"No mortal can fail to fear the unknown," Puck said, grinning. "'Tis bred into thee from thine earliest ancestors, who did first light campfires 'gainst the night."
They crouched in a dry stream-bed near the house; the stream had been diverted indoors to fill out the water supply. Bracken had grown up in it, enough to cushion the children as they lay against the side on their stomachs.
"Is that why we waited for night?" Geoffrey asked.
"It is," Puck answered. "Thy kind fears the dark, though some of ye hide it well."
"What shall we give them next?" Cordelia asked.
Puck turned to her with a smirk. "What wouldst thou fear?"
The captain sat in the watch officer's office, gazing out the window. What could that noise have been? Of course, old houses are always settling—but this house wasn't really old, it just looked that way!
Well, on the other hand, new houses settle, too—he knew what kind of shoddy workmanship they tried to pass off these days. But settling wouldn't make a noise that lasted so long!
Outside, something flitted by; he barely saw it out of the corner of his eye. He frowned, peering more closely. There it was again, just a flicker—but enough to need checking! He pivoted in his chair and pressed a touchpoint on his desk. "Check the visual scan, northeast quadrant, quickly!"
"Checking," the guard's voice responded.
The captain waited, glaring out the window. There it was once more—still a flicker, but lasting a little longer this time. He could almost make out a form…
"Nothing," the guard stated.
The captain cursed and whirled back to the window.
The shape danced between two tree trunks a hundred-feet
from the house, at the edge of the security perimeter. It was pale, glowing, and vaguely human in form. In spite of himself the captain felt the hairs trying to stand up on the back of his neck. He was a materialist—he knew nothing could exist if it couldn't be weighed or measured. If he saw it but the cameras didn't, it couldn't really be there; it had to be an hallucination. And that meant…
Unless somebody else could see it, too. He stabbed at another touchpoint and barked, "Sergeant! Come in here!"
Two minutes later, a third man stumbled in through a side door, hair tousled, blinking sleep out of his eyes. "What… what's moving, Captain?"
"Ghosts," the captain gritted. He pointed out the window. "Tell me what you see."
The sergeant stepped over to the pane, puzzled. Then he stared. "They're not real!"
"Well!" the captain heaved a sigh. "At least you see them, too!"
"What?" the sergeant turned to him. "Did you think you were dreaming, sir?"
"No, just hallucinating. Now, you've seen them—go look on the monitors, will you?"
Frowning, the sergeant turned and went out into the hall. A few minutes later, his voice sounded right next to the captain's ear. "Right you are, sir. There's nothing on the monitors."
"That's what I thought." The captain stared out at the darkness, numb. There were three of them now, flitting from one tree trunk to another. Or else it was just one, moving very quickly… "Check all the sensors."
A few minutes later the sergeant reported, "Nothing on infrared, sir," and the guard's voice said, "No radiation… no new concentrations of mass… no RF reflection…"
"They're not real." The captain glared out at the glowing, dancing forms in indignation—but under that emotion was a growing dread. The things were there, no doubt about it—it wasn't only him; the sergeant had seen them, too. But how could they be there and not leave any trace on the sensors?
Gregory looked up at Magnus and Geoffrey. "Canst thou sus-tain this illusion, brothers?"
The two bigger boys knelt side by side, sweat starting on their foreheads, deep in concentration. "Long enough," Magnus answered.
"'Tis hard, casting this picture into their minds," Geoffrey muttered. "The groaning was easier."
"Then make them hear it again," Magnus grunted. He waited a moment, then asked, "How doth it work on them?"
"They do begin to fear," Gregory reported. " 'Tis not great, and buried deeply—but it hath begun."
"So much the worse for them," Cordelia declared. She turned to Fall. "Hast thou the spiders?"
"Aye, a thousand for each door. They have begun spinning a giant web before each portal."
'"'Tis well." Cordelia turned back to Magnus. "Are the elves in place?"
Her brother looked the question at Kelly. "Aye," the lepre-cohen grinned, "and greatly delighted they are."
"Then let them laugh," Cordelia declared.
A hideous cackling rang through the house from every nook and cranny.
"Trace!" the guard shouted. "That sound shows a waveform, Captain!"
"At last! Something real!" The captain hit a touchpoint on the wall beside the desk and a siren whooped throughout the house. Agents tumbled from their cots, bleary-eyed and fuzzy-brained, hearing the captain's voice booming near their ears, "Search every place large enough to hold a loud-speaker!"
They searched. Behind the terminals, behind the stacks of boxes of organic powder, throughout the storerooms they searched—but they found nothing more than spiderwebs, cur-iously without spiders. As the siren faded, they heard what they were looking for—or its evidence; shrill, manic laughter, at exactly the right pitch to set their teeth on edge and make chills crawl up their backbones. Inside the closets they searched, around the hearth and inside the chimney—but they didn't peer into the crannies between the stones. Down in the time-lab, up on the landing pad, under each cot they searched —but they didn't pull out the wainscoting. Inside every desk drawer, behind every toiletry, inside the cabinets they searched—but they didn't look inside the pipes, or behind the mirrors in the bathroom.
It was just as well they didn't. They wouldn't have be-
lieved what they found, anyway. Even if they had, it wouldn't have made them feel any better.
In every nook more than two inches wide with a foot of space behind it, an elf crouched. Inside the walls, in back of the baseboards, and behind the food synthesizer hid pixies, shooing away mice—and from every minute crack and each open grille echoed their laughter, growing more and more hilarious with every passing moment.
"It's mass hallucination!" the captain bellowed. "It couldn't be anything else!"
"How about sabotage?" called a civilian official.
"From where?"
"Bid them coax the mice to where they can see these fellows," Magnus instructed Kelly.
The elf protested. "Why not the Wee Folk?"
"We dare not let the Big People find them! 'Tis too dangerous," Cordelia explained.
Geoffrey nodded. "And, too, if they did find something that could explain the noises, they might become able to bear their fear."
"Assuredly, we do not wish that," Kelly grinned, and he turned to instruct an elfin courier.
Inside the house, elves coaxed mice into mouseholes that the men didn't know existed. Quivering, the mice stared out at the huge beings who were hurrying from place to place, peering and seeking, growing more and more frantic with each passing minute.
Cordelia closed her eyes, opening her mind to the kitchen mouse. "Aye, I can see them. That cup, there…"
The cup shot off the counter and flew through the air, narrowly missing a plainclothes agent. The agent's head snapped around watching it; he winced as it smashed itself to smithereens against the wall. He looked about with a sudden stab of foreboding…
… and saw the saucer spinning right toward his nose.
In the watch office, the captain heard a crash. He spun about to find the terminal cover in a dozen pieces and molecular-circuit gems strewn about in a circle.
-
At the guard station, the terminal beeped. The guard turned toward it, wide-eyed, and saw a mass of print scrolling frantically upward on its screen.
The print stopped abruptly.
Slowly, the guard stepped toward it, scanning the letters. "Regulations concerning surprise inspections…" He darted frantic glances at the screens, but they were all blissfully peaceful. He stabbed at a touchpoint and called, "Captain… I think somebody's trying to tell us something…"