Page 4

Crispin

N one of this was going as planned.

Crispin was a huge fan of as planned.

First off, the damnable Hall of Mirrors had dumped him a good half-mile away from his destination, in the midst of the rainstorm from hell, in a park next to a frightening display of men with round hats that all had numbers, every one of them glaring at him in the intermittent flashes of lightning.

He’d run off in startled fear, his world-appropriate clothing feeling itchy and growing soggy—and looking stunningly drab, a far cry from his usual flair for color.

None of the squirrels in the park seemed friendly, tucked away under the dry canopies of the trees as he ran past, noting his passage with apparent disinterest.

He had eventually found his way out of the park to the questionable shelter of an awning of an abandoned…

he wanted to say restaurant, but it had zero charm and, due to the whole abandoned part, zero food.

His stomach had rumbled at that. Before his workday had taken a turn for the worse, he’d planned to have a perfectly respectable meal of nut mush and elven mead with Minkis, if his rather unreliable pet squirrel had decided to come in for the night.

And now here he was half-soaked, on the simultaneously bland and crazy planet Earth, a world he’d managed to avoid for years.

At least this part of it didn’t stink. Much.

Though there was an uncollected can of refuse in one corner of the little courtyard that emitted a rather foul odor.

No matter. He’d be off-world soon enough and then safely back home once he dropped off his collection at the office.

The stairs he’d just climbed would have put the rickety ones on the haunted world of Thauria to shame for their sheer ability to seem both insubstantial and very creakingly real, and now he stood in a place that could charitably be called the seventeenth pit of hell, talking to a man who clearly wanted nothing to do with him.

His target, Leopold Lane, was… rumpled. That was the best and most generous word he could come up with to describe the person before him.

He was shirtless and thankfully not too out of shape, not that Crispin would have said anything.

That would be rude. He wore baggy gray pants and mismatched socks—maybe that was a thing on Earth these days?

—and his chestnut-colored hair was messy, but not in a way that looked adorable.

More like the dead cat he’d seen on the side of the road on the way over from the park.

Still, the man didn’t seem unkind, only confused.

“Excuse me?” Leopold’s eyebrows shot up. “What, are you with the army or something?”

Something flickered in the corner of the room.

Or, in an angle of the room? None of the corners of this place seemed straight.

It was like stepping into one of those weird paintings where everything curved up and around to meet itself in impossibly complex ways.

Or like a bathroom on Herschel IV. “No, no army.” Crispin tried a different tack. “Leo, have you ever felt… lost?”

“Oh geezus, you’re one of those. And it’s Leopold, not Leo.

Or Leopard, or Legolas….” He shuffled over to a big white metal box that looked like it had seen better days fifty years before and was now surprised to be still standing.

He cracked it open and pulled out a single clear bottle with a blue label that said Zima.

“If we’re gonna talk batshit, may as well have a little of this.

I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, and you seem”—he looked over his shoulder and gave Crispin a once-over—“special.”

There was another flicker at the corner of his eye, this time behind the sagging cold box that had clearly seen better days.

Crispin wondered if he was having a stroke.

“Sorry, Leo–pold.” He was proud to have caught his own mistake this time.

He rarely used nicknames, but somehow it had initially seemed appropriate .

Oh well. He could admit when he was wrong.

Leopold opened a cabinet and pulled out two glasses—as mismatched as his socks—and after pushing aside a number of strange colored pieces of cardboard or wood, set them on the table.

One was a thick glass beer stein that wouldn’t have been out of place in Theodor the dwarf’s kitchen, while the other was a plastic glass in the shape of a thin pink bird.

Its long neck acted as the handle, the webbed feet splayed on either side provided support.

Plastic . Crispin shuddered. Vile stuff. Another Earth specialty.

“Guest’s choice.”

Crispin blinked, confused, until he realized that Leopold meant the glasses. “That one, please.”

“Fair enough.” The man half-filled the stein with the fizzy liquid and handed it over, pouring the rest into the second glass.

“Oh, where are my manners?” He chucked the bottle into an overflowing bin and rummaged through a rag pile, emerging victoriously with a black piece of cloth. “Knew I’d washed this one.”

“That’s… clothing?” His charge was one of the slovenliest people Crispin had ever run across, and Leopold’s charm, bare bones as it was, was dangerously close to expired.

“Yup. Grabbed this at a con a couple years ago.”

There was something printed on it: a picture of an old man in a brown robe with a long shiny blue sword. The words had all but faded beyond recognition, except for the first two. “Help me….” It seemed… appropriate. Maybe it was a sign.

“He kind of looks like you,” Leopold continued, “all prim and proper. Are you a Star Wars fan, Crispy?” He grabbed his drink and sank down on the tattered scum-brown sofa that was crouched against one wall like a feral cat.

Crispin frowned. There was so much wrong in that question. In this room. In this… person. Maybe he’d be better off returning to the office and telling his boss he’d been unable to complete the recovery. Let her send someone else to do it.

He discarded the idea as soon as he thought it. She’d been very clear on the importance of this particular collection, and if he failed, he’d lose his stellar perfecality rating. “No. Not a fan of any wars, star or otherwise.” He sipped the concoction. It sizzled unpleasantly in his mouth.

The lights flickered again.

“Is there something wrong with your… domicile?” He couldn’t quite bring himself to call it a home.

“Oh, that.” Leopold rolled his eyes. “It’s an old house. Neighbors are using the microwave. That’s all.”

Crispin had no idea what little waves had to do with anything, and he didn’t want to know. “We should get going….”

Leopold’s eyes widened. “You were serious?” He looked up at the sagging ceiling. “What, is the ship here to collect us?” He downed his drink and set the strange bird-glass on a cardboard box next to the sad-looking couch.

Then everything happened at once.

The shadows lining the walls moved.

The room shook.

Crispin dove for Leopold out of instinct, holding out Thea, his portable transport device and friendly companion—who had decided to be a phone in this gods-forsaken world—and landed in a sprawl across the surprised man.

Leopold sputtered, scrambling away from him. “What, are you crazy? Get off of me.” Then a look of horror crossed his face.

Crispin looked over his shoulder at the ceiling.

Something dark and foul was growing there, as the shadows bubbled up from behind the cold box that had housed the Zima.

He caught a hint of a gaping jaw full of dark sharp teeth and a whiff of something that smelled like the grave, at which point the lights flickered out for good.

What in the fells of Hargsmarsh? “We have to go!”

Leopold made a strangled sound in the dark.

“Thea, take us back to OotL. Now.”

The phone’s screen lit up, and for a second Crispin wished it hadn’t. Tentacles with sharp claws on the tips were reaching for them from the small kitchen in the horrid little flat Leopold called home.

Then the phone’s light expanded, and he and his charge were sucked into it.

One of the tentacles had wrapped around his leg—and it was oh, so cold—but then the creature was gone.

Crispin blinked, looking around anxiously. Something wasn’t right.

They should be in the Hall of Mirrors, his mission accomplished. Instead he was all alone, still surrounded by the sparkly blackness of the Un-Place, relieved only by a slight glow from the device in his hand.

He pried a severed tentacle off of his leg and tossed it aside. It sizzled into nothing.

“Leo?” Remembering his manners, he tried again. “Leopold?”

Nothing.

He lifted his mirror. Thea was still shaped like a phone, but her screen was cracked. “Thea?”

In response, she played a line from The Lost Snork’s Lament . “No one knows where the blind man goes….”

“Come on, Thea, talk to me… where are we?”

The screen flashed, sending a kaleidoscope of lights and a drunk-sounding hiccup.

“Did the dark cloud do something to you?” He looked around. “Did Leo do something? Where has he?—?”

The rest of his words were cut off as he landed face-first in a mound of grass.

He pushed himself up and scrambled backward spitting out a few purple blades and managing to sit up and look around.

He was in a forest, a very purple forest, and something was howling in the distance.

Damnable grass will probably stain my… .

But his tweedy jacket was gone, replaced by downy fur, and he seemed to have… antlers?

He was distracted from that revelation by a voice. “What the hell did you do to me, Crispy? And where the hell are we?”

Crispin turned to find his charge, at least he assumed it was still Leopold, staring at him and looking really annoyed. The human also had brown fur—except for a rather fetching white patch on his chest—a pair of short antlers, humanlike hands, and an elongated snout.

He looked just like a….

“Oh crap.”