Games Creatures Play

by Charlaine Harris

  This resulted in even more fulmination, lasting a day and a night and day and a night, and incorporating more cataclysmic events, which outside the Professor’s little bubble of safety and the perimeter of absolute destruction that surrounded him, induced civilization’s pundits to invoke the phrase “biblical proportions” more than anybody had since that one time in 1997 when a porn magnate released a film set in the harem of King Solomon.

  Inside the bubble, however, there was just the Professor and his implacability, the two Elder Gods and their fury . . . which, once profligately spent, arrived at the only place it could, with N’loghthl and The Septic Breath Of All Existing Foulness spent as well, staring daggers at the speck of a creature whose defiance had brought them to this eventuality.

  “Do you concede defeat?” the Professor inquired.

  They did.

  “That is eminently reasonable of you. I, however, am aware that once I accept your concession, my usefulness as your brother’s jailer, and therefore as the one force that keeps the two of you at bay as well, is ended . . . and I harbor too much affection for the world to let that happen. I therefore designate one bribe that I am willing to accept in exchange for my agreement to open the box. It is a highly unlikely bribe, one that you will be able to predict by sheer logic. I am willing to sit here for all eternity if I must, to refuse all other inducements. In this way, I save humanity.”

  The tantrum that followed was even worse than the prior ones, in that it had the extra added obscenity of whining.

  It was an impasse, and if we take anything from it, it is our perception of Professor De Glough as an uncomplicated, one of a kind, world-saving hero; a man who when all of existence depended on him stood between all of us and Armageddon.

  It should be noted here, because what follows renders it irrelevant, that the bribe the Professor had in mind was the simple word Please. He had quite rightly bet all our futures that neither N’loghthl nor The Septic Breath Of All Existing Foulness would ever come up with that word on their own, even if provided a thousand times a thousand eons to mull the problem over; it was, he divined, wholly beyond their character, and he was so right in this assumption that, were they and their sleeping brother the whole entities that mattered here, humanity would have been able to survive and flourish and thrive and rise and achieve a destiny beyond the whims of any of their kind.

  Really, he deserved a medal, or at least a great big hand.

  Alas, we find we must report that he had failed to consider one thing beyond even his capacity to predict, something he might be forgiven for missing, given the power and the scale of the creatures he was dealing with.

  For him, it manifested as a sight that made his eyes boil in their sockets, and his brain dribble out of his ears; a shape of infinite complexity and infinite awfulness, congealing in the air behind the two Elder Gods he had stymied; a creature who was to them what a whale is to the tiniest minnow. He was shattered and gibbering before his mind could put together what he had learned from them—that they were siblings and that they were playing a game—and point out, with cold and pitiless logic, that among men as well as Elder Gods, there is a certain class of creature known for getting bored, and making up games, a class of creature looked over by another who can be trusted to come running, whenever a game gets out of hand.

  So we’re sorry to have to tell you this. We really are.

  But the last thing Professor De Glough saw before his heart burst, and darkness was loosed upon the Earth, was Mommy coming to make sure everybody was playing nicely.

  ICE

  LAURA LIPPMAN

  Laura Lippman grew up in Baltimore, in a neighborhood very much like the one described here. Okay, it was the exact same neighborhood, and the two stories joined here, about two girls, were inspired by real-life events. Historical note: Baltimore, which was hard-hit by rioting after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, began observing King’s birthday in the 1970s, long before the federal holiday was created. A New York Times bestselling author, Lippman has published eighteen novels, a novella, and a book of short stories. Her nineteenth novel, After I’m Gone, was published in February 2014. She lives in Baltimore and New Orleans. She ice-skates whenever possible.

  Atheena could run. Boy, could she run.

  She ran down the hill at full speed. Because she could, because the hill was there and when you are ten years old, running down a hill at full speed makes as much sense as anything else you might do. You can roll down a hill, too, but that is a game for lazier, gentler grassy slopes, with plenty of land to catch you at the bottom. This hill was studded with trees, which snapped and slapped unless you were fleet and nimble, short and skinny. Atheena was all those things. Her brother lumbered along, slowed down by his size, crying out when he felt the stinging, winter-bare branches on his face. Those branches never touched Atheena.

  Atheena flew down the hill, her lungs bursting with happiness. It was such a beautiful day, more beautiful than any January day had a right to be, more like March. They were off from school for Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday for the first time ever, a holiday just for schools, nobody else. Her mama didn’t have off, but Atheena and her brother did.

  It was funny, though, how boring a day off from school could become before it was over, how easy it was to use up all the fun. The day had started fine—Mama’s kiss on the top of her head as Atheena burrowed under her covers, enjoying an extra hour of sleep. Cartoons and Nesquik and Pop-Tarts, Dialing for Dollars. Then outside, a walk to the corner store with the dollar Mama had left for her. One for her and one for her brother. Then they had sort of run out of things to do until Bobby thought to go exploring in the woods behind Hillside Road.

  And now here they were, running, running, running down the hill. There was a pond at the foot of the hill. It had never occurred to Atheena, whose school bus crossed that pond on a bridge every day, that she could reach it on foot, yet here it was. The pond, still all ice after last week’s hard freeze, looked like a shiny white diamond winking at her. If she ran fast enough, she could probably glide across it, like those skaters did. The Winter Olympics would be starting soon and she liked to watch the skaters and the skiers, although her Uncle Rodney always said those were sports for rich folks and white folks. Atheena had puzzled over that because she was pretty sure that all rich folks were white, except for maybe Miss Diana Ross and the Jackson Five. Not even the people on Hillside Road were truly rich, big as their houses were compared to the one where she lived with Robert and Mama.

  They were racing and she was winning. Robert was two years older, but she was faster and, oh, how it irked him, losing to his baby sister. Can’t catch me, I’m the gingerbread man! Of course, when she got to the bottom, he could catch her. Wouldn’t it be funny if she said exactly those words and didn’t stop, just flew across the ice to the other side? Mrs. Burke had been reading them this story, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, about slavery and such, said it was important to know certain things if they were going to celebrate the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. here in Baltimore; they needed to know how far they had come, how it used to be that the stories of black people were only listened to when told by a white woman, and while this woman was a good white woman, Dr. King had showed the world that they had words, too, they didn’t need white people to tell their stories.

  Atheena ran down that hill like Eliza running from Simon Legree, like Moses escaping Egypt. Go down, Moses. Go down, Atheena. It would be hard to run on the ice. She had taken many a fall on ice in her time. Maybe she should try to walk across the spine of the rickety old dam, the one that created the little pond out of a stream that usually just tumbled and churned across rocks. But no, that dam was so full of splinters and stuff. She would just get up a lot of speed, then glide across the ice. It would be like surfing, not that she had ever done that, either. She ran straight at the frozen pond and launched herself across it, arms out, gliding, gli
ding, gliding. It was the closest a person could come to flying and have her feet on the ground, Atheena thought.

  She was almost to the opposite side when she felt the ice shudder. Could ice get cold? Or did ice shiver when it got warm? It shuddered once, twice, then gave way the third time, collapsed beneath her. If gliding had felt like flying, then this was like falling from the sky.

  Atheena couldn’t swim. Neither could Robert. Swimming, too, was for rich people and white people. Her brother stood on the bank screaming for her, but Atheena never surfaced. The water was barely over her head in the spot where she fell. But that was enough, that was all it took. The stream’s murky waters, which looked so lazy and still on the surface, were strong enough to press her against the old dam and hold her there. She was cold, then surprisingly warm, so warm—

  • • •

  “And they never found her body, not even when they had to rebuild the dam after Hurricane Agnes that summer,” Gwen told Mickey, a flashlight beneath her chin.

  They were sitting in Gwen’s bedroom, under a makeshift tent made from Gwen’s bedspread.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Mickey said. “It’s not very deep there, even when the stream is at its highest. She was either there or she was washed over. And if she was washed over, they’d have found her right away, her head all busted and stuff on the rocks.”

  “It’s a mystery,” Gwen said. “That’s the point of the story. She just ran down the hill and tried to cross the ice, fell through and was never seen again.”

  “The only mystery I can see,” Mickey said, “is how it could have happened on Martin Luther King’s birthday before Agnes. We didn’t even have that holiday five years ago.” Agnes had been a big deal and Mickey remembered it, the water rushing down Purnell Drive, carrying cars away. But she didn’t remember the holiday, much less a little girl dying on it.

  “I think we did,” Gwen said. “I’m pretty sure we did.”

  “How would you know? You didn’t live here then.”

  “My father told me. He heard about it down at the hospital. They were talking about how we had a school holiday next week and someone said that it was so sad, how a little black girl died on Martin Luther King Day the first or second time we had it. Just ran down a hill, right into the water. And her named for the goddess of wisdom, too. That’s irony, my dad says. Do you know what irony is?”

  “Of course,” Mickey said.

  She didn’t. And even though Mickey understood Gwen was asking only because she liked to explain things, not because she thought less of Mickey for not knowing them, she wasn’t going to admit her ignorance this time. Gwen knew lots of things and she liked to share them. If she had her way, they would play school in the afternoons, but the last thing Mickey wanted to do was play school after being there every day.

  She was so tired of Gwen explaining things to her.

  Gwen was her friend, her best friend. “Your only friend,” Mickey’s mom said, meanly. It wasn’t her fault that there weren’t any other eleven-year-old girls around here. And Gwen was a very satisfactory friend most of the time, with a cool house and a cool mom and amazing treats in a big drawer in the kitchen that you were allowed to have whenever you wanted up until thirty minutes before dinner. Gwen’s mother went to the grocery store every Saturday morning and the rule was that all the kids in the house—Gwen, her older sister, Fee, her brother Miller before he left for college last fall—could pick anything they wanted, and as much as they wanted, then eat it as fast or slowly as they wanted. Gwen always picked out one or two treats for Mickey and when Mickey looked into the treat drawer and saw the package of circus peanuts—not real peanuts, but the orange-y marshmallow ones—she felt like someone in a pirate movie, staring into a chest that made your face glow gold.

  Lately, though, Mickey was getting tired of Gwen’s stories. Gwen liked to talk. Mickey liked to do things. Not sports so much—she wasn’t good at sports. But she yearned to spend the afternoons outside, roaming the wild, overgrown park that surrounded Gwen’s house. Gwen could sit inside for hours, even on a beautiful day, moving her stuffed animals and dolls around in service of a story, playing tea party and school and hospital and drugstore. She really did tell wonderful stories, although Mickey was beginning to suspect she stole them from books. The only details Mickey contributed were usually taken from One Life to Live.

  But now it was January, a cold, snowless January. The promises of Christmas—promises that had failed to be kept, in Mickey’s case—had come and gone, and the year stretched ahead, with so little to look forward to. There would be Valentine’s Day—cupcakes, cards. The teacher said everyone had to give a card to everyone, which was torture for Mickey, as it meant getting money from her mom, or trying to go around her mom and wheedle it from her sort-of stepdad, Rick, who always gave her what she wanted—unless her mother decided to stop him. “On principle,” she said, but the only principle Mickey could see was that her mother didn’t want her to have things she wanted. That was how Christmas had gone down, her wish list ignored because her mother decided she should get “better” stuff, more expensive things. Stupid clothes and a little handheld hair dryer, which her mother used most mornings. Besides—the one-valentine-for-everyone rule? It was so unfair. It was made for girls like Gwen, who was plump and too smart, so no boys liked her. Boys liked Mickey and she didn’t even try to make them. She would have gotten a Valentine’s Day card from every boy in the class without a rule. It seemed to Mickey sometimes that all the rules were made for people like Gwen by people like Gwen—teachers and such. Like, one day, a million years ago, some teacher didn’t get a Valentine’s Day card from a single boy, so she made a rule that everyone had to give a card to everyone. But that was unfair to people who couldn’t buy the best cards. Mickey’s mom would want her to get that awful pack of silly cards, the babyish ones without envelopes, with skunks and bears and puppies saying stupid stuff.

  No, if Mickey couldn’t get Rick to take her to G.C. Murphy’s for the good cards, she’d rather not buy any cards at all. Maybe she should convince Gwen that it was a cool thing to do—

  The overhead light snapped on, making them jump.

  “Why are you inside, sitting in the dark?” Gwen’s mother, Tally, the kind of mother who said, “Call me Tally,” had sneaked up on them. She was generally cool, Gwen’s mother, but she moved about the house like a cat, surprising them.

  Gwen hid the flashlight beneath her skirt before pulling the bedspread from their heads. Mickey wasn’t sure why it mattered if she had the flashlight. But Gwen’s family was funny that way. There were things that Mickey would never touch in a million years—fragile things, valuable things—that Gwen was allowed to handle. But then Gwen’s parents would get upset because she used a flashlight. They were nicer than Mickey’s mom, no doubt, but at least Mickey knew where she stood with her mom. Tally was sweet most of the time, and then she went on these tears. Mickey could see one forming now, as she moved around Gwen’s room, pulling up the blinds so they snapped, grabbing and folding the quilt they had used for their game.

  “Mary mecco,” she said to the quilt. “Do you know what this cost?”

  “We were just playing,” Gwen said. Mickey was staring at the quilt. Why was it called Mary?

  “The sun’s out. You should be outside.”

  “It’s cold,” Gwen said. It was, really cold, and had been for a week, the kind of cold that made the inside of your nose freeze so it felt like the ceiling at Luray Caverns, all stalactites and things.

  “The pond has frozen over. I saw everyone skating when I drove up to the store. You should go skating.”

  It sounded like a suggestion, but Mickey knew it wasn’t.

  “I don’t have skates,” Mickey said. She really didn’t.

  “There’s probably an old pair around that would fit you. Maybe even mine, although we’d have to roll up a pair of socks and pu
t them in the toes.”

  Now was the time to say that she didn’t know how to skate. So why didn’t she? It was hard for Mickey to say she didn’t know how to do things. It was so much easier to pretend that things weren’t worth doing. Like arithmetic, for example. Or making a diorama for Maryland Day. So much easier to take the zero than to try to explain that her mom didn’t have an empty shoebox, much less the time to sit with her and help her make little replicas of ships, the Ark and the Dove. Gwen had gotten an A on her diorama, but—Tally had ended up doing most of it, even making a Father Andrew out of the kind of plastic doll you found on wedding cakes.

  “That’s okay. I’ll just go home,” Mickey said.

  “Don’t be silly,” Tally said. “I already called your mother and said you were having dinner with us.”

  “Will you skate with us, Mom?” Gwen’s voice was hopeful. Tally was very pretty and, although not particularly young, she looked very young, with her long hair and slender figure. She looked younger than Mickey’s mom, in some ways, and Mickey’s mom was always one of the youngest moms. But her mom was prettier, Mickey decided with a sudden, fierce loyalty. She never loved her own mom more than when she was around Tally Robison in one of her moods.

  “No, I’m busy,” Tally said. Doing what, Mickey wondered. Her mom worked, but Gwen’s mom just sort of—floated. Gwen said she was writing a book, but that was the kind of lie that Gwen would tell. Oh, Tally did peck away at a typewriter some afternoons, but real people, people you knew, didn’t write books and it was silly to pretend they did. Mickey wasn’t sure who, exactly, wrote books, but it wasn’t normal people. People on television shows, maybe, or the president.