Azzie himself had no need for such vulgar superstitions. He knew that mankind’s game was a long way from being played out. There would be contests like this for many thousands of years into the future, as there had been for thousands of years into the past, though the memory of mankind retained only the most confused memories of this.
At last Azzie grew tired and went up to the bedroom. It still lacked a half hour or so of midnight. Azzie didn’t believe either Hye or Agatha would return. They seemed not to be made of stern enough stuff. But he decided to show them the courtesy of staying up for them anyhow.
The minutes dragged by, and a hush fell over the village. This was the time Azzie loved best, the minutes approaching midnight, when the complexion of the world changed, when the dusky sanctities of evening had been forgotten, and the saving grace of dawn was still far away. It was in these hours, between midnight and dawn, that evil always felt most at peace with itself, most experimental, most in need of strangeness and sin, most in need of producing the ever-pervading perversions which needed constant renewal, and the doing of which was a delight to the evil soul.
Midnight came and passed and no one knocked at his door. Azzie was growing bored, and the big four-poster bed with its Huffy eiderdown looked exceedingly comfortable. It was a temptation, and since demons are not supposed to resist temptation, he gave in, got up on the bed, and closed his eyes. He fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep a dream came to him. In his dream three maidens clad all in white came to him carrying holy articles in their hands. They beckoned to him, saying, “Come, Azzie, join us in our frolic.” And Azzie, looking at them, was greatly desirous of joining them, for they smiled and winked at him most enticingly. But there was something about them he didn’t like, something which said to his trained eye that they really didn’t care for evil, were merely feigning it in order to lure him into their clutches. Nevertheless, he was drawn toward them, almost against his will, even though he repeated to himself lines from the Credo of Evil: that the good is capable of assuming a pleasing form and that a demon must take care not to be seduced by that which only seems evil. The Credo didn’t help. They reached out to him. …
He never learned the outcome because he was awakened by a tapping at the door. He sat up and pulled himself together. How ridiculous it was to be afraid of being tainted by good! It was a standard fear among demons, and it gave him a turn, dreaming of it.
The tap came again.
Azzie checked his appearance in the cracked mirror. He smoothed his eyebrows, brushed back his red hair, and gave an experimental leer. Yes, he was decidedly horrific tonight, ready for any applicant who came through the door.
“Come in,” he said.
When the door opened and he beheld his visitor, he was more than a little surprised.
The person who entered was not familiar. He was a very small man with a large hump upon his back. He had on a large black cloak which was wrapped completely around him, its hood raised. His long, bony face was dead white, sepulchral. As he advanced Azzie noticed that he walked with the help of a cane.
“And who,” Azzie asked, “are you, to come calling upon me at this hour?”
“I am Frike,” the lame hunchback replied. “I have come in answer to your ad. You wanted a servant, it seems, one who would be up for anything. I put myself forth as just such a person.”
“You are not afraid to recommend yourself,” Azzie said. “But there are two applicants ahead of you. I set them a simple task and now I await their return.”
“Ah, yes,” Frike said. “I happened to meet them, the poet and the beldame. They were at the gates of the cemetery, trying to get up the courage to do what you required of them.”