Strange Prey

by Chesbro, George C. ;

  “Just keep your mind on your work, Wotzel!” Harry shouted. “We’re not going to let them come over here!”

  Reassured, Wotzel managed a powerful horn wiggle. The two snakes that had been threatening Tom vanished.

  “I see a rabbi,” Mary whispered so as not to upset Wotzel. “Three ministers … they’re getting together now … I think they’re holding some kind of conference.”

  “Hey!” Harry yelped. “The snakes and spiders are disappearing!”

  It was true. The snakes and spiders were popping all around the living room, going up in tiny wisps of smoke. The four humans were rising, and the quicksand was evaporating, being replaced by the reassuring hardness and color of wood flooring.

  “There he goes!” Mary screamed with delight. “Amodeus is climbing out his bedroom window … the crowd’s chasing him… he’s gone!”

  Everything in the living room was as before; the quicksand, snakes and spiders were gone.

  Wotzel was hanging out a window, retching. It took a while to quiet him, but Mary and Virginia finally forced some chicken soup down him, and that settled his stomach.

  The battle with Amodeus had been won, and they decided to celebrate by going out to a movie.

  It was a mistake.

  “She’s beautiful,” Wotzel sighed, staring at the image on the screen in the darkened theater. “I’d never dreamed that any human could be so beautiful.”

  Virginia shook her head. “She’s also a …”

  “She’s not your type, Wotzel,” Harry said. “Lottie Lobo’s a cold-blooded, vicious woman who cares about nothing and nobody other than herself. She’s the only movie star who admits to all the bad stories printed about her. She’s proud of them.”

  Wotzel said nothing, and it was obvious to the four humans that the demon had fallen in love. Suddenly Wotzel rose, adjusted his wig, and started down the aisle.

  “Wotzel!” Mary said, grabbing his hand. “Where are you going?”

  “Hollywood,” Wotzel said without hesitation. “I’ve got to meet her. She’s the most beautiful thing.”

  “She’ll bring you nothing, but trouble,” Tom warned.

  Wotzel shook his head stubbornly. “It would be worth it.”

  Harry decided to try a different tack. “What about Amodeus?”

  Wotzel crossed and uncrossed his horns in thought. “I think you scared him away,” he said at last. “It doesn’t really make any difference. I must meet Lottie Lobo.”

  The four humans glanced at one another, then rose together and went after Wotzel. Wotzel looked at them quizzically.

  “We’re going with you,” Mary said to Wotzel. “Tom and Harry can get a week off from work. You’ll need somebody to pray for you if Amodeus turns up.”

  Wotzel considered it, then nodded his head. In the next instant they found themselves ensconced in the Presidential Suite of the Beverly Hills Hilton.

  It was the fifth evening of their stay in Hollywood, and the four humans could not remember ever seeing Wotzel so depressed. The demon was sitting in a corner of the suite, starting on his second case of Chivas Regal. His tail was twitching, occasionally flopping out of control; the tail had already broken a lamp and a chair. He had tried every love spell he knew and had finally come to the belated conclusion that no love spell would work on a woman who, as described, had never loved anyone but herself. That love, Wotzel realized, was far more powerful than any spell he could conjure up.

  “Forget her, Wotzel,” Mary moaned. “You’ve been at it almost a week; Lottie Lobo’s insulted you, humiliated you, and called you backwards. You still haven’t gotten over that.”

  “She wants things I cant give her!” Wotzel wailed. “She wants to hurt other people, get even. I try that and I get migraines so bad I cant work spells anyway.”

  “How’s your migraine now?” Virginia asked.

  “A little better,” Wotzel slurred.

  “I think the fact that you fogged every inch of film within a fifteen mile radius might have something to do with your headache,” Harry said quietly.

  “I didn’t know,” Wotzel said, beating his chest. “It was an accident.”

  “Wotzel,” Tom said quietly, “I think we should pack up and go home.”

  Wotzel dragged himself to his feet and balanced unsteadily on his tail. “I suppose you’re right,” he said in a scratchy mono. “But we’d better wait until I sober up some. In the state I’m in, there’s no telling where we’d end up.”

  “For heaven’s sake …”

  Wotzel clutched his stomach. “Virginia, please!”

  “Sorry,” Virginia said. “I was about to suggest that we simply take a plane back home.”

  Wotzel nodded his assent Mary was just about to pick up the phone when it rang. She answered it, listened for a few moments, and then handed it to Wotzel with a gesture of disgust. “I think it’s your heartthrob,” she said.

  Wotzel staggered across the room and put the phone to his ear. A few moments later his face lit up. He replaced the receiver on the hook, clicked his heels and snapped his tail.

  “Whoopee!” Wotzel said in full stereo.

  “Wotzel,” Mary said, “don’t be taken in by her.”

  But Wotzel wasn’t listening. “Lottie wants to make up,” he gibbered. “She’s going to meet me on Lot Seven right now!”

  “It’s a trick, Wotzel,” Harry warned. “Let us come with you.”

  “Uh-uh. She says she wants to meet me alone.”

  There was a wink of light and Wotzel was gone.

  The four humans raced out the door, successfully evading a squad of hotel detectives who had been sent to throw them out. They took the elevator downstairs, out-sped the manager, and jumped into a taxi outside the hotel. It took a half hour to get to Lottie Lobo’s studio, and another twenty minutes to find a hole under the fence. Once through that, they raced along a roadway, following the signs indicating the direction to Lot Seven. They turned a corner and Harry, in the lead, held up a hand for them to stop.

  There was a full moon, and Lottie Lobo could clearly be seen standing at the top of a great pile of scaffolding. She was tapping her foot impatiently.

  Wotzel suddenly emerged from the shadows to the right. “Lottie,” he said in a voice that sounded suspiciously like an impression of John Wayne. “My darling!”

  Lottie Lobo’s deep, throaty voice drifted down from where she was standing. “Where have you been, big boy?”

  “I was excited and a little drunk, I admit,” Wotzel said, imitating Steve McQueen. “I wound up in a Tibetan monastery.”

  Lottie held out her arms invitingly. “Well, dumpling,” she purred, “the important thing is that you’re here now. Come to me.”

  “He must be awfully tired,” Virginia whispered. “He’s climbing.”

  Wotzel was laboriously making his way up the maze of scaffolding. At one point he got a webbed foot stuck on a nail and it took him a few moments to work it loose.

  “Do you really love me, Lottie?”

  Lottie Lobo laughed. “I loathe you, stupid.”

  “Huh?” Wotzel had stopped climbing. His magnificent stereo voice had been reduced to a barely audible hi-fidelity.

  “I said that I loathe you, you retarded, good-for-nothing excuse for a demon! You promised me a rose garden. Amodeus has promised me the world!”

  “Time to start praying,” Harry whispered.

  “There’ll be no prayer meeting tonight, folks,” a voice said.

  The four humans started to turn toward the source of the voice and found they couldn’t move. Or speak. They were completely paralyzed.

  “You’ve betrayed me!” Wotzel cried out.

  “The world! The world! I’ll get all the best parts, pick my own leading men!”

  A cold shadow passed overhead, and Amodeus suddenly materialized on Wotzel’s back. Virginia, Mary, Tom and Harry watched in horror as a huge pit opened in the earth beneath the struggling demons. Flames and smoke shot into the n
ight sky. The scaffolding shook and Lottie Lobo tottered, and then plummeted to the ground. She landed on her head. She twitched, and then lay still. Amodeus lunged off the platform, carrying a squealing Wotzel with him down into the fiery pit. Then the earth closed and the night was still.

  “Are you people okay?”

  The words sounded strange, coming as they did from the mouth of a gorilla that was about to crush a “White Hunter” who had foolishly defied a restriction on “Taboo Territory” in the “Heart of Darkest Africa.” And the gorilla spoke with Wotzel’s voice.

  Harry looked at Tom, Virginia and Mary. They were all tapping their earphones or changing channels. None of the other passengers on the flight seemed to sense anything out of the ordinary; they were still watching the in-flight movie.

  “Look out the window.”

  The four humans crowded in front of the nearest window while Tom lifted the shade. Wotzel was sitting out on the wing, his tail blowing in the jet stream, his nose pressed against the window.

  “Wotzel!”

  Wotzel pressed a webbed finger to his lips as the other passengers shushed angrily. “Are you okay?”

  “We’re fine,” Virginia said softly. “The spell passed after… Hey, you escaped! We thought …”

  Wotzel grinned. “I didn’t escape. But I did get a special dispensation to come back and say goodbye to you.”

  “You have to go back?”

  Wotzel nodded. He didn’t seem at all displeased at the prospect. He pointed one finger downward. “I’ve got to go now,” he said. “Lottie’s waiting for me. She needs someone to show her the ropes.” And then he was gone.

  “Ouch,” said the gorilla as the White Hunter kicked him in the shins.

  FOUR KNIGHTS GAME

  Giving a simultaneous chess exhibition against 50 players was nothing new for Douglas Franklin. A prodigy as a child, an International Grandmaster at 18, Douglas had spent the last 10 of his 29 years wringing out a living doing what he loved best: playing chess. He had been around the world a half dozen times. He had little money, a small walk-up flat in New York City, an unbroken string of invitations to all the major international tournaments, and he called that freedom.

  Like most Grandmasters, Douglas was accustomed to playing simultaneous exhibitions in a kind of trance. Not that he didn’t know what was happening on the boards, but he relied on his prodigious skills, natural instincts and vast experience to sustain him through the long hours as he moved around the inner circle formed by the players’ tables, working to obtain an advantage in the openings, then allowing each game to take its course, to play him.

  This exhibition was different. The girl was a distraction.

  She was good, Douglas now realized, too good to be a casual weekend player like the majority of participants on the “Chess Cruise” he had been hired to host. He had underestimated her and chosen a line of attack that was quick and powerful, but ultimately inferior. She had withstood the attack, and Douglas now found himself in zugzwang, where all the moves available to him were bad ones.

  Sensing a game of unusual interest, a number of spectators had crowded around the girl’s board. Armand Zoltan, the ship’s owner, had positioned his huge bulk directly behind the girl’s chair and was staring over her shoulder at the score sheet she had been keeping. Zoltan’s eyes were large and black, like two pieces of coal shoved into the puffy dough of his face. His gaze momentarily flicked upward as Douglas approached. Then he turned his attention back to the score sheet.

  There was one other man who appeared more interested in the record of moves than in the actual position on the board. He had slipped between two of the tables and was standing inside the circle, studying the piece of paper by the girl’s hand. He was tall and thin, with pale, almost yellow eyes that seemed to blink in spasms. A bald pate was sparsely covered with a few strands of hair combed from one side to the other and plastered down with hair lotion. His suit was obviously well tailored but failed to disguise the fact that he needed a bath. He smelled of spicy after-shave and sweat.

  Douglas touched the man on the shoulder. “Excuse me, I need some room.” The man stared hard at Douglas for a few moments, then moved quickly back.

  Douglas lighted a cigarette and pretended to study the position on the board in front of him. He knew the position was hopeless; what he was really interested in was the girl. If she were nervous, she didn’t show it. She was cool and poised, despite the crush of onlookers and Zoltan breathing down her neck. She had a high forehead framed by silky, raven-black hair; cold, penetrating green eyes that seemed to reveal little were contradicted by a full, sensual mouth.

  The score sheet had no name on it.

  Douglas tipped over his king in the traditional gesture of defeat. “I resign,” he said easily.

  There was scattered applause, quickly stilled by the angry shushing of the other players.

  “Thank you,” the girl said quietly. She rose and began to fold her score sheet.

  Douglas gently touched her arm. “May I ask who just beat me?”

  The girl smiled and extended her hand. “My name is Anne Pickford.” Her grip was firm, like her game. She spoke with a pronounced British accent.

  “You play a fine game, Anne. Do you mind if I borrow your score sheet? I’d like to look it over.”

  Anne laughed as she handed him the paper. “If you like. But my guess is that you know every move that was made. The line you used was refuted three years ago in Copenhagen. You were the one who refuted it, against Barslov.”

  Douglas grinned and slipped the sheet into his pocket. Many of the spectators had moved on to the other boards, but Douglas was aware that the man with the yellow eyes was standing close by, watching them. Douglas leaned closer. “Actually, I was looking for an excuse to ask you to have a drink with me.”

  “Why must you have an excuse, Mr. Franklin? Where’s your natural Grandmaster egomania?”

  “It’s badly bruised at the moment. Eight o’clock in the upper lounge?”

  “Fine.”

  The girl nodded curtly, then turned and walked away. Douglas waited until she had disappeared from sight out on the deck, and then moved on to the next board. He studied it for a moment, then reached down and moved a bishop. “Checkmate,” he said cheerfully.

  “Pickford,” Douglas said. “There was an English Grandmaster, Samuel Pickford.”

  Anne smiled and sipped her drink. “My father. He taught me how to play.”

  Douglas tapped the score sheet in his pocket. “Of course. It really was a beautifully played Sicilian.”

  Anne shrugged. “We both know you’d beat me easily in a match.”

  Douglas’ glass was empty. He looked inquiringly at the girl, who shook her head. He ordered another Scotch for himself, then leaned back and studied her.

  “Why haven’t I heard of you? Judging from the way you play, I’d say you were at least an expert. Considering the state of women’s chess, I’d think you’d be in international competition.”

  Something moved deep in the girl’s eyes, a dark, silent laughter that Douglas found disconcerting.

  “I find my own game more interesting,” Anne said quietly.

  “Really? What game would that be?”

  “I’m a journalist.” Her eyes were veiled again. “Actually, this is a working trip for me.”

  “You’re not here as a player?”

  “No. I’m afraid I sneaked into the exhibition.”

  “I’m glad you did.”

  “I was in Barcelona when I heard about this junket to Glasgow for the Interzonal elimination. Obviously, chess is very chic now and I thought there might be a good story in the cruise. I was right. Here I am in the middle of the ocean, having drinks with the infamous Douglas Franklin.”

  Douglas laughed. “Infamous?”

  “Well, perhaps that’s overstating the case. But it’s true that most serious players resent you, and non-chess players admire or envy you. For the same reasons.”
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br />   “What reasons?”

  “Take the Glasgow Interzonal. You won’t be playing in it because you never bothered to try to qualify. Instead, you’re hosting a boatload of patzers on their way to sit in the audience. Who else but Douglas Franklin would win his share of major tournaments every year, then turn his back on the chance to play for the world championship? The chess Establishment thinks you’re irresponsible.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re having a lot of fun. You’re waiting for your wanderlust to burn itself out. When you want the world championship enough, you’ll go after it.”

  Douglas shrugged. He felt it was time to change the subject.

  A steward arrived with his drink. As Douglas pushed back his chair to give the man room he noticed two men watching them from a table in a far corner of the lounge. One was Zoltan, and the other was the man with the yellow eyes.

  Douglas waited for the steward to leave, then pulled his chair back close to the table. “Let’s see how good a journalist you are,” he said quietly. “The two men at the corner table—the fat one’s Armand Zoltan, right?”

  Again, something moved in Anne’s eyes. She glanced quickly over his shoulder, then back into his face. She seemed puzzled. “Yes. He owns this ship. But didn’t he hire you?”

  Douglas shook his head. “I was hired by the travel agency booking the cruise. Who’s the guy with him?”

  “I don’t know:” Her voice cracked almost imperceptibly and she quickly swallowed some water. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. They seemed to take a special interest in our game this afternoon. Maybe they think it’s still going on.”

  Anne paled and her eyes shifted slightly out of focus, as if she were looking at something ugly and menacing far in the distance, beyond the confines of the ship.

  Douglas tried to bring her back. “Does Zoltan play chess?”

  “A Four Knights Game,” Anne said absently.

  “I must have missed a move. How’s that again?”

  Anne’s eyes came back into focus and she smiled disarmingly. Whatever she had been looking at was gone, sunk in the depths of the ocean, or her mind. “Nothing,” she said easily. “I was just talking to myself.” She stifled a yawn that could have been feigned. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m very tired.”