"I try to avoid giving harsh critisms because I know tastes varrybut this is with out a doubt the worst story I have read, which considering how I felt about the Cue story is saying something. This is most pathetic self insertion I have ever seen. A good rule of thumb. DON'T PLUG YOUR FICS IN A FIC! Its not impressive its sickening. You even miss casted AGAIN. Jagara was a good guy, Malcar was evil, and not pathetically evil like the Mutants, he was so powerful Mumm-Ra even brought him back to life. If your going to write Tcat fan fics at least pout people on the right sides. And stop posting all over FF.net, almost every section I go to has your drival in it and it's the same damn stories, Xing has said not to do that because of how taxed the servers are. May a hundred snarfs nest in your underware if you ever do such a wretched thing again. PS: I have erected a monument to you alright, its a dartboard."

OUCH! That hurt! LOL!

During the whole of a dull, dark and soundless day, in the autumn of the year when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone on foot through a singularly dreary tract of country and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of my destination.

I looked out onto the scene before me, onto the house, onto the simple features of the domain, onto the bleak walls, onto the vacant, eye-like windows, onto rank sedges, onto white trunks of gnarled, decayed trees with a feeling of confused dismay. It seemed to me that I had visited such a scene once before, or had read of it perhaps, perhaps in some frequently-scanned tale. And yet it could not be -- I had only met Malcar three days ago, when I had received an invitation to visit him at his home on Third Earth.

The circumstances under which I had met Malcar were simple. In a symposium of the Astronomical Society, held on New Thundera, I was introduced to him by a Jaggara, our mutual friend. Casual conversation gave way to absorbed discussion when he discovered my hidden, secret interest with works of fantasy. When he learned I was headed back to my post on Third Earth he urged me to see him for a day and to examine his unusual collection.

"I feel that we have much in common," he told me, "in my love of fantasy I bow to no one. It is a taste I inherited from my father and his father before him. Together with their considerable acquisitions in the genre, you would be greatly pleased with what I am prepared to show you. For in all due modesty I am the galaxy's leading collector of the works of RD Rivero."

I confess that his invitation did not thrill me, I am not a literary hero-worshiper, nor a scholarly collector, nor do I have any particular love for a man who was quick to kill tigers and my fellow Thundercats in story after story -- and that more than anything is why I have only a passing interest in his work. So it was instead the personality of Malcar himself that caused me to accept his hospitality. The man who had proposed to become my host might have himself stepped out from the pages of a Rivero story. His speech was irregular: passively simple phrases that at times would give way to a complex entanglement of hackneyed language. His appearance, too, lent itself an air of insanity, of something that had gone wrong somewhere.

It was that that led me to journey to his estate and its own peculiar, intrinsic images of shadow and darkness -- the ghastly forms of rotted, dying nature strewn about in the forest clearing. As I prepared to enter the mansion I almost expected to see tall, Egyptian statues, circular pools of boiling, purple liquids, the entrails of scarified animals, a shrouded, hooded figure limping, dragging itself in to and out of the shadows so vividly described by the author of Elixir and Mwahahahaha-whatever. I was not disappointed. True to both the atmosphere of the mansion and to my own imagination, the front door was opened before I had even knocked by a butler who conducted me, in silence, through the dark passages of the interior to the study of his master.

The room was large and lofty, the windows were long, thin and so high above the floor as to be inaccessible from inside. Feeble rays of orange light made its way through the dust-encrusted panes but it served to make sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects within. Blackened pictures hung from stone walls. Wooden furniture was comfortless and ancient. Books and musical instruments were scattered unused and open on the carpeted floor.

Upon my entrance Malcar arose from a sofa on which he had lay at full length and greeted me with a vivacious warmth, an overdone cordiality that had much in it. Yet his tone while he spoke of the object of my visit, of his earnest desire to see me soon alleviated my first impression. He welcomed me with the rapt enthusiasm of the born collector and I came to realize that he was indeed just that.

Initially, he disclosed, the nucleus of the present accumulation had begun with his grandfather, Thor, a respected merchant who lived in the eastern coast of the ancient continent of North America. Almost a hundred years ago he had been one of the leading patrons of the arts in his community and as such was partially instrumental in arranging for the excavation of Rivero's body, its reburial and the erection of a monument to his honor. That event occurred in the year 53,120 and it was only a few years before Thor had laid the foundations of the Rivero collection.

"Thanks to his zeal," his grandson informed me, "I am today the fortunate possessor of a copy of virtually every existing specimen of Rivero's published works. If you will step over here" -- and he led me to a remote corner of the vaulted study, past the dark draperies, to a bookshelf that rose remotely to the shadowy ceiling -- "I shall be pleased to corroborate that claim. Here is a copy of Fragments, the year 2050 edition and here is the still earlier and original Xanadu of the year 2000. The original version given to Thundera Tiger, as you doubtless know, is valued today at --" I nodded, "but I can assure you that my grandfather parted with no such sum in order to gain possession of this rarity."

He displayed the volumes with an air of pride that is often times characteristic of the collector and is by no means to be confused with either literary snobbery or ordinary greed. Realizing this, I remained patient as he exhibited further treasures -- handwritten loose papers, notebooks containing unfinished tales. Ascending a short library ladder, he handed down to me the first, unpublished versions of Confessions -- or as it was titled then when he first wrote it -- Tygra Always Says -- how my fingers trembled over those words.

He kept a running commentary on each item he presented me -- I had no doubt he was a Rivero scholar as well as a Rivero collector.

"I owe a great debt to my grandfather's obsession," he said while he descended the ladder to join me before the bookshelves. "It is not altogether a breach of confidence to admit that his interest in Rivero reached the point of obsession and eventually mania. The knowledge, I fear, is public property.

"In the early fifties of the part century he built this house that I am sure you can tell is an odd mixture of the black pyramid and Cat's Lair. This room was his study and it was here that he poured over the books, the letters and the numerous momentous of Rivero's life.

"What prompted a retired merchant to devote himself so fanatically to the pursuit of a hobby, I cannot say. Let it suffice that he withdrew from the world and from all other normal interests. He made pilgrimages to the ruins of Newark, sent agents to Florida and Cuba, to every extant locale in which Rivero had set foot during his lifetime. He acquired the hard copies of emails and handwritten letters, he bought them as gifts or stole them if no other means proved feasible."

Malcar smiled and nodded.

"Does all this sound strange to you? I confess that once I, too, found it almost incredible. Now, after years spent here I have lost my own objectivity."

"Yes, it is strange," I replied, "but are you quite sure that there was not some obscure personal reason for your grandfather's interest? Was there the possibility of a distant, familial relationship?"

At the mention of the last word Malcar stared visibly and a tremor of agitation spread over his face. "Ah!" he exclaimed. "There you voice my own inmost conviction. A relationship. There must have been one. I am certain that my grandfather felt or knew himself to be linked to RD Rivero by the ties of blood. Nothing else could account for his strong initial interest and his final, melancholic lapse into a world of delusion and illusion.

"Yet he never voiced a statement or put an allegation upon paper and I have searched the collection of letters in vain for the slightest clue.

"It is curious that you so promptly divined a suspicion held not only by myself but by my father. He was only a child at the time of my grandfather's death but the attendant circumstances left a profound impression upon his sensitive nature. Although he was immediately removed from this house to the home of his mother's people, he lost no time in returning upon assuming his inheritance in early manhood.

"Fortunately, being in possession of a considerable income, he was able to devote his entire lifetime to further research. His name is still well known in the world of literary criticism but for some reason he preferred to pursue his scholarly examination of Rivero in secrecy. I believe this preference was dictated by an inner sensibility, that he was endeavoring to unearth some information that would prove his father's, his and, for that matter, my own kinship to Rivero."

"You say your father was also a collector?"

"A statement I am prepared to substantiate," replied my host, as he led me to yet another corner of the shadow-shrouded study. "But first if you would accept a glass of wine?"

He filled not glasses but beakers and we toasted one another in silent appreciation.

"Now, then," said Malcar, "my father's special province consisted of the accumulation and study of letters of correspondence."

Opening a series of large trays beneath the bookshelves he drew out file after file of glassined folios and for the space f the next half hour I examined emails sent to Thundera Tiger, Lady Thundera, Fianna, Cheezey, LD, Super Lemmingo and other fellow masters of Thundercat fiction. My mind was numb -- there were literally thousands upon thousands of examples. Rivero saved every last item, every email he sent, every email he received, perfectly formatted and printed.

During the course of my perusal my host took occasion to refill our beakers with wine and the heady draft began to take effect for we had not eaten and I admit a certain weakness for addictive substances.

Here was wit, erudition, literary criticism, here were the muddled outpourings of a mind gone mad in despair, here was the draft of a projected story, the fragments of a narrative, here were a pitiful cry for deliverance and a paean to living, here were a dignified response to a flame and an editorial prnunciamento to an admirer, here were love, hate, pride, anger, celestial serenity, abject penitence, authority, wonder, resolution, indecision, joy and soul-sickening melancholia -- in sum and in total the enigma that was RD Rivero.

Again the beakers were filled and again promptly emptied.

The mystery of Rivero remained, despite Malcar's father's careful study of the letters. "My father learned nothing," my host confided, "even though he assembled this massive collection. So his search went on. By this time I was old enough to share his interest and his inquiries. Come," and he led me to an ornate chest that rested beneath the windows against the west wall of the study.

Kneeling, he unlocked the repository and then drew forth in rapid and marvelous succession a series of objects each of which boasted an intimate connection with Rivero's life. Souvenirs of his youth and his varied interests. Awards he had won in school, photographs he had taken of Manhattan before it had been destroyed, maps of moons and other planets, books he read from and adapted, used and spent pens, pencils, calculators. A CD of Mahler's "Das Lied Von Der Erde," where the translated words "forever" and "eternally" were highlighted and underlined. A periodic table with his signature and the signatures of his scientific colleagues.

Again we drank and I say that the wine was potent.

Malcar's face remained unchanged but there was a bit of mad hilarity in his eyes -- a restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. At length I happened across a little box of no remarkable character. I asked about its history and what part it played in Rivero's life.

"In the life of Rivero?" A visible tremor convulsed the features of my host -- it rapidly passed, his face transformed to a grimace of amusement. "This little box -- and you will note how, by some fateful design or contrived coincidence, it bears a resemblance to the box he himself conceived and described in his Good Twin, Evil Twin, this little box is concerned with his death rather than his life. It is, in fact, the selfsame box my grandfather clutched to his heart when they found him dead."

Again the tremor, again the grimace.

"But say, I have not yet told you of the details. Perhaps you would be interested in seeing the spot where he was stricken. I have already told you of his madness but I did not more than hint at the character of his delusions. You have been patient with me and more than patient. Your understanding shall be rewarded for I perceive you can be fully entrusted with the facts."

What further revelations Malcar was prepared to make I could not say but his manner was such as to inspire a vague disquiet and trepidation in me. Upon perceiving my unease he laughed shortly and laid a hand upon my shoulder. "Come, Tygra, this should interest you as an aficionado of fantasy," he said. "But first another drink to speed our journey."

He poured, we drank and then he led the way from that vaulted chamber, down the silent halls, down the staircase and to the lowest recesses of the building until we reached a vast chamber that resembled Mumm-Ra's crypt exactly. We passed before the actual replica of the sarcophagus only to find that it was a doorway into a small antechamber.

"You need not be afraid," he assured me. "Nothing has happened down here since that day almost eighty years ago when his servants discovered him stretched out before this iron door. The little box was clutched to his chest, he was collapsed in a state of delirium from which he never emerged. For six months he lingered a hopeless maniac -- raving as wildly from the very moment of his discovery as at the moment he died -- babbling his visions of a giant, moving tiger statue, the house coming to life and collapsing on the ground, strange, misshapen creatures, haphazardly sown together, crawling on the ground, shrunken, shriveled corpses wailing in the night, gigantic spiders and often he would run from room to room, fleeing what he called a liquid mass of loathsome, detestable putridity form which Lynxo's voice emanated.

"Nor was that all he babbled," he confided and here his voice sank to a whisper that reverberated through the stone chamber complete with replicas of the Ancient Spirits of Evil. "He hinted other things far worse than fantasy. A ghastly reality surpassing all of the phantasms of Rivero.

"For the first time my father and the servants learned the purpose of the room he had built beyond this iron door and learned what he had done to establish his title as the galaxy's foremost collector of Rivero.

"For he babbled again of Rivero's mysterious death, tens of thousands of millions of years ago, in 2035, of the hasty burial in a Jersey City cemetery and of the removal of the body in 53,120 to the mausoleum where his monument now rests. As I told you and as was known then my grandfather had played a public part in instigating that removal. But now we learned of the private part -- learned that there was a monument and a grave but no coffin in the earth beneath Rivero's alleged resting place. The coffin now rested in the secret room at the back of this scale replica of Mumm-Ra's sarcophagus. That's why this chamber, this house itself had been built.

"I tell you, he had stolen the body of RD Rivero -- and as he shrieked aloud in his final madness did not this indeed make him the greatest collector of Rivero?

"His ultimate intent was never divined but my father made one significant discovery -- the little box clutched to Thor's chest contained a portion of crumbled bones -- a thumb that was all that remained of Rivero's corpse."

My host shuddered and turned away. He led me back along that hall of horror, up the stairs and into the study. Silently he filled our beakers and I drank as hastily as deeply as desperately as he.

"What could my father do? To own the truth was to create a public scandal. He chose instead to keep silence, to devote his own life to study in retirement.

"Naturally the shock affected him profoundly. To my knowledge he never entered the room beyond the iron door and, indeed, I did not know of the room or its contents until the hour of his death -- and it was not until some years later that I myself found the key among his effects.

"But find the key I did and the story was immediately and completely corroborated. Today I am the greatest collector of Rivero -- for he lies in the keep below, my eternal trophy!"

This time I poured the wine. As I did so I noted for the first time the eminence of a storm, the impetuous fury of its gusts shaking the casements and the echoes of its thunder rolling and rumbling down the time-corroded corridors of the old house. The wild, overstrained vivacity with which my host harkened, or apparently harkened, to these sounds did nothing to reassure me -- for his recent revelation led me to suspect his sanity.

That the body of RD Rivero had been stolen, that this mansion had been built to house it, that it was indeed enshrined in a crypt below in the style of his hero -- that grandfather, son and grandson had dwelt here alone, apart, enslaved to a sepulchral secret -- was beyond sane belief. And yet, surrounded now by the night and by the storm in a setting torn from one of Rivero's own fantasies, I could not be sure. Here the past was still alive, the very spirit of Rivero's tales breathed forth its corruption upon the scene.

As thunder boomed, Malcar took up a flute carved from a tiger's thigh bone and whether in defiance of the storm without or as a mocking accompaniment to it he played. Blowing upon it with drunken persistence, with eerie atonality, with nerve-shattering shrillness. To the shrieking of that infernal instrument the thunder added a braying counterpoint.

Uneasy, uncertain and unnerved I retreated into the shadows of the bookshelves at the farther end of the room and idly scanned the titles of a row of ancient tomes. Here was the Book of the Dead, the Kabalah, the Chiromancy of Robert Flud, the Directorium Inquissitorum, a rare and curious book in quarto Gothic that was the manual of a forgotten church and betwixt and between the volumes of pseudoscientific inquiry, theological speculation and sundry incunabula I found titles that arrested and appalled me. De Vermis Mysteriis and the Liber Eibon, treatises on demonology, on witchcraft, on sorcery moldered in crumbling binding. The books were old, but the books were not dusty -- they had been read and recently.

"Read them?" it was as though Malcar divined my inmost thoughts. He had put aside his flute and now approached me, tittering as though in continued drunken defiance of the storm. Odd echoes and boomings sounded through the long halls of the house while curious grating sounds threatened to drown out his words, his laughter.

"Read them?" he said again. "I study them. Yes, I have gone beyond grandfather and father, too. It was I who procured the books that held the key and it was I who found the key. A key more difficult to discover and more important than the key to the vaults below. I often wonder if Rivero himself had access to these selfsame tomes, knew the selfsame secrets. The secrets of the grave and what lies beyond and what can be summoned forth if one but holds the key."

He stumbled away and returned with wine. "Drink," he said. "Drink to the night and to the storm."

I brushed the proffered beaker aside. "Enough," I said. "I must be back at Cat's Lair before --"

Was it fancy or did I find fear frozen on his features?

Malcar clutched my arm and cried, "No! Stay with me! This is no night in which to be alone. I swear I cannot abide the thought of being alone. I can bear to be alone no more!"

His incoherent babble mingled with the thunder and the echoes. I drew back and confronted him. "Control yourself," I counseled. "Confess that this is a hoax, an elaborate imposture arranged to please your perverted fancy."

"Hoax? Imposture? Stay and I shall prove to you beyond all doubt" -- and so saying Malcar stooped and opened a small drawer set in the wall beneath and beside the bookshelves. "This should repay you for your interest in my story and in Rivero," he murmured. "Know what you are the first, the only other person beside me to glimpse these treasures."

He handed me a sheaf of manuscripts on plain white paper. Documents written in ink, curiously similar to what I had noted while perusing Rivero's documents. Pages were clipped together in groups and for a moment I scanned titles alone.

"Angry Warrior Maidens Should Be Tube Tied," "The Return of Zeno," "Lunatics Forever," I read aloud. "Jagga's Corpse Lives," "More Tales From The Pyramid." In my agitation I came close to dropping the numbered pages. "Grune's Little Party," "Grune's Blood Bath," "Mumm-Ra WINS!" "And Then There Was Snarf," "Snarf And Snarfer, Evil And Wicked," "Get Off My Samophlange!" "Vultureman's Latest Invention."

"Are these what they appear to be -- the unpublished tales of RD Rivero?"

My host bowed -- "Unpublished, undiscovered, unknown except to you and me."

"But this cannot be," I protested. "Surely there would have been a mention of them somewhere. In Rivero's own letters or in those of this contemporaries. There would have been a clue, an indication, somewhere, someplace, somehow."

Thunder mingled with my words and thunder echoed in Malcar's reply.

"You dare to presume an imposture? Then compare!" He stooped again and brought out a glassined folio of letters. "Here, is this not the veritable printing of RD Rivero? Look at the shape of the letters, the various styles of 'y' and his 'th.' Will you say that these have not been penned by the selfsame hand?"

I looked at the handwriting, wondering at the possibilities of a monomaniac's forgery. Could Malcar, a victim of mental disorder, thus painstakingly simulate Rivero's hand?

"Read, then!" Malcar screamed through the thunder. "Read and dare to say that these tales were written by any other than Rivero."

I read but a line or two, holding the topmost manuscript close to eyes that strained beneath wavering candlelight but even in the flickering illumination I noted that which told me the only, incontestable truth. For the paper, the curiously unyellowed paper, bore a visible watermark, the name of a firm of well-known modern stationers and the date -- 51,220. Indeed, Rivero dated all of his stories and all of the manuscripts were not older the five or six years.

Putting the sheaf aside I endeavored to compose myself as I moved away from Malcar. For now I knew the truth, knew that countless millennia after his death a semblance of Rivero's spirit lived in the distorted and disordered soul of Malcar. Incarnation, reincarnation, call it what you will, Malcar was in his own irrational mind, RD Rivero.

Stifled and dull echoes of thunder from a remote portion of the mansion commingled with the soundless seething of my own inner turmoil as I turned and rashly addressed my host.

"Confess!" I cried, "is it not true that you have written these tales, fancying yourself the embodiment of Rivero? Is it not true that you suffer from a singular delusion born of solitude and everlasting brooding upon the past, that you have reached a stage characterized by the conviction that Rivero still lives on in your own person?"

A strong shudder came over him and a sickly smile quivered about his lips as he replied.

"Fool! I say to you that I have spoken the truth. Can you doubt the evidence of your senses? This house is real, the Rivero collection exists and the stories exist -- they exist I swear as truly as the body lying in the sarcophagus below!"

I took up the little box from the table and removed the lid. "Not so," I answered. "You said your grandfather was found with this box clutched to his breast before the door of the vault and that it contained Rivero's dust. Yet you cannot escape the fact that the box is empty." I faced him furiously. "Admit it, the story is a fabrication. Rivero's body does not lie beneath this house, nor are these his unpublished works, written during his lifetime and concealed."

"True enough," Malcar's smile was ghastly beyond belief. "The dust is gone because I took it and used it -- because in the works of wizardry I found the formulae, the arcana whereby I could raise the flesh, recreate the body from the essential salts of the grave. Rivero does not lie beneath this house -- he lives! And the tales are his posthumous works!"

Accented by thunder his words crashed against my consciousness.

"That was the end-all and be-all of my planning, of my studies, of my work, of my life! To raise by sorcery the veritable spirit of RD Rivero from the grave -- reclothed and animate in flesh -- set him to dwell and dream and do his work again in the private chambers I built in the vaults below -- and this I have done! To steal a corpse is but a ghoulish prank, mine is the achievement of genius!"

The distinct, hollow, metallic and clangorous, yet apparently muffled reverberation accompanying his words caused him to turn in his seat and face the door in the study so that I could not see the workings of his countenance -- nor could he read my own reaction to his ravings.

His words came but faintly to my ears through the thunder that now shook the house in a relentless grip. The wind rattling the casements and flickering the candle flame from the great silver candelabra sent a soaring sighing in anguished accompaniment to his speech.

"I would show him to you but I dare not. For he hates me as he hates life. I have locked him in the vault alone for the resurrected have no need of food or drink. And he sits there, pen moving over paper, endlessly moving, endlessly pouring out the evil essence of all he guessed and hinted at in life and which he learned in death.

"Do you not see the tragic pity of my plight? I sought to raise his spirit from the dead, to give him back to the world anew -- and yet these tales, these works are filled and fraught with a terror not to be endured. They cannot be shown to the world, he cannot be shown to the world. In bringing back the dead I have brought back the fruits of death!"

Echoes sounded anew as I moved toward the door -- moved, I confess, to flee the accursed house and its accursed owner.

Malcar clutched my hand, my arm, my shoulder. "You cannot go!" he shouted above the storm. "I did not speak of his escaping, but did you not guess? Did you not know? Did you not hear it through the thunder -- the grating of the door?"

I pushed him aside and he blundered backward upsetting the candelabra so that the flames licked across the carpeting.

"Wait!" he cried. "Have you not heard his footsteps on the stairs? Madman, I tell you that he now stands behind the door!"

A rush of wind, a roar of flames, a shroud of smoke rose all about us, throwing open the huge, antique panels to which Malcar pointed.

I speak of wind, of flame, of smoke -- enough to obscure all vision. I speak of Malcar's screams and of thunder loud enough to drown all sound. I speak of terror born of loathing and of desperation enough to shatter all sanity. Despite these things I can never erase from my consciousness that which I beheld as I fled past the doorway and staggered down the all.

There behind the doors there did stand a lofty and enshrouded figure, a figure all to familiar with pallid features, high forehead, bald, bearded. My glimpse lasted but an instant, an instant during which the man -- the corpse -- the apparition -- the hallucination -- call it what you will -- moved forward into the chamber and clasped Malcar to his breast in an unbreakable embrace. Together, the two figures tottered toward the flames which now rose to blot out vision forever, eternally.

From that chamber and from that mansion I fled aghast. The storm was still above in all its wrath. Lightning came to claim the house of Malcar for its own. Suddenly there shot along the path before me a wild light and I turned to see from where a gleam so unusual could have issued -- but it was only the flames, rising in supernatural splendor, to consume the mansion and the secrets of the man who collected Rivero.