The Ninth Nightmare

FIFTEEN Skirmish In Hell

Soon after Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa had disappeared into the big top, every clown and circus hand and freak had crowded in through the illuminated archway to see the show, and within minutes the carnival grounds had been deserted, leaving only the animals and the quasi-animals sitting miserably in their cages.

Dom Magator and Zebenj’Yyx had cautiously climbed to their feet and looked around. ‘Clear,’ Dom Magator had decided, and behind his fearsome African mask, Zebenjo’Yyx had nodded.

They had scrambled over the ridge where they had first taken cover, and then they had dodged their way through the rain toward the big top. They had run with their shoulders hunched, like a two-man SWAT team — Zebenjo’Yyx keeping his right arm held out straight in front of him in case he needed to shoot off a sudden burst of quarrels, and Dom Magator holding up his Absence Gun, with his finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

The Absence Gun looked like a Gatling machine-gun, with five rotating barrels, except that the barrels were made of pale green ceramic and the gun itself had a stock like a rifle. It worked on the principle of quantum decoherence, producing a wave function which made it a scientific impossibility that its target had ever existed. It was the third stage beyond the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat, in which a cat in a sealed box was both alive and dead at the same time. Anybody who was hit by an Absence Gun was neither alive nor dead, and never had been.

Over by the trees, An-Gryferai took a short run and launched herself into the air, her wings softly thundering. She quickly gained altitude, and flew up high over the top of the tent. Then she started to wheel around the four black pennants which were flapping wetly from its flagpoles. She was buffeted by the wind and the rain, and blinded by fitful flashes of lightning, but she managed to keep steadily circling, waiting for Dom Magator to give her the word to attack.

For the past ten minutes, Dom Magator and Zebenjo’Yyx had listened closely to everything that had been happening to Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, so that when they pushed their way in through the main entrance and marched side by side into the auditorium, they had a good idea what would confront them. Even so, as they reached the stage, crowded with clowns and freaks and fire breathers, and with Brother Albrecht sitting in his black contraption in the center, Zebenjo’- Yyx said, ‘Jesus Ker-ist! This ain’t no circus! This is hell on wheels!’

All around them the audience were baying with bloodlust, both men and women. They sounded like a pack of hounds, more than three hundred of them, closing in for the kill. Many of them standing on their seats so that they could get a better view of Maria Fortales as Doctor Friendly prepared to suture the snakes on to the stumps of her shoulders. One woman had lifted her nightdress at the front and was gnawing at the hem in excitement.

Trumpets were blaring, drums were rattling, and the clowns and freaks were stamping their feet on the stage, so that the noise was overwhelming.

‘Zebenjo’Yyx, sic that bastard in the white coat!’ Dom Magator ordered. ‘Jekkalon — Jemexxa — hit that fricking clown! The green one!’

Brother Albrecht caught sight of them. ‘Who are these?’ he shouted, and he was so angry that flecks of spit flew from his lips. ‘Wer traut such, meinen Albtraum einzutragen? Who dares to enter my nightmare?’

But without any hesitation, Zebenjo’Yyx raised his right hand again. Lincoln couldn’t consciously understand how he knew how to fire his arrows, but for some reason he did. Not only that, he did it with speed and casual expertise, as if he had let them off hundreds and hundreds of times before. He raised his right arm and pointed it directly at Doctor Friendly. Then he closed his fingers, and squeezed his fist tight, striking Doctor Friendly with six arrows. There was a sharp rattling sound as the arrows flew out of the release mechanisms on his forearm. Doctor Friendly was thrown backward by the impact and hit his head against the front wheel of Brother Albrecht’s contraption. The two circus hands who had been holding the snake down ducked sideways for cover, but Zebenjo’Yyx raised his left arm and shot both of them, two arrows in the chest and one between the eyes for each of them. The snake twisted and rolled off the gurney and dropped with a thump on to the stage. Before it could slither out of sight, Zebenjo’Yyx shot it with seven arrows, all the way along the length of its body. The final arrow nailed its jaws to the floor.

Mago Verde, however, didn’t wait. He struggled through the crowd of performers to the far side of the stage, and leaped off, forcing his way between members of the audience up the right-hand aisle. Brown Jenkin whirled around and saw him, and shouted out ‘Attente moi! Mago Verde! Shit-merde you bastard! Wait for me!’ He immediately jumped after him and struggled up the aisle close behind him, snatching at his coat and screaming at him. ‘Attente moi! Attente moi! Wait! They will schneiden me if they catch me! You know that!’

But as Mago Verde tried to escape, Jekkalon pushed his way to the rear of the stage, where two vertical ladders ran up to a trapeze platform. He scaled one of the ladders so quickly that he looked like a human spider. He paused for only a split second, balancing on his toes. Then he swung from one trapeze to another, double-flipping and triple-flipping, flying over the audience toward the rear of the auditorium. The audience looked up in amazement, and immediately hushed.

Jekkalon reached the last trapeze platform well before Mago Verde had managed to fight his way up the aisle to the back of the big top. ‘OK, Jemexxa!’ he called out. ‘Give me some of that sweet, sweet voltage!’

Jemexxa, who was still on the stage, lifted her right hand, with its shiny reflective palm. Jekkalon did the same. Mago Verde seemed to guess what was likely to happen, because he started to struggle back down the aisle again, and then he ducked his head down and hunched his way along a row of seats, trying to use members of the audience to shield himself. Brown Jenkin kept close behind him, still screaming and chattering.

Jekkalon swung from one trapeze to another, until he was dangling right over Mago’s Verde head. He held out the palm of his hand and aimed it at Mago Verde, and told Jemexxa, ‘Now!’

An intense flash of lightning jumped out of Jemexxa’s hand and struck Jekkalon’s with an ear-splitting bang. At the very last second Mago Verde grabbed Brown Jenkin under the arms and heaved him up in front of him. Brown Jenkin didn’t even have time to shout out before his head exploded. Brains and bone shrapnel were sprayed all over the audience who were standing around him, and a cloud of brown smoke rolled up into the air, mostly from his scorched tweed coat.

Mago Verde slung Brown Jenkin’s body aside and vaulted over the next row of seats, and then the next. Jekkalon swung after him, from one trapeze the next, but Mago Verde managed to keep dragging members of the audience in front of him, one bewildered dreamer after the other, so that Jekkalon didn’t dare to take a shot. If he killed any of the real people who had been drawn by Brother Albrecht into this dream, he couldn’t be sure what would happen to them in real life.

Mago Verde rolled over the last tier of seats and disappeared. Jekkalon swung after him on his trapeze, spinning in a wide circle, but he couldn’t see him anywhere.

‘You nailed him yet?’ asked Dom Magator. He was panting hard.

‘Not yet. I lost him. He probably escaped out back, where we snuck in. Do you want us to go after him?’

But Dom Magator said, ‘Forget him for now. We got ourselves a whole lot of trouble on the stage.’

Jekkalon twisted around on his trapeze and saw that the clowns and the freaks and the circus hands were gathering protectively around the black contraption in which Brother Albrecht was sitting. But they were not just shielding their lord and master from Jebenzo’Yyx and Dom Magator. They were tearing open their shirts and their blouses and their silky clown costumes and baring their chests, as if they were inviting the Night Warriors to kill them.

Even Brother Albrecht’s entourage of naked tattooed men and women were clustered around him, too, their arms held wide open, making no attempt to protect themselves. Xyrena thought that it looked like a nightmare production of Hair.

‘You will leave my dream now!’ Brother Albrecht shouted at the Night Warriors, and he was incandescent with anger. ‘You will leave my dream now, all of you, whoever you are, and you will never return!’

Dom Magator climbed up the steps on to the stage. A white-faced clown came waddling toward him, as if to intercept him, but Dom Magator waved his Absence Gun at him, and said, ‘You want to cease to exist? You’re going the right way about it,’ and the clown gave him a horrified grin and waddled away. Dom Magator approached Brother Albrecht.

‘Sorry, pal,’ he told him. ‘Me and my friends can’t leave just yet. We came here to bring this whole disgusting charade to a well-deserved conclusion and we won’t be saying our goodbyes until we’ve done it. Now, if this collection of oddities and short asses know what’s good for them, they will elect to stand peacefully aside and let us get on with the business in hand.’

He lifted his Absence Gun, double-cocked it, and leveled it at the clowns and the freaks who had gathered themselves between him and Brother Albrecht. He saw a pretty little pale-faced girl standing directly in front of the Grand Freak. She had straggly brown hair and a long floral dress with a lacy collar. She gave him a hesitant smile, but when he looked down at her feet he realized why she probably wasn’t afraid to die. She had the black-and-tan paws of a German Shepherd, instead of feet.

He thought that he would probably be doing all of these people a big favor, canceling out their existence as if they had never been born. But he knew that it wasn’t his call.

Xyrena stepped up beside Dom Magator, and said to Brother Albrecht, ‘Don’t you have a conscience, Mister Grand Freak? You’re responsible for all of these people. You wouldn’t want to see them hurt.’

‘I have seen them hurt!’ they heard Brother Albrecht shout back to them, although he was barely visible behind the jostling crowd of freaks. ‘I hurt them myself, and often! And mutilated them! It’s all part of the show! All human life is pain and suffering and disappointment, no matter what lies God tells you! Pain and suffering and disappointment are the price we have to pay for being born!’

Dom Magator aimed his Absence Gun and tried to get a fix on Brother Albrecht’s head, but the freaks kept moving and nodding and leaning at different angles so that he found it impossible.

‘What you are trying to do is fruitless!’ Brother Albrecht added. ‘Now I want all of you to leave my dream and never come back! You will see it again, soon enough, when I bring it to the waking world! You will hear our music and see our black flags waving, and you will know that we have come to preach the truth about God, and the fallacy of human charity, and the pleasures of endless agony!’

‘Not a fricking chance,’ said Dom Magator. He nearly caught Brother Albrecht in his cross hairs, but the pale little girl moved her head into his line of fire, still smiling at him.

‘Man, I think you should go for a shot whatever,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘How many of these freaks are goin’ to survive, when this circus breaks up? Most of them, they’re only dream people anyhow. You can’t hurt nobody who’s only a dream!’

But at that moment Brother Albrecht shouted out, ‘Flammen! Flammen! Geben Sie mir Feuer!’

‘What?’ said Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘What in hell’s name he talkin’ about?’

They soon found out. The fire breather came stalking toward them, stiff-legged, his face still smudged with soot from his last display, like a marionette which has just been snatched out of a bonfire. His cheeks were swollen, his eyes were watering, and Dom Magator suddenly realized that he had a mouthful of lamp oil.

‘Hit the deck!’ he shouted, and at that instant, with a soft roar, a huge ball of orange fire enveloped the Night Warriors, so that their armor and their costumes were set ablaze. Xyrena was the most vulnerable: she wore only a crown instead of a helmet, but Dom Magator spun himself around as the flames rolled toward them and shielded her face with his upraised hand. All the same, Xyrena yelped as the fire singed her hair.

Zebenjo’Yyx blew out the flames on his forearms, and then twisted around and around, furiously trying to see where the fire breather had disappeared to. ‘You all right, Xyrena?’ he asked. ‘You not burned or nothin’? Everybody else OK?’

Jekkalon had swung back from the rear of the big top now, and he landed on the stage next to Jemexxa. Small flames were still flickering on her legs but he quickly smacked them out.

Dom Magator looked back toward Brother Albrecht’s contraption, to see if he could manage to get a clear shot this time. For a fleeting second he saw Brother Albrecht’s face, in profile, and Brother Albrecht looked angrier than ever. All this tussling was holding up his eighth sacrifice, after all — and not only that, Zebenjo’Yyx had killed his surgeon and one of his snakes. Dom Magator saw him sharply in his sights, and was just about to fire when an elderly woman with blood-red eyes deliberately blocked his line of sight. She had an expression on her face that explicitly challenged him, ‘Go ahead, if you dare — kill me! There’s nothing I’d like better!’

Zebenjo’Yyx came up to join him, still stiffly sticking out his right arm, ready to fire. ‘Where’s that fire-eatin’ mother? He almost choked me.’

Before Dom Magator could answer him, there was another soft roar, from the other direction this time, and for a second time the Night Warriors were enveloped in a huge ball of flame. Zebenjo’Yyx fired off five or six arrows, two of which were blazing, but the fire breather was far too quick for them, and pushed his way back into the crowd. Dom Magator checked his infrared sensors to see where he might have gone, but for the few vital seconds in which he might have located him the ambient heat was far too high, and all he could see was dancing black ghosts, like a Balinese shadow-theater.

‘Nobody hurt?’ he asked.

In the confusion the clowns and the freaks and the children had all started to drag Brother Albrecht’s contraption back toward the rear of the stage.

‘I still say take the goddamned shot!’ shouted Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘Back in Hamtramck, you wanted to waste somebody, you just cruised by and you sprayed the whole street, no matter who was standin’ there! Sometimes it’s the only way, man, believe me!’

But Dom Magator looked up toward the ceiling of the big top and said. ‘I got a better idea. An-Gryferai — you hear me?’

‘I hear you!’

‘Can you cut your way in through the roof?’

‘You bet! Be glad to! You don’t know how stormy it’s getting out here!’

‘OK, then — do it! Then fly straight down here to the stage and grab the guy in the orange flame outfit! He’s a fire breather, and he’s being a royal pain in the ass! Take him outside and drop him as far away as you like, and from as high as you like! Just get rid of him!’

‘There’s a pretty murky-looking pond in the woods,’ An-Gryferai told him. ‘I could drop him in there. That would put his fire out.’

Within just a few seconds, Dom Magator heard a rippling, rumbling sound overhead. An-Gryferai was slicing open the thick black canvas with one of her claws, and the wind was making it flap like a sail.

She made a cut over twenty feet long, and then another cut diagonally across it, in a star shape. The howling of the wind and the sudden cold spray of rain on their heads made everybody in the auditorium look up. Without any hesitation, An-Gryferai folded her wings and came plunging through the cut, head first like a skydiver.

Down below her, on the stage, she could see the flame breather in his orange leotard, circling around the back of Brother Albrecht’s black contraption. He was obviously trying to reposition himself so that he could spurt out another blast of fire at her fellow Night Warriors. He was filling his mouth with lamp oil from a large glass flask and he was almost the only performer on the stage who wasn’t looking up at her.

She came soaring down, and as she did so, with a brisk clicking noise, she extended her mechanical claws. She hit the flame breather in the back, her claws crunching deep into his deltoid muscles, and with three strong beats of her wings she lifted him clear off the stage and high up over the audience. He tried to shout out in shock, but his cheeks were bulging with lamp oil and he breathed most of it into his lungs.

She lifted him higher and higher, while he spluttered and choked and kicked his legs in a vain attempt to wrestle himself free — even though he would have dropped more than seventy feet if he had managed it. An-Gryferai beat her wings harder and harder, until she had almost reached the ceiling of the big top. But as she rose nearer and nearer to the star-shaped cuts she had made in the canvas, she realized that the fire breather was much heavier than she had estimated him to be, and that she would have to spread her wings much wider than the cuts she had made in order to be able to lift him out of the big top and into the open air.

Not only that, the storm outside was howling even more fiercely than before, and she didn’t think that she had the strength to battle the downdraft that was blowing in from outside — not when she was carrying a struggling man who must have weighed nearly two hundred pounds.

Maybe she should do what her grandmother Gryferai had done to the Black Shatterer, and simply let go of him. But there was no guarantee that the drop was enough to kill him, and put him out of action for ever.

‘Jekkalon!’ she gasped. ‘Jemexxa!’

‘What’s wrong, A-G?’ asked Jemexxa.

‘I can’t lift him out through the roof — he’s far too heavy and the wind’s too strong!’

‘What are you going to do?’

The fire breather was close to asphyxiating now, and thrashing his arms and legs even more violently. It was only because An-Gryferai’s claws were buried so deep in his muscles that she was able to hold on to him. The wind shrieked in through the cuts in the canvas and made her dip and spin in mid-air.

‘I’m going to drop him, but as soon as I let go of him, I want you to zap him!’

‘You got it! Jekkalon?’

Jekkalon said, ‘Got you!’ He pushed his way through to the rear of the stage and mounted the ladder that would take him back up to the trapeze platform. None of the clowns or freaks made any attempt to stop him. They were too busy dragging Brother Albrecht off the stage, and out of Dom Magator’s line of fire. They were even shouting out a ragged chorus of, ‘Heave!’ and, ‘Heave!’ Dom Magator kept trying to get a clear shot, but even though Brother Albrecht no longer had his fire breather to keep the Night Warriors at bay, he still couldn’t manage it, not without the risk of hitting an innocent performer.

‘I swear to God, man!’ Zebenjo’Yyx shouted at him. ‘You just need to total the whole frickin’ lot of them!’

Dom Magator was almost beginning to believe that he was right, and that firing indiscriminately into the crowd was going to be the only way to ensure that the Grand Freak was eliminated for ever. But at that moment, high above their heads, An-Gryferai released her grip on the fire breather, and Jekkalon launched himself off the trapeze platform and performed a triple backflip to intercept the fire breather as he came down.

It was all over in a fraction of a second, but it seemed as if it took for ever, like a slow-motion ballet. As soon as An-Gryferai released her mechanical claws from his shoulder muscles, the fire breather dropped toward the stage, his arms flailing as if he were trying to swim. Jekkalon was tumbling over and over in mid-air, and as he did so, he extended his right hand, rotating his wrist so that his reflective palm would line up with Jemexxa’s.

Jemexxa fired a dazzling lance of lightning out of her right hand. It hit Jekkalon’s hand with a deafening crack, and instantly ricocheted upward. The fire breather exploded still thirty feet up in the air, the lamp oil in his lungs detonating in a massive orange fireball bigger than those he had breathed out over the Night Warriors.

Fragments of flesh sprayed all across the audience, as well as bones that whirled over and over as if somebody were juggling with them, and surrealistic loops and skeins of skin. As Jekkalon reached the next trapeze, and deftly caught hold of it, the whole of the big top was already in an uproar, with men roaring in disbelief and women screaming in horror, and performers and circus hands running in all directions.

The clowns and the freaks who were dragging Brother Albrecht’s contraption off the stage were momentarily dazed with shock. They stood staring at the fine drizzle of blood which drifted across the auditorium, and the scorched tatters of orange clothing which were the very last to come see-sawing down to the ground.

For the first time, as the girl with the dog’s paws and the old woman with the blood-red eyes watched the smoke from the explosion curl away, Dom Magator had an unobstructed line of fire. He aimed his Absence Gun until he saw Brother Albrecht in his sights, tousle-haired, impossibly handsome but still frowning in fury, and he pulled the three-stage trigger. The ceramic barrels whirred around, and the air in front of the gun appeared to ripple, as if he were looking at Brother Albrecht through the hot rising fumes of a coke-fired brazier.