Madhouse

by Rob Thurman

  Assuming, it wasn’t what I’d been taught. Niko has a quote…hell, Niko has a quote about anything and everything. This one had been about overconfidence or complacency, something to that effect. And then Niko had summed it up in terms I would actually remember. Assume, he had said, and you will get your ass kicked by me. It was slightly different than that old saying I’d learned in the sixth grade, but it got the point across. And I did remember Niko’s version most of the time, but once in a while I blew it. Once in a while I had to say hello to Mr. Fuckup.

  I thought I was alone. I was wrong.

  “Traveler.”

  It stopped me in my tracks, that one single voice. I thought it was his at first, Sawney’s, but the second time it came, I knew better. It was as gloating and predatory, but it wasn’t coated with the oil slick of insanity. Instead it was coated with the dryness of dust and the grit of desert sand. I could smell the heat of a merciless sun rising from limestone tombs. Could all but hear the chanting of priests and the movement of a stone slab that would seal you in for human lifetimes.

  My flashlight beam shot back and forth for several seconds before I spotted what I knew I would see. There was no cowboy hat this time, but there was the same resin-hardened flesh, blackened and withered lips, brown stubs of teeth…bandages, dry ones. He had been here awhile, then…waiting.

  Wahanket.

  The dusty glow flared in his eye hollows and the leathery jaw cracked in a crooked, jagged grin. “Surprised, traveler? You should not be. On occasion every scholar should engage in field research.”

  “What are you doing here? How the hell did you even know we’d be here?” I asked warily as I pulled my gun.

  “Knowing your movements, the most simple of things. I set my little pet to follow you.” Pet? Oh, Jesus, that damn squeaking zombie rat he’d been putting back together at the museum. It’d run off in the shadows and I never thought about it again. “It was my eyes. I saw you come to this place before…above. I knew you would return here, below. As for what I want?” The corpse grin twisted. “Observing. Recording. That has been my life in that wretched basement for years upon years. I want to participate.” Like a kid who wanted to be in the school play. Yeah, whatever.

  “I want it to be as it once was when I created kings. As I have created one now. Awakened one, rather.” It was said with gloating satisfaction. Dynasty after dynasty, Robin had said. Thousands and thousands of years, even a king maker and scholar could get bored—could want to get back in the game. Have a little fun. But it didn’t matter what he wanted, because he wasn’t going to get it.

  The gleam of metal in my hand wasn’t the only one. I saw another as the withered hand flashed upward. I’d forgotten the brittle basement-dwelling sage loved all things high-tech. And guns were definitely advanced technology, like the 9mm I had so moronically given him. I threw myself against the wall, dropping the flashlight and firing as I went. The plaster exploded beside me, but several feet down. Loving technology didn’t necessarily translate into being good at using it. Target practice had been limited in the museum.

  Although he wasn’t a crack shot, he was quick for a bag of bones and scraps of flesh. He disappeared in the dark. “What is Sawney giving you, you bastard?” I snapped. He’d woken him up just as he had the rat. Wahanket had somehow triggered Sawney’s reintegration. Given him whatever boost he needed to explode back to life. That traveling exhibition had shown up in the museum and the mummy had seen his chance to be what he’d once been, a king maker. But Sawney wasn’t his puppet. Sawney wasn’t ruled by anything except his own madness.

  “Sawney Beane offers me nothing in the way of material goods. He offers me nothing at all. But he creates a newly interesting world,” drifted the voice of the Sphinx. “I tire of this monotonous existence. Day after day, year after year. I tire of the bloodless quest for knowledge.” There was a sly satisfaction.

  “Even if that quest gave the Redcap this place. His true home. I tire of it all. I am ready for change and this one brings it in splendid, bold strokes.”

  The gun fired again. The bullet came closer. I’d tossed the flashlight when I’d first fired the Eagle, not that Wahanket seemed to need the help. Could mummies see in the dark? Probably. Could they repel bullets?

  We’d see about that.

  I methodically sprayed the entire clip back and forth across the tunnel, side to side and top to bottom. Reading about gun battles on the Internet was different than being in one, although he was probably hell on wheels when it came to a bow and arrow or sword. A gun, though…overconfidence…overconfidence was—damn, if only I could remember Niko’s quote.

  The smell of smoke filled my face, and my ears rang from the concussive blasts. I stayed close to the wall, felt around on the floor for the flashlight and switched it on, and held it at arm’s length from my body to decrease my chances of being hit. I flicked it back and forth. Nothing. Okay, technically not true. There was something, just not the whole package. I moved forward and bent down to pick up Wahanket’s gun, along with his hand still wrapped around it. As I made my way farther, I saw other bits and pieces of him. Not much, the occasional scrap of brown linen or blackened piece of dried flesh, but nothing substantial. It was a trail of bread crumbs, and they led back to the room, back to the pool.

  The king maker had left the building.

  Wahanket had changed his mind about being a participant after all. The role of researcher could be boring and monotonous, but the museum basement was safer than the real world. Wahanket had lost his edge a long time ago in those desert sands.

  I looked down at the black water. “Once more into the breach,” I murmured to myself. Or as Goodfellow would’ve said, once more into the breeches. I grimaced. It was as bad hearing it in my head as hearing it in person. Exhaling, I holstered the Eagle, pried Wahanket’s gun out of his severed hand, and shoved it in my waistband before diving into the water. I was lucky; Hank had left the hatch open for me in his hurry to escape. It made the body parts bumping against me as I swam not so bad. Yeah, right. It was goddamn horrible, and when I reached the other side, I scrambled out as fast as I possibly could.

  Wet footprints led away across the tile. Wahanket was running back to his basement. He’d think twice about leaving it again.

  “Where the hell have you been?”

  I looked up from the footprints to see Niko in the doorway. He was still wet from his attempt to pull me out of the water. “Correction,” he said with narrowed gaze, “what took you so damn long to get back?”

  “You worry too much, Grandma.” I grinned in relief at the sight of beetled brows and irritable gray eyes. Niko’s worry was always clearly expressed—as annoyance. “Did you see Wahanket?”

  He ignored the question as he looked me up and down, but Robin, behind him, answered. “We saw a few wet footprints and a piece of linen. Wahanket, eh? Crafty corpse. But I suppose that explains how Sawney found a place so perfectly suited for him.”

  “And for that, perhaps we will deal with him later.” Niko indicated where the material of my jeans was ripped over my thigh. “Revenant?”

  As much as I hated to admit it, I had to. “Yeah.”

  “One?”

  “Two,” I said defensively, “and I was trying not to drown at the time. It’s not my fault.”

  “It’s amazing. The person who shows up at our sparring session looks so very much like you too.” He said it as if he hadn’t felt my hand slide through his in the water as I disappeared to God knows where. As if he hadn’t run from one hall to another only to be blocked by concrete walls. We all had ways of dealing. When the situation had been reversed, I dealt the same, with sharp-edged sarcasm—once I’d killed everything that had gotten in my way.

  “I’d say bite me, but I’ve been bitten already. Besides, Goodfellow might jump over you and take advantage of it,” I grumbled, but curved my lips again. “And there was nothing over there but revenants and Wahanket. No Sawney.”

  “Then le
t’s go find him,” Nik said, waiting until I preceded him. Watching my back.

  “By the way, you have absolutely nothing I want to bite,” Robin snorted as he moved through the door. “Egomaniac.”

  Promise swallowed that one in silence, but it would make a reappearance later. I had faith. We exited the dead end of the room and started back down the tunnel. We walked a hundred feet before we saw it. At first, I saw only a glimpse. Pale, it flashed, disappeared, reappeared, and then vanished again.

  “Travelers.” There was the low hiss of several voices in unison. “Trespassers.”

  Great, a new refrain.

  “They’ve learned a new word,” I drawled. “How goddamn clever is that?”

  “Several rungs below a brainless parrot,” Nik responded with arctic bite, “and an utter waste of our time.” More damn revenants and no Sawney. We were all disappointed. I knew I was tired of hacking at their stubborn, disgusting flesh. There was no honor in battle, no honor in killing. There was only necessity. Niko had taught me that. But if there had been honor, revenants wouldn’t have entered that picture anywhere.

  “Trespassers.” What had been glimpses became a long look and then a close-up of one of the most freakish things I’d ever seen. “Trespasserstrespassers-trespassers.” They boiled into the light, arms flailing.

  They were wearing straitjackets, every last one of them—left over from the good old madhouse days. No longer white, the grubby cloth was rotting and ripped. The overly long sleeves weren’t fastened behind. Instead they flapped like the wings of maddened birds or wove through the air like a striking snake as the revenants ran. It was oddly hypnotic and not-so-oddly horrific. It wasn’t enough that revenants looked like zombies; now they looked like zombies of the insane. Sawney wasn’t happy just being mad himself or seeking it out; he had to dress up his goddamn pets that way as well. Talk about your hobbies we all could’ve done without.

  “I’ve lived a long, long time and I’ve seen many, many things,” Robin said, awed, at my back, “and I can confidently say that I have never seen anything quite like that.” I didn’t have time to respond. They were almost on us and I raised the Eagle and fired several shots.

  Explosive rounds, they might not have much effect on Sawney, but they worked like a fucking charm on his boys. We didn’t end up fighting them, but we did end up wearing them. I wiped a hand across my face, clearing it of pulverized flesh and thin, watery blood. I didn’t wait for Robin’s outraged comment about his wardrobe that had to be fast on its way. “Yeah, sorry about that,” I said automatically as I heard his disbelieving gurgle behind me.

  We moved on without further discussion. All in all, the best thing for me. We stepped over the bodies of straitjacketed revenants and dodged the two slow-moving ones that had craters in their heads. The spoonful of brains they had left kept them moving around, but not too aware.

  Which is exactly how I felt when the ground disappeared beneath me.

  21

  This just wasn’t my day.

  I used to hate the sensation of falling, same as anyone else. But since I’d made a few gates and traveled through them…a traveler just as Sawney said…that had changed. I still didn’t like it, don’t get me wrong, but I sort of recognized the feeling. Walking through those gates was like falling, only not just down. It felt like falling down, up, and sideways—all at once. Hard to imagine, but that’s how it felt.

  So when the floor caved in under me and I fell, for a second I was confused. Had I opened a gate and not even realized it? One moment of confusion, but it was long enough to hit and hit hard.

  I lost the flashlight. I didn’t lose my gun. If the fall had killed me, I still wouldn’t have lost the gun.

  I’d landed on my side. I blinked dazedly into the blackness and realized…yeah, that wasn’t an Auphe gate. You fell, asshole. Now get the hell up. It was easier said than done. I wheezed as I pulled air into shocked lungs and tried to move. That’s when I felt the fingers on my leg. They crept up under my jeans and touched my calf, circles of ice on my bare skin. They moved soothingly, stroking my leg as they sucked the warmth from it. Sawney. Only Sawney drained the heat from you like that. I growled, low and incoherent, in the back of my throat and tried harder to move my arm, more specifically my hand holding the gun. Oxygen-starved, I didn’t have much luck.

  “Cal?”

  It was from above. Niko. He’d managed to avoid falling with me. Good for him. I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little relieved.

  “Cal?” This time it came from beside me, along with the crunch of boots landing on the debris of shattered tile. There was light, a hand on my face, and then the silver sweep of a sword. The frozen touch on my calf disappeared just as the claws had begun to puncture the skin. That trademark crazy laugh went with them.

  I let my arm relax. A futile tremor was all I’d gotten out of it anyway. In the flashlight’s glow I could see the Eagle resting in the dirt, my white finger lax on the trigger. I also saw Niko’s boots move closer, and then, as I looked upward and he simultaneously knelt, I saw his face. He was pissed as hell. “Sawney.” He ran a quick hand over my arms, legs, and spine. “I am going to enjoy killing him far more than I should.”

  I’d gotten a few breaths in and coughed out, “You…and…me…both.”

  With his help I managed a sitting position. I looked up in time to see Promise and Robin jumping down. It was about ten feet down from the tunnel floor, and they managed it with ease. Certainly more ease than I had. Promise seemed to float down while Robin came down quickly and lightly, a hand bracing his ribs. I knew how he felt. I hung my head and concentrated on breathing. Drowning, falling—I was getting tired of not breathing. “More tunnels?” I asked, shifting my shoulders against a blooming all-over ache.

  “New tunnels with the tile replaced and fixed into place over them. Sawney must have had the revenants dig them,” Niko said. Hands slid under my arms and hefted me to my feet. “An effective trap.”

  I wobbled, then steadied. “Sneaky fuck.”

  “Pithy, but accurate.” Robin used his flashlight to scan the circumference of the pit. “Where did he…ah. There.” There was an exit, one small enough you’d have to crawl through it while dragging your dinner behind you. “Wonderful. Crawling through dirt. Color me filthy and excited.”

  “Filthy and excited, and exactly how would this be different from your norm?” Promise asked with the perfect appearance of genuine interest.

  “Well, color me annoyed as shit,” I gritted before Goodfellow had a chance to fire a shot back. I twisted the crick out of my neck and started toward the hole.

  Niko fisted a handful of my jacket, holding me back as he moved ahead. “My turn to go first,” he said mildly.

  He did it with more grace than I had. Soon we were all standing in a new tunnel. Nine by nine, it was carved out in the earth beneath the asylum tunnels. “Our little friends have been busy.” Robin looked around, bent down to touch the dirt door, and came up with a finger wet with red mud.

  “Very busy indeed,” Promise added. “That is fresh. Tonight’s kill.”

  “Good. That means we’re close.” Niko moved—fast, smooth, and still as coolly pissed as he’d been when he’d dropped down into the pit.

  I hadn’t thought of this whole mess from Nik’s point of view. Sawney had defeated him easily at every turn, had killed allies he’d enlisted, had attacked his brother with impunity and actually consumed part of him. Niko was not happy—in no way, shape, or form—and was determined to make this encounter with Sawney our last. My brother—he’d never learned to spread the blame around. It was our failure, not his, but he wouldn’t see it that way. Couldn’t see it that way. He’d lived the majority of his life under the weight of sole responsibility. There was no changing that habit now.

  One damn good brother, but as I’d thought many times before, too good for his own good.

  As we moved, we found more signs of Sawney’s victims. There was no more jewelry, but
there were clothes. Ragged and dirty. Knit caps and ancient coats. Shoes with peeling soles. So many clothes was bound to equal a whole damn lot of victims—the homeless we’d known he was concentrating on now.

  He’d figured out pretty quickly that these weren’t the days when travelers disappeared and it was considered a hazard of the day. He knew people would look for him if he stuck to your average New Yorker who had a job, wife, husband, children, parents…the ones that would be missed. But as we’d seen, the homeless were perfect and he wasn’t the first monster to think so. They even traveled, pushing carts from here to there. I doubted that was a prerequisite for Sawney anymore, the traveling. When you lived in a city this big, you didn’t need to wait for the wayward traveler moving across the countryside. And then there was his taste for the mentally ill, and that definitely tipped the scale. There was safe and there was madness-flavored fun…a win-win for our boy Sawney. We’d known that, but seeing it on such a large scale…

  Jesus.

  The clothes didn’t litter the dirt floor. They were hung whimsically from the ceiling, like the gauzy curtains you’d see in a harem in an old movie. Some shirts were pinned to the walls with one arm pointing the way ahead and the other hanging limp. Shoes were lined up at the base of the wall to march in the same direction. When the shirts and shoes ran out, then came the hands and feet. The palms of the hands were punctured by nails pinning them to the packed dirt wall, and the index fingers pointed the way. In the same frozen march as the shoes were the feet with dirt plumping up between gray toes. I looked away. Even if I’d been completely human, I wasn’t sure I could’ve stayed that way after what we’d seen in the past week.

  This whole god-awful show made me wonder if he’d anticipated we’d come all along or if it was just more of his sick sense of humor played out for his own entertainment. Right before we killed him maybe I would ask him. At least the blood was less easy to see, soaked up by the earth beneath our feet. It was still there, though; the revenant proved that.