The Jekyll Legacy by Jaye Michael & Levanah Greene Chapter Eight Tricks and Treats

Victorian alchemy meets modern science and magic.
What could possibly go wrong?

If you can remain calm and collected amidst all this confusion,
you simply don’t truly understand the problem.

 — Unknown

 

Vfrgoysl peeked out into the great opening. It was dark, but he could see clearly. Nothing moved. With an inaudible sigh, he scurried forward keeping to edge of the wall as he scanned the vast expanse before him seeking food. Hunger drove him. It always drove him, and it was not just his own hunger but the hunger of the many mouths of his children and his children’s children.

There! Food! A large blob of something pulsating slightly, but otherwise unmoving. It was enough to feed his entire family for several days. Vfrgoysl salivated in anticipation, but it was in the open. He would have to move away from the safety of the wall. He would have to move into the open where the giants lived, where blindingly bright light could appear without warning and where huge objects could drop down on you from nowhere to crush you.

There really was no choice and Vfrgoysl knew it. The hunger would consume him otherwise. His family would die; the thousands of them. Another quick scurry brought him to within mandible-reach of the blob.

From this close, it was clearly pulsating and Vfrgoysl twitched his antennas as he tried to sense whether it was truly edible. The faint cloying odor was all he needed to convince himself. He stretched a mandible to taste of the delicacy before him and found himself stuck. His mandible seemed to be rapidly sinking in, deeper and deeper. He jerked once, trying to back away from this new threat, but could not free himself.

Within seconds the blob had engulfed Vfrgoysl and less than a minute later he’d been completely absorbed. Vfrgoysl was no more, but a small portion of him, his knowledge and his emotions, lived on. Na-Noc grumbled at how slowly he was regaining his original mass. At this rate, one cockroach at a time, it would take forever.

Using the information he’d obtained from Vfrgoysl he reformed himself into a larger version of the cockroach and scurried off toward his nest. There were a couple of thousand morsels of food waiting for Na-Noc and the sooner he could regain his original size and reclaim the Heart of Virtue, the sooner he could petition the Dark Gods to return him to his homeland.

“Emily?” Herbert Lanyon whined as she plucked at her bra straps, irritated by their foreign feel and not any more comfortable with the smooth silky feeling of her blouse.

“Yes, dear?” Emily Lanyon asked as he stopped and looked up from the hay he was spreading about with his hooves in the makeshift stall they had created on one side of the family’s attached garage.

“Stop kicking the hay around and listen to me please. I’m worried about how the Uttersons will handle this.”

“Would you two like some privacy?” Akcuanrut glanced over from the workbench, as entranced as he was by the various tools, especially the power tools, and hoping he would be able to continue his examination. From time to time he’d pick up a cordless drill, or a power saw, and pull the trigger with a startled frisson and a delighted laugh.

“No, perhaps you can help,” Emily waved him over.

With a last wistful glance towards the workbench, he joined the two centaurs.

“We’ve done what we can. The kids will get another copy of the Jekyll formula from our safe deposit box on Monday. Selene even found an all-night feed and grain store that delivered half a ton of feed and that hay that Emily was just spreading around.” She made a wry moue. “Darn, I feel like I just did a commercial for the Yellow Pages.”

Emily smiled politely at his husband’s attempt at humor, but Akcuanrut stopped sneaking glances to the workbench long enough to give the female centaur a quizzical look.

“Sorry,” she blushed and explained about indexed business listings, although it was difficult to account for the fact that they were still called ‘yellow pages’ when in fact they were online now, and had no intrinsic color at all. That led into another long explication of electronic communication and the Internet, and by that time they were both confused. Before she could return to the original topic of discussion, the doorbell rang.

“Oh dear, I guess we’ll have to wing it.”

“Don’t worry, Herbert,” Emily assured her as he reached out and tucked an errant strand of hair behind his husband’s ear. “The Uttersons are our friends. They’ll understand.”

With that they all moved to a position behind the four foot high barrier that had been constructed earlier. The barrier was designed to block the centaur’s lower body from view until their new forms could be presented in a manner designed to avoid shocking their friends.

They could hear questioning voices approaching. “Is my tie straight?”

Herbert glanced critically at her wife and nodded, reaching out to grasp his hand and squeeze it nervously.

“Emily? Herbert? Are you really out there? Is this another one of your Halloween pranks? And where did you get these two darling girls to pretend to be barbarian swordswomen?….” the cultured “Vassar-trained voice” trailed off as Mrs. Lucille Utterson preceded her husband George into the garage. She stopped short when she saw Herbert Lanyon, his wife Emily, and a stranger with flowing white hair standing uncomfortably behind a plywood barrier. The Lanyons, oddly enough, appeared to be standing on a table or something, because they towered above everyone in the garage, almost brushing the ceiling, although the garage itself was designed to accommodate large vans, the better to lend itself to Dr Lanyon’s scientific experiments, some of which required heavy machinery and wouldn’t fit into the laboratory upstairs.

George had been paying too much attention to the two barbarian women to notice that his wife had stopped and bumped into her. “Sorry, dear. Must have tripped,” he smiled endearingly at her scowl.

“My Gawd, Emily, you’ve turned the garage into a stable,” Lucille clapped her hands in excitement as she turned back to the centaurs. “I can’t wait to see what’s next.”

As they had previously agreed, Dr. Lanyon responded as if she were her wife, or at least tried to, but Lucille had already turned to Akcuanrut. “And who might you be, sir? As you’re here I’m sure you must be a good friend of the Lanyon’s, but in that marvelous costume, I don’t recognize you.”

“Lucille!”

“Yes, Emily?” Lucille turned back to Dr. Lanyon with a perplexed look.

“Please sit down,” Dr. Lanyon gestured to the chairs that had been positioned just inside the garage, facing the barrier the Lanyons were standing behind. “We absolutely must talk.”

“Why of course, Emily,” she sounded hurt. “Why didn’t you say so? Come, dear,” Lucille gestured to her husband to follow, then marched haughtily to a chair and waited for her husband to seat her. Making a production of smoothing out her skirt, Lucille finally looked inquisitively up at the two centaurs standing behind the barricade. “What would you like to say, dear?”

Hiding her face behind her hand as she pretended to clear her throat, Dr. Lanyon muttered just loud enough for her wife to hear. “Sometimes I don’t know how you’ve put up with her all these years, Emily.

“We,” she continued aloud, facing the others, “Dr. Lanyon and I, need to tell you a story. At first blush, it will seem a rather outlandish tale, so I must ask you both to bear with us until the end.”

“Why, Emily, this sounds positively conspiratorial,” Lucille beamed, “like in college when we — George, stop poking me.”

“Lucille!”

“Yes, Emily? Oh, of course. Your story.”

With the skill of a career academician, Herbert Lanyon VI, MD, PhD, female centaur, described the events of the preceding few days in excruciating detail, successfully transforming the family’s incredible adventure into a rather dull report suitable for the driest technical journal. Mr. Utterson sat listening intently while his wife allowed the tale to progress to its eventual conclusion, albeit not without some foot-tapping and a stifled yawn or two.

At the conclusion, Mr. Utterson peered at one Lanyon and then the other before speaking. “That was a fascinating story, Emily, although presented in a manner more like what I would expect from your husband,” he nodded cheerily at the male centaur he assumed to be Herbert Lanyon. “Definitely not up to your usual standards of entertainment. But certainly you are not purporting to claim it as whole cloth, are you?”

“Of course it’s true, dear,” Lucille interrupted as she gave a broad wink at the person she thought was Emily. “After all, you know sorority sisters never lie to one another.”

“Rhea. Selene. Would you take your positions please?” As Emily’s deep voice boomed out, the twins quickly moved to stand at ease behind the Utterson’s chairs.

“Thank you. Now, Akcuanrut, would you please remove the barrier?” The wizard grumbled at being asked to perform manual labor, but rolled the barrier away to reveal the Lanyons in their full glory.

“Well, really! Emily Lanyon, I’m shocked. Cover yourself up this instant.” Sandra quickly scanned the garage seeking something to throw over her old friend, apparently standing naked from the waist down before her — and, more importantly, her husband, but failed to notice that both had implausibly shrunk down to normal size.

Spying an old blanket in a corner, covering the gas barbecue grill for the winter, she stood to rush over and grab it — or at least tried to stand — but two strong hands snaked out from behind her and held her immobile in her chair.

“I say, what’s the meaning of this?” George began to rise and also found himself held firmly in his seat as the woman behind him said, “Sorry, Dad,” and confused him even more. Then, everyone tried to speak at once. Finally, a plaster-cracking bellow from Emily Lanyon silenced the others and in the silence, Herbert called to Akcuanrut, “Why do they see us as humans? What’s wrong — er, or should I say right?”

“Magic, I suppose, your centaur magic. In a land of humans it would be safest to be perceived as human, so that is how you are perceived.” He thought deeply for a moment. “I suppose this means that not all the magic of this world has been consumed for some reason, just not the magical continuum drawn upon by creatures such as yourself.” He shrugged, a fluent student of human cultures and otherwise. “Who knew?”

“So how do we let them see us as we are?”

“Simply wish it so, just like flying. It’s your magic, so it answers only to you, and I have to confess that I’m a little jealous at the present moment.”

The two centaurs glanced at each other. Emily shrugged his shoulders and they both closed their eyes and concentrated. The Uttersons’ horrified gasps told them all that it had worked.

Selene was sprawled lazily on the living room couch watching the twenty-four hour news channel.

“Jeez. You’d think you’d never seen a TV before.” Rhea playfully ruffled Selene’s reddish blonde hair as she ambled past on the way to the lounge chair. On the news was a story about the theft of several lab rats being used to test a potential cancer cure. A spokesman for the laboratory was noting that the loss of the animals would delay testing for at least a year.

“Who the hell would want to steal a bunch of white rats?” Rhea wondered aloud.

“Got me,” Selene picked at a piece of loose fabric. “Maybe we should investigate, Frank.”

“Right, Joe,” Rhea snorted. “But your reference is messed up. The Hardy Boys were— well— boys — or haven’t you looked in a mirror lately?”

“True. Maybe Nancy Drew would be better — or how about the Bobbsey Twins?”

“Wasn’t one of them a boy? I vaguely recall my mother once lecturin’ me on them when I was a kid and didn’t want to learn to read. I had a theory worked out, see, that books were obsolete, because everything could be translated into speech electronically….”

Selene smirked. “Yeah, yeah, except that people can read — with training — from three to ten times as fast as even rapid speech can be understood. When scanning for information, the ratio goes up even higher. It was a dumb idea, Sherlock.”

Rhea grunted, unwilling to dignify a reasoned counter-argument to her childhood fantasy with a retort.

“I never read the Bobbsey Twins stories anyway. I thought they were boring.” Selene turned off the television and rolled onto her stomach to face Rhea. “But, speaking of boring, who really cares? Are you as restless as I am?”

“Yup, and unless you feel like some sword practice we’re probably gonna to stay bored. You know how damned long it takes our parents to develop a plan of action once they start talking. We could be old and gray before they decide anything.”

“So let’s go out and do something — something other than the same old sword practice, as exhilarating as that might be.” Selene sat up, getting excited by her idea. “We could visit the arcade at the mall, or check out how the team is doing without us. We could even go to the dance like we were planning before this all started.”

“Now wait just one minute Selene — and you are Selene now, not Jack. Do you want people to see you like you are now?”

“What’s wrong with what I look like?” Selene stood and posed seductively. “I think I look pretty darned good. Besides, who’s going to recognize us? We’ll just be two people in the crowd.”

“Right,” Rhea laughed. Standing, she gently took Selene by the hand and led her up the stairs to her old bedroom. “I’ve gotta get you to a mirror.”

“This is crazy, this is crazy, this is….”

“Oh shut up already, Rhea. It’s panic like that — panic unbecoming an ex-first string quarterback, I might add — that’s the reason why I’m driving, even if it is your car.”

“But the football game? No one will know us and they’ll try to….”

“Exactly, Rhea. No one will recognize you. That’s why we agreed that we would call you Nancy, although I still think Hattie would have been easier for you to remember — who would have known you had a thing for Nancy Drew? So what’s the problem?”

“What’s the problem? Darn it, Selene, we’re headin’ towards a high school football game. Teenaged boys; hormone factories, and they’ll be even more difficult to deal with once they get their adrenaline flowin’ from the game. You must remember what that’s like, Jack,” she intentionally used his birth name, “you used to be one.”

“So? I’m not looking for sex, Nancy,” Selene used the incognito Rhea had selected for effect, “just a good time. Teenage girls have been dealing with teenage boys for ages. Exactly how many girls did you ravish after each game you played, for example?”

“None, but….”

“But what? We’re going to watch our team play. If you still feel uncomfortable, we can leave right after the game ends. Nobody’s going to hit on you, well  not much anyway. Besides, if someone did, you could slice them into tiny bits at least seventeen different ways — but please don’t. I’d suggest just using some of the same techniques your girlfriend Connie has been using to keep you both virgins. It would be hard to explain away the misunderstanding if either of us had to kill anyone, and it’s awfully difficult to get blood out of leather. Right now, these are our only outfits, remember, and I’m not sure whether anything we purchased in a modern style would stay that way for any length of time, considering what happened to the clothes we were wearing when we changed. I mean, look at us, still fresh as savage daisies, our outfits clean and neatly pressed after weeks of wandering around in the wilderness without a dry cleaner in sight.”

Rhea wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention. “Connie never looked like we do. I mean she was pretty — real pretty when it comes to that — but just look at us. I mean, we’re out and out gorgeous, like supermodels or rock stars. Worse than that, look what we’re wearin’. We’re gonna freeze our cute little behinds off wearing teeny-weeny leather bikinis like this.”

“No problemo, buddy mine. The bikinis are fine — they’re just a Halloween costume like almost everyone else at the game will be wearing. As for being cold, look on the back seat.” With that, Selene pulled into the high school parking lot. “Come on,” she called out as she grabbed her old letter jacket, slammed her door and strutted proudly towards the gate.

Rhea sat watching as Selene strode through the gate and disappeared into the crowd. She could hear the cheers from the assembled students, from the sound of them all boys, and shivered, now that the car heater was off. With a deep sigh, she reached back and grabbed her letter jacket. Throwing it over her shoulders and holding it closed in front of herself, Rhea slowly left the car and trudged towards the gate, easily following the path of outraged girls, most of whom were berating their boyfriends about staring at ‘that slut,’ or words to that effect — and who knew what else.

Akcuanrut was bored. He had quickly realized that he didn’t have enough knowledge of this world to be of any help, especially as the direction of the discussions were leaning towards how to cope until the changes could be reversed rather than how to get Akcuanrut back to his world. With the TSP device gone, it had not taken him long to come to the conclusion that he would have to arrange for his own return. The others didn’t even notice when he excused himself and left the garage.

Wandering through the kitchen was fun for a while, the gas stove was amazing and he played with it for several minutes before moving on to the refrigerator. He played with the refrigerator door, watching the light go on and off, then with the in-the-door ice dispenser until there was a small pile of cubes and crushed ice on the floor. The sink was most fascinating of all to Akcuanrut, with its hot and cold water and the drain to take it all away.

He was tempted to use a bit of his magical reserve to determine how they worked, but grudgingly decided against it. He didn’t have enough magic to return as it was and this world didn’t have much to spare. Instead, he decided to see if he could find and gather what he would need. Not one to delay, once he’d finally made a decision, Akcuanrut stalked out to the garage. The door was still open to air it out after one of the centaurs had inadvertently relieved himself or herself. The debate still raged in the other room and no one even noticed as he grabbed the blanket off the grill and stalked purposefully off into the dusk.

Na-Noc was hungry again — and weak. He had no idea where he was, but assumed it was some hell the Dark Gods had sent him to for failing to protect the Heart of Virtue. It took so long to surround and absorb his food in this place where magic was so scant, and he’d shed a lot of the mass he’d gathered with so much effort when one of the rats he’d ambushed had turned out to have ingested a copious dose of poison. It had been a race to slough off the poisoned tissue before it killed him as it worked its way rapidly toward what passed for a brain in his protean body. He had to find a wizard, or at least a powerful source of magic, if he was ever to escape this prison. It was faint, but he could sense a wizard nearby. Food was closer — and he was so hungry… so very hungry.

The crowd roared. It was first and ten on the thirty-yard line and the Orbs had the ball. Selene was yelling and cheering them on with the rest, but Rhea was a bit more critical as she analyzed her replacement’s moves. Phil Cohn was doing remarkably well as a second string quarterback coming out from behind Rhea’s shadow, but he seemed to be afraid to go with a pass play.

“Selene. Selene!” Rhea shouted and tugged at her leathers to get the excited girl’s attention, since Selene had discarded her jacket within moments of finding a seat, finding it too warm once she’d started jumping up and down and cheering on her team. “We’ve gotta get Phil to pass the ball. No one’s coverin’ any of the receivers. They’re wide open and he’s almost outta time.”

“What?” Selene shouted over the crowd. “I can’t hear you.”

“I said, he needs to pass the ball. He’s only called one pass play the entire game and if he doesn’t start soon, he’ll be massacred. We don’t have enough ground plays to keep their defense off guard,”

“So tell him.”

“No way. I’m stayin’ low key. Besides, the way I look, why would he believe I have the slightest idea how to play a man’s game like football?”

“So you’d let our team and our school down?”

“No. That’s why I told you. You don’t seem to mind paradin’ around for everyone to see. You go tell him.”

“No. It’s your suggestion. You go,” Selene smiled archly.

“I can’t. I just can’t.” Rhea was near tears in her frustration. “Come on. It’s your team too.”

“Well, all right. You’re right there. I don’t want them to lose either.” Selene hesitated for a moment, as if in thought, and then gave a big grin. “But you’re going to owe me — big time. Right, ‘Nancy’?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll owe you. I’ll owe you. Anythin’ you say. Now get down there and convince him to do a pass play. It’s already second down.”

“Okay, but take off your coat,” she said.

“What!? Why on Earth should I take off my coat?”

“Do you want the team to win? I’m not going down there unless you take off your coat, and that’s final.”

“Okay,” she groused, as she shrugged out of her jacket, “but I don’t see why I have to do anything so silly.”

Without a word, but smiling back at Rhea as she turned toward the home team’s place by the side of the field, Selene gave a flip of her hair and flounced off to the bench where the coach was giving the team a last minute pep talk. Smiling, she wondered if it was the usual one involving calling the players ladies and threatening to enroll them in the cheerleading squad if they didn’t win.

The time out was ending as Selene made it to the bench and called Tim aside. The whistle blew and they were still talking. Rhea couldn’t tell what Selene said, but Phil shook his head and started to head back out onto the field. Selene stopped him and pointed in Rhea’s direction just as the coach got to them and started yelling. Suddenly the coach was on the ground holding his arm and Phil’s eyes were bugging out. Ignoring the quarterback’s shocked expression; Selene said something again and pointed towards Rhea again.

Before she’d finished her instructions to Phil, a whistle blew and everyone groaned as the refs moved the ball back ten yards for delay of game. Rhea fought the urge to scream in frustration. Phil shook his head, as if he’d been slugged, and jogged out onto the field, but kept sneaking glances back at Selene, who was helping the coach slowly to his feet and smiling.

At first, he was shouting at her, but then she said something that seemed to quiet him down, and he managed to focus his attention on the game again.

The huddle broke and both teams lined up with the Orbs needing twenty-seven yards with just seventeen seconds to the end of the game. A running play would use up most, if not all, of the clock and the Orbs would end up losing nineteen to fourteen.

Phil knew that the barbarian babe was right, but he was worried. He hadn’t connected on a single pass in the last practice and the one pass he had thrown during this game had resulted in an interception and the touchdown that currently put the Wolverines in the lead.

The coach had called for a lateral to Tim Walsh the halfback on the last play, but when the ball was hiked Phil quickly tossed the ball, only to see Tim buried in red Wolverine uniforms after gaining only two yards.

Now the pressure was really on. Another quick huddle, then the ball snapped for the last down of the game — and he dropped it. Cursing, he lunged for the bouncing ball, scooped it up and began running towards the bleachers only to see a wall of red charging towards him. Doubling back, a silver Orbs uniform streaked past him and a Wolverine went down. Three more were still closing on him.

Desperate, seeing Tim Walsh standing alone in the end zone, hands in the air waving frantically, he chucked the ball in a wobbly arc just as a wall of red crashed down on him.

When Phil awoke, he found himself lying on a cot at the sidelines with Selene, the coach, and the team’s trainer staring down at him. In the background he could hear cheering, but couldn’t tell which team the cheers were for.

“Unh,” he lifted his head, or rather tried to, until everything started spinning. Setting it gently back on the pillow and holding it he mumbled, “Who won?”

“We did, Phil,” the coach beamed down at him. “Tim caught your pass in the end zone. No one was even near enough to touch him. It was brilliant, even if a little wobbly, but you were under a lot of pressure, and managed to keep your head. Good job, son.” The others nodded, also smiling.

Cautiously, Phil turned to Selene. “And it’s a date?”

Selene smiled and nodded. Then the cot lifted and they followed him out to the ambulance.

The crowd of food had drawn Na-Noc like a magnet and he huddled beneath a wood and metal structure trying to decide which morsels of garbage to consume first when he recognized a magic source with the taste of his original world. How could that be? he wondered and stretched an eye up on a thin pseudopod. Wiggling between the wooden slats he saw one of the barbarian women and quickly withdrew. If one was there, the other was probably nearby. He worriedly searched for another magical signature, fearful that the other one was already sneaking up on him.

With a sign of relief, Na-Noc finally located the other one near the open field that people had been running about on. Hunger was now secondary to survival in Na-Noc’s mind and he crawled off looking for easier prey.

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002 Jeffrey M. Mahr — All Rights Reserved

Copyright © 2012 Levanah Greene — All Rights Reserved