The Ninth Nightmare nw-5

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Got you now, tin man, don’t I? Thought you could stymie my sacrifice, did you? Well, now you can make amends! You’d like to make amends, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Sorry, pal,’ Walter retorted. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ His gun had been thrown on to the bed and he glanced at it quickly, trying to work out his chances of diving across the quilt to reach it. Probably nil, for a man of his bulk.

  ‘You and your friends caused the Grand Freak a whole lot of heartache last night,’ the clown told him. ‘Killing Doctor Friendly, and the Grand Freak’s favorite fire-breather, and his harlequin, too. He never cared too much for Brown Jenkin, but then who did? But you still made the Grand Freak very angry by blowing Brown Jenkin’s head off.’

  ‘I told you,’ said Walter. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re blabbering on about. However I do know that you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer.’ He took out his cellphone and flipped it open, but when he tried to call Charlie, all he could hear was crackling. He hit the phone several times against the heel of his hand, but it still didn’t work.

  ‘OK,’ he said, unclipping his handcuffs from his belt. ‘Turn around and put your hands behind your back. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.’

  ‘You think, tin man?’ grinned the clown. He gave Walter a low bow, and then he suddenly whirled around and he was brandishing a long serrated kitchen knife.

  ‘Put the blade down!’ Walter told him. ‘You even scratch me with that, and you’re going to do so much time you’ll need a Zimmer frame when they let you out.’

  ‘Scratching you? I wouldn’t dream of scratching you,’ said the clown. He prodded at Walter with the point of his knife. Walter lifted his left elbow to shield himself, and retreated across the room.

  ‘You don’t want to do anything stupid,’ he warned the clown.

  ‘Oh, yes I do! Clowns are stupid by nature! Stupidity is our bread and butter! Throwing buckets of water all over each other! Stupid! Tripping over each other’s feet! Stupid! Cramming ten people into one car, so that the wheels fall off! Stupid!’

  He kept on prodding at Walter, and Walter kept backing away. For God’s sake, where was Charlie? He must be missing him by now. But then he backed into the coffee table, and stumbled sideways, and lost his balance, and fell heavily on to the floor, hitting his head on the arm of one of the chairs.

  As he fell, the clown leapt forward, and seized his right leg. Walter kicked at him, but the clown dragged up the cuff of his pants, pulled down his sock, and sliced through the Achilles tendon at the back of his heel.

  Walter shouted out in pain, but the clown took hold of his left leg, twisted off his shoe, and did the same. Walter managed to heave himself up into a sitting position, but now he was completely unable to stand. Blood was running quickly out of the cuts on his heels and spattering the light blue rug.

  ‘You bastard!’ he gasped. ‘You bastard, what have you done to me?’

  The clown leaned over him. Close up, Walter could see that he wasn’t smiling at all.

  ‘This is only the beginning, tin man. There’s far worse to come — you’ll see! But after what you did last night, you and your friends, what do you expect? Not mercy, surely!’

  ‘I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,’ Walter told him. He was breathing heavily and his face was ashen from shock.

  ‘Of course you know what I’m talking about, Dom Magator the Night Warrior.’

  ‘Who the what?’

  ‘Don’t deny it. You might have been wearing that helmet last night, but I’d know that fat gut anywhere! And who else would be looking for me, by day as well as by night?

  He stood up straight. ‘Anyhow, you’ve solved a problem for me. I needed to bring nine sacrifices to Brother Albrecht, as you know — nine souls who would happily commit themselves forever to the most terrible show on earth. Maria Fortales was number eight, and I’m happy to say that you can have the honor of being number nine.

  ‘As soon as you take your place among your companion freaks, the papal sanction will be broken for ever. The circus will come rolling through to the world of reality! Drums beating! Trumpets blaring! Tarantara! Tarantara! And the world will collapse into wonderful, screaming chaos! Murder! Rape! Wanton vandalism! People set on fire for the fun of it! The human race is headed that way already, of course, but Brother Albrecht’s circus will make sure you arrive in hell so much sooner!’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Walter, weakly. ‘What circus are you talking about? You’re Mago Verde, aren’t you?’

  ‘Ah! You know who I am! A clever detective, as well as a formidable Night Warrior! Yes, tin man. I am Mago Verde, the Green Magician.’

  ‘You’re not Gordon Veitch, though, are you? You can’t be. Gordon Veitch must have died a long time ago.’

  ‘The real Gordon Veitch, yes. The human Gordon Veitch. The human Gordon Veitch was trapped when the cops set fire to Shantytown in nineteen thirty-eight. Smoke inhalation. But he was asleep when it happened, and dreaming, and his dreaming self survived, and his dreaming self is me. Get it?’

  ‘So Henry Marriott wasn’t shooting us a line after all.’

  ‘Henry Marriott? Jesus! Is that punk still above ground? He used to be my gofer! What an idiot. Thought he was a clown? He couldn’t make a hyena laugh.’

  ‘But Henry Marriott told us you were trying to get Gilbert Griffin’s dead wife back. He didn’t say anything about a circus. What circus?’

  ‘Oh… yes, that’s how it started, with Emily Griffin. I was visiting other people’s dreams, trying to find her. She was very elusive, to tell you the truth, young dead Emily Griffin. It was like trying to catch a shadow, or an echo, or the snatch of a song. I visited the dreams of most of her friends. I visited her parents’ dreams. Never quite caught her.’

  He turned back to Walter with a real grin underneath his painted grin. ‘One night back in nineteen thirty-six I stepped into a dream that one of Gilbert Griffin’s stockholders was having; and I was pleasantly surprised to find myself at Brother Albrecht’s carnival and freak show. That was when I first realized what the power of true evil is all about. And, believe me, tin man, the power of true evil is the most intoxicating elixir that man ever drank!’

  ‘I need you to call nine-one-one for me,’ said Walter. ‘This bleeding isn’t going to stop.’

  Mago Verde ignored him. ‘I was looking for Emily Griffin at the time, yes, with the aim of reuniting her with her grieving husband. He was paying me enough, I can assure you! Three thousand dollars in just six months! But when I met Brother Albrecht, everything changed. My whole life was turned upside down. I forgot about Emily Griffin. Who cared about one dim-witted young woman who crossed the street without looking left and right? Brother Albrecht and his circus, that was the future for me!’

  Walter rested his head against the seat of the armchair. ‘Please. Call for a bus, would you?’

  But Mago Verde came over and sat down cross-legged very close to him, so that Walter could smell vinegar and cigarettes and greasepaint. ‘Let me explain to you all about Brother Albrecht’s circus,’ he said. ‘You need to know this.’ And he told Walter how Brother Albrecht had been mutilated in 1147 by his lover’s vengeful husband; and how he had started his carnival; and how Pope Eugene III had sealed him in the world of dreams.

  ‘I made a deal with Brother Albrecht. I would dedicate the rest of my sacrifices to him, and not to Gilbert Griffin, so that he could bring his circus back to the real world, where it belonged. In return, he would make me the head of all his clowns.

  ‘He wanted freaks. He wanted women who had been sawn in half and men with six arms instead of legs. I’m sorry to say that quite a few of them went to meet their Maker while I was trying to oblige him. That’s when the cops began to hunt me down for serious, and that’s why I made myself anonymous and pretended to be a bum and hung out around Shantytown. M
istake, huh? I underestimated Eliot Ness, even worse than Al Capone did. But all’s well that ends well, and here we are, you and me.

  He stroked Walter’s cheek, almost lovingly. ‘I’m going to get you ready for your journey to the freak show, and then I’m going to sleep for a while, and dream what I did to you. When I do that, there won’t be any evidence that you were ever here. No blood on the carpet, nothing. Nobody will ever know what happened to you, not your family, not your fellow detectives. Not unless they visit Brother Albrecht’s circus when it arrives in the waking world. Ha! Ha! Then they’ll see you! Dom Magator the Castrated Night Warrior!’

  ‘What? You’re making a big mistake here, pal. My name isn’t Dom anything and I still don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!’

  ‘Well, you would say that,’ Mago Verde replied, pretending to be petulant.

  He stood up. Out of one of the pockets of his shabby black coat he pulled a grubby gray scarf and a length of tarry cord.

  ‘Very considerate of you, bringing your own handcuffs,’ he said. ‘Saves me tying your wrists together, and I was always crap at reef knots.’

  He pushed Walter over on to his stomach. Walter thrashed and struggled, but Mago Verde was so bony and strong that he couldn’t prevent him from wrenching his arms behind his back and hooking them together with his handcuffs.

  Once he had done that, he rolled Walter over on to his back.

  Walter yelled out, ‘Help! Help! Somebody help me! Police! Help! Somebody help me, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘Nobody’s going to hear you, tin man,’ leered Mago Verde. ‘Better off saving your breath!’

  He forced the scarf into Walter’s mouth and tied it tightly behind his head. It tasted foul, like dog grease. Walter bounced himself up and down and tried to scream, but he only managed to produce a muffled gargling sound.

  Mago Verde unfastened the buckle of Walter’s belt, and tugged down his zipper. Then — grunting with the effort — he dragged down his pants and his floral boxer shorts as far as his knees.

  Walter lifted his head up as high as he could, his eyes bulging, staring at Mago Verde in a helpless appeal not to mutilate him. ‘Mmmfff!’ he cried out. ‘Mmmmmmfff!’

  Mago Verde looked down at him and gave the slightest shake of his head. ‘Sorry, tin man. This has to be done. The Grand Freak wants a fat man who won’t ever feel like messing with his women!’

  He held up the serrated kitchen knife and ran his fingertip along the blade. Even though he did it only lightly, it still drew blood. He smiled and sucked his finger, and then he lifted up Walter’s shirt.

  ‘Mmmmmffffff!’ shouted Walter, in desperation.

  He felt almost nothing. A sharp coldness between his legs, and then a flood of warmth. In fact he couldn’t believe that Mago Verde had really done what he had threatened to do. He tried to raise his head again, but he didn’t need to, because Mago Verde was holding up something that looked like a bloody fledgling that had fallen from its nest.

  ‘There!’ he said. ‘Extraordinary, isn’t it, that the only difference between a man and a eunuch is one insignificant piece of gristle!’

  Walter’s head fell back on to the carpet. He felt darkness overwhelming him, as if he were sinking into a black swamp, and he did nothing to resist it.

  Mago Verde stood over him for a while, and then he went through to the bathroom and dropped his bloody prize into the soap dish. He stared at his painted face in the mirror for a while, expressionless. Sometimes he was so cruel that he amazed even himself. Could this really be the same Gordon Veitch who had loved puppies when he was a small boy, and whose mother had sung him to sleep with Golden Slumbers Kiss Your Eyes?

  Well, not really, he decided. The real Gordon Veitch had died a long time ago, without even waking up.

  He went back into the bedroom and lay on the bed, with all of his clothes and his shoes on. Walter was still lying unconscious on the floor, his shirt-tails stained dark with blood. Mago Verde closed his eyes and thought about nothing at all. He could fall asleep at will. Within moments he was breathing steadily, and dreaming.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Hot Pursuit

  It took Charlie over an hour and a half to check every room on the third, fourth and fifth floors. After he had visited the last of them, he called Walter to see if he had found anything suspicious. When he got through to Walter’s cellphone service, however, an automated voice insisted that there was no such number.

  He called Walter again and again, but each time he had the same response. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again. In the end he took the elevator up to the seventh floor and walked up and down every corridor. No Walter anywhere.

  He knocked on the door of one room after another, asking the guests if they had been visited by a well-built detective in a red-and-green plaid coat. All of them said yes, they had. ‘He told us he was looking for signs of disturbance. Whatever that meant.’

  If a room was unoccupied, he used his pass key to open it up. In two of them, he came across people asleep, but there was no sign of Walter in any of them. When he looked into Room 702, however, he found that the bedside lamps were both lit, and that the bedcover was rucked up, as if somebody had been lying on top of it.

  He circled slowly around the room. Apart from the bedside lamps and the rumpled bedcover, there was no other evidence that anybody had been here, yet Charlie felt distinctly unsettled. He tried calling Walter’s cellphone again, but there was still no response.

  He sat down on the end of the bed and called headquarters. ‘I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve lost Wisocky. Yes. I know. But we were searching the Griffin House Hotel and he’s vanished into thin air. His cellphone’s out of service and I have absolutely no idea where he is. I’m going to need backup to look for him.’

  He snapped his cellphone shut and sat still for a moment, trying to work out what was disturbing him. He sniffed, and then he realized what it was. The faintest smell of Walter’s aftershave, Tom F Extreme. He sniffed again, but the smell had gone. Maybe he had imagined it. But he still had the feeling that something highly stressful had happened in this room; something so stressful that it had left a resonance, like the lingering resonance of a violin concerto, even after the very last screeching note has been played.

  Kieran and Kiera came out of the elevator into the lobby. John gave them a wave with his rolled-up newspaper and called out, ‘Man, am I pleased to see you two! I thought I was going to die of malnutrition.’

  Kieran said, ‘We looked pretty much everywhere. Nothing. I don’t think Mago Verde’s going to show.’

  ‘Springer seems convinced that he will,’ said Kiera.

  John eased himself out of his armchair. ‘I’m never too sure about Springer. Sometimes he seems to know everything and at other times he seems to know squat.’

  ‘I can’t really work out who he is,’ said Kiera.

  John sniffed. ‘Who he is? I’d like to know what he is. Once or twice he’s showed up and he isn’t even a he, he’s a she. Anyhow — listen, you guys, I’m going to get myself some chow before the restaurant closes. Have a boring time, won’t you? I sure did. Do you want to read my Baton Rouge Advocate?’

  He turned around, and he was just about to make his way to the restaurant when the elevator doors opened and Kieran saw Mago Verde step out, wearing his shabby black suit and his greasy green grin.

  ‘Shit!’ he said. ‘He’s here! Mago Verde! Look!’

  Kiera said, ‘Oh my God, yes! But where’s he going?’

  John spun around and around. ‘Where? Where is he? I don’t see him!’

  ‘He’s crossing the lobby in front of the reception desk! He’s just passing the portrait of that sour-faced old man!’

  ‘I don’t see him! Why don’t I see him? I can usually see Dreads, but I don’t see him at all!’

  ‘But where’s he going?’ Kiera repeated. ‘I thought he was supposed to be coming to the hotel to dream
about his last victim. But he’s leaving. There — he’s walking out through the front door. There — he’s gone.’

  John thought for a moment, and then he said, ‘I think I know why he’s going. He’s going because he’s done the dirty deed already. He’s caught his victim, and mutilated her, and he’s dreamed her into the hotel walls. Now he’s gone off to find somebody who’s dreaming about Brother Albrecht’s circus — anybody. Then he can do the same as we do, and step inside their dream, and he’ll be back there — back at the freak show.’

  ‘But what about his victim?’ asked Kiera. ‘If she’s here, inside of the walls, how is going to take her to Brother Albrecht?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure,’ John told her. ‘But I guess that this hotel is like some kind of way through to the dream world — a gateway. A normal person wouldn’t be able to step into somebody else’s dream the way that we do, or the way that Dreads like Mago Verde can. Once Mago Verde is back in Brother Albrecht’s dream, he must have a way of arranging for his victims to follow him there.’

  ‘What the hell are we going to do now?’ said Kieran. ‘If he’s taken his ninth sacrifice already, and he’s on his way back to the circus—’

  ‘You heard what Springer said. We’ll have to go after him, and try to catch up with him before he manages to deliver his victim to Brother Albrecht. Otherwise, all hell is going to bust loose.’

  They took the elevator back up to Rhodajane’s room. Springer was still there, watching the fire escapes. He looked sicker and grayer and more hunched-up than ever.

  Springer said, ‘What’s happened? Have you seen Mago Verde?’

  Kieran nodded. ‘He came out of the elevator and he left the hotel like he was in a hurry. Our guess is that he’s found a ninth victim already.’

  ‘But you didn’t see him enter the hotel?’

  ‘I don’t know why,’ said John. ‘I can only think that his real self is dead. The twins here, they can see dead people, but I can’t.’