by Kim Newman
‘Outta my way!’ said a big man, knocking me over.
‘Pardon me!’ said a big woman, stepping on me.
A tommy gun rat-tat-tatted into the ceiling. Chinese paper ornaments and showers of dust fell. Everyone freeze-framed. I took the welcome opportunity to stand up.
Two impassive cops in shiny black raincoats levelled guns like the Gestapo rehearsing for a massacre.
Barton MacLane and Ralph Bellamy came through the door. MacLane was smiling, and that was a collector’s item. I could already feel the rubber hosepipe. I was sure this was where I came in.
Someone must have done some extensive informing, because MacLane picked Susan and me out of the crowd without even the pretence of looking around for the usual suspects.
‘Hello, gumshoe. You been a busy boy tonight. Don’t think we didn’t see you around when Claude Rains made with the Lindbergh act, by the way. And that goes for your girlfriend and the punctured cab driver too. You both got a nice long rest coming.’
I put my hands in my coat pockets.
‘You know what?’ snarled MacLane, ‘I wish you would. I’d love to save the taxpayers some money and shoot it out with you.’
I eased out of the pockets and showed him my open, empty hands. The smile went away.
‘Okay, outside!’ he barked at us. ‘The rest of you people, get lost! And don’t do it again.’
We were impersonally helped out of the temple. Bellamy was aw-gosh polite to Susan, but I got some unnecessary shoving. A cop grabbed my wrist and handy-helped me into the street. That wasn’t too pleasant, since he had apparently come direct from a City-wide garlic and limburger cheese sandwich-consumption championship.
What do you know, it had stopped raining outside. The City was still wearing the wet look. Drains were overflowing, and globs of water clung to everything, but it had stopped raining. The air tasted cleaner. Next thing you knew, it would be daybreak. I could picture that: a Technicolor sunrise, and three singing sailors swarming through the docks.
Either we were altering the Dream for ever, or Daine was signalling to us that it was time to get out of his head.
MacLane had us stand against a wall, facing the bricks. Bellamy reported to police headquarters over his two-way wrist radio, wrapping up the case.
I looked at Susan, and she looked at me. We both smiled, and I knew for a fact that she wasn’t Daine.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ shouted Bellamy. ‘Stop him, someone!’
Shots hit the wall above me. I had chips of brick on the brim of my fedora. Susan cried out as her face was stung.
I turned around. Bellamy was struggling with MacLane. Between them was a tommy gun, discharging itself into the air. An innocent bystander kneeled over. Poor sap. Many of the cultists kissed sidewalk. I hugged Susan to me.
‘You can’t do it!’ Bellamy was saying. ‘You can’t kill people just because you’re a cop!’
Personally, I wished Bellamy would quit trying to be reasonable and concentrate on the wrestling.
I had a strong feeling that Barton MacLane was no cop. Barton MacLane was Truro Daine.
I pulled Susan, and made a break for it. One of the squad cars was standing empty. The uniformed cops and a couple of detectives were watching their superiors slug it out. I hoped they’d be distracted enough to ignore our getaway attempt.
MacLane had the edge as far as weight, toughness and meanness went. But that put him at a disadvantage according to the flatty rules Daine had strung himself with. MacLane fought dirty. Bellamy did the Marquis of Queensberry proud, and landed a series of good, honest punches above the belt. He had even white teeth, he was hero material. Even with a badge, MacLane was a blundering thug.
Bellamy landed a solid right on MacLane’s jaw. The captain staggered backwards, tripped over the dropped gun and fell onto the sidewalk. The gun skittered across wet asphalt.
I folded myself into a police car, dragging Susan after me. I felt under the dash for the dangling keys I had Dreamed there.
The engine caught first time. The offside rear door opened, and Ralph Bellamy squeezed in. There were shots, and the back window powdered. I gunned the car.
We squeal-turned around the crowd, and zigzagged away from the Temple of Turhan Bey. If I ran anybody over, I didn’t pay any attention. Bellamy exchanged wild shots with MacLane as we left the captain in the middle of the road. I glanced back and saw MacLane clambering onto the running board of an already growling squad car, holding the tommy gun one-armed. He fired an experimental burst into the air, and waved his armoured troops forwards like George S. Patton himself.
It was car-chase time.
I drove through a street market, up and down hills, in and out of alleyways, through tarpaper shacks. The car leaped swimming pools and ruptured bridges. There was a whole platoon of black-and-whites on our tail at the outset, but we lost them one by one. They plunged into lakes, crashed into busses, flipped over like turtles or got jammed between lampposts. I drove like a champion, and Susan kept Dreaming obstacles into our pursuers’ way. An earthquake crack appeared jaggedly like lightning across the road behind us, and two more cop cars plunged into a bottomless pit.
MacLane’s car leaped the crack and kept after us. He was the most difficult to dodge, of course. He kept firing his inexhaustible gun at us, shattering the entire rear of the car. Susan threw up enough concealed armour plate to keep us safe, but ricochets still twanged through the night. A flaming arrow came from somewhere and lodged in our roof. Susan punched through the metal and pinched the fire out with a suddenly spade-sized hand.
A white-haired little old lady pushing a pramful of quintuplets started crossing the road up ahead of us. They were taking their time, as she coochy-cooed down at the gurgling little cutenesses.
I crashed through them. What the hell, they weren’t real, right? Granny exploded like a sack of offal. Babies flew everywhere and burst like watermelons on the road. Daine couldn’t make me feel guilty. Susan got it, but Bellamy was appalled and had to be mollified.
‘Undercover killer midgets,’ I said, ‘the City is full of ’em.’
MacLane’s driver swerved out of his way to get the last crawling quintuplet. It popped under a wheel. Obviously, I had started the next craze.
‘Susan,’ I said. ‘Do something.’
‘Okay. Take this turn here.’
I leaned over on the wheel. We swung into a drive, knocking a mesh gate askew and waking up a snoring security guard. An alarm sounded, and searchlights raked a factory complex.
‘What’s this place?’
‘The Acme Explosives and Infernal Devices Company,’ said Susan. ‘Just drive around the plant.’
‘This never used to be here,’ said Bellamy. ‘This was a vacant lot when I drove past it on my way to headquarters earlier this evening.’
‘I’ll explain later,’ said Susan.
We did a figure eight around two bulbous tanks marked HIGHLY EXPLOSIVE – DO NOT SMOKE OR DISCHARGE FIREARMS. MacLane was still hard on our rear bumper. He shouted insults at us. I kept on our course, letting the leathered wheel slide through my hands. A stray chip turned the windshield white, and Susan pushed it out in a lump. Rainwater swept into the car and got into my eyes.
‘Now!’ shouted Susan.
I pulled out of the eight, stamped the accelerator down through the floor and drove for a gate. We smashed through it and came to a halt, a tangle of wire wrapped around the hood. I turned round in my seat to get a good view. Bellamy was shaking his head in a daze.
MacLane’s driver wasn’t up to it. Their car skidded in gravel, flipped up and over like a pancake and lodged itself in a sundered tank. Viscous liquid oozed out like an alien blob and slowly enveloped the dented car. MacLane was still on the running board, his arm wedged into the squashed wreck of the car. Slime crept down his sleeve. With a cry of rage, he puffed on his much-chewed stogie and fired at us.
Ka-BOOM!
It was an explosion of atomic proportions. A
mushroom of intense white light rose, taking MacLane with it. The yard was bright as day for a few seconds, then night crept back in around the flames. Trails of burning liquid spiderwebbed out across the site, licking at the other tanks. People ran for cover.
I Dreamed the mess under our wheels into tissue paper and drove off before the rest of the place could go up.
‘Look,’ said Susan, pointing. We were driving past the Inferno Factory. There was a figure walking in the flames. ‘That’s not possible.’
‘Anything’s possible for the Night Mayor.’
MacLane-Daine came out of the jungle of fire, a human torch, arms raised like Frankenstein’s monster. He kept coming after us. I pushed the pedal again, and we easily outdistanced the walking fireball. In the darkness behind us, MacLane coming. He threw a handful of fire at us, but it missed, landing in a sizzle in the branches of a wet tree. He screamed with an inhuman ferocity.
Bellamy was breathing heavily after the exertion. He wasn’t really equipped mentally to handle this. His screen character was one of dunderheaded amiability, and Daine hadn’t given him enough self-awareness to adapt with the Dream.
‘Why would Captain MacLane want to kill you, Richie?’ he asked, straightforward eyes wide open.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I knew he was on the take, but I never had enough evidence to show Hamilton. There were just lots of things wrong. Funny little things like the way he could find a mental case to confess to every gangland killing, and the number of prisoners who had sudden heart attacks while he was questioning them. Stuff like that.’
‘No doubt about it, the guy was a fink and a hoodlum,’ I said, ‘and worse.’
‘He used to be a good cop.’ Thinking it through was causing plodding, methodical Ralph Bellamy some considerable pain. ‘I guess the temptation was too much, huh? Crime, I hate it!’
‘Where do we go from here?’ asked Susan, shivering.
‘I have a place in the hills. Out of town,’ said Bellamy. ‘We can shack up there until I get word to Hamilton. MacLane doesn’t know about it. We’ll be safe.’
‘Fine. Direct me.’
We faded towards the outskirts of the city. The police car held the wet roads, even the treacherous lanes that snaked up into the hills. It seemed odd not to be surrounded by concrete, but the jungle-dense trees and vertiginous inclines were hardly less oppressive.
Up in the sky, there was the faintest glimmering of a moon.
Bellamy had a pioneer cabin overlooking the City. A white hurricane lamp burned in the window. It was homey. There were no other residences around. When we got out of the car, we found the only sound came from the chirping crickets.
‘My wife will fix you coffee.’
‘I could do with some shoes,’ said Susan. ‘Kruger took mine.’
Bellamy laughed good-naturedly, and paused to light his pipe. I looked down at Susan’s dirty white feet on the dirt road. I had forgotten to Dream her footwear.
‘We’ll try to dig you up something.’
The cabin door opened, and a woman stepped out. For a moment the porch shadowed her, then the moon came out form behind the dissipating clouds. Light fell on her face. She was ravishing. Susan Hayward? Eleanor Parker? No, Rhonda Fleming.
Captain Barton MacLane just didn’t like private eyes.
In murder mysteries, it is always the least suspicious person who turns out to be the killer. Someone friendly, handsome, reliable, considerate, decent and helpful. Someone like Ralph Bellamy.
‘Daine!’
Like all the best exposed culprits, he didn’t try to bluff it out. He took his pipe out of Bellamy’s mouth. The face was dark for a second, then he puffed again, and the glow showed his own features. He rippled and reconstituted. Bellamy’s clothes hung strangely tight on him. He changed to tweeds and an alpine hat.
‘It’s been a good game, Mr Tunney, but it’s over now. I’m going to have to kill you both.’ He had a hunting rifle. ‘And, consequent to your failure, I doubt if I’ll have any more intruders in my cloud.’
‘You won’t get away with it,’ I said, demonstrating my occasional weakness with dialogue.
‘When you wake up, give my kindest regards to governor Trefusis, and tell the world I shall be making my presence felt very soon.’
‘They’ll pull the plug, no matter what the law says.’
‘Possibly, Ms Bishopric, possibly. However, I have colonised the life-support fail-safe system. That’s what the game’s been about, you know, distracting the governor until I was beyond him. Those biomek filaments have been growing into the tank, you know. I shall now wage my own little war in the circuits and spaces of Yggdrasil, and there’s no way you can reach me. Happy wipe-out. I’ll look you up when the whole world is my Dream.’
Daine was observing the tradition that the bad guy should always explain his crimes in great detail before trying to kill the hero. Rhonda Fleming leaned on him, pouting, stroking the goatee he was affecting.
‘You must know Cornell Woolrich, Mr Tunney. Do you remember…’
‘First you Dream…’
‘…then you die. Quite.’
The gun came up.
29
He had been keeping quiet. Tunney and Daine squared up to each other like the black-hat and white-hat cowboys. Only the white hat didn’t have a chance to pull his six-shooter. There was a symmetry she found appealing to the scene. Two men, with women at their sides. But Daine’s bove bimbo was a fantasy, and Susan was real. Daine didn’t count women as real anyway. That’s what left him open to what she was going to do to him.
She reached for him, slid easily into his head, and made an explosion. She fed him Cleo Laine, backed by The Ramones.
Blow, blow thou Winter wynd, thou wert not so unkind as man’s ingratitude! Thy tooth is not so keen, because thou art not seen, although thy breath be rude!
She took all the bones out of his spinal column and compressed them to nothing, she turned his eyeballs inward, she jellied his legs, she unplugged and rewired his guts. His fingers became fat maggots and detached themselves from his doughnut hands. They burrowed into the wet earth. Standing over the squalling creature she had fashioned, she conjured a three-foot-long sharpened stake from the air. She plunged it through the Daine Thing, ignoring the clear fluid that squished out of the puncture, and drove it deep. It sank through the monstrosity and into the earth. With a stone, she pounded the stake until Daine was pinned in his place, a burst jellyfish god.
The sky ripped and hung in tatters, revealing plasterboard and lath behind. Arc lights fell into cardboard forests. She left Daine to writhe, and wrenched his Dream apart. The City bled and burned. Lights went out, and tinsel was whipped out to sea. The earth split open, and buildings tumbled into the fissures.
Susan put her mind to it, and tore up the City. Chunks of stone flew into the air and became ice. Roads bubbled and slid like tar glaciers. People became mannequins and were consumed by the chaos…
Then the burning man came from out of nowhere and took her down.
30
We were in the dark again. The mess on the ground in front of me came together as a man, and Daine – still dazed from his transformations, still pinned like a vampire butterfly – stared up in hatred. He was shrieking. I kicked his gun away, and dived at MacLane.
The cop was still burning. I shut out the pain and pushed him away from Susan. We struggled. The fire man and I rolled in the wet undergrowth. Nothing seemed to extinguish the flames. My face scorched, and I couldn’t see properly. Susan reeled away from us, flames springing up where she had been touched. The cop and I rolled over and over, crushing each other, towards the precipice.
The City was below us, dark shapes and scattering of lights. Beyond the City, over the bay, there was a trace of dawn.
I slugged MacLane in the face. He tried to strangle me. That marked him as an amateur. You should never try to throttle someone who has his hands free. Nobody’s little fingers are stro
nger than a man’s hands. I prised his pinkies out of my throat, and bent them back. They snapped like burned-through twigs and I threw them away.
The jolt got through to him, and he sprang off me. We were near the edge. I kicked out, and his leg broke in two places. The flames were dying down. I could see his blackened, swollen face.
He stood for a moment, and without a sound fell off the hillside. I peered over the edge. His flames whipped in the wind like a tattered kite. The fireball became tiny and winked out. There was quiet.
Daine was still struggling against the stake. Susan was on the ground, patting at the patches of fire on her suit. Rhonda was superfluous to this scene, and had disappeared back to her dressing room.
With a yell, Daine got both hands on the stake and wrenched. It came free and he threw it at me. I dodged it as Daine stood up. He swelled, altering his insides. He was going to make himself invulnerable, and then turn Susan and me into ragged carpets.
I had my gun out. I got Daine in the chest, over the heart. He stiffened, then the blood and burn on his jacket faded away. I shot him again, and again. I emptied the clip. It was like throwing stones into a lake. There were ripples, but they went away. I Dreamed more bullets into the gun, and shot him full of more lead. He staggered, but kept on moving. I Dreamed my gun bigger, and sprayed him with tracers. There were little explosions in the air around him. His jacket flew open, and gouts of flesh fell away from his ribs. The wound patched over with timber-textured vinyl. I threw my gun away, and pulled a bazooka out of the air. I took him down with a shell, and he flew to pieces. The pieces kept crawling together.
I walked to the crater I had made, and stamped on the wriggling bits of Daine. I couldn’t stop him reforming, but when he came together all the polish was gone off. His face was just pasted over a badly formed skull. He turned his hand into a buzzsaw, and buried it in my leg, but I phantomed myself before he could breach my similie. I drifted back, insubstantial, but concentrated on keeping a form. I solidified.
Susan was beside me now, kneeling on Daine’s chest, his lapels in her fists, locking his mind with hers, forcing herself into his head. He was sobbing and swearing as she raped his skull.
