It could all have been a dream. Or most of it, anyway.
Of course, Hellmouth Amusement Park wasn’t a dream. It had been around since the early ’20s, about as long as Clement himself, sitting there in its landscape of black cinders like a hell-monster head from a medieval illustration.
And Walpurgisnacht wasn’t a dream. The last night of April happened to fall on a Friday the year he was a high-school sophomore, and that weekend he happened to be visiting Ted and Omar and Uncle Buck, who happened to live twenty minutes from Hellmouth Park.
Uncle Buck was an old bachelor who had adopted his ex-girlfriend’s son Ted legally and somehow taken Omar in off the streets more or less unofficially. It was a good ol’ bachelor household where Uncle Buck let the boys do pretty much what they wanted, especially now they were in high school. But the rest of the family trusted Uncle Buck and his boys because, after all, they were the ones who had pulled Clement out of the lake and rushed him to the hospital that summer they were vacationing up north with a bunch of other uncles and aunts and cousins. The summer Clement had just turned eleven. The time he’d got bitten by some stranger in the hospital and woke up a vampire.
It also wasn’t a dream that on the last night of April the year Clement was about to turn sixteen, Uncle Buck cut out when the old round novelty clock shaped like a Coke sign said 7:30, to go out on an adult date with Mary Lou Grubinger and do what he still pretended to pretend Ted didn’t know anything about yet.
Ted was just over fourteen. Omar was almost seventeen. It didn’t seem like the age difference it had back when all three of them were ten years younger, even five years younger. But it was still enough for the two younger boys to look up a little to Omar and the two older ones to look out a little for Ted. Both ways, Clement was in the middle—but both of the others looked up to and out for him a little, too, because of his being a vampire and having had to figure out the real ropes and rules of that condition for himself, when it turned out that old books and screenshows made mistakes all over the place. All in all, in most ways, his life was still pretty normal.
For instance, it wasn’t true that vampires couldn’t eat or drink anything else except blood. Clement could eat and drink anything he wanted, including garlicky stuff. He just never got any food value except bulk out of anything but raw blood.
When ordinary food didn’t give him any vitamins or minerals or calories, just bulk, he thought it should’ve been logical for alcohol to give him just lubrication, without intoxication. Then he could’ve drunk everybody except another vampire under the table. It didn’t seem fair that alcohol went to his head at least as much as to anybody else’s. He guessed maybe the real reason the Old Count never drank ... wine was because he couldn’t afford not to keep a clear head.
Fortunately, Clement thought, he didn’t need to worry about keeping a clear head tonight. It was the end of a hard school week and he was relaxing with a couple of old family buddies after a good supper of hamburgers, fries, shakes, and, for Clement, a glass and a half of cow’s blood with almost a full quarter-teaspoon of human mixed in. Omar, Ted, and Uncle Buck—before he left—had all contributed.
On a full stomach, what could be wrong with the boys sharing a sixer of beer between the three of them? And then dipping into Uncle Buck’s Old Crow and finding out what it tasted like with cola and lemonade?
He didn’t know and after a couple of glasses he wouldn’t have cared that he was learning the hard way what people meant when they called something “a sophomorish stunt.” It even hit him like a pretty good idea when Ted said, “Hey, let’s go to the Park!”
“Oh, yeah,” said Omar. “Woodville Park you mean, I hope.”
“You know where I mean. Woodville Park, huh!” Ted made a kind of sloppy snort.
Omar poured himself a little more Old Crow and sat there sipping it straight, wearing a grownup and slightly faraway look.
“Aw, come on, Omie,” Ted insisted. “Clemmie’s never seen it.”
Clement didn’t like being called “Clemmie,” but this time he let it just slide by, feeling dreamy and mellow, and said, “Only from the outside.”
“’S right,” Omar agreed, nodding like Socrates. Then, after another moment of deep thought, “’S the one place Poppa Buck don’t want us goin’ without him.” Meaning without Uncle Buck.
“Who’s gonna tell ’im?” Ted demanded.
Omar finished his whiskey, poured a little more, and remarked, “Yeah, but what’s the use? All the good parts’re off limits to you younkers.”
“Who’s gonna know?” Ted insisted. “I c’n pass for just ’bout ’s old’s you are. An’ Clemmie’s good ’s sixteen.”
“Two weeks,” Clement offered. “Not quite two weeks. Besides, ’s okay.”
“Besides,” Ted put in, “he’s a drac.”
That wasn’t what Clement had meant. “Besides, I’d jus’ as soon see the safe parts.”
“Yeah,” Omar mused with another sip, “he’s a dracula. Could make a difference. Could make a big difference. But what kinda difference? I mean, they say the Park can be more dangerous for crooks an’ assies—”
“Hey!” said Clement, just sober enough to guess he was getting a mean dig. “I’m no assy crook. I’m so darn squeaky good, all th’ teachers jus’ love me. Point me out as a shinin’ good essample for other people.” He stood up, holding onto the table to help keep himself steady. “Come on! Le’s go. Only, hey, lend me some other kinda clothes, huh? An’ maybe they won’t even notice th’ dang fangs.” He knew there wasn’t anything strange about his eyes, anyway. He hadn’t been able to see himself in a mirror since it happened, but everybody told him his eyes still looked the same old greeny bluey brown as always.
They were sober enough to get him into a pair of Omar’s old jeans and one of Ted’s baggiest sweatshirts, and that proved to them they were sober enough for the trip to the Park, Omar driving the Rattletrap, that had been waiting for a new set of shocks since before Thanksgiving.
Omar made it in just under seventeen minutes, but by that time Clement felt bounced and jolted sober enough to hatch a few misgivings at sight of the huge monster head…all those stories tall…eyes and nose blazing red light, mouth wide open like it was howling, tongue lolling out for a walkway.
On the other hand, for a floater who’d faithfully spent most of the last third of his life, except when he was swimming, in the traditional vampire uniform—black suit, white shirt and vest, long cape—jeans and sweatshirt were like a costume, made him feel easy and reckless and ready for anything.
Okay, almost anything. He and Ted and Omar swaggered up the rubbery tongue together, arm in arm like the Three Musketeers, and into the leaping flames that were film projections on screens that made up a shifting maze. But when they came to the honor-system admission collector, that was shaped like a cerberus, and Clement read the sign that told kids “7-16 take your adults to Ears,” he felt it almost like some kind of physical barrier.
“Come on!” Ted poked him. “You’re good as sixteen.”
“Not quite.”
“Heck, what’s a lousy ten days? Look, I’m fourteen, and I’m going in.”
“Well,” Omar started to say, “maybe we’d better think—”
Ted reached over, dropped his money into the dog’s open mouth, and grinned at Omar.
The oldest boy shrugged, grinned back, and dropped his money in after Ted’s. “Okay, Teddybear, just to keep you out of trouble. How ’bout you, Clem?”
Clement got out his admission coin and held it to the dog’s head. Maybe it was just his imagination, but the statue seemed to growl and even snap at him. He jerked his hand back and stood still a minute, breathing hard and shaking a little.
“Well, com ’n,” said Ted. “Whatsa matter?”
“Hey, look, you guys’re forgetting something. Vampires can’t go in where they haven’t bee
n invited, and you aren’t invited in here till you’re sixteen. Officially sixteen, not just ten days shy.”
Ted took a lurching step that put him on the other side of the dog. “Okay, come on in, I’m invitin’ you!”
The vampire held his money out at the dog’s mouth again, heard another growl, and shook his head. “Sorry. Good try, but th’ people own this place say nobody under sixteen, and I guess they overrule you.”
“Glad I ain’t a vampire,” Ted remarked.
Omar looked from one of them to the other a couple of times and finally said, “Well, Clement, I guess the Teddybear here’s set on going in with or without you, so I still think I’ve gotta watch out for ’m. Why don’ you go around to one of the ears an’ ride up to the kiddieland? Bet they’ll let you in there okay, an’ it’s good an’ safe. Yeah, you’ll be plenty safe up there till we get out, and there’s still some pretty good rides an’ stuff.”
Feeling more relieved than he’d have liked to let on, Clement waved, said, “Okay, guys, do-sveedonya,” and went back outside alone. He hopped down off the tongue and headed for the right ear ... or was it the left? He still felt just a little bit burr-headed. Not that it mattered. Both of the Hellmouth monster’s ears were outside elevators riding up and down to the kiddieland in the brainpan.
While waiting for the elevator, he leaned on the building. He thought he felt a little tingling through his borrowed jeans and sweatshirt. It was just on the edge of being unpleasant, but before he could make up his mind whether or not to stand away from the wall, the elevator reached the ground and stopped. A man got out leading two preteeners and looking tired, but not scared. Clement got in and rode up as high as it went without
its making any stops at floors in between. He checked his old-fashioned watch. The dial looked blurry, but he thought it must be a little too late by now for family groups to be arriving. The elevator would probably make more stops on the way down for people heading home.
The elevator’s building-side door opened and he stepped out into the kiddieland. An employee in a devil costume was sitting behind some kind of torture rack that blocked the way just about two paces beyond the door. After a couple of seconds, Clement saw that the rack was really a ticket counter with a turnstyle. No honor system up here.
The floater in the devil suit had been looking bored, but he seemed to perk up when he saw Clement studying the entrance machinery. “Hey, Dracula!” he said. “You look old enough to get in downstairs.”
The ticket-seller’s costume was a tight red body suit with a close-fitting hood that had two little horns on top—just about as traditional a get-up as Clement’s vampire uniform—and for a moment the boy forgot he was in plainclothes tonight. “Yeah, well, maybe I am old enough to get in through the mouth,” he answered, swaggering a little. “Maybe I just figured the pickings would be fatter up here, know what I mean?”
The ticket-seller winked. He had an ugly face, but ugly in a cheerful kind of way. “Yeah, Drac, I read ya loud and clear. Go right on in.” He yanked a lever and then gave the turnstyle a spin to show how loosely it worked.
“How much?”
“For draculas, nothing. It’s on the house. Say, wouldn’t be checking the joint out as a possible place of employment, would ya?”
“Why? Got any openings?”
“For a dracula, always.”
“Well, thanks, I’ll think about it.” Still swaggering—or maybe it was staggering?—Clement half lurched through the turnstyle and remembered what he was wearing when he got a glimpse of the sweatshirt sleeve on the handlebar. “Hey,” he asked, turning for a look back at the floater in the devil suit, “how’d you know?”
The floater grinned and tapped his own eyetooth. “Your fangs, fella. Dead giveaway.”
“Oh, right.” Clement grinned back, a big, fang-displaying grin. So many people couldn’t see them, or pretended they couldn’t out of some misplaced sense of politeness, that it was fresh air to brush up against somebody who talked about them. “Thanks. Aloha.”
“See ya around, sport.”
Clement nodded and sauntered on into the kiddieland, looking up and all around. Maybe he was still a little lightheaded, or maybe it was just the size of the place, but it seemed more awesome than it should have.
It was just ordinary fairgrounds stuff, really. Merry-go-rounds, loop-de-loops, ferris wheels, all tricked up with gargoyles and monster figures, but the usual harmless stuff underneath. There was a “dragon rides” dirt ring with plain little ponies plodding wearily along beneath about half a ton of costuming apiece. There were a couple of roller coasters that couldn’t be quite as high as in an open-air park ...
But almost as high. He looked up and up, trying to follow their peaks with his eyes, and the ceiling was lost somewhere above. Like the biggest cave ever formed. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see clouds rolling overhead up there.
One side of the vast chamber was a curved glass wall. He knew because from outside, you could walk around and look up at the kiddieland through the clear back of the skull. But from inside, you could hardly even catch the glint of the glass window panes. Sometimes he didn’t feel quite sure which side was the glass wall—where the inside left off and the view of the night outside began.
Now and then a bat swooped down from above, making most of the kids and some of the grownups squeal and duck. The first couple of times, Clement ducked along with the rest because, vampire or not, he was still a little spooked by bats. But after he saw by the way they flew in slow, hokey jerks that they were just stage and movie bats, not real bats, he stopped ducking and laughed at them, along with the smart grownups.
He remembered the joke he’d made to the ticket-seller at the elevator door, about looking for fat pickings. People didn’t look a thing like walking bottles of blood to him, never had, but he bared his fangs at a couple of little kids anyway. They giggled and opened their mouths back at him. One of them put in a pair of candy fangs first, and started eating them afterward.
There weren’t any humungous crowds left at this time of night, but Clement was always in sight of ten or twenty people or so, all sizes from primary graders to grandparents, and most of the ones still here seemed like enthusiastic nighthoppers. Empty—of playground trappings as well as people—and echoing, this place could have been creepy. With the trappings, it was mostly silly and a little tacky. Tinselly—that was a good word for it.
Clement stopped and bought some “brains on a stick”—really just cotton candy with a couple smears of dark red food coloring—from a green-faced Wicked Witch who took his money without seeming to even glance at his fangs. But then she put a paper cup of fizzing red liquid into his other hand and cackled, “For you, Drac. On the house.”
The liquid was a phosphate, of course, so full of black cherry syrup that it turned his stomach. Or maybe it was the cotton candy that turned his stomach, on top of the beer and Old Crow. He tossed them both, half finished, into a waste receptacle shaped like a miniature hellmouth, and decided to try a ride on one of the merry-go-rounds.
The nearest one, sign-posted the “Monster-Go-Round,” had gargoyles, hunchbacked devils, dragons, coiled snakes, hodags, manticores, basilisks, harpies, something like bristly warthogs, vultures, scowling centaurs, and mermaids with wild eyes and teeth sharpened to points and locks of hair swirling coyly over their breasts. Clement thought it was overdone. Besides, a lot of the colors were nauseous. He went and found another merry-go-round, called the “Nightmare Wheel.”
This one had wild-eyed black horses, zebra-stripped unicorns, and female centaurs who looked as wild-eyed and pointy-toothed as the Monster-Go-Round mermaids, and had their breasts just as carefully covered up.
Clement pretty well had his choice of mounts. There were only about half a dozen people on the Nightmare Wheel, and nobody else waiting to go on. Clement flashed his fangs at the ticket harpy, and she let
him inside the gate free and told him he could get on any time and get off any time, whether it was between rides or in the middle of a ride.
The wheel was in the middle of a ride right now, but Clement hopped aboard and started walking counter the way it was turning, looking for the best horse, unicorn, or centauress. After a couple of rows, he felt too woozy to continue, and climbed up on the next creature, a medium-sized black horse with no saddle, no bridle, and a stark white pole. Her eyes were stark white, too, almost as big as eggs, her head was reared up and turned a little as if to stare at her rider, and the veins were bulging beneath her lacquered hide. But her back was comfortable, contoured just right, and the pole had a slight twist that let him get a good grip on it.
Almost as soon as he was settled, he thought the turntable speeded up. Not much at first, but in a few minutes the lights in the rest of the kiddieland were blurring, then streaking around him. Swallowing hard on the contents of his stomach, he wished for stirrups, and hung onto the pole, pressing his knees against the horse until he imagined he felt her sides give like real flesh.
Then the nausea passed and he started to enjoy it. Except for the dizziness and the pounding in his head ... No, after a while even that got to be enjoyable.
The Nightmare Wheel seemed to be slowing down, and Clement was thinking about whether to get off or stay on for another ride, when Omar jumped onto the turntable and hurried over to Clement’s horse.
“Hey, Drac!” said Omar, clutching the horse’s mane with one shaking hand. He looked like he was about to have a nervous breakdown. “We’ve got a problem.”
“What?”
“They spotted that Ted’s underage. They…do things to underage people who try to get in through the mouth.”
Clement tried to slide off the nightmare’s back, but his legs shook and suddenly it seemed better to keep his seat. “What kind of things?”
The Fanciers & Realizers MEGAPACK Page 101
