Now I was in their game. Some wanted to kill me, some to protect me, but none care for me, not even the derg. They were interested solely in my value to the game, if that's what it was.
And the situation was my own fault. At the beginning, I had had the accumulated wisdom of the human race at my disposal, that tremendous racial hatred of witches and ghosts, the irrational fear of alien life. For my adventure has been played out a thousand times and the story is told again and again — how a man dabbles in strange arts and calls to himself a spirit. By so doing, he attracts attention to himself — the worst thing of all.
So I was welded inseparably to the derg and the derg to me. Until yesterday, that is. Now I am on my own again.
Things had been quiet for a few weeks. I had held off the feegs by the simple expedient of keeping my closet doors closed. The leeps were more menacing, but the eye of a toad seemed to stop them. And the melgerizer was dangerous only in the full of the Moon.
"You are in danger," the derg said yesterday.
"Again?" I asked, yawning.
"It is the thrang who pursues us."
"Us?"
"Yes, myself as well as you, for even a derg must run risk and danger."
"Is this thrang particularly dangerous?"
"Very."
"Well, what do I do? Snakeskin over the door? A pentagon?"
"None of those," the derg said. "The thrang must be dealt with negatively, by the avoidance of certain actions."
By now, there were so many restrictions on me, I didn't think another would matter. "What shouldn't I do?"
"You must not lesnerize," the derg said.
"Lesnerize?" I frowned. "What's that?"
"Surely you know. It is a simple, everyday human action."
"I probably know it under a different name. Explain."
"Very well. To lesnerize is to —" He stopped abruptly.
"What?"
"It is here! The thrang!"
I backed up against a wall. I thought I could detect a faint stirring of dust, but that might have been no more than overwrought nerves.
"Derg!" I shouted. "Where are you? What should I do?"
I heard a shriek and the unmistakable sound of jaws snapping.
The derg cried, "It has me!"
"What should I do?" I cried again.
There was a horrible noise of teeth grinding. Very faintly, I heard the derg say, "Don't lesnerize!"
And then there was silence.
So I'm sitting tight now. There'll be an airplane crash in Burma next week, but it shouldn't affect me here in New York. And the feegs certainly can't harm me. Not with all my closet doors closed.
No, the problem is lesnerizing. I must not lesnerize. Absolutely not. If I can keep from lesnerizing, everything will pass and the chase will move elsewhere. It must! All I have to do is wait them out.
The trouble is, I don't have any idea what lesnerizing might be. A common human action, the derg had said. Well, for the time, I'm avoiding as many actions as possible.
I've caught up on some back sleep and nothing happened, so that's not lesnerizing. I went out and bought food, paid for it, cooked it, ate it. That wasn't lesnerizing. I wrote this report. That wasn't lesnerizing.
I'll come out of this yet.
I'm going to catch a nap. I think I have a cold coming on. Now I have to sneez
— End —
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