No more memories . . .
Was this all part of becoming empty . . . like Clive? Was this the weird journey from zombie to walking, talking skeleton . . . and what then? What happened afterward? Was Clive on some dark, twisting path that would see him end up as a forgotten prop in a science lab?
“You okay?” Max asked, as we continued to trudge along the frosty path. “You look a bit . . . funny.”
“I was just thinking about stuff, that’s all. I know this probably happens to everyone who dies, but—”
“I was talking about your eye.”
“My what?”
I raised a hand to my face and—almost dreading what I might feel—touched my eye socket with my fingers. Thankfully, nothing felt particularly out of the ordinary.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked Max.
The werewolf shook his head. “Not really, dude. Your right eyeball has slipped a bit: it’s looking down toward your cheek.”
“Rubbish.”
“I’m serious.”
To test out this grim observation, I closed my left eye and looked just out of the right one.
The view was pretty bleak: all I could see was the forest path and a pink border where my cheek must have been.
“You’re right; I can only see the floor.”
This is ridiculous, I thought. How am I supposed to have any sort of afterlife in this condition? If the other eye goes the same way, I’m toast.
Max sighed. “You’re in big trouble if the other one checks out, too,” he muttered, reading my worried expression. “Unless it flips upward: at least then you’ve got everything covered.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. What a comforting thought.
“Don’t sweat it,” Max said, giving me a friendly pat. “Clive doesn’t have any eyeballs, and he still seems to see okay. Mind you, I did once hear him say that he could only ever feel stuff, not exactly s—”
“OKAY, OKAY! STOP TALKING, WILL YOU? YOU’RE NOT HELPING.” I gritted my teeth and rolled what was left of my eyes.
NINTH MISTAKE:
Midden Field was usually a dark, forgotten wilderness on the outskirts of town. You might see a pile of trash there from time to time, or the occasional cow, but—mostly—it was one of Mortlake’s old and forgotten farming grounds.
Until now. . . .
The place was alive with lights: red, green, blue, purple, yellow. It was like watching the world’s biggest and most prolonged firework display. There were flashing, eerily illuminated signs everywhere . . . and something told me they weren’t being powered by electricity: a crackle of dark and powerful energy ran along the outline of every tent.
Most carnival setups are composed of a number of separate tents, kiosks, and stands—whereas Carble and Stein’s ghostly circus consisted of a vast, sprawling network of brightly covered canvas marquees, all streaming out from the central big top as if the enormously distorted core had grown a variety of spindly limbs.
“It’s massive,” Max whispered from our hiding place on the edge of the wood. “Where do you think Cheapteeth and his cronies are? The big top?”
I shrugged. “They might be, but—well—we don’t know, do we? Those demons must all be in there somewhere, too. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Maybe we should have waited for Clive and the others.”
Max took a deep breath but appeared to be steeling himself for the change. I could see the full moon reflected in his eyes.
“It’s time,” he growled. “Let’s go.”
I followed him down the incline and onto the edge of the field, swearing when I stepped in some ghostly dog doo despite having one eye firmly on the grass. Even though it was little more than a wisp of spirit grossness, I still couldn’t shake it off the end of my foot without jumping up and down three or four times.
There were about a hundred different entrances to Carble and Stein’s bizarre circus, and all the signs were in some strange language I couldn’t understand.
“It’s Arcanum,” Max whispered.
“Arcanum?”
“Demon language: Evil Clive can read it.”
“I wish we could.”
“Yeah, me too.”
To say the place was weird would have been a dramatic understatement. All the usual circus stands and stalls were present, but none of them were manned and all of them had some twisted, sickening element that I have never seen in any living circus I’d ever visited.
The dunking booth had a half-rotted human corpse perched on the end, barely supported over a container of what looked and smelled like blood. The Whac-A-Ghoul game urged you to bop a collection of shrunken ghoul heads, all with one sewn-up eye mimicking the look of Jessica Stein, while the ring toss involved trying to throw a series of tied intestinal cords over the top of various decapitated limbs that sprouted from the floor.
“I hate this place already,” Max whispered. “And we haven’t even gone in yet.”
I peered around with equal disgust, but an even darker feeling was stealing over me. “It’s too quiet here. I can’t help but get the feeling that we’re walking into a trap.”
Looking back, I have to wonder what might have happened to us had Max not suddenly tripped on a block of wood half lodged in the base of one of the sideshow stalls.
“Argh! What the hell—”
I crouched beside my werewolf friend, intending to haul him back to his feet, when I spotted a solitary demon flying low over an outlying field to the west.
“Shh!” I urged Max. “Stay down!”
We both hunkered against the flapping canvas walls of the stall, watching with bated breath as the demon—one of the little monstrosities from Stein’s attack on Prospect Hill—came in for a landing on the edge of the Midden ground and promptly scampered for a brightly colored tunnel that opened in the shape of a gaping yellow mouth.
“In there! Quick!”
We dashed across the open ground, weaving our way between the stalls and trying to stay as low as we could.
By the time we arrived at the giant mouth, the little demon was a tiny receding dot at the end of the corridor. It paused for a second, then flittered off to the left.
Max glanced up briefly at the moon, and his hair began to rise.
We both steeled ourselves and hurried inside.
Despite my determination to seem like I was firmly in control, a dark wave of fear was washing over me. Taking on Kambo Cheapteeth in any circumstances was a terrible step into the unknown, but on his home turf it would be like striking a match in a gunpowder factory. I was absolutely, completely terrified.
Fortunately, I didn’t have time to dwell on my fear.
“Haaahahaahahaahahahahahahahah!”
A cacophony of sickening laughter echoed all around the interior of the canvas maze as we forged our way ahead. It sounded as though the stream of noise was being played on a loop, because several of the same snorts and giggles seemed to signal the end of each batch. Either way, it was creeping Max out; he seemed to be stuck in a sort of half-wolf shape, and I knew that only happened when a particular fear was gripping him.
The fork where the demon turned was well lit, but there was absolutely no sign of the little fiend. Following its route to the left, I was disappointed when we hit yet another intersection, especially when there were three possible exits.
“It could have gone anywhere,” Max whispered.
I shook my head, trying to figure out where we were in relation to the big top. It was difficult to think; the laughter was getting louder and louder. The sheer lunacy of it burrowed under my skin and set my nerves on edge.
Max narrowed his eyes and squinted along the central passage. “We should go s
traight ahead,” he muttered. “I can see someone moving, up there. Look!”
He suddenly shifted up a gear, making a determined dash for the end of the corridor. I couldn’t see what he was looking at, but then I had only the one good eye, and he could probably command an entire army of wolf senses, so naturally I followed him.
About halfway along the passage, he stopped dead, crouched, and began to snarl in the low, guttural tone I’d come to recognize as his threatening growl.
Now I could see the movement in front of Max . . . but something about it alerted me to the fact that the shadow wasn’t an enemy at all.
Every circus has a hall of mirrors.
“Max! Hold up. It’s your reflection, you doughnut!”
But the wolf in Max wasn’t too sure. The growling continued as I made my way past him and stood between the two, waving my hand in front of the glass.
It was a good mirror, I have to admit . . . and disguised so well that you couldn’t actually see the edges.
Beyond it, a well-lit maze led off in all directions. The bright light was matched only by the million images cast around the walls, reflecting, distorting, and stretching my disgusting appearance to infinity.
“Do we have to go in there?” Max growled. “I’m likely to be really jumpy, and you might get your head clawed off or something. . . .”
I glanced back the way we’d come and shrugged.
“It does go in the direction of the big top,” I admitted. “Besides, we’re both dead. What’s the worst that can happen?”
Max glared at me, and I just knew he was thinking about Jemini and her screaming purple agony.
“Yeah,” I said, reluctantly. “Apart from that.”
TENTH MISTAKE:
The hall of mirrors in any circus is a weird and freaky place. Each length of glass shows your image contorted any number of ways: fat, thin, tall, short, wide, angled . . . you name it. You get to glimpse the reflection you see every day morphed into something terrible.
Then your friends start laughing, you tag along, and within seconds, the whole episode has become hilarious and you’re having the time of your life.
That’s in a normal circus.
The hall of mirrors at Carble and Stein’s uniquely creepy carnival didn’t stretch us or shrink us or even turn us upside down. What it did was much worse.
It brought us back to life.
I stood watching myself in better days as I went off to school. I was happy, smiling, laughing, and joking with two friends who I was shocked to realize I didn’t even recognize.
Then, suddenly, the image in the mirror flashed and flickered and the past became the future. My reflection beamed as it raised a hand to its head and began peeling away the skin. In an instant, I was looking at a grinning human skeleton.
My eyes filled with tears, and I was angry, because I couldn’t help it. At least the emotion gave me the strength to pull my gaze away from the vision.
I shook my head and wiped the tears from my ragged cheeks.
Max, standing a short distance away, seemed to be equally horrified. When I managed to pull myself away from my own grinning reflection I saw why he was so upset.
The Max in the mirror didn’t look anything like my undead mate. In fact, it looked so unlike him that for a moment, I thought it was someone else.
Then I noticed a quirky crease around the jawline and a slight lean to the smirking mouth. It was definitely Max . . . but he seemed so different: less hollow, more energetic, more . . . alive!
“They’ve deliberately done this to upset us,” I snapped, grabbing hold of Max and dragging him away from the image. “Let’s just keep moving. All the while we’re hanging around this dump, Jemini isn’t getting any better.”
We ran on, trying to ignore our haunting pasts as they flashed on and off from the walls on all sides. The insane laughter, piped throughout the circus, was now set at an almost ear-splitting volume.
Round and round and round we ran, up one corridor, down another, left at the first set of mirrors, straight ahead at the next. It was no use: this place redefined the word maze.
“How do we get out of here?” Max growled, covering his ears as the single cackle of laughter from the lunatic speaker brought him closer to the edge of madness. “I can’t even see where we came in.”
“That’s the point of a maze,” I muttered, equally annoyed but trying to think. “The only thing you can do in a place like this is something they don’t expect you to do. . . .”
“Such as?”
“Well . . . how about . . . THIS?”
I took a run up and booted one of the mirrors. It exploded on impact and showered us both with a million tiny shards of glass.
There was a larger passageway behind it, and the entire area seemed to open out a lot more.
Max turned to me with an expansive grin and muttered, “I like your style.”
We both took a determined step forward and entered the next part of the circus.
I’d always assumed that Kambo Cheapteeth knew about the world of the dead long before he joined it. Anyone crazy enough to commit suicide in the name of some arcane god and talk two other morons into doing the same was either deeply, deeply disturbed or just plain crazy. Either way, I’m guessing that Cheapteeth didn’t exactly get his wish: spending all of eternity as a demented, ugly, putrefying clown cannot have been what he bargained for when he scrawled his magic symbols in the back of his carnival trailer. Personally, if I had been given a choice, I’d have gone for not dying (and maybe a really hot girlfriend, forty million in gold coins, and an Xbox Kinect).
Despite all this, Cheapteeth must have harnessed some sort of magical ability after his death. Otherwise, this circus base of his couldn’t have existed . . .
. . . and exist it DID.
The weird, twisted corridors reminded me of the hideouts occupied by Batman villains in that series my dad used to watch: all slanted floors and ceilings. To make things even more unsettling, TV screens were suspended on the walls at odd angles, playing sick cartoons that definitely weren’t Sunday afternoon entertainment.
“This place is warped,” Max said, watching the mouse in the animation slowly sewing up the eyeballs of its feline enemy. “Let’s just find Cheapteeth, rip him apart, and then get the heck out of here.”
I nodded ahead as we rounded a twist in the passage. “Can’t imagine it’s going to be that easy.”
There, at the far end of the next corridor, was a set of red, yellow, and purple curtains fastened back with a length of white rope. Beyond, the massive expanse of the big top beckoned . . .
. . . and there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.
ELEVENTH MISTAKE:
I was never so grateful to be in the shadows as my eyes took in the scene.
Nightmare City.
The big top was packed with demons.
A sea of red waved, chattered, and fid-geted around the walls as Max and I stared, open-mouthed at the incredible interior of the circus’s core. Amid crowded coils of seating lay the vast arena stage, a white circle bathed in the glare of what seemed like a hundred unseen spotlights. There, center stage, stood the filthy, brass-toothed midget we all now knew to be the erstwhile Vincent Carble. Cheapteeth’s right-hand man was wedged between two enormous lions that each looked capable of devouring him without a second thought. They weren’t ordinary circus animals by any stretch of the imagination: both had rotting flesh, exposed bones, and the twisted, blood-shot eyes of the cursed. Above this diorama of concentrated evil, the floating form of Jessica Stein was visible at one end of a tightrope that spanned the roof of the big top. She drifted aimlessly back and forth, spitting out demented cackles and waving her arms at random.
“Where is he getting all these things from?” I muttered, gripping Max’s arm tight when he tried to take a step forward. “I mean, he just died like the rest of us, right?”
“He died cursed.”
“So did I.”
Max turned to me. “No, Ed. You were cursed. Cheapteeth cursed himself. When that happens, sometimes you attract . . . attention.”
“From who?”
“Forget it. Let’s just say he’s obviously getting help from a very powerful frien—”
Max stopped talking as the spotlight hit us.
The light was unbearable: a searing, burning white pool of blistering intensity that threw us into sharp focus while the rest of the big top was plunged into shadow.
“Ah . . .” said a voice that sounded like it came from the depths of evil. “Our shtar turn hash arrived. A big round of applaushe, pleashe—for our honored guest, the ever-decomposhing Edward Bagley.”
An explosion of thunderous clapping ripped into our ears as a second spotlight relit the stage. Kambo Cheapteeth staggered down a twisted spiral walkway where each step seemed to appear only a fraction of a second before he arrived upon it. The clown, clad head to toe in festering, half-torn, oversized clothes, was speaking into a strange ice cream cone that seemed to be both amplifying and distorting his dark, syrupy voice, streaming it around the arena as his army of servants chattered in the background.
Max bristled to life, his bones and teeth elongating, his jaw extending and hair sprouting in full glory from his nose, ears, and arms. Within seconds, I was standing beside a giant werewolf. Max, it seemed, had a super-strength button concealed somewhere about his person . . . and it had been firmly pressed.
I felt like a ferret standing next to a walrus.
“Impresshive,” crowed the jellied voice of Cheapteeth. “But I fear you’ll need shlightly more than one big mutt to have any chanche of leaving this plache with whatsh left of your organsh. Don’t feel bad, Ed—you’d never have eshcaped my clutchesh even if you’d brought along all your friendsh . . . you were doomed the moment you interfered in my death.”
Undead Ed and the Demon Freakshow Page 5
