HA
CAN'T RUN CAN'T HIDE PLAY THE GAME
Aleister sat by the fire as I told him everything that was going so wrong. I told him about my To Do list (still spamming the message ‘Finish the Game’), about how I couldn’t level up at first, but then couldn’t even open my character sheet or my inventory.
He thoughtfully flicked his tail, and looked into the fire.
One I had finished, he sighed.
“You really got yourself into a mess.” He summed up.
“Yeah… I don’t know what to do.” I said, my voice breaking. “I really think my only choice might be to play whatever stupid game it wants.” The messages kept bothering me to Finish the Game. I thought many times how maybe if I gave in and did so, it might finally leave me alone.
“No!” Aleister sounded angry, and somehow hurt. “You can’t do that.”
“But what else can I do, Aleister?! It’s so frightening, all the time with the messages and the shadow smiles, and everything else! I feel dreadful, and I can’t continue just ignoring it?”
Aleister was silent for a moment, looking into the fire. It was late afternoon, and every shadow lengthened. While the light from the kitchen window was still streaming in golden and buttery, the inside of the house felt like an icy tomb to me. Every shadow was suspect, a possible incursion on my sanity.
“You can’t finish the game,” Aleister started, unsure of himself, “because I don’t believe it is a game any mortal can win.”
I sat up, raptly listening to the cat.
“What exactly am I playing with?” I asked in a hushed tone.
“It is an exceedingly rare occurrence, so there isn’t much written on the subject. You won’t find its real name, the Name it calls itself, anywhere.” Aleister said, “But, you will find references to it, and it is usually called The Midnight Man, on account of the fact that it calls its black candle, the Midnight Candle.”
LIGHT THE CANDLE
LIGHT THE CANDLE
WAIT TILL MIDNIGHT, LIGHT THE CANDLE AT MIDNIGHT
LIGHT THE MIDNIGHT CANDLE
The messages came at the same time that Aleister had spoken. Every time I saw a new message, I got hit with a wave of sickness, almost like eating Belladonna. I clutched my stomach, and waited for the sickness to pass.
Exceedingly rare? I must have been blessed with the worst luck imaginable to run into this monster.
“What do you know about it, Aleister? Surely there must be some way to get rid of it!” I said.
The cat was silent again.
When he finally spoke, he sounded very tired, and old.
“As it happens, I know quite a bit about it. Let me tell you a story…”
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There was once a gentleman name Mr. Finley. He lived in a busy city, quite close to the capital. Mr. Finley had hailed from an old line of aristocrats, and had been born to a small fortune. He led a modest and thrifty way of life, and worked as a Barrister, so in his life he only added to the sum of his fortune.
Mr. Finley married a lovely woman, and she gave birth to two daughters. Once the daughters came of age, they both married and moved far away from Mr. Finley and Mrs. Finley. They wrote often, but opportunities to come visit were scarce, as the road would be long and troublesome.
Mr. Finley and Mrs. Finley grew old, and eventually, Mrs. Finley died of an illness of the heart.
Mr. Finley was quite lonesome. He had no children in the house, no wife, and he had long hung up the Barrister’s robe. He would need to find something to do.
As many aged but fashionable gentlemen do, Mr. Finley became interested in Sorcery. Of course, he understood, he was in far too advanced an age to be rightfully initiated, and would never become a Sorcerer with a capital S. But dabbling and hobbyism didn’t need initiation.
He had heard from a neighbor lady, Mrs. Grey, that if one were to take up Sorcery, the addition of a magical cat to one’s household would be most beneficent. That same day, Mr. Finley set out for the capital, in order to procure himself such a creature.
In the capital, he visited the Royal Sorcerer (or, more specifically, one of the Royal Sorcerers, as the Queen likes to keep many in her retinue), and queried the procurement of such a cat.
Good fortune! The Sorcerer that Mr. Finley met had such a wondrous cat! And his darling, Sylvestrina, had just given birth to a litter 8 months prior. The kittens were all growing wonderfully, and it would be time soon for the little cats to go their own ways. Everyone knows cats don’t stay together in families, as humans do. Although they will tolerate other cats about, as sometimes humans wish to have more than one, they really prefer to be the only feline in the house.
So the Royal Sorcerer gifted Mr. Finley one of the kittens. A pure white, beautiful little girl-cat, that Mr. Finley named Vanessa. Vanessa, for her part, decided she quite liked the aged gentlemen. His eyes were merry and blue, (her own eyes were a perfect crystalline shade of blue) and she liked the ponderous, and overgrown white eyebrows, that made Mr. Finley resemble an overgrown owl (it is well know that Owls and Cats make comfortable allies).
And, she liked the name that Mr. Finley gave her. Vanessa. It would be a fine addition to her other two names, which were unknowable to humans.
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“Wait,” I said, “ Mr. Finley gave her a third name? How did she already have two names?”
“All cats have three names.” Aleister said, as thought I was expected to know this bit of feline lore.
“But why?”
“That's really not important to the story at all.” he responded.
“But you’ve mentioned it, now I have to know, so why do-” I didn’t get a chance to finish, because Aleister begrudgingly explained.
“One name that humans call us, usually simple and easy for a human to remember. Mine, of course, is Aleister.” Aleister recited.
“One for other cats to know. This one is unique, a particular, peculiar name and more dignified. For, no cat may have the same name as another cat.” Aleister paused, as though contemplating if he should divulge the last name.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
“And then there’s the inner name, the name only a cat himself knows. A deep and inscrutable, singular name. Quite ineffable, a cat may spend a lifetime contemplating its mysteries.” Aleister concluded.
“Huh.” Was my clever addition to Aleister's explanation of cat names.
“I'm going to continue my story now.”
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Mr. Finley brought Vanessa back to his townhouse, and made the magical cat quite comfortable. He lavished attention on Vanessa, and brought her many treats, and generally treated her like the royalty every cat believes themselves to be.
Vanessa, was also happy to be living with Mr. Finley. She helped him with all manner of magical pursuits, for even in her short stint with the Royal Sorcerer, when she was but a kitten, Vanessa remembered much. Every cat has a precise and perfect memory, and it is one of the many reasons why cats make such wonderful additions to any Sorcerer’s household.
They lived like this for some time, in a quiet harmony, and Mr. Finley believed himself to be very happy.
One drafty November, the month of the Snake, a pure black tomcat was seen lurking under the window of Mr. Finley’s townhouse. As is known, the month of the Snake gives rise to youthful indiscretion, and Vanessa, who would normally ignore the coal-black tom, felt herself drawn out of the window, into the night, by the light of the full Snake Moon.
And so, Vanessa came back pregnant. She thought that this might sour her relations with Mr. Finley, who certainly never indicated his want for more cats. But Mr. Finley couldn’t be happier! Soon, his house, once so lonely after the death of Mrs. Finley, would be full of mewling, precious little bundles of fur. How lovely!
The kittens were born, seven in total, and each was treasured and safe in the warm house. Each was mostly white, but had a splotch or two of their father’s perfect, black coat. They were, even by the meticulous standard of cats, a very handsome litter.
The kittens all grew, and it was the month of their maturation, just before each kitten would become a cat and go on their own individual journey, that tragedy struck the Finley household.
Mr. Finley had gotten in the habit of staying up late, encouraging Visions from the netherworld, and learning much in this way.
One such late night, Vanessa, who always endured the late nights staying up with Mr. Finley, reported that she saw the man light a thin black candle that certainly had not been there during daylight. She wasn't sure what it meant, but she knew it was trouble, for as soon as the candle was lit, the house was plunged into complete darkness.
Vanessa found her kittens in the darkness. They huddled together behind a couch, and shivered, as they heard all manner of terrifying noises, and smelled all sorts of horrifying smells.
The morning finally dawned, and the light came back to the pitch black house. But something was wrong. Every cat knew this, because of the sensitive nose every feline is blessed with. The house smelled wrong.
Mr. Finley disappeared, and it wasn’t until the later afternoon that Vanessa finally found her favorite gentlemen. She was horror-struck. It looked like Mr. Finley, for the thing wore his skin expertely, stretched just right over the aged joints and thin muscles. You could never tell that there was something off, except when it smiled, it was just a bit too wide to be natural.
But Vanessa was a cat. And she knew it wasn’t him immediately, because the stench of wrongness was all over Mr. Finley. Her Mr. Finley smelled like treacle pies, tobacco ash, and fine brandy. This thing smelled like an abattoir.
She warned her kittens, who were almost cats, to flee, for whatever wore Mr. Finley’s skin was not to be trusted.
Two of the seven kitten-cats fled that night, trusting their mother’s words.
That same night, the house was plunged into darkness once again, and the cats heard the thing wearing Mr. Finley’s skin stalking the halls, shambling like a leper.
Vanessa was gone the next morning. One of the girl kitten-cats, Calcema, hysterically reported that she had seen their mother’s corpse, arranged in the most gruesome manner in the attic.
The kitten-cats crept up to the attic, but saw nothing. Two more kitten-cats left (including Calcema).
Only three kitten-cats remained, and these were Aleister, Hyacinth, and Mercutio. They agreed that they would stay until they could find their mother. Certainly, they don't disbelieve their sister, Caclema. But, what if their mother had been merely wounded? What if she needed their help?
The three cats (for with their mother gone, they each discarded their kittenhood, in a ritual only cats are privy to) decided that they would stay out of sight, and observe the goings on in the house quietly. They were, by this point, very scared of the thing which wore Mr. Finley.
Like clockwork, once night drew on, and the clock struck midnight, the house became completely dark. The next morning, Hyacinth was gone.
Another night, and Mercutio was no more.
And then it was only Aleister, who was desperate to find his lost mother and his lost siblings, but also desperate to stay alive and out of sight of the thing that wore Mr. Finley.
That night, with Aleister the last cat in the house, darkness came again. Impenetrable, total darkness. Even a cat's wondrously sensitive eyes could not see through that black curtain. Aleister heard noises, and every time he did, he moved to a different room, navigating the once familiar and comfortable town house by memory. He moved and moved, but the noises seemed to follow him. He might have been caught, but it was that night that the front door was flung open, and the relative light of the night time street streamed into the wall of darkness which was Mr. Finley’s townhouse.
Three Sorcerers stood on the doorstep. A thin bespectacled man, a tall, commanding woman, and a little girl.
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“A little girl?” I asked. Why would a child come to a nightmare house?
“Yes. I didn’t know at the time, but the little girl was Meredith, the Tiny. She is a well known Sorceress. One of the only known Sorceresses to pick Pitchfork as her sign. I suppose in order to keep the favor of Gilligad the Scarecrow, she took magical measures to keep herself eternally small.” Aleister said, and none of his explanations made any sense to me, but I let him continue the story. It turned out, there wasn’t much story left.
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Aleister bolted from the house when he saw the open door. He had known that night that he would be dead by morning if he stayed inside. He waited on the cobblestone, under the streetlamp, as the Sorcerers battled the darkness in that house. In the morning, the woman and the man looked drained, tired, and battle-scarred. The little girl looked much the same as when she came. The man and woman carried the limp body of Mr. Finley, who Aleister could smell, was some days dead (although, Aleister had seen him shambling about the evening prior).
The woman took in Aleister, and it was this same woman who was Mistress of the present house. Aleister later learned that Calcema, his sister, had raised the alarm, and alerted other Sorcerers to Mr. Finley’s unfortunate fate.
Aleister asked Mistress if there had been any way to save Mr. Finley, and she had said that after the Midnight Candle was lit, there was no possible way.
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“So, do you see why you can’t light the candle?” Aleister asked.
That was not the moral I took away from the cat's story. What had the three Sorcerers done to battle the darkness? Whatever it was, I might soon have to do the same thing.
“Aleister, I’m so sorry about your mother… and your siblings…” I said. I had no idea how one might comfort a cat.
“It’s all in the past now, all in the past.” He said, looking into the fire.
Suddenly, a normal message appeared.
New Card of Destiny Discovered!
The Cat
I felt something warm in my pocket, but as I reached in, I didn’t find anything. And, I couldn’t open my inventory. Whatever the new Card was, it would have to stay a mystery for now.
We sat silently for long minutes. Dredging up the past had affected the cat, and he was unusually morose.
“You should know, I sent Cheerful away.” Aleister spoke up.
“What?” I asked, incredulous.
“He won’t be coming back to this house, not until you feel better.” If you ever do. The cat hadn’t said those words, but they hung in the air regardless.
“But how could you have known? I’d only told you after Cheerful left?”
“You can’t fool a cat’s nose. And you’ve smelled off for some time now.” Aleister said, not looking at me.
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ENDING STATUS
SIGN: MIDNIGHT
STINK: MIDNIGHT
EXP: COME PLAY AND SEE