by Kim Newman
Eventually, she went out onto the croquet lawn and found what was left of Coral, her arm separate from her, lying with Amelia and the others. Giselle was sitting next to her, breaking her fingers, trying to feed off the girl but tasting only dry ashes which made her sick. Giselle coughed up grey matter, and crawled away, disgusted. Judi touched Coral, and the remains fell apart completely. The girl was gone. So, it was possible to die more. She wondered if she would miss Coral.
The girl had been fun. Once, giggly drunk in the flat and surprised at themselves, they had made love. It had been pleasant, but they had never repeated the experiment. Very few of Judi's good memories had to do with sex or love, and so that once was precious. She had never really enjoyed hurting or giving hurt, but that was the way it had all too often worked out.
She slept and ate, or at least pretended to, and changed her clothes regularly. She had a lot of clothes. Everything she had ever owned was in the house, and it all, back to her smallest baby-dresses, still fitted her.
She learned the names of some of the other ghosts. She had long conversations with an Irishman named Niall Baum who thought he was in a Dublin boarding house in the 1870s, and learned from him a little more about the Monster. From him she learned that Giselle was of the Monster's kind, and that she had been his wife - a thing beyond imagining - until an end was put to her. Too many of the others spoke and thought only in languages she had no way of understanding.
Bored, she tried to kiss Niall, and he disappeared. She felt strange after that, and could remember Shanghai, a series of explosions, and a bloody struggle in a temple in the hills. She felt some of her fuzziness disappear, and was not sure what had happened.
The ghosts were becoming fewer in number, and she was feeling more solid. It took her a while to realise that she was taking them all into herself. It was bizarre, not entirely comfortable, and - she suspected - dangerous.
How could she hope to stay Judi if she were taking all these others on board?
She could understand Mandarin now, and Turkish and mediaeval French, and other useless tongues. She had died in battles from before the time of Christ down to Khe Sanh, and in numberless squalid, fundamentally unchanging, beds down through the centuries. She felt especially close to Macha Igescu, who had died for the first time in Istanbul in 1938; they had both been whores, both been wasted in a city across the sea from the land of their birth, had both excited and touched the Monster… Digging deep, she was surprised to discover a thinned relationship: Macha's cousin in Bucharest had been married to a Nastase whose uncle had emigrated to America and changed his name to Nielson.
Judi had seen the Clive ghost with a similarly shrunken young man, whose perfumed curls and thin greased moustache made him a childish dandy, and learned from Macha that this was Demetrios, who had been her pimp and protector. After feeding off her, the Monster had killed Demetrios as a favour. It was one of his many capricious gestures.
Eventually, Nina Kenyon turned up. She was wearing torn clothes, and her make-up had streaked. Judi was glad to see her, and they hugged.
'Judi,' the other girl said, 'I'm so tired.'
'Sleep, then.'
'I will.'
Judi stroked Nina's hair, and the frail ghost became faint in her embrace. Macha joined them, more hair, more hands, and Judi felt the Roumanian girl's cheek sinking through her own.
Suddenly, she was alone, remembering Coral smoking at school and a boat trip across the Bosphorus.
She was still Judi, but she was Nina and Macha too.
She saw Clive and Demetrios, but they were the size of housecats, and scurried away.
She remembered shaving her head, surrounded by religious relics, and vowing to bring down the King of the Cats.
Then, she knew that was Niall Baum's memory.
As an experiment, she seduced a ghost. A tiny Indian girl with an elaborate pearl ornament shaped like a snail's shell in one nostril. Judi took her, and absorbed her. There was a rush of unfamiliar experience, and a sense of gratitude at being no longer alone. Kanchi was by far the oldest of the ghosts she had come across, and Judi was startled by the vividness of her memories.
The Monster, whom she thought of as Guillaume of Oswestry, had accepted her in marriage as a gift, and fed off her a little at a time over a period of months. There was nothing in Kanchi's experience which jibed with any history Judi knew, and so she could not even guess how long the girl had been a ghost.
The house changed with each of her absorptions. She found new rooms, fabulously unfamiliar and yet homely. She lived memories, fantasies and illusions. The Dream expanded, the mists receding, and the New Hampshire house became a higgledy-piggledy palace.
She collected ghosts, absorbed and became them all. She swam with Jeane Russell, and was exhilarated by the self-image of a healthy, perfectly-tuned body. She fought with Stefan Snieszawski, and was astounded by her sword-wielding courage in battle. She crept up on Cam and finally put things right between them, absorbing him gently. She was surprised at what she found within her half-brother, and a little shamed by his turbulent depths.
From Nina, Judi learned about Anne. She saw, and was delighted by, her sister in the Club Des Esseintes, hitting Eric Wardle with a chair. It was strange, as Anne threaded herself into pictures Judi knew intimately but could not associate with her sister. Here was Anne in the Club, in Nina's flat, at one of Amelia's 'entertainments'…
She found a dried-up doll on the lawn, and knew that it was both Clive and Demetrios Malacou, gone forever. They resembled a pickled set of Siamese twins in a freak show. She tried to suck them in, but there was nothing left.
She was almost alone in the Dream. She was all the ghosts in one. She remembered being Niall Baum, Kanchi, Nina, Macha Igescu, Cam, and the others, but she was still herself, still Judi.
Giselle hid from her, but she saw her handiwork everywhere. Rooms were vandalised, and the remains violated.
Finally, on the lawn, she caught the ancient little girl and, shutting her ears to the shrieked pleas, ate her all up.
As Giselle gave up the struggle, Judi felt a sudden vertigo. The palace, the lawn, the mists beyond. They all collapsed, leaving only a limitless darkness.
Judi was the Dream.
FIFTEEN
THE CLUB DES ESSEINTES was not hidden now. A fiery, twisted sign burned above the window of the nostalgia shop, casting a hellish glow on the display of comics. All the covers stuck to a formula - the superhero in trouble. There was Superman OD'd on Kryptonite, Iron Man rusting away to nothing, Swamp Thing falling victim to a Deep South drainage and reclamation scheme, the X-Men Xed out by the League of Evil Mutants. Anne knew that, in the end, these super-guys would win. She was not super, but she was in trouble, and she thought that she could win too. She had to think that. She had to.
The amusement arcade next door was a joke, with clanking, clattering and bleeping sound effects but no moving parts. Crude tailor's dummies posed over the pinball tables and video games, their stiff hands unfit for the tasks they were supposed to be performing. The music was wrong too - big band jazz, not hip-hop loudness. Skinner was giving up on the street.
He was in the Club Des Esseintes, and he wanted her to come for him. Fair enough. Then, he would not have to bother dreaming the city properly. They would have it out, and one of them could go home to sleep. Anne was tired, but she would be okay for the big finale. She was sure.
The nostalgia shop was locked up, the sign on the door said 'open'. So in she went, knowing the way now. The shop was empty of people, but there was a whirring and clicking in one corner. The collection of Japanese warrior robots was swinging into action. Eyes flicked on and off, mighty plastic arms lifted, jet planes became miniature android colossi, death rays warmed up. She took a light sabre from a Star Wars display and swept the robots off their stand. Designed to take the aggressive play of even the most creatively destructive child, the robots were unharmed and dangerous.
She stamped on a hawk-faced hu
manoid with buzz-saw bracelets. She had been doing a lot of damage with her feet recently. This time, all she did was hurt her ankle. One of the little bastards pinched her calf with blunt metal claws. She kicked it away. The plastic light sabre was proving useless, so she exchanged it for the centrepiece of a display promoting a video-only splatter movie, The Cincinnati Flamethrower Holocaust.
She wished it were for real, and so it was. She adjusted the nozzle like the one on the weedkiller spray back home in New Hampshire, and turned the flames on. A spurt of fire came out of the hose attachment. She swept the flame in a scythe-swath in front of her, aiming low. The robots went up instantly, and fell aside. They became little mounds of bubbling plastic and twisted tin. The stench was ghastly. The fire spread to some early Howard the Ducks, and died out suddenly. She dropped the toy on the floor, and stepped over the burned patch.
The spiral staircase was still there. The burning smells were stronger, and some were coming up from below. She had never come across brimstone, but this was what she would have guessed it was like. Also, there were waves of heat coming up from the Club.
She went downstairs.
The corridor was the same as it had been this morning, but the portrait frames on the wall were untenanted, containing either sheets of blank coloured canvas or meticulously dull paintings of chairs and curtains. She expected that the Marquis de Sade and his intimate friends were wandering around.
There was no exectioner-suited bouncer guarding the doors. Eric must only work the day shift. She was glad of that. He would have been sure to remember her and hold a grudge. This time, the musak was reworking an old Everly Brothers song, 'Love Hurts.'
Again, she went into the Inferno Lounge. Inside, it was Hell.
SIXTEEN
IN THE PLACE that had been the Inferno Lounge, but was now simply an Inferno, he waited for her. He had put her image up on the television monitors, and watched her coming for him. In his freshly-stolen youth, he was impatient for it all to be over. The expectation of pleasure coursed through his body. There was an electric tingling in his venom glands, in the flesh under his fingernails and in the tip of his penis. All the self-control he had learned was needed now. His mind kept his body on straining leashes.
The change had made him himself again, but he would have to discharge some of his surplus energy before the build-up literally tore him apart. He watched Anne on the monitors. The ghosts he had sent after her, to signpost the way to his lair, were pussycats compared with the ghosts forming in the red shadows of this room. He cheered and hooted as she overcame the weaklings he put in her way. He was glad to lose them. Once out of Anne's sight, he knew they would cease clinging to existence. They were gone forever. He sensed her growing confidence in her ability to survive this game, and the muscles in his arms spasmed in delight. She would be a feast, an unparalleled feast.
Although he was paying most attention to the monitors, he had other things to take care of. With a splurge of raw thought, he reshaped his environment, tearing down and building upon the banal Dante-and-Bosch conception of Hell that had been fostered by the decorators of the Club Des Esseintes. In the murals, damned souls began to wriggle in their torment, snake-tongued devils prodded them with tridents, vats of blood and excrement came to the boil, the Vices cavorted in a sinful jubilee. Every scream he had ever heard was replayed in a choral symphony of terror that Anne's brother would have sold his soul to have written. At the bar, a former Pope of the Black Church set up a line of fire and ice cocktails.
The best of his ghosts were with still him, the ones who had been as vital as Anne, the ones who had kept him alive well into his third millennium. Judi was there, and the three from China, and those who had come against him earlier. They had given him a hard time once, but they were his now, his utterly, to do with as he wished.
He called Judi out of the Dream, and bound her with fire. Surprised at the strength he still sensed in her, he threaded iron through the fire to make sure. She rattled her manacles, but was held fast.
Manacles would have many memories for her, he was sure.
He fashioned a throne of twisted corpses from the mural, and sat regally upon it. His ghosts stood like attendants. On the screens, Anne burned a horde of dolls. He liked playing the Devil, but it was just a game.
'I'm just a thing of nature, like you,' he told his unlistening ghosts. 'I'm no more the Devil than an alligator or a trap-door spider is. All this…' he gestured to the fiery lakes and the infernal landscapes '… is your Dream. I'm only borrowing it for a while.'
Anne was outside now, in the corridor. Her television image flickered with its soon-to-be-released ghost. How sad, he thought, that she would never appreciate how special she was. At least, not until she had lost the qualities that made her so.
Anne came into the Inferno Lounge. The doors banged behind her, and became a part of the gargoyle-sprouting rock wall.
'Gotcha!' he shouted.
SEVENTEEN
AT THE CENTRE of his Pit, he was sprawled casually in a high-backed chair wrought from a tangle of living limbs and torsos. Bones had been broken and reset during its manufacture, and the component people still suffered the pains. A face stared out from between his elegant ankles, silently screaming. Its eyeballs burst like lanced boils, spattering the backs of his trousers with steaming humours. Skinner did not mind. He could walk through a downpour of burning filth and stay as well-turned out as Fred Astaire. To her surprise, he had some of Astaire's loose-limbed vitality. Even as he relaxed, she could see the agility and expertise of his movements. He was younger than she had ever seen him, but the youth of his body was coupled with the skills and experience of an immortal genius. The ridges of his multiply-healed scars lit up like orange neon veins under his skin. He was laughing at her. It was the least human sound she had ever heard. In this light, his hundreds of teeth were ruby-red and shark-sharp.
She did not believe in the Devil, she did not believe in the Devil, she did not believe in the Devil…
'My world, and welcome to it, Anne.'
… but the Devil believed in her.
'You look like a dream,' he purred.
Standing behind his throne like Satan's lady-in-waiting was Judi. She was whole again, and wholly his creature, wrapped in chains. He held out a hand, palm up. She took it, and stroked it, the links of her handcuffs polished and shining. Her studs and chains and zippers held a million reflected fires. Her face was as dead and beautiful as that of a make-up-masked magazine model.
As usual, Anne could expect no help from her sister.
She stepped towards him, fingers hooked into claws. She was going to open his face like a pair of thick curtains. She did not get very far.
She could not see them, but they came from everywhere - out of the walls, swimming up through a floor that was solid to her but liquid to them, from under the Club Des Esseintes' bolted-down tables, out from their perches on ceiling fans and light fixtures. Horny hands grabbed her, and held her like leather straps. Her elbows, hands, knees, feet, hips, neck and head were held fast. She was forced to look ahead, at Skinner. Something with damp fingers was pulling her hair. Something with fingertips that stung like nettles had a hand in her clothes, and was painfully tickling her stomach, circling her navel with mosquito bites. Barely audible obscenities were cooed into her ear.
This, she knew, was nothing.
Skinner got out of his throne, and strolled towards her. He did not dance, but his walk had the pantherlike litheness of the very best professional golfers. He put his huge face near hers. Clamped down, unable to look anywhere but into his eyes, at his teeth or up his nose, she felt like the victim of skilfully sadistic dentist. If she looked to her extreme left, rolling her eyes so far that her optic muscles ached, she could see a black and red blur. Judi was standing back, watching the operation without interest, like a dental assistant who has seen all the bridgework she ever wants to but knows that she has a better job than all her friends who are waitresses.
He unconsciously licked his lips, and kept on touching her face. She knew he was getting off on it somehow. Unusual little muscles in his throat, cheeks and temples were twitching slightly. He had closed his eyes, and was transported with pleasure. She felt the fight going out of her, as if it were draining into him through pinprick pores that opened wherever his fingernail pressed.
Not pinned down, but embraced. Not dying, but living. She wanted to go to sleep.
Her face cooled as he massaged it. She relaxed, became absurdly comfortable. The stinging on her stomach faded away. All sensations went away…
… she dreamed she was floating in a warm sea, endowed with a painless buoyancy. Only her face was above water, and gentle waves broke on her chin. Anemones brushed her heels as she drifted away from the shore with the tide. There were clouds high above her, and circling seabirds. She knew she would have to make one last effort, take one last breath, and then propel herself downwards, through fathoms of clear, sun-filtering water. Only at the bottom of the sea could she sleep.
