The Ninth Nightmare (26 page)

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.