by Mike Mignola
“The establishment’s namesake,” Gwendolyn said, amused by the introduction. “Pleased to meet you.”
Bentley studied the man, searching for a sign of … what, exactly? He had no idea. He was looking for something, anything, that could prove William Tuttle’s innocence before it was too late and allow the ghost of Tianna Hoops to finally be at peace.
“I must apologize for this incident,” Nocturne said, his focus primarily upon Gwendolyn. “Something like that should never have occurred.” He turned an icy gaze on the two workers.
“We’re sorry, boss,” Mr. Dyre said quickly. “We thought we was doing what you wanted us to do.”
“Yeah.” Kretch backed up his friend. “We knew he shouldn’ta been here, and tried to kick him off the premises before he could start any trouble.”
“But trouble was started anyway,” Doctor Nocturne said, motioning toward them with a delicate hand. “And here we are.”
Bentley stepped forward then. “There was no harm done,” he said. “I was just admiring this lovely poster.” He approached the picture of Tianna. “Mr. Huggston was simply filling me on the tragedy of her death.”
He continued to stare at the poster.
“In fact,” he said after a moment’s pause, “there have been quite a few tragedies here over the last few years.” Bentley turned his full attention to the Doctor. “I wonder why that is?”
Nocturne seemed to be studying him now, the jewel in the center of his turban twinkling seductively in the light of the fading sun.
“First you must take into account where the words originated,” the carnival’s owner said. “He is a disgruntled former employee.”
“And a drunk!” Gwendolyn was happy to add, nodding vigorously.
“Yes, one, sadly, with a drinking problem,” Doctor Nocturne agreed. “But one must also remember that this place, this carnival, it is our home … a universe unto itself. A microcosm of the world. There are good things and bad things happening all the time … life, as well as death.”
“Yeah, I can see it,” Gwendolyn said, still nodding. “That’s pretty deep, Doc.”
“It is the truth … the Circus of Unearthly Wonderment is my home … it is our home, and everybody who lives here is family.”
He smiled at them, and Bentley felt that spider-legs chill run down the length of his back. Something was—off.
“And just so you do not speak ill of my family…”
Nocturne’s hands came up, and suddenly two tickets were being presented to them.
“What are these?” Gwendolyn asked, reaching for them.
“Passes,” the Doctor said. “Passes for you to enjoy the Chamber of the Unearthly, free of charge.”
“Thanks!” Bentley’s companion said, relieving the Doctor of the passes. “That’s mighty nice of you. Don’t you think it’s nice, Bentley?”
Bentley continued to study the Doctor, looking for a crack in his facade, something foul leaking out.
“Fabulous,” he said. “I think it’s fabulous.”
* * *
The Chamber of the Unearthly was a rather dark and rank-smelling structure of winding wooden corridors that emptied into rooms displaying said unearthly objects.
The first objects that Bentley and Gwendolyn found were jars, each containing an oddity, lining a wall.
“Is that a two-headed monkey or is it a baby?” Gwendolyn asked, leaning against the velvet rope that held the audience at a respectable distance from the displays.
“I don’t know,” Bentley answered, without much interest.
“Well, whichever it is, it’s ugly,” she commented. “And look at all this other stuff.”
Bentley glanced over briefly. There were strange animals floating in yellowish preserving fluids, as well as what appeared to be deformed and amputated body parts. Truly not things he cared to see, but Gwendolyn could not resist the idea of free passes, and one never knew what might be discovered while looking around.
Hadn’t William Tuttle said that he and Tianna had been inside the Chamber when—
“Sweet Jesus!” Gwendolyn exclaimed as they rounded a corner on a large and quite powerful-looking beast—a gorilla—wearing a fine, brown suit, sitting in an easy chair and reading a newspaper.
“I see that even gorillas can enjoy your father’s publication,” Bentley said jokingly. “I would have believed simians more intelligent.”
“You know where you can stick that business, buster,” she warned, keeping her distance from the beast as he looked up from his reading to fix her with his dark, beady eyes.
“What are you looking at?” she asked the gorilla.
They walked past that exhibit to the next, where a large, hairless man—he didn’t even have eyebrows—sat in what appeared to be an electric chair.
Bentley immediately thought of William Tuttle, sitting in the penitentiary awaiting his punishment, unless something was discovered that might prove his innocence.
“Oh, don’t you worry none about Mr. Bippo,” the hairless man said. “He’s perfectly harmless as long as he’s got somethin’ to read.”
“Nice to know,” Gwendolyn said, grabbing hold of Bentley’s arm. “And what’s your story?”
“Story?” the big man asked, shifting his bulk in the elaborate wooden chair. “Yeah, I guess we’ve all got one.”
The gorilla suddenly appeared in the man’s space, and Gwendolyn yelped.
“Hey there, Bippo,” the man said. “Want to light me up?”
The gorilla in the suit grunted, waddling his strange ape walk over to a large, humming machine on the stage that was covered in dials and switches.
“Want my story, pretty lady?” the hairless man said, gripping the armrests of the chair. “How about this … got hit by lightning when I was just a little tyke, and since then…”
The gorilla looked over at him before turning some of the knobs and throwing a switch.
Electrical current shot down the length of wires hooked up to the chair, coursing through the man who was seated there, making him shake and groan, his skin beginning to smoke. A strange, cooked-meat smell filled the air.
“The Human Dynamo can’t get enough!” the man yelled at the top of his lungs, his teeth actually beginning to smolder in his mouth.
“Let’s get the heck out of here,” Gwendolyn said, pushing Bentley along.
They moved down even darker, more rickety corridors, glimpsing more displays of questionable validity. They passed an exhibit of strangely malformed bones, which were being called the ossified remains of a gargoyle, as well as an object that might have been an enormous tooth—perhaps one from the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon like the sign professed, but Bentley highly doubted it.
At the end of the corridor was a curtain that Bentley guessed would take them out of the Chamber. He pushed the dusty velvet hanging aside and realized that he was wrong.
They were inside another room … another exhibit.
“What now?” Gwendolyn asked, and he could feel her grip tighten upon his arm.
The room was empty except for a large tank that took up nearly one whole side of the small room. A single lightbulb burned in the ceiling, casting strange, shimmering shadows off the greenish water inside the glass container.
“What’s in there?” Gwendolyn wanted to know, curiously approaching the front of the tank. A sign on the platform to the right of the exhibit said it contained the last known mermaid in existence.
“A mermaid,” Bentley told her, watching her as she stepped toward the tank. The water shimmered and roiled, and he searched for signs of movement—for signs of life.
“I don’t see anything inside there,” she said, growing closer.
Bentley continued to stare, and for the briefest of moments, he thought he saw something.
Two, dark, soulless eyes.
Staring.
“Let’s go, Gwendolyn,” Bentley ordered, suddenly having had more than enough of this Chamber of the Unearthly.
“But I haven’t seen the mermaid,” she whined.
He did not bother to argue with her, just shook his head in annoyance as he found the exit and stepped out into the early beginnings of twilight.
* * *
Their drive back to Hawthorne House was mostly silent. Bentley, mind tweaked by the musing of the drunkard, Charlie Huggston, was lost deep in his thoughts, attempting to resurrect every bit of memory.
If there had been other deaths at Doctor Nocturne’s carnival, he must know more of them, Bentley decided.
“We’re here,” Gwendolyn suddenly announced, and he saw that they had pulled up in front of Hawthorne House.
“Oh,” Bentley said, pleasantly surprised. “The journey home seemed much shorter.” He began to open his door.
“Yeah, probably had something to do with the total silence,” Gwendolyn said, obviously annoyed by the time he’d spent ruminating.
“Thank you again for finding the circus and attending with me,” he said, being polite.
“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling, sliding over on the seat closer to him. “Who knows, maybe this is the beginning of something. Y’know, me and you maybe going places and doing things?”
Bentley knew exactly what Gwendolyn was hinting at and decided to nip it in the bud immediately.
“I have very little time these days to socialize, Gwendolyn,” he said, pushing open the door of the roadster and quickly climbing from the car, afraid she might pursue him.
He leaned back into the car to finish his words to her. “But if time should ever open up, which I seriously doubt it will, I would consider calling on you … and we could maybe go to a place … for something … to do something.”
He hated to give her false hope, but at the moment decided that was for the best—a payment of sorts for the aid she’d provided him.
“Ya think?” she asked, her extra-wide smile beaming.
“I doubt it. But one never knows,” he said, slamming the passenger door closed.
Chapter Sixteen
BEFORE:
There was a little girl inside Professor Romulus’s box.
Abraham attempted to understand that as he stood there, staring at the petite figure stirring in the glass coffin trimmed with metal and bolts.
“Professor?” Abraham called out over the high-pitched whines and hums of the various machines.
The scientist ran about, checking instruments and gauges. “Everything is holding,” Romulus called out excitedly.
The child was angry; Abraham could see it in the way she lashed out at the glass, and by the way her pretty face—though it wasn’t so pretty now—screwed up, her mouth opened unusually wide in a silent scream.
A silent scream of rage.
“Professor?” Abraham called out again, wanting the man to see what he saw. How was this possible? Was this so-called entity … a child?
“Please,” a voice begged.
Abraham managed to tear his eyes from the contents of the box to see his own child, his son, thrashing wildly upon the examination table, his wife struggling to hold him down.
If anything, he seemed stronger as a result of what they had done.
What they had done.
He looked back to the cage, to the beautiful little girl. For a brief instant he saw something else inside the containment box, and felt his breath catch painfully in his throat.
Something that now hungrily watched his boy.
“Edwina, you must take the boy and go,” Abraham ordered.
She was trying to hold the flailing boy still, as Bentley called out to his mysterious friend.
Is that even possible? Abraham wondered. Could their son have somehow befriended the thing they’d captured? He wanted to call it a child, a lovely little girl, but for the memory of what he’d just glimpsed.
His wife was now paying close attention to the box.
“It’s just a child,” she whispered, forcing her weight down upon her writhing son. “How is it that we’ve captured a little girl?”
Abraham could hear the panic creeping into the normally strong woman’s voice, as she attempted to comprehend what was happening.
“It’s not a child,” he corrected her firmly. “And this is why you must take Bentley and…”
“It’s not a child,” Professor Romulus repeated, suddenly appearing in the midst of them, his face red and shiny with sweat. “It could never be anything so innocent.” He removed his goggles and stared, mesmerized, at the contents of his box.
“She’s my friend,” Bentley cried out, reaching for the captured little girl.
The entity within the box reacted like metal filings to a magnet, drawn to the side of the box where Bentley’s outstretched hands beckoned.
“I don’t understand,” Edwina cried out, while attempting to keep her son in place. “Why does it look that way?”
“Death is a clever, clever thing,” Professor Romulus said. His head suddenly tilted to the right as one of the machines began to make a different, barely audible sound. “It will assume the form of something nonthreatening, to make one’s loss of life … of one’s existence easier to accept.”
“I saw it for what it is … what it truly is,” Abraham interjected, trying to make his wife listen. “And that’s why you must take Bentley and leave the solarium before…”
Something happened inside the cage.
And it seemed to have somehow affected the machines.
Abraham stopped talking, looking around as the lights dimmed, and the machines began to sound—odd.
Strained.
Edwina screamed. They all looked to the source of her terror, and they saw that the little girl had started to change. They watched as she went from blond haired and fair skinned, dressed in the prettiest of red party dresses, to a thing composed of tattered shadow and fury.
“No!” Romulus yelled as he gazed upon the shifting thing, growing larger and more active within the case. The machines were becoming louder, and the smell of burnt ozone filled the air.
The scientist tore his gaze from the entrapped entity, running to his machines as he continued his rant.
“No! No! No! No!”
The thing trapped in the case had grown in size, its bulk pushing against the glass. Its prison started to shake, rocking from side to side.
“You’re hurting her!’ Bentley cried out, pushing at his mother and causing her to stumble to one side.
The boy threw himself from the table, landing in a crouch from which he sprang toward the trembling glass case and the writhing nightmare it contained.
Abraham tried to stop his son, stepping into his path, but the boy proved inexplicably quick, darting around his father’s outstretched hands to reach the case.
Bentley stood swaying before the container, staring with wild glassy eyes as the entity struggled within.
“I won’t let them hurt you anymore,” he said to the thing inside.
“Bentley!” Abraham yelled, striding toward where the boy stood. “You don’t know what you’re doing, boy!”
* * *
Bentley knew exactly what it was he was doing.
His friend was in trouble, and he had to free her. Pulling back, he made a fist and punched the glass with all his might.
He could hear his father coming up behind him, yelling that he did not understand, but he understood perfectly. This—what they had done to his friend—it should never have happened.
“Bentley!” He heard his father cry out and felt his strong hands grip his shoulders, trying to pull him away, but Bentley was not yet done, and bent himself forward, slipping from his father’s clutches.
He knew that his opportunity was waning, and that he would likely not get many more chances. Looking into the case, through the shifting darkness trapped inside, he saw his friend there and told her his intentions.
“I’m going to get you out,” he said, and again slammed his fist against the glass. �
��But you need to help me.”
Bentley drew back his fist and brought it toward the glass with all that he could muster. Inside the tank, a fist formed as well, coming to meet the impact of the boy’s strike from the other side.
The two fists hit on opposite sides of the glass with a sound like the crack of a whip.
“Bentley,” he heard his father say so very close to his ear. “What have you done?”
Tiny hairline fractures, like cartoon bolts of lightning, appeared where their fists had met, spreading out across the surface of the glass, moving faster and faster until there wasn’t a part of the glass on any of the four sides that wasn’t marred by a multitude of fine fissures.
Bentley turned to face his father and smiled dreamily.
“I’ve helped her,” he said as the glass let loose behind him, crashing to the solarium floor in a rain of pieces, releasing what had been captured inside.
“I’ve set my friend free.”
* * *
Professor Romulus knew that he should run—every instinct told him to flee, to get as far away as was possible.
But he knew he wouldn’t be able to escape it. That was the sad truth that he already knew, but he needed something like this—a failure of such magnitude—to drive the point home.
He tried to maintain the machines, but he knew it was only a matter of time before the bulbs blew, and the power that they were attempting to contain was released. The sound of shattering glass from behind made him cringe, as the first of his complex machines exploded in flames, a thick black smoke that smelled of burning rubber leaking out from within, making him choke.
And the air behind him—the entire sunroom—filled with the most awful sounds.
Angry sounds.
Romulus continued his futile task of trying to maintain the machines, but it was far too late for that. They could no longer do what they had been created for; the power of the universe was now released, unbridled, causing the machines to explode and burn in their ineffectiveness.
The horrible sounds built to a near deafening crescendo, then stopped abruptly as he watched one of the last of his special machines sputter and die.
