, it was a sure bet that neither becoming insubstantial nor dashing around at the speed of sound would be effective against this guy in the long run, but it was better than nothing.
He stopped a few feet from the edge of the bed, staring at me critically with feverish, bloodshot eyes.
“You know who I am?” he asked in a gravelly voice.
“I know what you’ve done,” I replied, hoping I sounded more confident than I felt.
He threw his head back and chuckled — a harsh, grating noise that put me in mind of a manhole cover being dragged off the entry to
