by Pete Kahle
I could see there was no point arguing so I got on with the job of dragging the three corpses – what was left of them and any remains I could scoop up – to one of the helicopters and I dumped them in it without ceremony. I found a spare can of fuel and sprinkled it liberally about the machine before setting light to it. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy my revenge on that flying beast as it exploded all to hell and beyond. The second chopper remained intact, silently waiting on its pad, like it was telling me, it would be here when I needed a lift back to civilization. Not if there’s a mountain bus service, I was thinking.
I switched everything off in the lodge and picked up Ariadne’s kit bag. It now contained her Ninja gear as well as both her swords. With any luck she’d get a chance to use them before this caper was over.
Darkness cloaked everything when I’d done and I was looking for a flashlight when Caliban appeared, holding some kind of lantern-thing. Straight from the faerie realm was my guess, but it was one less thing for me to worry about. He’d incinerated any last remains of the corpses and their offending seeds and pronounced himself happy with his work.
“So where we headed?” I asked him.
“Deep forest. Scathach will be waiting. We’ll cross at dawn, when she can open the way.”
I was glad to keep moving, trying to wrench my mind away from the fact that Ariadne must be in danger. Her abductors may have been given instructions not to harm her, but whoever this Pumpkin King was, he wasn’t necessarily going to apply a soft touch, not to either of us, judging by what Scathach had told me. Caliban lit the way and for a little guy he moved swiftly through the forest terrain, obviously born to it. I just about kept up with him, but grew more and more uneasy. My night vision was okay, but the trees were so thick here that I felt crowded in, muffled in darkness. I could hear what were probably ordinary nighttime forest sounds, but they weren’t what I was used to in the city, so my blood ran a little cold.
Eventually we reached a clearing, a grassed slope that led down to a stream. It was lit by another of the small lanterns, which hung from a tree. In the glow I could see Scathach, motionless as an obelisk. Caliban had reverted back to his black cat shape and sprang up easily on to a low branch.
“This must be the bank where the wild thyme grows,” I quipped.
Scathach smiled, but it barely dissolved that underlying sadness. “Nick Nightmare. I am sorry that we meet again under such circumstances.”
“You know where she is?”
She nodded. “Three of the Boneless Men took her through the gate and they will waste no time getting her to the court of the Pumpkin King.”
“Three?”
“Yes. We have to wait until dawn before we can give chase.”
“There were seven bodyguards. Three are dead. Caliban and I converted them into hot ashes. That leaves four. Three are with Ariadne. What about the fourth?” I don’t like loose ends, especially when they’re sneaking around with a gun.
She frowned, puzzled. “We must be wary.” She sat herself cross-legged and I noticed the Gae Bolg stretched in the grass beside her. She patted the ground and invited me to sit with her. “We can only be patient.”
“So how come you’re in on this? I know you don’t care much for these Boneless goons –”
“I have my reasons for defying the Pumpkin King and the vile creatures he serves,” she said, cutting into my words, her green eyes sparkling with anger. “I would not see Ariadne Carnadine suffer as I have suffered. I will gladly side with you against those monsters.”
“You want to tell me about it? If we’re going to wait it out until dawn, you may as well fill me in.”
She was a curious mixture of vague hippy waif and wild kind of mystic, turbulent and angry and probably very fierce. When she’d been using that spear, she would have made a good warrior woman, leading a mob of painted Brits into battle. Sassy was not the word for it.
“Not so many years ago, I lived in a scruffy old apartment in the Bronx with my lover. His name was Kulkain. He was an actor, a few months older than me and just as full of dreams as I was. He was very good, a natural talent and that’s not just the love-smitten me talking.” She was the gentle version again, the warrior woman submerged under the memories that ignited her as she spoke. “We shared everything and spent most of our lives studying the natural way of things. I don’t know how it began, but Kulkain was wooed by the darker powers – they saw a potential in him to further their aims. We knew what they were capable of, and we avoided them. Oh, but they are cunning, deceitful. They worked on Kulkain insidiously, slowly winning him over with promises of success, the one thing he craved, perhaps even more than me.” Her tears glistened in the lamplight.
“I had my own power and gifts of wild magic, things passed down through my bloodline. I warned him of the dangers, but he was given the roles he’d always craved and he was increasingly seduced by the dark. Then one day, he’d gone too far. Vaulting ambition had undone him and there was no way back. He was lost to me. The theatre, too, lost him, as he came completely under their control, almost as an addict succumbs to the drugs he depends on. The last I heard of him,” she ended, “he had died. Taken across to their bleak regions, far beyond my reach.”
Yeah, well that wouldn’t have been the first time a guy had got too drunk on ambition. She’d referred to Macbeth and I was catching on to why she liked to quote it, although I recalled that it had been his good lady wife who’d prodded him towards the fatal path to power. Her and the witches.
“Was the Pumpkin King part of this?”
“He serves the same master. The time is fast approaching when the darkness will cast itself over the earth. Part of its preparation is to eliminate those who stand against it – those who know the truth of its rise. The apathy and cynicism of men works in favour of the enemy. Those who know the truth, such as you and your companions – those you call Vengeance Unlimited – they are recognised as a threat.”
“Yeah, this isn’t the first time we’ve come under attack. So you’re with us?”
I liked her defiant glare. “I am. To the hilt. The Pumpkin King will soon be ready to launch his invasion. He will infect you and Ariadne with Boneless Men and hold you up as slaves in his army, unless we foil him. He will not be expecting me, nor the Gae Bolg. My hand will guide it into his black heart. It will rip him asunder!”
“You have a plan?”
“When we cross into his realm, you will take the path to his court and play the part of the anxious lover, eager to storm the court and rescue her.”
I’m no actor, but I was thinking I could play that part pretty well.
“He will expect you to tumble into his trap. Why shouldn’t he be confident of snaring you?”
“You’re going to tell me why, right?”
“Caliban and I will come upon him unawares. A direct, unexpected strike to the very core of his blighted kingdom. It’s dangerous, but we’ll not waver. We’ll screw our courage to the sticking place.”
I was nodding, but I was getting a mite uneasy about Macbeth as a recurring theme here, given what happened to that particular dude.
“You must get some sleep,” she told me.
“Sleep? At a time like this –” I didn’t finish my protest – she simply reached out and pressed her cool fingers to my brow and the lights went out.
It was close on dawn when I came to. I felt well rested, so Scathach had worked some kind of magic, which was just as well, given my anxieties about Ariadne. Scathach brought out some cold meat, rabbit maybe, and I chewed it hungrily, washing it down with cold water from the stream. We left at once and Caliban padded along a narrow trail, set on either side by old stones that looked to me like they’d been set here by folks a whole lot older than the original Indian tribes who had probably once lived hereabouts. We reached another, slightly wider river and I didn’t much fancy wading over it, not in this autumnal cold.
We didn’t have to. Dawn’s rays sliced through the trees and obvio
usly the timing was right because Scathach indicated some stones under the water that were picked out by the bright light. We crossed and slipped into the reeds beyond. I knew that we were no longer in my world. Wherever the hell this was, it was alien. If I expected the sun to rise and brighten everything up, I was to be disappointed. The place was gloomy, a twilight region, the heavens padded out with layers of cloud, greys and purples, shrouding the landscape in a dour kind of gloom.
We were out of the reeds almost immediately, heading along a path that was bordered on both sides with tufts of grass and marsh, as far as the eye could see. There was enough solid ground for us to make progress, and we did so for a long time. There were no birds overhead and very little sign of life of any kind. Occasionally something would disturb the reeds, or there’d be a distant splash, like a body diving underwater, but we went on our way unmolested.
When we finally got to the far side of the marshy land, there were fields rolling up gently beyond. We were following a rough path and as we went into the fields, we could now see the rows of massed green leaves, with their pumpkin hearts. Countless thousands of them! Row upon row of pumpkins, all of them as big as a human head, all that sickly orange-brown colour I’d seen back in Scathach’s field. We got to a crossroad and Scathach pointed ahead.
“Keep going until you come to a wall. The Pumpkin King’s court is within its confines, up on the hill. Caliban and I will branch off here and come upon the place from another angle. We’ll choose the right moment to join you. You shouldn’t be impeded. His eyes will be upon you, once you reach the wall. In the meantime, if you see any of the Blind Gardeners, keep well clear of them. As their name suggests, they cannot see as we do, but they have a keen sense of smell. Keep to the path, or they’ll deem you to be a threat to the plants. If they do, avoid them.”
I didn’t need telling twice. I watched her and the black cat take off down the right hand path and moved on with a shrug. I had my guns and I had Ariadne’s bag, with her twin swords, but right now what I really needed was an armoured tank. I wasn’t picky - I’d have settled for a bulldozer. Boy, did I feel exposed.
As I trudged on, the sun didn’t get any brighter and the rows of pumpkins showed no sign of thinning or diminishing. I couldn’t make out if these things had faces, but my skin was crawling like someone was studying me, like a kid studies an ant crossing a paving slab. I could hear a constant rustling sound, like the quasi-human plants were stirring, maybe thinking of getting up. Scathach had told me I wouldn’t be attacked, given that I was an expected guest at the castle.
After several miles I caught sight of something vague and very bulky moving about on the near horizon, a huge shape with long, spindly arms, a vegetable harvester. It had no neck, its head like a huge hump on its shoulders and it was too far away to see details, but it had no eyes. A Blind Gardener, I assumed, plodding along in its daily round of tending the endless array of plants. I saw a few of these things, happily far off, and they didn’t pick up my scent.
I guess it was coming up for midday (not that you’d have known by the dreary light) when I reached the wall. It stretched across the path and ran away to the left and right, bisecting the huge field. It was about eight feet high, composed of ancient bricks that had been roughly hewn what could have been a long time in the past. Vines and creepers had more or less taken the wall over, burying it in places. I could see a broken down gateway, but there were no guards. Open house, then.
I put my Berettas away and opted for Ariadne’s blades. Okay, so I wasn’t going to be jumped on out here, not till I got to the Pumpkin King’s place at least, but I didn’t buy into going in naked. I’d used the swords before and must admit it had been fun doing the Conan the Barbarian thing. I could see why Ariadne worked out with them.
Beyond the gate, I was in what could once have been stately gardens, but they were so overgrown with weeds and shrubs that had run amok, it was tough to keep sight of the path and its half buried paving stones. The grass was chest high, so I could see some way ahead to where a hill rose up into the mist. It had the look of a big burial mound, the sort of thing that would get an archaeologist’s juices flowing. I thought there were movements up on the slopes, but couldn’t be sure. I moved on.
There was a path leading up the hill that became a deep incision, like some crazy god had whanged his sword down into the earth. I went into its shadows and there were steps that made the climb easier. It was as cold as a tomb, my breath even cloudier in the semi-light. Also, the place had a weird smell to it, rotting vegetation and rotting something-else. Burial mound was probably right, and some of the inhabitants had been left here recently.
Emerging, I was on the flattish top of the mound, its dimensions obscured by the mist, or low cloud. I could see a ring of very tall stones – I believe they call them menhirs or sarcens in archaeology-speak. They weren’t the regular shapes of the stuff at Stonehenge. These were more random, sculpted, possibly by the weather, into weird shapes, hunched and twisted, like frozen demi-gods. Just the kind of mutated shapes you’d expect to find in the court of the Pumpkin King. Speaking of mutated shapes, a whole bunch of them emerged from the mist and arranged themselves around the stones, hemming me in.
I went on to the centre of the place and there he was, in all his splendour. Well, not splendour, not by human reckoning. There was a paved area, roughly rectangular, and beyond it an expanse of mud and therein resided the huge deformity that must be the Pumpkin King. He had a body that could once have been human, but which was now an immense mini-zeppelin, with two bloated arms, the lower part of the body submerged in the mud, the way the lower half of a plant is buried in soil. And the head – now that was something else entirely. It was the biggest pumpkin-like growth I’d ever seen and would have taken the Gold Medal at every Biggest Pumpkin event imaginable, and some. It had that same sickly colour - degraded orange - but also a face that had been stretched over it, as if it had started normal but then been contorted by the growth of the thing.
Round, yellow eyes gazed at me like there was a fire behind them, in the hollowed-out skull, although that had to be some kind of illusion. There was a gash of a nose, but the mouth – man, this had to be a bad dream. Like a garden pumpkin where the features are chopped out with a knife, this mouth, almost as wide as the entire bloated head, had vegetable teeth, interlocking and slick with drool, as if the wriggling anaconda that was the tongue within was far too big for the mouth.
I stood in fascinated silence, though I felt like a fly in front of a chameleon, about to be zapped and swallowed.
“Mr Nick Stone. Or Nightmare, as you prefer,” said the creature in a voice that completely threw me. It was strangely cultivated, not the voice of a mutated vegetable. I think the monarch was smiling, but that expression would have curdled milk.
“So nice of you to drop in on my little kingdom.”
“You know why I’m here.” It was meant to come out as a derisive snarl, or at least sound defiant, but it was more of a hoarse croak.
“Ah, of course. The beautiful Ariadne Carnadine. I can understand your impatience. Very well, let’s not beat about the proverbial bush.” He lifted one of those massive arms and made some sort of gesture. Mud sloughed off him and fell with a plop back into his private bath.
There was movement behind him and my heart thumped in my chest as a group of figures – among them three of the converted Boneless Men who’d been her bodyguards – dragged the writhing Ariadne out onto the stones. They had gagged her – I could imagine the stream of invective she’d have hurled at them if they hadn’t – and tied her hands tightly behind her. She was wearing the simple dress and soft shoes I’d last seen her in, hardly suitable for a night out here in this wilderness. Her eyes met mine and I was relieved to see the fury in them. The goons may have trussed her up, but she was still ready to spit hell and fury given half a chance.
“I gather you two have been causing a good deal of trouble,” said the Pumpkin King, that revolting ton
gue slopping about, flicking gobbets of drool across the slabs. “Very inconvenient for the dark power I serve. I’ve been commissioned to put a stop to it.”
I flexed my arms gently, the twin swords gleaming in the pale light of day. It would have been a cinch to jump him and slice him up, but he knew he had me.
“Don’t be foolish, Mr Nightmare. It would be a shame to kill your beautiful friend in front of you, but you’ll appreciate that’s exactly what I’ll do if you as much as take a step towards me. You’re not the only one here with weapons.”
The ex-bodyguards all had their guns trained on my chest.
“Exactly what do you want from us?” I snapped.
“Well, tomorrow night is Samhain. It’s a highly significant time, in this world as well as yours. We have our celebrations to attend to. And our sacrifices. You and Miss Carnadine will be our offerings to those you have frustrated. It doesn’t have to be painful, but your blood, mingled on our altar, will be a very special libation. And I will allow you and Miss Carnadine to spend a little time together before we begin the ceremonies.”
At another gesture from him, the Boneless Men cut Ariadne’s bonds and her gag and pushed her towards me. The Pumpkin King obviously remained confident that we wouldn’t rush him. I gave Ariadne a brief hug and she took one of the swords. I whispered a warning not to chance an attack to her. And I was thinking, where the heck is Scathach? Now would be a good time to gate-crash this little soiree.
Maybe the witch was psychic because I heard a commotion by the tall stones to my left and several of the Boneless Men there broke apart to reveal Scathach, clearly in Boudicca mode. Her red hair flew about her like a sheet, her hands gripped the Gae Bolg like a pike and her expression was one of boiling fury. I have to say, it was a big improvement on the dancing Ophelia version.
“Ah, you’re here!” said the Pumpkin King. His face warped itself into what I took to be a beam of pleasure, though it would have sent small children and animals racing for cover.
