“It's got his moustache,” I said.

We stared at the mounted head, secured inside a sigil-fortified cage. It was translucent, not like glass but like a thin shell of smoke. Its wild horns suggested something much more lethal than the simple defences of a plains herbivore. The light shining through the head lent a hint of a red glow to the rudely cocked eyes, and the lewd mocking leer offended me to my core. But that disgusting split tongue was the most disturbing of all. Just looking at it tied a knot in my crotch.

“Ms. Trammel?” said Inspector Graemes of the CID, Supernatural Branch. “Let's stay on track. When was the last time you saw Mr. Mabbleton, uhm, alive?” 

“This past night,” I said. “The recent meeting of the Hell Explorer's Club. This plaque with the demon's head had just been brought in by al-Haqarabi. He said he won it in a game of pachinko behind a shoe store in Marrakesh. He tells a lot of hard-to-check stories like that, but he gets results so most of us let him have his way.”

“And for your club of demon hunters, was this a [i]usual[/i] sort of item?”

“It’s good that you qualified that. Sir Marles has an impskin cap that occasionally gives him prescient visions, but costs him a finger joint each time he uses it. Lady Syesti has a matched pair of drake tattoos that can crawl over her body at will. MacAiles has boots that let him tread directly on unknown and alien soils; his feet seem to disappear into black clouds when he wears them. 

“The demon head was the sort of thing we were used to handling, and we’d found nothing about it that would require additional procedures beyond the usual ritual words. We’ll be revising our rules and procedures in light of these events.”

Inspector Graemes nodded and flipped a page in his notebook. 

“There was a collar of green metal that affixed the demon head to the plaque, and strange glyphs were burned into the collar. We started discussing what they could mean, and al-Haqarabi called in a bet he’d won last month, and challenged Mabbleton to decipher the glyphs, or at least pinpoint their origin. Mabbleton is--was--an expert linguist and master of sigilla, so he declared himself game and had a go at them.

“He sat there for nearly an hour, turning the plaque about, tracing the characters, checking the club’s library for references, and muttering under his breath. He tried ciphers, mirror images, iterative structuring, and even Lull analysis. Finally, he gave an enormous sigh, set the thing down and spoke nine words; only nine words, but they were all it took to set the horrible thing off.

“That damned head extruded its tongue, and it shot out like a cobra and went straight down Mabbleton’s pants. He turned the most remarkable shade of vermillion, but he kept his cool right up until that tongue hit the bullseye, so to speak. He yelled then, and a number of us were pulling on his arms and legs to get him off. But that tongue just kept going deeper and deeper, and the nightmare part was watching his expression change. It went from surprise, to indignation, to horror, to desperation. But when that damned tongue had struck deep enough into him to reach his heart, and you could see him starting to accept it, that was when most of us had to turn our heads aside. We knew we were losing the battle and so did he. It was stomach-wrenching and heartbreaking all at once--”

Graemes paused sympathetically and allowed me to collect myself. I took slow deep breaths for a minute, then continued. 

“Mabbleton started to… collapse. His limbs shrank and curled up, escaping the grasp of those who sought to pull him free. His body thinned as he was drawn up to the demon’s mouth, and he started to merge with its face. It was as if he was a stocking being drawn over the thing’s head. You could see his face being pulled and stretched, the horns bursting through his forehead, and that obscene tongue supplanting his own tongue and protruding through his lips. The moustache may well be all that’s left of him. For his sake, I hope that’s true.”

Graemes paused in taking his notes. “You said he’d spoken nine words; what were they?”

I knew it should be safe to repeat them, with the thing under containment.

“He said, ‘I'll be damned if I let this lick me.’”