Dean R. Koontz - The Haunted Earth

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The Haunted Earth -- Dean R. Koontz
(Version 2002.06.30)
Dedication:
A crazy story for Crazy Tillie Teeshirt
PART ONE: THE ALIEN GRAVEYARD
Chapter One
Count Slavek, having proposed a toast to his new friend's great beauty,
tossed off the glassful of red wine. Then, smiling so broadly that he revealed
his two gleaming fangs, he said, "Before long, my dear, we shall drink other
toasts together, though not of wine."
Mrs. Renee Cuyler, dressed alluringly in a thigh-high skirt and a blouse
slashed almost to her navel, smiled at the Count's thinly veiled promise of
inhuman ecstacy and sipped her wine, which she, more decorously, had not
swallowed in one thirsty gulp.
The Count put his glass down and walked to her, his cape flowing out
behind like dark wings. He touched her lightly along her slim neck. A small
sigh (from both of them) punctuated the caress.
"Pure Hokum," Jessie Blake whispered.
He had to whisper, for he was sitting in the closet, watching the Count
and Mrs. Cuyler through a fisheye lens which he had installed in the door some
hours earlier. Neither the Count nor Mrs. Cuyler knew he was in there, and
they would both be acutely disturbed when they learned that he was watching.
The important thing was not to let them know they were observed until the
crucial, incriminating moment had arrived. So Jessie whispered to himself.
He had bribed the hotel desk clerk into admitting him to the expensive
Blue Suite three hours before either Count Slavek or Renee Cuyler arrived for
their none-too-private assignation. He had chosen, as his observation post, a
stool in the only closet which looked out on the main drawing room of the
suite. Though he knew events would rapidly progress to the bedroom, he
suspected that Count Slavek, in his excitement, would choose to chew on Renee
Cuyler's neck right here, in the drawing room, before moving to other
stimulating but decidedly more mundane, sensual activities. Vampires were
notoriously overeager, especially when, as in the Count's case, they had not
made a convert in some weeks.
Mrs. Cuyler put down her own wine as the Count's hand pressed more
insistently at her neck.
"Now?" she asked.
"Yes," he responded, throatily.
Jessie Blake, private investigator, got off his stool and put his hand
on the inside knob of the closet door. Still bent over to peer through the
tiny fisheye lens, he made ready to confront the Count the moment that toothy
son of a bitch made a single legal error.
The Count gazed into Renee Cuyler's eyes in a manner intended to convey
more than mortal longing.
To Jessie, who was getting a crick in his back, Slavek looked more as if
he had suddenly gotten stomach cramps.
The woman hooked her fingers in the lapels of her already daring blouse
and opened it wider, giving the Count a better approach to her jugular and
incidentally revealing two full, round, brown-nippled breasts.
"You look ravishing," the Count said.
"Then ravish me," Mrs. Cuyler breathed.
What tripe! Jessie thought. At this crucial moment, he couldn't even
risk a whisper.
"Of course," the Count said apologetically, "there are certain
formalities we must perform, certain..."
"I understand," the woman said.
His voice losing none of its slick, warm charm, the Count said, "I am
obligated, by the Kolchak-Bliss Decision of the United Nations Supreme Court
for International Law, to inform you both of your rights and of your
alternatives."
"I understand."
The Count licked his lips. In a sensually guttural voice, clearly too
excited to take much more time with the legal formalities, he said, "At this
time, you need not submit to the consummation of our pending relationship, and
you may either leave or request the services of a licensed advisor on
spiritual matters."
"I understand," she said. She pulled her blouse open even wider, giving
the Count a good view of the normal pleasures that awaited him once the
greater joy of the bite had passed.
"Do you wish to leave?" he asked.
"No."
"Do you wish the services of a spiritual counselor?"
"No, darling," she said.
For a moment, the Count seemed to have forgotten what came next in the
litany engendered by the Kolchak-Bliss Decision, but then he went on, speaking
quickly and softly so as not to break the mood: "Do you understand the nature
of the proposal I've made?"
"Yes."
"Do you understand that I wish to initiate you into the World of the
undead?" the Count asked.
"I do."
"Do you understand that your new life of damnation is eternal?"
"Yes, darling, yes," she said. "I want you to -- to bite me. Now!"
"Be patient, dearest," Slavek said. "Now, do you realize that there is
no return from the life of the undead?"
"I understand, for Christ's sake!" Mrs. Cuyler moaned.
"Don't use that name!" the Count roared.
In the closet, Jessie Blake shook his head, saddened by this spectacle.
Maybe he wouldn't even have to interfere, if things kept going like this.
Another five minutes of questions-and-answers would bleed away most of the
romantic element the Count had spent the early evening hours in building up.
U.N. law certainly had made things tough for the likes of Slavek.
"I'm sorry," Renee Cuyler told her would-be lover-master.
The Count composed himself and, still with his fingertips resting on the
pulse at her neck, he said, " You understand that my culture encourages a
certain male chauvinism which you must accept as intimate terms of our blood
contract?"
"Yes," she said.
"And you still wish to continue?"
"Of course!"
Jessie shook his head again. Mr. Cuyler was going to have his hands full
restraining this wife of his, even if Blake did pull her out of the fire this
time. Obviously, she had a vampire fixation, a need to be dominated and used
in a physical as well as a sexual sense.
The Count hesitated on the brink of beginning the second and shorter
section of the Kolchak-Bliss litany, the part dealing with the woman's
alternatives, and having hesitated he was lost. He tilted Renee's pretty head,
sweeping back her long, dark hair. Baring his fangs in an unholy grin, he
went, rather gracelessly, for her jugular.
Delighted that his estimation of Slavek had proven sound, Jessie twisted
the doorknob and threw open the closet door, stepping into the drawing room
with more than a little flair.
Count Slavek jerked at the noise, whirled away from the woman and,
hissing through his pointed teeth like a broken steam valve, back-stepped with
his arms out to his sides and his cape drawn up like giant wings ready for
flight.
Jessie brandished his credentials and said, "Jessie Blake, private
investigator. I'm working for Mr. Roger Cuyler and have been assigned to
protect his wife from the influence of certain supernatural persons who have
designs upon both her body and soul."
"Designs?" Slavek asked, incredulous.
Jessie turned to the woman. "If you'd be so kind as to close your
blouse, Mrs. Cuyler, we can get out of this dump and -- "
"Designs?" Count Slavek insisted, moving forward. "This woman is no
innocent victim! She's about the hottest little number I've seen in -- "
"Are you contesting my intervention?" Jessie asked.
He was six feet tall and weighed a hundred and eighty-five pounds, all
of it bone and muscle. And though he couldn't harm a supernatural person
without resorting to the accepted charms and spells, silver bullets and wooden
stakes, he could sure as hell generate a stalemate out of which no one could
gain anything.
Still, the Count said, "Of course, I contest! You have somehow secreted
yourself in a privately rented hotel suite, against all the laws of individual
-- "
"And you," Jessie said, "were in the process of biting a victim to whom
you had not recited the entire pertinent information which the Kolchak-Bliss
Decision obligates you to state in easily understood language."
Mrs. Cuyler began to cry.
Blake, undaunted, continued: "A mindscan, which you would have to
undergo if I lodged this charge with the authorities, would prove my
allegations and make you vulnerable to a number of unpleasant punishments."
"Damn you!" Slavek growled.
"No histrionics, please," Blake said.
The Count took a threatening step in the detective's direction. "If I
were to make two converts here, then there would be no one to report me, would
there? I'm sure Renee would help me to convert you." He grinned, his black
eyes adance with light.
Blake removed a crucifix from his jacket and held it in one fist, where,
with a human antagonist,' he might have carried a fully loaded narcotic pin
gun. "I'm not unprepared," he said.
Slavelj appeared to shrivel a bit and looked guiltily away from the
crucifix. He said, "I was Jewish before I was a vampire. There's no reason for
that device to thwart me."
"Yet it does," Blake said, smiling down at the plastic Christ-on-a-Cross
which was in four different shades of glow-brite orange. His pin gun was the
best model, an expensive piece of equipment. But he did not believe in toting
around a hand-crafted crucifix when any old hunk of junk would do. He said,
"Studies have been done which show that you people fear this only on a
psychological level. Physically, it has no effect. Yet, because you get your
power from the mythos of vampirism, and because the cross plays such a strong
part in that mythos, you really would die if you came into contact with this -
- if a spirit can be said to die."
As the detective spoke, Slavek began a strange transformation. His cape
appeared to mold closer to his body and to alter, by slow degrees, into a taut
brown membrane. The Count's features changed, too, growing darker and less
human. Already, he had begun to shrink, his clothes miraculously shrinking
with him and dissolving into him as he strove to attain the form of a bat.
"That'll do you no good," Jessie said. "Even if you escape out the
window, we know who you are. We can have you subpoenaed in twenty-four hours.
Besides, Brutus can trail you wherever you go."
The Count hesitated in his metamorphosis. "Brutus?"
Blake motioned toward the closet where a powerful hound, four and a half
feet high at the shoulders, strode out of the closet Its head was massive, its
snout long and crammed with sharp teeth. Its eyes were an unsettling shade of
red with tiny, black pupils.
"A hell hound?" Slavek asked.
"Of course," Brutus said.
Mrs. Cuyler seemed shocked to hear a deep, masculine voice coming from
the beast, but neither Count Slavek nor Jessie found it odd.
"Brutus can follow you into any little nether-world cul-de-sac you may
intend to flee to," Blake said.
The Count nodded reluctantly and reversed his transformation, became
more human again. "You work together, man and spirit?"
"Quite effectively," Brutus said.
He held his burly head low between his shoulders, as if he were prepared
to leap after the Count if he should make the slightest move to escape.
"An unbeatable combination," Slavek said, admiringly. He sighed and
walked to the sofa, sat down, crossed his legs, folded his pale hands in his
lap, and said, "What do you want of me?"
"You've got to hear my client's ultimatum, and then you can leave."
"I'm listening," Slavek said.
He had begun to buff his nails on the hem of his cape.
Mrs. Cuyler, bewildered, still stood in the center of the room, crying,
her small hands fisted at her sides as if the tears would soon turn to screams
of rage.
Jessie said, "You've been caught in an illegally executed bite, and you
will remain susceptible to prosecution for seven years. Unless you want Mr.
Roger Cuyler -- my client and this lady's husband -- to initiate that
prosecution, you will henceforth have nothing whatsoever to do with Mrs.
Cuyler. You will neither contact her in person, by telephone, by viewphone or
by messenger. Neither will you employ supernatural methods of communication
where this lady is concerned."
Slavek looked longingly at the leggy young woman and finally nodded. "I
accept these conditions, naturally."
"Be off, then," Jessie said.
At the door of the suite, Slavek turned back to them and said, "I think
it was much better when we kept to ourselves, when you people didn't even
know, for sure, that we existed."
"Progress," Blake said, with a shrug.
"I mean," Slavek said, "there's much less risk of a stake through the
heart nowadays -- now that we understand each other -- but the romanticism is
gone. Blake, they've taken away the thrill!"
"Take it up with city hall," Brutus said. He wasn't in the best of moods
today.
"It's seven years now since my land of people entered real commerce with
your kind -- and things get worse every day. I don't think we'll ever like it
the way it is now." Slavek had taken on the brooding tone that so many middle-
European bloodsuckers adopted when in a musing mood.
"The maseni have learned to live with their supernatural brothers -- and
vice versa," Blake reminded Slavek.
"But they're different," the Count insisted. 'They're alien to begin
with. It was a natural thing for them to establish contact with their
supernatural world. But they forced this on Earth; it isn't a natural
condition here."
"I hope not," Blake said. "If relations between the flesh and the spirit
worlds, here on Earth, become as easy as they are on the maseni home world,
I'll be out of a job."
"You exploit other people's problems," Slavek said.
"Solve other people's problems," Blake corrected.
Grimacing to express his distaste, Count Slavek left the suite in a
swirl of black cloth.
At the same moment, Renee Cuyler's tears changed abruptly into anger, as
he had expected they would. The woman ran at him, screaming, clawing with her
well-manicured nails, kicking, biting, slapping.
Jessie pushed her away and, when he could not settle her with words,
settled her with three narcotics pins in the abdomen. She slumped down on the
thick carpet and went to sleep. She snored.
"Jesus, what a bore!" Brutus growled. He had no compunctions about using
the Lord's name, in vain or otherwise, though Blake had never heard him use it
otherwise. He padded to the sofa, jumped onto it, curled up with his big,
hairy paws hanging over the edge of the cushions. "It's one infidelity case
after another, these days," he complained.
"Boring but safe," Blake said. He went to the vid-phone, punched out the
number of their office and waited for Helena to answer it.
"Hell Hound Investigations," she said, almost five minutes later.
"You're a poor excuse for a secretary," Blake said. She blinked her
long-lashed, blue eyes, pushed a strand of honey yellow hair away from her
face. "Yeah, but I'm stacked," she said.
He could see her swelling bosom in the vidphone screen, and he could not
argue with her. He said, " Okay," and he sat down, a bit overwhelmed by
mammary memories. "We've got Renee Cuyler safe and sound. I want you to call
her husband and send him over here." He gave her the address of the hotel, and
the suite number.
"Congratulations," she said, smiling. She had ripe lips and very white
teeth. She should have made commercials for unnatural sex acts, Blake thought.
"Oh," she said, "you've received four calls this morning from a potential
client."
"Who?"
"Galiotor Fils," she said.
"A maseni?"
"With that name, what else?" she asked.
"What's he want?"
"He'll only talk to you."
Blake thought amoment. "I'll be back in the office in an hour and a
half, if you get to Roger Cuyler right away. If this Galiotor Fils can be
there, I'll talk to him."
"Right, chief," she said.
He winced and didn't have a chance to reply before she snapped off, her
perfect face and better bosom fading from the screen.
"Looks like you got your wish -- for something interesting to happen,"
Blake told the hell hound.
Brutus climbed off the couch and shook his head, his ears slapping
against his skull, and he said, " Did I hear right? A maseni for a customer?"
"You heard right."
The hound said, "That's a first. What problem could a maseni have that
his own people couldn't solve, that he'd need a human detective for?"
"We'll know in an hour or so," Blake said. "Let's get our equipment out
of the closet and ready to go, before Mr. Cuyler gets here to collect his
wife."
Chapter Two
With a six-inch tentacle as thick as a pencil, which passed for his
forefinger, the maseni tapped the glass front of Blake's battery calendar. He
looked hard at the detective, his deep-set yellow eyes intense, his lipless
mouth expressing obvious disapproval, and he said, "Your calendar ran down
three days ago, sir. The date is not October 3, 2000, but October 6, 2000."
"Only four days short of the tenth anniversary of the initial maseni
landing on Earth," Blake said, leaning back in his shape-changing chair and
staring across the desk at the alien.
Galiotor Fils blinked, surprised. "True enough, sir. But I fail to see
what that has to do with your inefficiency."
"And I fail to see what my calendar has to do with your visit to my
office, Mr. Galiotor." Watching the alien, Blake could almost understand why
the right-wing Pure Earthers were so rabidly anti-maseni. Galiot or Fils was
not the most pleasant sight: nearly seven feet tall, as were most of his kind,
dressed in amber robes that matched the color of his eyes, he looked like
something made of wax drippings -- yellow skin with a glistening look to it,
lumpy and yet graceful, with a ballooning forehead, those deep-set yellow
eyes, the squashed nose, the lipless slash of a mouth, hands composed of those
thin tentacles instead of fingers...
Galiotor Fils said, "If you're inefficient in your daily office routine,
perhaps your work as an investigator would be equally sloppy."
"Did you just choose my name from the phone book, or did I come
recommended?" Blake asked.
"Oh," Galiotor said, "you came recommended, sir. Highly recommended." He
nodded his bulbous head, as if agreeing with what he said, but the effect was
that of a puppet being jerked on strings.
"Then I suggest we get on with the business at hand. If you will just
tell us your situation, what you would like us to do for you, we can -- "
The maseni interrupted. "Excuse me, but must this animal remain in the
room, sir?" He pointed an undulating tentacle-finger at Brutus, who had curled
up on the only other easy chair in the room, only a half dozen feet from
Galiotor Fils, himself.
"Him?" Blake asked. "Of course he has to stay. He's my partner in Hell
Hound Investigations. In fact, it's from him we get our name."
"This is an intelligent creature?" the maseni asked.
"How would you like a couple dozen canine incisors in your ass?" Brutus
inquired of the alien, his voice like gravel sliding down a sheet of tin.
Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his seat. "I see," he said. "One of
your supernatural brethren."
"Exactly," Blake said.
"Your myths contain some very strange creatures," Galiotor Fils said.
"Of all the races we've met, of all those we've introduced to their
supernatural world-mates, I don't think I've ever seen a collection so
colorful -- "
"You're pretty colorful yourself," Brutus said. He had raised his big
head from his paws. "In fact, you're downright disgusting."
The maseni made a throat clearing sound like a cat wailing in hunger.
"Yes," he said, "I suppose it's all a matter of perspective."
Brutus lowered his head to his paws again.
Jessie, aware that the maseni was still uneasy about Brutus, decided
that a reassuring little speech, now, would save them time later. Until he was
put at ease, Galiotor Fils was going to be a difficult client. A difficult
potential client. At the moment, Jessie didn't think they would take the case;
both he and Brutus were well-off enough to be choosy, and they were both in
need of something to stir the blood, something exciting. Galiotor Fils did not
seem to be the type to change their luck. Still, on the off chance that he
might be what they were looking for, Jessie decided not to send him away at
once but to try to placate him, if possible.
"Mr. Galiotor," he said, "I assure you that you have nothing to fear
from my friend, Brutus."
"Nothing," Brutus grumbled.
Jessie said, "Two thousand years ago, Brutus was a man much like myself,
a man who had sinned and who, upon death, went straightaway to Hell. There, he
was changed into the hound you see before you, and he was given certain duties
to perform wi thin the hierarchy of file nether world."
"Interesting duties," Brutus said, grinning widely, almost slavering.
Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his chair.
"Brutus's duties were so interesting, by his way of thinking, that he
chose to continue them even after he had spent enough time in Hell to redeem
himself."
"Five hundred years," Brutus said.
"At the end of five hundred years, having served his time, Brutus could
have opted for either permanent death or reincarnation. He rejected both and
simply remained a hell hound."
Brutus still grinned wickedly. "It was delightful."
"After a second five hundred years, ten centuries after his death,
Brutus had forgotten his old persona. He could not recall who he had been when
he was a man, or what he had done."
"Just as well," the hound said.
Jessie said, "After fifteen hundred years, he was weary of his duties in
Hell, and he began to roam the Earth, seeking the unique and the titillating,
anything short of the reincarnation which was his due."
"It'd be a drag to be human again," Brutus said. Galiotor Fils looked
from the man to the hound, back and forth, as if watching a tennis match.
Jessie said, "Nine years ago, a year after you people first made contact
with Earth, I quit my job as a narcotics agent with Interpol, and I advertised
for a supernatural partner to go halves in the establishment of a detective
agency. Brutus answered the ad."
"And we've been busy every since," the hound said. He chuckled, deep in
his throat. "You people caused more trouble than a thousand detectives can
handle."
Galiotor Fils shifted uneasily in his chair, laced his twelve tentacle-
fingers together, unlaced them, blinked his amber eyes and said, "I hope you
aren't -- well, prejudiced against the maseni race. I am aware that some of
you people feel you would have been far better off -- "
"No, no," Blake said. "You misunderstand my colleague's meaning. We are
glad you came to Earth; we thrive on the chaos. Ordinary detectives, those who
work on cases involving only human beings, make very little money, but those
of us specializing in human-alien and human-supernatural cases do well. Quite
well."
"I see," the maseni said.
"Not everything, you don't," Jessie said. "Mr. Galiotor, my pleasure
with your people's arrival on Earth is not strictly financial in nature. You
see, before that time, ten years ago, I was twenty-seven years old and bored
to tears with nearly everything: my job with Interpol, food, liquor, books,
films, getting up, going to bed... The only things I wasn't bored with were
marijuana and women; I smoked the former and balled the latter, and I was an
enthusiast of both. However, it was a shallow life. Then the maseni came, and
everything changed. Mind you, life would have been lively with one set of
aliens to deal with -- but you brought two, yourselves and your supernatural
brothers. And you introduced us to a third set of aliens that had been with us
all along, our own supernatural brothers. In the following decade, I have not
only earned considerable money, but I have suffered very damn few dull
moments."
"Until recently," Brutus added.
"Yes," Blake said. "Until recently. Recently, it seems one case is like
the last -- a wife trying to run off with a vampire; a husband ignoring his
own wife but taking a contract with a succubus; banshees involved in real-
estate swindles, trying to scream down the value of a house or tract of land;
A ghoul interested in robbing graves unsanctioned by the government... Both
Brutus and I need a change, and we're hoping, quite frankly, you're the one to
give it to us."
"Well, it may be nothing, sir," the maseni said.
"Whatever it is," Blake said, "it's obviously unusual. So far as I know
you're the first maseni ever to contact a human detective, for aid."
"Most likely," Galiotor Fils agreed. He looked at both man and hound, in
turn, while he played six tentacles over his open mouth. At last, he dropped
his hand to his lap and said, "I am most distraught, sir. My brood brother has
died, and there has not been a proper ceremony."
Blake and Brutus exchanged a glance, and the detective rose from his
chair to pace behind his desk. " Brood brother?" he asked. "That would mean
another maseni, like yourself, born in the same brood hole on the home world,
in the same familial mud as yourself?"
"Even more than that," the maseni said. "In this case, Tesserax was of
the same Birthing as I, from the very same egg batch. We were the same age, by
a hatching day, and we were close." Fat, yellow tears hung at the corners of
the alien's eyes, trembling like liquid jewels, and the corners of his lipless
mouth turned down.
"Tesserax? That was his name?"
"Galiotor Tesserax," the maseni said, nodding.
He was barely able to control his grief, but he held back the threatened
tears and covered up the sorrow in the line of his mouth by raising a hand and
playing six small tentacles there.
"How did he die?" Blake asked.
"I have asked the highest officials in the maseni diplomatic mission,"
Galiotor Fils said, "but I have been unable to get a good answer. Invariably,
they tell me the same thing -- 'of natural causes' -- which is to tell me
nothing at all. They commiserate with me in a false manner, saying what they
do not feel, saying they knew him well and miss him too, saying they suffered
much grief themselves... Lies. I see through that."
"What reason would they have to lie to you?" Jessie asked, pacing yet,
not looking at Galiotor Fils, not able to look at him because of those yellow
tears trembling on those thick, wiry lashes.
"I believe that they were somehow involved with his death," the alien
said, his sorrow slowly turning to anger, the tone of his voice subtly
different as he spoke.
"The maseni at the embassy?"
"Yes," Galiotor Fils said. "Tesserax worked there; indeed, he was the
deputy chief of the embassy staff, the second-ranking maseni on Earth. He was
of high position, respect, dignity, with a great future."
"No history of illness?"
"Nothing worse than an occasional tentacle infection," the maseni said,
looking at his own hands. "He was a sexually unrestrained fellow, you see, and
he often indulged in spur-of-the-moment -- ah, you'd call it 'petting' without
first lubricating his tentacles against infection. Our tentacles, you see, are
by far the most delicate portions of our anatomies."
"How old was Tesserax?" Blake asked, looking at the maseni's twelve
little tentacles from the corner of his eye.
"Eighty-six Earth years," Galiotor Fils said. "But since we are much
longer-lived than you, I must translate that -- as, say, early middle age."
"Not quite old enough to just drop off," Blake said.
"Hardly," Galiotor Fils said.
Blake said, "But surely the men he worked with at the embassy were the
cream of maseni society. Your diplomatic staffs aren't thugs, mugs, thieves or
murderers, are they?"
"No, no!" Galiotor Fils said. His yellow face took on the subtle,
greenish hue which indicated embarrassment. He was clearly upset that the
detective could even suggest such a thing, as if it were not merely a slur on
the diplomatic staff, but on the race itself, and on Galiotor Fils as well.
"They are gentlemen of the first mud, I assure you, all intensively tested for
psychological abnormalities. Their function is a very delicate one, after all:
the introduction of maseni civilization, the establishment of trade and
philosophical relations with inferior and superior and equal galactic races.
They must be of sound mind."
Jessie returned to his desk and gripped the back of his shape-changing
chair with both hands; it molded around his fingers. He said, "Then how can
you suspect these people of murder?"
"I said I thought they were somehow involved in his murder, but I did
not say they performed it."
"Call a spade a spade," Brutus growled.
Galiotor Fils looked at the hound and said, "What?"
"Make yourself clearer," Jessie suggested.
"I think my brood brother died in some unconventional manner, and that
the embassy is trying to cover it up." The alient shifted in his chair, too
big for it, and said, "Is that better?"
Blake chose not to answer that, but began pacing again. In a few
moments, he said, "Thus far, you've given us no reason to believe the people
at your embassy were lying to you. Certainly, you choose not to believe that
he died of natural causes, but that seems to be only opinion. Mr. Galiotor,
when one loses a loved one, grief sometimes makes the acceptance of reality
too hard to bear, and fantasies of paranoid -- "
"There are a number of reasons why I suspect that I am not being told
the truth about Tesserax's death," the maseni said, a bit angry.
"Name one," Brutus said.
"I am stationed on Earth for the purpose of sociological research, along
with several hundred colleagues. A group of your scientists have been taken to
our home world, in exchange for the privilege of unrestricted study here on
Earth. Tesserax and I saw each other frequently. Everyone at the Los Angeles
embassy knew I was here, who I was, how much I loved Tesserax. Yet, when he
died, I was not notified until he was three weeks in the grave!"
"Bureaucratic red tape, paper errors, fumbling in high office," Blake
said, by way of explanation.
"That's an institution peculiar to your own race," Galiotor Fils said.
"We haven't 'red tape' in our own government."
"An honest oversight, then."
"I can't believe that all fifty of Tesserax's associates at the Los
Angeles embassy could forget me. One, yes, or even a dozen. But certainly not
all of them, sir."
"What else?" Brutus asked.
"Every time I try to make an appointment with the embassy doctor, who
was supposed to have treated Tesserax, I get put off. He's always busy with
patients or away or in surgery or something." Galiotor Fils wiped at his huge
eyes with both hands, tentacles wriggling, as if pulling off his weariness. "I
attempted to learn something from the maseni supernaturals who come and go at
the embassy, but I lost out there as well. They fed me the same line as the
embassy officials, as if they'd studied the same script."
Jessie pulled out his shape-changing chair and sat down behind the desk
again, waited until the chair stopped gurgling and was fitted firmly to him,
then said, "You think that the maseni and the maseni supernaturals at the
embassy are cooperating to hide something about your brood brother's death?"
"Yes. I know how strange that sounds. Though spirits can learn to live
harmoniously with creatures of flesh and blood, and vice versa, they rarely
present such a monolithic front on any particular topic."
"Interesting," Jessie said. "Conspiracy of a sort between the real and
the spirit world."
"One thing," Brutus growled.
Galiotor Fils looked at the hound. "Yes?"
"I don't know much about maseni mythology," Brutus said. "When one of
you dies, what happens to the 'soul'?"
"Any of a dozen different things," Galiotor Fils said. "Tesserax might
have become a ghost, much like the sort that you people believe in. Or he
might have been changed into a Great Tree, assigned to suffer the tortures of
the sentient inanimate before recyling -- ah, this gets difficult to explain
in terms you people would understand."
"It doesn't matter just now," Jessie said. "In short, Tesserax would
have returned in some form, and you would have known about it."
"Exactly," the alien said. "Immediately upon learning of his death, I
paid to have a constant call on the netherworld communications network, so
that he would come to me first thing. He hasn't answered it. He would, if he
could. Therefore -- "
"Perhaps he isn't dead," Jessie suggested.
"In my central heart, I hope that this is true," Galiotor Fils said,
placing a hand across his abdomen to indicate the seat of his emotions.
"However, I also fear that something even worse than death has happened to
him."
"Like what?" Brutus asked.
The alien stood, suddenly, towering almost to the ceiling, unfolding out
of the easy chair like a paper accordion coming to full length. He leaned over
Blake's desk, his palms flat on the blotter, his twelve tentacles wriggling
madly, and he said, "I am afraid, Mr. Blake, that Tesserax was buried without
the proper ceremony, and that his soul -- his soul has been dissipated."
The last few words came out in a strangled gasp. Everyone was silent in
the wake of this display, until Galiotor Fils could recover. His face had
blanched, and his whole body had locked into a twisted, rigid stance.
At last, the alien said, "Forgive me for getting so emotional."
"That's okay," Blake said, not able to meet the creature's gaze. "Can
you go on? Can you explain just what you meant -- when you said that
Tesserax's soul may have been dissipated?"
Galiotor Fils grimaced, a horrible sight on that nearly featureless,
yellow face. "Yes, of course. You see... Maseni mythology holds that, unless
certain burial procedures are observed, the soul of the departed will simply
disintegrate. He will never return in another form, will have no spiritual
life. He will be, plainly, dead. Because this has long been a maseni belief,
millennia old, it has come to be fact. As you know, the supernatural is at the
mercy of human creation, just as humanity is at the mercy of the spirits'
creations. It is a closed circle. God created us, yet we created God, sort of
like your riddle: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"
"Theoretically," Brutus said, "you've brought us to another impasse."
Galiotor Fils looked down at the hound and said, "How so?"
摘要：

TheHauntedEarth--DeanR.Koontz(Version2002.06.30)Dedication:AcrazystoryforCrazyTillieTeeshirtPARTONE:THEALIENGRAVEYARDChapterOneCountSlavek,havingproposedatoasttohisnewfriend'sgreatbeauty,tossedofftheglassfulofredwine.Then,smilingsobroadlythatherevealedhistwogleamingfangs,hesaid,"Beforelong,mydear,we...

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