The Ninth Nightmare

THIRTEEN Dogs of War

An-Gryferai dipped and wheeled over the brow of the hill, flapping her wings, waiting for the rest of the Night Warriors to catch up with her. She stayed as close to the ground as she could while still keeping the circus in sight, even though it wasn’t easy. At this low altitude, she had to battle against mischievous crosswinds and abrupt drops in air pressure. Her shoulder muscles were aching with the effort, but she didn’t want to fly any higher in case any of the carnival folk happened to look back and catch sight of her, Dom Magator had already warned the Night Warriors that it was a priority to surprise Brother Albrecht, if they could, because they had no idea if or how the carnival folk could retaliate.

‘Let’s just put it this way,’ Dom Magator had said, ‘this guy has been traveling around with his freak show for eight hundred years, kidnapping women and children and cutting their arms and their legs off, and inflicting all manner of deformities on them, and nobody has been able to stop him yet. Not priests, not princes, not goddamned sorcerers, even. So let’s be intelligent, shall we, and assume that he has some way of defending himself?’

Now the Night Warriors had all gathered at the top of the hill. An-Gryferai beat her wings strongly so that she gained another twenty feet in altitude. She focused her lenses toward the carnival and transmitted into each of the Night Warriors’ helmets a high-definition 3-D image of what she could see. She showed them the wide trail of tire-tracks and footprints that the traveling carnival had left behind it in the long wet grass, and then she showed them the settlement beside the birch trees, and the carnival site itself, half obscured by drifting woodsmoke and mist.

Dom Magator said, ‘We need to pinpoint Brother Albrecht’s exact location. If we can take him out first, I think we’ll have much less organized retaliation from the rest of the freaks.’

‘My guess is he’s goin’ to be real well protected,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘Like the gang leaders in Brightmoore and Hamtramck. You couldn’t get near those brothers for guns and muscle.’

‘Why don’t I go down there and look for him?’ Xyrena suggested. ‘I mean, I don’t look threatening, do I?’

‘Absolutely the opposite,’ Don Magator agreed. ‘But are you sure that’s a good idea, going down there unarmed? We don’t yet know how these people react to strangers. They might blow you away as soon as look at you.’

‘They’re entertainers, aren’t they? Trapeze artists and jugglers and clowns, and very special people. I don’t think they’ll give me any trouble.’

‘OK, but I think Jekkalon and Jemexxa should go with you. They’re both acrobats, so if anybody’s going to get a warm welcome from carny folk, I guess they will. Besides, they don’t look like they’re carrying weapons, even though there’s plenty of lightning around for Jemexxa to zap them with, if she needs to. Zebenjo’Yyx and An-Gryferai and me, we’ll take up tactical positions as close as we can without being seen, and cover you.’

An-Gryferai flapped down to earth again, with a nimble skip, and shook the rain off her wings. ‘All ready?’ asked Dom Magator. ‘Here goes nothing.’

The five Night Warriors fanned out and began to walk toward the carnival. Over their heads, the electric storm became even more dramatic, with lightning crackling from one cloud to another and thunder rolling almost continuously. Chilly rain slashed sideways across the grass.

Dom Magator switched on the heat sensors that displayed infrared body images on his visor. This allowed him to make second by second checks on the movements of the carnival people, in case any of them betrayed signs that they had caught sight of the Night Warriors coming toward them. But they all appeared to be far too preoccupied, swarming backward and forward between the carnival site and the settlement by the birch trees.

Suddenly — right in the center of the carnival trucks and caravans — he saw four tall poles being erected, with black pennants flying from the top of them. Within less than thirty seconds, in a series of huge convulsions, the big top began to rise, like a harpooned whale rising from the depths.

At the same time, all around it, twenty or thirty smaller tents and marquees were mushrooming up; and off to the right, a large gang of circus hands were bolting together a long row of animal cages. They assembled the cages in only a few minutes, and then at least a dozen trucks were noisily backed up to them. The trucks’ rear doors were thrown open, and ramps dropped down with a fusillade of banging and clattering. After a few moments, trainers dressed in flamboyant coats and tall hats and wigs appeared, leading out tigers and bears and elephants and zebras.

Once the animals were all safely locked up, the trucks were driven away to the far side of the carnival site. Meanwhile the trailers and horse-drawn caravans were being marshaled into a rough semicircle. It all happened so quickly that it was like watching a speeded-up movie. Electricians climbed up ladders to suspend strings of red lights between the cages and the caravans and the tents, and in front of the big top an archway was hauled up into position. A generator blurted, and all the lights flickered on, while the illuminated lettering over the archway spelled out Albrecht’s Traveling Circus & Freak Show.

After a few more seconds, the Night Warriors heard music on the wind, occasionally interrupted by thunder. In The Good Old Summertime, played on a barrel organ.

‘My God,’ said Dom Magator. ‘If this doesn’t make me feel like a kid again.’

They had reached a low ridge about a hundred yards away from the perimeter of the carnival site. Dom Magator sent Zebenjo’Yyx off to the right, so that he could cover Xyrena if and when she entered the big top. He sent An-Gryferai off to the left, close to the settlement of houses and barns, so that if she needed to take off and fly, the birch trees behind her would make it harder for anybody on the ground to see her.

He gave Xyrena a quick embrace, his heavyweight armor clanking against her gold-plated breastplate. Then he shook Jekkalon and Jemexxa by the hand, and said, ‘Break a leg, OK?’ All of a sudden he felt like Uncle Buck, not only because he was so well built, but because he really cared for these two young twins. They were good-looking, they were hugely successful, and they had nightly faced audiences of thousands. But this was their first time in Night Warrior combat. Dom Magator was confident that they had inherited all of the tactical skills they needed, but they had no experience yet of how harrowing it could be, fighting in nightmares; how bizarre, or how bloody.

Xyrena and the twins started to walk toward the carnival tents. As they did so, from inside the big top, the Night Warriors heard a muffled drum roll, and then a man bellowing through a megaphone. They couldn’t make out what the man was saying, but his announcement was immediately followed by a discordant blast of trumpets and a smattering of applause.

‘Sounds like show time,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx.

‘Xyrena, Jekkalon, Jemexxa…’ said Dom Magator. ‘You take it real easy, you hear me? And keep us up to the minute, OK? You need us, you just yell, and we’ll be right there before you can say “catfish po’boy with everything on it”.’

Xyrena circled around the back of the caravans and trailers, with Jekkalon and Jemexxa staying close behind her. Just as before, when Kieran and Kiera had explored the carnival site on top of the hill, all of the trailers had black blinds drawn tightly down at the windows, although they could hear voices and music and occasional bursts of shouting from inside some of the trailers, and there was a pungent smell of tobacco smoke on the wind.

From the direction of the big top, they heard another drum roll, longer this time, followed by another fanfare of trumpets, and another round of applause.

‘I think we should go see what’s going on,’ said Xyrena. ‘If it’s some kind of show, then the chances are that the Big Cheese is going to be there.’

‘Can’t we find our mom first?’ asked Jekkalon.

‘Come on, Jakki, you know what our priority is,’ Xyrena told him. ‘We have to pull the rug out from under this freak show as soon as we possibly can.’

‘You will help us find her, though?’

‘Like I said to my first husband, I promise I’ll try to keep my promise, but I can’t promise.’

They walked along the line of animal cages. The stench of tiger’s urine and elephant’s dung was overwhelming, and made Xyrena’s eyes water. The tiger snarled at them listlessly, but its eyes were dull and its fur was patchy and even if it managed to escape from its cage, Xyrena doubted if it had the strength even to run after them, let alone eat them. The bear was in much the same condition, sitting in one corner of its cage, endlessly rocking backward and forward like a mental patient in a rundown asylum.

In the last cage a Great Dane bitch was lying on her side on a heap of dirty straw, apparently asleep. Her pale honey-colored coat was caked with black mud and she was so undernourished that her ribcage was showing.

Jemexxa went up to the bars of the cage and said, ‘Such a beautiful dog. We used to have one when we were little — Princess, we called her. We used to be able to ride on her back, like a pony. Look at her — how could they treat her so bad?’

‘Come on,’ Xyrena urged her, ‘we have to get going.’

But just then the Great Dane stirred on her straw, and lifted herself up on her front paws, and turned her head around. Jemexxa clamped both hands over her mouth and took two staggering steps backward. Jekkalon said, ‘Holy shit! I don’t believe it.’

Even Xyrena found it impossible to believe what she was looking at. The Great Dane had the head of a human woman. She was very pallid, with a heart-shaped face and raggedy brown hair and pale green eyes, although the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. Her cheeks were streaked with dirt and there were clusters of dark red sores around her lips.

She stared at Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, occasionally blinking. Then she stood up on all fours and came trotting over to the bars of the cage.

‘Who are you?’ she said, in a reedy voice, as if she were being half strangled. Xyrena could see now that there were crude stitch-marks all the way around her neck, where her head had been sutured to the Great Dane’s body. ‘Do you live in the village? I’ve never seen you before.’

‘No,’ said Xyrena. ‘We don’t live in the village. We’re just kind of passing through.’

‘You don’t belong to the circus?’

Xyrena shook her head. She found the dog-woman both horrifying and fascinating, both at the same time, but more than that she felt desperately sorry for her.

‘You’re naked but you’re not naked,’ the woman frowned.

‘Well, that’s my armor,’ Xyrena explained. ‘I’m a kind of a freelance warrior. Like a mercenary only I don’t get paid for it.’

‘A warrior?’ the dog-woman asked her.

‘Like I say, kind of.’

The dog-woman thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘Would you kill me?’

‘Excuse me? Would I kill you? Of course not.’

‘If I begged you to kill me, would you kill me?’

Xyrena didn’t know what to say. She opened her mouth and then she closed it again.

‘Look at me!’ the dog-woman insisted. ‘I used to be pretty. I used to have a husband, and children. I used to be so happy. Now look at me. I’m not even human any more.’

‘What happened to you?’ asked Jemexxa.

‘A clown happened to me. A clown with a gray face and gray hair and a bright green smile.’

‘What did he do to you, this clown?’

‘I first saw him at the Empire Fair, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where I used to live. It was so long ago now that I can’t even remember when it was. I saw him smiling at me through the crowd and I smiled back at him, and he gave me this little wave with his fingers. Then I took the children home and he was waiting for me, in my living room. How he got there before me and how he got into my house I shall never know.

The dog-woman’s eyes suddenly filled up with tears. ‘That was the end of my happiness. That was when hell started.’

‘This clown—’ Xyrena prompted her.

‘Most of the freaks call him Mago Verde, or the Green Magician, but Zachary always calls him Gordon. Zachary — he’s the Freakmaster — he’s in charge of all of the living exhibits, like me.’

‘Gordon — that wouldn’t be Gordon Veitch by any chance?’

‘I don’t know. I only know Gordon.’

‘And he’s still here now, with the carnival?’

Elizabeth nodded. ‘Yes. But he’s always coming and going. Sometimes he disappears for days on end, but then he comes back and shuts himself up in his caravan for weeks and nobody sees him. All of the other clowns hate him. The freaks hate him and the animal trainers hate him. But the Grand Freak thinks he’s wonderful. The Grand Freak treats him as if he was Jesus Christ, almost.’

The dog-woman was out of breath now, and panting painfully. Xyrena waited for a few moments, and then she said, ‘The Grand Freak? Who the hell is the Grand Freak?’

‘Brother Albrecht. He calls himself the Grand Freak because he wants everybody to pity him. He doesn’t want anybody to forget that he was beautiful once and how much he’s suffered. But he doesn’t care how cruel he is to other people. He loves to see them tortured — even little children.

She paused again, to catch her breath. Then she said, ‘Please kill me. Please. I tried to strangle myself with my collar, and once I tried to bite off one of my paws so that I bled to death, but Brown Jenkin found me, both times.’

‘Who’s Brown Jenkin?’

The dog-woman gave a shivery shake of her head. ‘He’s a what rather than a who. Half a human being and half a rat. But he helps Zachary to keep his eye on all of us freaks, just to make sure we don’t harm ourselves. I’m sure that he has some kind of a sixth sense, because when one of us can’t take it any more, and wants to end it all, he always sniffs it out, and stops us.’

Xyrena said, gently, ‘Tell me your name.’

‘My name? You don’t need to know my name to kill me. It would be easier for you if you didn’t know it.’

‘Please, tell me your name.’

‘Elizabeth. But my husband always called me Betsy.’

‘Well, listen, Elizabeth, I can’t kill you.’

‘Why not? You said you’re a warrior. Don’t you have a gun?’

‘I couldn’t kill you if I wanted to because you’re still real.’

‘What are you telling me? That this is only a nightmare? Then how come I never wake up?’

‘Because this carnival is all a dream, but not your dream. It’s Brother Albrecht’s dream. Over the years he’s imprisoned dozens of real people inside of it, so that they can’t escape. We think that he sends this Gordon character back to the waking world to find victims for him — innocent men and women just like you — and then he brings them back here and turns them into freaks for his carnival.’

‘So you can’t kill me but I can’t ever get away?’

‘You can get away, Elizabeth, and you will, just as soon as we can deal with the less-than-brotherly Brother Albrecht. And Gordon the Clown, too, while we’re at it.’

Tears were streaming down Elizabeth’s filthy cheeks and she was shivering with misery. Jemexxa put her hand through the bars of the cage and stroked her tangled hair. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Trust us. Just let us break up this carnival and then you’ll be free. Our mom’s here, too — the Demi-Goddess. We want to save her, too.’

Elizabeth was too exhausted to say any more. She crept back to her bed of straw and lay down, her ribcage rising and falling with effort.

Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘Did you pick up any of that?’

‘Yes, most of it, especially that Grand Freak stuff. Good going, Xyrena.’

He said something else, but his voice was drowned out by another drum roll from the big top, and another fanfare of trumpets, and more applause.

‘I think it’s time we went in and took a look-see,’ said Xyrena.

Jekkalon said, ‘There’s a flap in the canvas in back, that’s how we got out the last time. With any luck we should be able to sneak in without too many people seeing us.’

Jemexxa looked up at the thundery clouds. ‘I think I could use some charge first.’

She reached behind her and twisted two L-shaped levers, one on each side of the rack of storage cells on her back. Then she raised both hands, palms outward, as if she were praying to some Native American sky deity. In fact she was dowsing for negative electrical charges building up in the clouds — that type of cloud-to-cloud-to-ground lightning known as an ‘anvil crawler.’ At first she felt only a slight tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers, but as she slowly moved her hands to the right, the tingling became an uncomfortable prickling, like nettle rash, and then a sharp fizzing sensation that penetrated right under her fingernails. Within less than thirty seconds, however, she had located the point of maximum atmospheric tension — well over a hundred kiloamperes. It was located only about three and a half miles away, in a huge black cloud that was hanging over the summit of a hill. She lifted her hands higher and waited.

‘This is not going to take too long, is it, honey?’ asked Xyrena. ‘We need to get into that big top before one of these freaks catches us and turns us into poodles.’

Jemexxa didn’t answer her. She knew that there was no need, because a few seconds later a fan-shaped array of lightning lit up the clouds, spitting and shriveling like burning human hair. Four or five branches jumped directly toward her and struck the open palms of her hands. There was a sharp crack and a superheated blast of air which almost knocked them over and for a few moments they were all blinded. But with a high-pitched jittering noise, like a horde of rats scuttling up a drainpipe, the charges ran up the insulated cables on Jemexxa’s arms, and into the capacitors on her back, and she promptly twisted the two L-shaped levers back to their closed position, and snapped them shut.

She glanced up at the head’s-up display inside her helmet. It read 270c.

‘That should more than do it. Two hundred seventy coulombs.’

Jekkalon said, ‘That’s incredible. I even know what a coulomb is. How the hell do I know what a coulomb is? I flunked every single science subject when I was in high school.’

‘Don’t ask me,’ said Xyrena. ‘I don’t understand any of this Night Warriors malarkey. But suddenly I know things that I never ever knew I knew. I even know who wrote In The Good Old Summertime, would you believe?’

Jekkalon said, ‘Dom Magator? We’re going to enter the big top now. Not by the front entrance — we’re going in back.’

‘Don’t worry. I’ll have An-Gryferai keep you under close surveillance, and Zebenjo’Yyx and me will move in closer and cover you. If it comes to any shooting, though, make sure that you hit the deck real quick. Zebenjo’Yyx isn’t called the Arrow Storm for nothing, and I’ll be toting my Absence Gun and my Boomerang Knife.’

‘Be careful, though,’ put in Jemexxa. ‘Most of these people are innocent victims, and some of them are real.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Dom Magator assured her. ‘My Army buddy Rick Mantovani was killed in Iraq by friendly fire, but there’s nothing even remotely friendly about an Absence Gun, no matter who’s firing it.’

Jekkalon led the way between the smaller tents and marquees toward the back of the big top. Above their heads, the thunder and lightning were moving away now, but the rain was drumming down harder then ever. Jemexxa began to have an uneasy feeling that George Roussos might be close to waking up, in which case they would have to exit this dream as quickly as possible. Springer had warned them that if this happened, the dream wouldn’t simply collapse around them, leaving them standing by George Roussos’ bed, where they had first entered it. This happened with normal dreams and nightmares, but this dream wasn’t normal. This was Brother Albrecht’s dream, and George Roussos was only dreaming it because for some reason Brother Albrecht wanted him to.

If George Roussos woke up while the Night Warriors were still here, inside this dream, the only way for them to get out of it would be to wake up Brother Albrecht, if that were possible, or kill him.

They reached the back of the big top. Rainwater was spouting off the sloping roof and splattering on to the grass all around them. Inside, they could hear music playing — lewd, discordant blues — and people shouting and cheering. Every now and then there would be another drum roll, and another screech of trumpets.

Jekkalon made his way along the wall of black canvas, punching and tugging at it to find the flap from which they had escaped the last time they had dreamed that they were here. As he was still struggling to locate it, a motley group of clowns and circus hands suddenly appeared through the rain, less than ten yards away, accompanied by a woman with a pair of mechanical wooden legs, like the legs of two artists’ easels, all joints and struts and pulleys, which made her at least six inches taller than any of her companions. Her unnatural height was emphasized by a huge black tricorn hat that looked as if it might have been worn by an encephalitic pirate.

The Night Warriors turned their faces to the canvas so that no light would be reflected from the lenses in their helmets, and stood perfectly still. They stayed that way while the group passed them by, talking and tittering. One of the clowns shouted out, ‘Who’s this, then?’ and let out a laugh that was almost a series of screams. Xyrena thought for a split second that he must have seen them, but the group continued walking, and so the clown must have been laughing about somebody else altogether. The group disappeared around the next corner of the big top, and the last the Night Warriors heard of them was the arthritic creaking of the woman’s wooden legs.

After a furious search along the back of the tent, Jekkalon at last discovered the flap. He held it open while Xyrena and Jemexxa pushed their way through.

Unexpectedly, the big top was crowded with hundreds of people. All the gasoliers were alight, but even so the illumination inside the tent was strangely dim, as if they were looking at it through a fine gauze curtain. The air was humid and stuffy and smelled of wet soil and human sweat. Although there was so much music and drumming and cheering, the sound was muffled by the dark red velvet drapes that hung all around the auditorium. At least a dozen trapezes hung from the roof of the tent, swaying slightly, as if some acrobat had recently swung from one to the other.

This is just like a dream, thought Jemexxa, but of course it was a dream.

The Night Warriors kept themselves hidden behind the last row of seats. Xyrena said, ‘Dom Magator? The whole place is packed. Where did all of these people come from? There must be three hundred here, at the very least.’

‘They’re all of the people who are dreaming this dream,’ Dom Magator told her. ‘If you look around, you’ll probably see George Roussos someplace.’

‘Not from here I can’t. We’re right in back.’

‘That doesn’t matter. George Roussos isn’t important right now. The main thing is, can you see Brother Albrecht?’

‘I’ll take a look. Don’t go away now, will you?’

Xyrena lifted her head with its high gilded crown and looked cautiously toward the stage. At first her sight line was obscured by a bulky woman with frizzy red hair, so she took two or three steps sideways until she was standing at the end of the nearest aisle, and she could see most of the stage quite clearly.

On the left-hand side of the apron, a seven-piece band of black musicians was playing that slow, off-key blues number — one of those down-and-dirty blues numbers that would have had deeply suggestive lyrics if anybody had been singing it, like I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl. The band were all wearing brown-and-yellow-striped satin vests and immaculately-pressed brown pants, and it was only when Xyrena looked at them more intently that she realized what was so freakish about them.

Four of them were two pairs of conjoined twins, the sides of their vests slit open because their abdomens were connected with a thick band of skin. They were so closely connected, in fact, that their faces were pressed together, and the trumpeter and the clarinetist had to share the playing of their instruments — the trumpeter using his left hand to finger the register key of his twin’s clarinet, and the clarinetist using his right hand to mute his twin’s trumpet.

The other three were conjoined triplets. Two of them were joined at the side of the head, while the second and the third were joined at the shoulder, so that one of them had no left arm and the other had no right arm. Between the three of them they were playing banjo and alto sax.

They were accompanied by a pianist, who was sitting behind them at a shabby red upright piano. He was thin and pale, with a half-starved face and curly white hair, but what was immediately striking about him were the two curved horns which protruded from the top of his head, each of them at least nine inches long. Xyrena guessed that they must have been grafted on to his skull to give him the appearance of a devil or a demon or a faun. He was naked to the waist, with a scarred, emaciated back; but it was only when Xyrena moved a few feet to the right that she could see that he was completely naked. Not that he was exposing himself — he was covered from the waist down in shaggy white fur. He had no feet, only hooves, which he was using to jab at the loud and the soft pedals. He had been literally cut in half, and his hips and his legs replaced with those of a Rocky Mountain goat.

Xyrena was so horrified that she couldn’t take her eyes off him. Jekkalon and Jemexxa came up close behind her. ‘Holy moly,’ Jekkalon breathed. ‘I never saw anything like that in my whole goddamned life. Never. That is so gross.’

The pianist swept his fingertips all the way up the keyboard, to the plinkiest note at the top, plink! Then he sat with his horned head dropped down and his arms hanging limply at his sides and staring at the floor. A few moments later, with a collection of squeaks and honks, the jazz band petered out, too. The audience gave them a smattering of applause, but almost immediately they were drowned out by another ferocious drum roll, and another strident fanfare of trumpets.

Out of the red velvet drapes at the back of the stage burst a hugely fat man in a ringmaster’s top hat and a bottle-green tailcoat and shiny black knee-boots. He swaggered up to the footlights, cracking a ringmaster’s whip.

‘Ladies and gentlemen! And those who are both, or neither! Welcome to Brother Albrecht’s Traveling Circus and Freak Show! This evening we have gathered you here to celebrate the penultimate step toward the realization of our dreams! And when I say “realization” I mean “real-ization” — our seemingly endless nightmare at last made flesh! A triumphant return to the world of reality from the world of dreams in which we have been so cruelly and unjustly exiled for so long!’

There was a short pause before anybody in the audience applauded, and when they did, the clapping sounded half-hearted and sporadic. One or two of them cheered and whistled, but the Night Warriors noticed that there were just as many who sat with their hands in their laps, although they looked more bewildered than hostile.

‘Today I am overjoyed to tell you that the great Mago Verde has brought us back sacrifice number eight! Not only that, he has already dreamed her abduction and her mutilation into one of the bedrooms of the Griffin House. Her pain is now part of that building’s fabric, mixed with its very molecules, joining the seven other sacrifices whose suffering is secreted within its walls!’

Again, a few desultory handclaps, accompanied by coughing and the shuffling of feet.

The ringmaster cracked his whip three times. ‘Now there remains only one more sacrifice to be made before the gates to the waking world will be flung open to us, and the circus can pass through, with its bells and its trumpets and its clowns! One more nightmare, that is all — just one! And then we can bring chaos and anarchy to the entire planet, and undo the works of God for ever!

‘Ladies and gentlemen! And those who purport to be one or the other, or neither! I give you the greatest Dread who ever walked the world of reality and the world of nightmares — Mago Verde, the Green Magician!’

More clapping, more enthusiastic this time, and one or two piercing whistles, and then through the curtains appeared the gray-faced clown with the poisonous green smile. He circled around the stage with a self-satisfied strut, nodding his head to acknowledge the applause — occasionally flicking his long gray hair with his fingertips and blowing kisses, as if he were pretending to be gay.

‘Thank you, my friends, thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you dreamers all for joining our dream.’ His voice was hoarse and barely audible, so that everybody in the audience had to strain to hear him. ‘You are all far too kind to me — unlike the shits who are under the delusion that they run this circus!

He paused, and gave a real grin underneath his painted grin. ‘They all detest me, every one of them! And do you know why? They detest me because I am the only one, ever, who has shown himself capable of giving them what they want! I am the only one who can lead them back through to the waking world, and give them back the real life which they have almost forgotten.

‘You would think they would show me some gratitude, wouldn’t you? But no! They are all so jealous! I have the ear and the confidence of the Grand Freak himself, our beloved Brother Albrecht, and they hate that! But the Grand Freak knows that nine sacrifices have to be made, and that every one of those nine sacrifices has to be dreamed into the walls of the Griffin House, and that nobody else can do that, except for moi! Only then will he be able to wake up out of his dream, and lead his circus back to reality.

‘Of course the Grand Freak loves me! How could he not love me? He escaped into this dream eight centuries ago, thinking that he could easily return to the waking world whenever he wanted to, and continue to wreak his revenge on God, and all of God’s creation. But he reckoned without Pope Eugene. Pope Eugene cast a holy sanction — Sanctus Sanctio — which prevented the Grand Freak from waking up. And so for eight hundred years he continued to dream this dream. This wonderful, terrible, fearful, depraved and disgusting circus, which is everything that Heaven deplores, on wheels!

He stepped backward, toward the curtains, and then he called out, ‘Bring on the sacrifice!’

There was some tussling behind the curtains, but after a few moments two clowns staggered out, carrying high between them a bentwood chair. One of the clowns was in traditional white face and dressed entirely in white, while the other was made up like an Auguste, with a wild gingery wig and scowling red lips and baggy check pants.

Sitting in the chair, and tied to it with cords, was a plump young Hispanic girl with wavy black hair. She was wearing a long sleeveless dress of dirty gray linen, heavily bloodstained, and Xyrena could immediately see why. She had no arms, only two stumps at her shoulders which had been covered with thick gauze pads and adhesive tape to prevent them from bleeding, although both pads were now dark brown with congealed blood.

The two clowns carried the girl to the front of the stage and set her down facing the audience. ‘Behold!’ cried out Mago Verde, performing a little fluttering dance around her. ‘The eighth offering! Número ocho! Maria Fortales is her name! A Mexican beauty beyond compare!’

It appeared to Jemexxa that the girl was concussed, or drugged, or dreaming. She made no sound at all, and her eyes roamed around as if she couldn’t understand where she was, or what was happening to her. But even if she were semi-conscious, her eyes were filled with tears, and tears were glistening on her cheeks.

The audience of assembled dreamers started a slow handclap, as if they approved of this latest victim, but were growing impatient to see what would happen to her. Dom Magator said, ‘What the two-toned tonkert is going on in there, Xyrena?’

But he didn’t have to wait for long to find out. Mago Verde returned to the curtains at the back of the stage and cried out, ‘Now! The spectacle that you have all been waiting to see! The Arch-Dreamer himself! The creator of all of this unholy carnival! The Grand Freak, Brother Albrecht!’