Stalking The Zombie: Fables of Tonight Read online

  “Nothing is as simple as it seems,” answered the Grundy. “When you are a mere mortal, you cannot begin to realize the complexity of the universe.”

  “Okay, maybe he works for your Opponent,” said Mallory. “That makes it even more imperative that we get rid of him.”

  “I can reach out and choke the life from him this instant,” agreed the Grundy, flexing his long, lean fingers.

  “No!” shouted Mallory.

  The Grundy stared at him silently.

  “He’s still got Winnifred’s dream! I’ve got to get it back before you do anything to him.”

  “What do I care about an old woman’s dream?”

  “You said it yourself: her mind, her whole world, is more orderly without it. We’ve got to make the Sandman return it.”

  “I could torture it out of him,” said the Grundy. “He could provide me with an entire evening’s amusement before he finally succumbs.”

  Mallory stared at the demon for a long moment. “I don’t think you want to get anywhere near him.”

  “Why not?”

  “What if he stole your dream of empire?” suggested Mallory. “What if you no longer dreamed of defeating your Opponent?”

  “I am supreme in my domain,” answered the Grundy. “He can do nothing to me here.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not, but are you willing to bet everything you have on it?” asked Mallory. “Why expose yourself, when you don’t know how he steals dreams?” “Why do you think I don’t know?”

  “Because if you did, you’d have been stealing them for years.”

  “True,” admitted the Grundy. “I have more effective ways of destroying dreams.”

  “I’ve seen you kill dozens of men in an instant. I’ve seen you destroy whole city blocks. I’ve seen you make the stock market crash. But I’ve never seen you steal a dream, or have to protect yourself from a dream thief. I think we’d better do this my way.”

  “What is your way, John Justin Mallory?”

  Mallory held his hand out. “May I see that amber egg, please?”

  The Grundy handed it to him, and Mallory held it up to the dim light.

  “That pegasus looks very real,” he noted.

  “It is real.”

  “I didn’t know they came that small.”

  “They don’t—unless someone puts a curse of them and makes them that small.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “He was beautiful. He was innocent. He was filled with love. What better reasons could I want?”

  “And he belonged to the Sandman?”

  “Once upon a time. Before he escaped. I found him in a stable at the north end of Central Park.”

  “I believe I know the place,” said Mallory.1 “And once you trade this to the Sandman for your partner’s dream, what then?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  “See that you do,” said the Grundy, handing him the amber egg and somehow becoming less substantial. “You are all that stands between him and a death so hideous that I hope you cannot even imagine it.”

  The Grundy continued fading from sight, until nothing was left but his face.

  “Once again we find ourselves on the same side, John Justin Mallory,” he said.2 “I am beginning to wonder if you are my successor rather than my antagonist.”

  And then he was gone.

  “Mr. Mallory, sir?” said a Cockney voice, and Mallory turned to find himself facing the liveried goblin. “Come this way, please, and I’ll see you to the front door.”

  “I can find it myself,” said Mallory.

  “No doubt you can, sir,” replied the goblin, “but if you’re with me, the gorgon and the banshees will leave you alone.” A roar and a trio of high-pitched shrieks punctuated his statement, and Mallory dutifully followed him. When they reached the front door, Mallory took a single step outside and heard the portal slam into place behind him.

  “Felina?”

  “Up here,” said a familiar voice.

  Mallory looked up, and found the cat girl perched on a window ledge, chewing on the last bite of something with feathers.

  “Come on,” he said, trying not to show his disgust for her dietary practices. “We’re leaving.”

  She dropped lightly to the ground beside him.

  “I don’t know why fish like worms so much,” she said as they began walking across the drawbridge.

  “You ate a worm?”

  “Just one.”

  “Tasted pretty bad, did it?”

  “Oh, it tasted fine,” said Felina. “But it whined and pleaded all the way down.” She looked at him, an annoyed expression on her face. “I just hate it when they do that.”

  Mallory sighed. Every time he thought he was getting used to his new Manhattan, something like that came from out of left field and made the Grundy seem normal by comparison.

  * * * *

  “You’re back!” exclaimed Winnifred as Mallory entered the office.

  ‘You didn’t expect me to survive?”

  “With the Grundy?” She shuddered. ‘You never know.” She paused. “Still, the Grundy does seem to spend more time talking to you than to anyone else.”

  “Maybe that’s because I’m the only one who ever tells him the truth.”

  “Did you. . .?” began Winnifred hesitantly. “I mean. . .” Mallory reached into his pocket, withdrew the amber egg, and held it up for her to see. “I got it.”

  She walked over and peered into it. “It really does have a pegasus in it, doesn’t it? A blood-bay colt with golden wings.”

  “Same color as Citation, except for the wings,” replied Mallory. “And Citation didn’t need them.”

  “What did you have to give him for it?”

  “A favor.” ‘

  “What kind of favor?” Winnifred asked suspiciously. “If you have to break any laws . . .”

  “Relax,” said Mallory. “It’s the same favor I’m doing for you.”

  “I don’t understand. Surely the Grundy isn’t afraid of the Chinese Sandman!”

  “I don’t think he’s afraid of anything,” agreed Mallory. “But he is cautious. Why should he dirty his hands if I’ll do it for him?”

  “So what we do now?”

  “We wait. The Sandman has to show up sooner or later.” Mallory walked to an easy chair in front of the magic mirror. “Let’s have a movie.”

  “What will it be today?” asked the mirror, which was still showing the ancient baseball game.

  “A nice adventure film, I think.”

  “How about The Man Who Would Be King?”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Not this version.”

  “Connery and Caine, right?”

  “No.”

  “You also showed me the Gable and Bogart version that John Huston tried to make in the 1940s, before he ran out of money,” said the detective.

  “This is the one he tried to make in the early 1960s, with Marlon Brando and Richard Burton.”

  “Okay, that sounds good,” said Mallory. “Let me get a beer and we’re in business.”

  ‘You don’t have time for a beer,” said the mirror. ‘You’re starting that soon?”

  ‘You are about to have a visitor.”

  “If she comes in with a dead squirrel in her mouth, I’m throwing her right back out.”

  “Not Felina,” said the mirror. “Well,” it corrected itself, “Felina too.”

  “All right,” said Mallory. “Take a break.”

  “Thank you,” said the mirror, suddenly displaying Tuffy Bresheen scattering her opponents to the four winds in a 1949 roller derby.

  “Come on,” said Mallory to Winnifred.

  “Where are we going?”

  “If it’s who I think it is, and he does what I think he’s going to do, we don’t want to be inside.”

  “But the back yard is so small,” complained Winnifred. “True,” said Mallory. “But it has one definite advantage.”

  “What’s
that?”

  “No roof.”

  They went outside and walked around to the yard. “Hi, John Justin,” said Felina, perched on a branch on the only tree. She wiped some feathers from her mouth and emitted a small, ladylike burp. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Have you really?”

  “No,” she admitted. “But it sounded good.”

  “I’ve been waiting for yon,” said Mallory.

  “Oh?” She leaped into space, did a double somersault, and landed lightly on her feet right next to the detective.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I’m going to need your help in a couple of minutes.”

  “Do you want me to scare another troll?”

  “No.”

  “More leprechauns?”

  “Shut up and listen!” snapped Mallory. He handed her a small object and spent the next thirty seconds giving her instructions.

  “Now do you think you can do it?”

  “Not until you apologize for yelling at me.”

  “I didn’t yell.”

  “Did too.”

  “All right—I apologize.”

  “And you’ll never yell at me again, and you’ll buy me my very own fish pond, and—”

  “Don’t push it.”

  At that moment the Chinese Sandman joined them, decked out in a new outfit that was even more patchwork than the last.

  “You have it,” he announced. “I could sense it all the way from Grammercy Park.”

  “I’ve got it,” confirmed Mallory, withdrawing the egg from a pocket and holding it up for the Sandman to see. “Where’s your horse and wagon?”

  “I don’t need them any longer. I will give your partner her dream and you will give me my horse.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mallory.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think the egg’s worth more than that.”

  “John Justin!” cried Winnifred.

  “Not to worry,” he assured her. “Our friend knows it’s worth more than one dream.”

  “We had a deal!” growled the Sandman.

  “We still do,” said Mallory. “I have something you want. You have something I want. Only the conditions have changed.”

  “How many dreams do you want?” demanded the Sandman.

  “All of them.”

  “What?”

  “Give back every dream you’ve stolen or it’s no deal.” He smiled. “Why not admit that you want this pegasus every bit as much as the people you cheated want their dreams?”

  “You go to hell, Mallory!” yelled the Sandman. “I’ll trade you Colonel Carruthers’ dream for the egg. That’s the only deal I’ll make! Take it or leave it!”

  “Good-bye, Sandman,” said Mallory calmly.

  “I’ll be back for it!” promised the Sandman ominously. “It won’t do you much good,” said Mallory. “As soon as you leave the yard, I’m throwing it against the brick wall of the house as hard as I can.”

  ‘You can’t! It has mystic powers that only I can tap!” “Sure I can,” said Mallory with a shrug. “Its powers are no use to me.”

  The Sandman looked like he was about to explode. Then, suddenly, his whole body relaxed, as if all the air had gone out of it. “All right, it’s a deal.”

  “Fine. Give them back.”

  The Sandman muttered something in Chinese, made a strange gesture in the air, and bowed. “It is done.” “Winnifred?” said Mallory, turning to her.

  A blissful smile crossed her face. “It’s back!” “Grundy!” yelled Mallory. “Is he telling the truth?”

  A cloud suddenly took on the features of the Grundy’s face. “He’s telling the truth,” it said in the Grundy’s voice. “He has returned all the dreams.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me exactly what powers your pegasus has?” said Mallory.

  “As you yourself said, they’re of no use to you,” replied the Sandman. “Only I can tap them, and I have no intention of sharing my knowledge with you, now or ever.” He held out his hand. “My egg?”

  Mallory handed it over to him.

  The Sandman murmured another chant over it, then placed it on the ground. The amber egg seemed to glow with power, then began to shake. A moment later the amber shattered, leaving a tiny pegasus standing in the yard. Gradually it began to grow, and within ninety seconds it was full-sized. It stared curiously at the three humans and the cat girl, then lowered its head and begin nibbling on the grass.

  “That’s it?” said Mallory. “The deal’s done?”

  “The deal’s done,” acknowledged the Sandman.

  “Then I’ve got something to say to you.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah,” said Mallory angrily, pushing the Sandman in the chest. “I don’t like your business, I don’t like your attitude, I don’t like anything about you.” He pushed him again, harder this time. “I don’t ever want to see you in this neighborhood again, understand?”

  Suddenly the Sandman reached out to Mallory’s wrist, and an instant later the detective found himself flying through the air. He landed with a loud thud!

  “How dare you lay your hands on my person!” raged the Sandman. “I am the Chinese Sandman! Who are you to tell me where I can and can’t go!”

  He walked to the pegasus, grabbed its mane, and swung himself up to its back—and yelped in surprise.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, trying without success to free his hands from the blood bay colt’s black mane.

  “Wrong question,” said Mallory, getting to his feet and approaching horse and rider. “It’s ‘What’s going away?”’ “What have you done to me?” cried the Sandman. He lifted a leg preparatory to jumping off, and found that he was stuck to the colt’s back as well.

  “While you were busy demonstrating your martial arts on me, Felina covered your horse’s mane and back with glue.” Felina proudly held up the paint brush and the empty bucket of glue for the Sandman to see.

  “Fool!” grated the Sandman. “It will wear off in five minutes, and when it does . . .”

  “Oh, I think it will last a little longer than that,” said Mallory with a smile. He looked up to the heavens. “What do you think?”

  “With the spell I put on it, it will outlive the pegasus,” said the Grundy’s stern voice.

  Mallory raised his hand and brought it down with a resounding smack! on the colt’s rump. It whistled in surprise, then began flapping its golden wings. A moment later it was almost 50 feet above them.

  “You can’t get away with this, John Justin Mallory!” bellowed the Chinese Sandman. “I’ll be back!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Mallory. “In fact, I can almost visualize a strong wind blowing you all the way to Mongolia, and blowing you right back there every time you try to leave.”

  The largest cloud in the sky suddenly took on the Grundy’s features and, pursing its lips, blew the pegasus so fast and so far that in a handful of seconds it was totally out of sight.

  Mallory turned to Winnifred, a triumphant smile on his face, only to discover that his partner was crying.

  “What happened?” he demanded. “Did that bastard manage to steal it again?”

  “No, John Justin,” she sobbed. “It’s mine.”

  “Then why—?”

  “It’s so beautiful!” she explained.

  “But you cried when he took it away from you. Why are you crying now?”

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.”

  Mallory sighed. “I guess not.” He walked over to Felina.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll buy you a fish sandwich.”

  “Not now, John Justin,” said Felina, leaping up to a branch of the tree.

  “Why not?”

  “I’m having a conversation.”

  “With who?”

  “With the snake I just ate, of course.”

  Mallory walked around to the front of the office. Just before he entered, he looked up at the cloud that had so recent
ly possessed the Grundy’s features.

  “Don’t go too far away,” he muttered. “You just may be the only sensible person I can talk with.”

  He sighed deeply and entered the office.

  “Okay,” he said to the magic mirror. “Let’s get on with the movie.”

  “I’m not in the mood any more.”

  “All right,” said Mallory. “What do you want to show me?”

  He spent the next two hours watching Tuffy Bresheen turn the 1949 roller derby into a preview of World War III.

  1 - See Stalking the Unicorn.

  2 - See “Post Time in Pink”

  THE AMOROUS BROOM

  John Justin Mallory, his feet up on his desk, his battered fedora worn at an angle, was studying the Racing Form.

  “You know,” he announced, “I think I just may take a run out to the track this afternoon.”

  “Oh my God!” breathed Winnifred Carruthers, his pudgy, pink-faced, gray-haired partner. “That poor creature is entered again, isn’t he?”

  “How did you guess?” asked Mallory.

  “It’s the only time you ever go to the track—when Flyaway’s running.”

  “‘Running’ is an overstatement,” said the not-quite-human creature perched atop the refrigerator in the next room. “Flyaway plods.”

  “When I want advice from the office cat,” said Mallory irritably, “rest assured I’ll ask for it.”

  “That’s what Flyaway does,” continued Felina from atop the refrigerator. “He rests assured.”

  “If you ever leave here,” said Mallory, “don’t apply for a job as a comedian.”

  “Why should I leave here?” purred Felina. “It’s warm and dry and you feed me.”

  “How many races has Flyaway lost in a row now, John Justin?” asked Winnifred.

  “53.”

  “Doesn’t that suggest something to you?” she persisted.

  “That it’s past time for him to win.”

  “You are the finest detective in this Manhattan,” continued Winnifred. “How can you be so stupid?”

  “Oh, ye of little faith,” said Mallory.

  ‘You have solved a lot of tricky cases, and put yourself in harm’s way at least half a dozen times. Did you do it solely so you could keep losing your money on Flyaway?”

  “When I go out on a case, my function is to detect,” replied Mallory. “When I go to the track, my function is to bet. Why do you have such a problem with that? Mallory & Carruthers is paying its bills. This is discretionary income.”