As the ferocious, electric battle between Evil Clive and Kambo Cheapteeth unfolded in Midden Field, I quickly realized that there was simply nothing I could do to help.
There were grades of the dead, you see. Clive had been dead longer than anyone else in Mortlake and had, I assumed, become privy to certain grave-risen abilities, and Kambo Cheapteeth had evidently learned many of the same skills while drawing weird circles in the back of his carnival caravan. Watching the two of them duke it out was like watching Yoda take on the Emperor.
So, being a head lying in a field with no visible means of movement and only a single good pupil to observe anything with, I took the one course of action available to me.
I closed my eyes and stretched out with my feelings.
There was my torso: I could feel it being held by someone, maybe even carried along. The wind on my chest felt as fresh and icy as it would have had the torso still been attached to me.
Odd.
My legs felt the same way; a rush of wind and the physical support of arms wrapped around them. Also, I could feel my foot, as if it had been reattached.
What was going on? I needed to get back to the circus, but how?
THEN I felt it: the searing, magnetic power of the hand. I’d barely thought of it when I suddenly had a vision of grasslands passing by at high speed. It was approaching Midden Field.
There was no more time.
It was here.
The arm sprang into the air, and I noticed it was now covered in the same sickly black liquid I’d seen it doused in once before: a liquid that almost seemed to seep from the flesh.
The devil’s blood?
As I watched with mounting horror, it fastened onto the bony neck of Evil Clive. The zombie faltered slightly, releasing his grip on Cheapteeth long enough for the clown to roll aside and stagger away.
Shadows were beginning to approach on all sides of the clearing—familiar shadows.
Two werewolves were supporting Max Moon, who appeared to be barely conscious. Forgoth the Cursed had regained control of Mumps: the free-roaming demonic entity was now languishing in its disguise as a small, stuffed teddy bear. Behind them, two young vampires I didn’t know were carrying both halves of my body. This totally freaked me out—especially when the taller one patted my leg as if it was an elderly dog he was carrying.
They all stopped, hanging on the edge of the clearing as if they’d hit some sort of invisible force field. They looked petrified by what they saw.
The arm had full control of Evil Clive: a grim, watery blue outline had settled around the leader of Mortlake’s undead community. . . and he was becoming slightly blurred.
Cheapteeth stood on the far side of the clearing. The clown was still laughing maniacally, but his features were twisted in a kind of fascinated horror at the situation unfolding before him.
“Ed,” Clive called weakly, turning his empty eye sockets toward the patch of grass where my head still rested. “H-help me.”
“How?” I cried, feeling confused and pathetically useless in the gathering darkness.
“T-take controoollllllll.”
I focused all my energy and attention on my body, feeling my mind bleed into a sharp point as the pain of my own death resurfaced. I saw the truck, felt the despair, felt the . . .
. . . anger.
My torso flew from the grip of the smaller vampire and hit the field, sliding across the grass and connecting with my head. There was a slow sort of sucking noise as the bones fused together. I thought I might throw up, but I was quickly distracted when my legs followed suit, slipping underneath the midsection and propelling me onto my feet.
Both feet.
I looked down at the toes that had deserted me on the high wire and noticed that one of them twitched, slightly.
There was only one more thing missing.
I made a straight dash for Evil Clive and my other arm but was intercepted midway by Kambo Cheapteeth, who barreled into me with far greater strength than I’d previously given him credit for.
We both went flying.
All around the clearing, my friends stood by, frozen to the spot with fear as Clive struggled to free himself from the death grip of the devil’s fingers.
I couldn’t even begin to help.
I was in the fight of my undead life.
Kambo Cheapteeth wasn’t messing around. His desire to kill me was now so powerful that the demented clown was like a wild animal, kicking, biting, and clawing at me with spit flying from his lips in all directions.
Astonishingly, I felt calm.
My mind was elsewhere.
As Cheapteeth dragged me down to the ground and hammered a flurry of punches into my fleshless skull, I concentrated all my mental energy into releasing my detached hand’s grip from the neck of Evil Clive. After all, four of the nine fingers on that hand might belong to the devil . . . but the rest were mine.
And then, half dazed by the insanely powerful punches of Kambo Cheapteeth and half tortured by the effort of telepathy required to control my arm, I finally managed to break the deadlock.
Evil Clive dropped to the floor . . . and my arm shot back across the clearing.
Kambo Cheapteeth’s expression went from sheer glee at the damage he was doing to a shocked, bulging-eyed, distinctly throttled grimace as the demon hand fastened on his neck.
NOW, I thought. Now we’ll see. I’ve been in this very field—in this fight—before . . . and last time I won.
The arm socket reattached to my shoulder with the same wet, sucking noise, and I powered to my feet, feeling a fresh burst of energy as Cheapteeth visibly weakened in the grip of the demon hand.
I tightened my grasp on the clown, forcing him onto his knees. Cheering erupted from all around the clearing.
I grinned over at Max, who smiled back at me with vague comprehension as Kambo withered even further, shrinking up as he made a last ditch attempt to fight me off.
But his struggles were futile.
Still, my death grip tightened on his painted neck . . . and now I saw a look of panic flood through the clown’s twisted face.
Did I need to destroy him?
Of course I did.
I grinned maniacally. New power coursed through my dead veins. I remembered every punch the clown had given me, every strike against my flesh.
I tightened my grip and watched the life seep out of the wretch’s sallow face.
Then, all at once, Evil Clive appeared on the edge of my vision, creeping closer until he stood on the other side of the clown now wriggling weakly in my demonic grasp.
“Don’t do it, Ed.”
I glanced up at him. “What? Are you crazy? He would have destroyed me! He cursed me to live out this whole horrible nightmare! Don’t you get it? He’s never going to leave me alone! Not unless I finish it now. . . .”
The skeleton shook his head.
“There are other ways. Besides, it’s not you doing the thinking. Let go of him. Let go of him NOW.”
I tried to listen, but Clive’s voice was like a tiny trickle of water in the rushing rapids of my anger.
Powerless to stop myself, I squeezed until my soul screamed out in rage, until my teeth ground together with a sickening crunch.
Clive looked down at my arm and took hold of it with both his skeletal hands. But I continued to close the vise on Cheapteeth.
A gasp went up from the audience in the clearing.
Then it happened.
My clawed, nine-fingered hand crushed the light from Kambo Cheapteeth. The clown’s dirty, mud- and paint-encrusted face sagged suddenly, and a glowing blue light drifted from between his lips and floated upward.
>
I watched, my stomach turning over as the light floated into the sky . . .
. . . and then everything was a blur.
I awoke from my momentary dazzle still in the field and still surrounded by my undead friends . . .
. . . but none of them were smiling. Two of the vampires were holding back the werewolves, while little Forgoth was shaking with terror.
I couldn’t understand what was happening or how much time had passed in my impromptu daydream.
Then everything became clear, as if someone had suddenly switched on all my senses.
And there was Max Moon.
The werewolf had managed to stagger across the clearing and was wrenching at my demon hand with all his might, screaming at me to take control of myself.
“Ed! ED! Can you hear me? ED! It’s me, Max. ED!”
My voice growled forth in a dark and menacing tone that even I didn’t recognize.
“NO, MAX. I WILL NOT STOP.”
“Ed! You have to stop now! Look what you’re doing! LOOK!”
I shook my head as violently as I could to try to break free of the miasma surrounding me. When I did, and finally managed to look down, I gasped out loud.
I was killing Evil Clive.
My choking grip had transferred from the deflated clown to the skeleton, and now I couldn’t stop my own onslaught. I was killing the beloved leader of Mortlake’s undead community . . . and my savagely wounded best friend was trying desperately to drag me away.
As I fought to stop my addled mind from fizzing up, I tried to drive my thoughts to happier times: to my parents, to my life before the accident. I tried to think of every single thing that had ever made me happy and all the things that might still make me happy if I managed not to do this terrible, terrible thing.
I thought of Jemini sitting up in bed, released from the curse of Kambo Cheapteeth and his horrible midget conjurer; I thought of Max and me laughing at the weirdness of Mrs. Looker’s collapsing house.
I thought of being in a happy place in Mortlake, condemned to live out the rest of my undeath as a skeletal zombie, but surrounded by friends who never left my side . . .
. . . condemned . . . to live . . . as a zombie.
Cursed.
Locked forever in the land of the dead.
I cast a last, terrified, pleading glance at Max Moon, and then I saw the horror in my best friend’s face . . .
. . . as I completely destroyed Evil Clive.
It’s mad, bad, and dangerous to chase
The test finally happened at what I guessed was about mid-afternoon the following day.
The bolts on the great door slid back as usual, but then there was silence.
Complete silence.
Like someone who has just entered a room to find everyone staring at them with weird smirks on their faces, I moved very cautiously, expecting some horrible event to occur at any moment.
This is the test, I thought. Expect brutality.
I put an ear to the door (which turned out to be a mistake when I pulled away and the ear actually stayed stuck on the metal). There was an incredible lack of noise from the corridor beyond.
Nothing.
Slowly, carefully, I grasped the single iron handle on the great portal—and pulled.
Crreeeeeaaaaak.
The door swung toward me as I took several steps back—and there it was: a cold, empty passage filled with dark, gloomy shadows and only the distant flicker of torchlight.
The walls were slimy and covered in moss, the ceiling was crawling with weird insects (including something that looked like three eyeballs joined to a toe) and the floor was . . .
I looked down at the floor and did a double take.
Then I shook my head.
I even blinked to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.
Nope.
There on the floor of the passage was a thick wedge of cheese attached to some sort of metal wire.
“Is this a joke?” I called out, nudging the cheese with my shoe. It moved a bit, but not much. “What’s the test? To see if I try to eat it?”
There was no reply and I looked down again.
The wire pulled tight and the cheese shifted about four inches.
I didn’t quite know what to do, so I called out again.
“This is ridiculous! What can this possibly pro—”
My hand twitched—not much, but slightly.
The cheese shifted suddenly—about fifty inches this time.
My hand sprang out, clawed at the mossy wall, and dragged me forward. I used my other hand to slow my progress, but when I looked back the cheese was once again on the move.
“What the heck is—”
I punched myself in the face. It wasn’t that hard, but I wasn’t expecting it. The blow smashed my crumbling nose and almost knocked me over.
Screaming in anger, I rallied back and gave my left arm such a slap that even the elbow flushed red.
Then the cheese went nuts. It must have been pulled so hard on the wire that it actually took off into the air, flying away from me like a weird, cheddar version of Superman. My evil appendage backhanded me for good measure and then dug into the moss, dragging me along like a little kid pulls a new kite. I was ramming into walls, tripping over rocks, colliding with unseen trees growing from the path.
And, all the while, I’m thinking: This is mental.
The cheese shot up the spiralling steps of the Well, and I went after it. I couldn’t help picturing a massive mousetrap waiting at the end of the wire to signal a hefty goodbye to what was left of my crumbling body.
“Argghh!” I screamed as my head glanced off yet another rock, and then I was out—emerging from the top of the well into the dank, glistening tunnels of the sub-sewer.
I couldn’t even see the cheese anymore; it was a distant memory.
Then it happened.
Crossing from the sub-sewer into one of the old underground tunnels, my demonic arm swung me around the bend with such force that my head smacked sharply off an ancient brick outcrop and I was immediately knocked unconscious.
I had one very quick and unusual dream where I was riding an elephant with chronic diarrhea through a garden of enormous vegetables. Then I woke up . . .
. . . and soon wished I hadn’t.
My head was still bouncing off something, and I was still being propelled along. But now I felt a cool carpet of grass passing underneath me. Somehow, my loss of consciousness had seen me through three different sets of underground tunnels and now I was back above ground, heading for—what?
I managed to glance up just in time to see the grim outline of Mortlake Church against the background of a dark night sky.
I could now see the cheese flying toward it, the wire dragging it so fast that it actually sprang up in places, ricocheting off rocks and losing parts of its mass in bushes and hedgerows along the way.
It wasn’t even cheese shaped any more. It closely resembled a slightly weather-beaten block of butter.
I risked another glimpse forward, thinking at first that the entrance to the church was actually wreathed in flame. In fact, the flames were from torches carried by a large group of cloaked and hooded figures that gathered in a rough semicircle on the church steps. A little way behind them, and slightly off to one side, stood Max Moon and Jemini, both looking as worried as I felt.
Flames, said my ever-annoying subconscious. They’re going to burn you.
But—seriously—what could I do? I quickly assessed my options. I came up with:
Dig my good hand into the grass and get it ripped off.
Dig my good hand and my legs into the grass and get them all ripped off.
Dig my good hand and my legs into the grass, stop my progress, have a massive fight with my other hand—lose—and get ripped apart.
Dig my good hand and my legs into the grass, stop my progress, have a massive fight with my other hand—win—and get burned alive by the town torch bearers.
Wait and see what happens.
Guess which one I went for?
Trying to block out the weird chanting that I could now hear ringing clearly from the fast-approaching church entrance, I drew in a breath, thought of my friends, and prepared to take one for the team.
I could never have predicted what happened next. . . .
Undead Ed and the Demon Freakshow Page 7
