The Nightmare Maker

by Gregory Pettit

  “Mr. Adler, you are officially out on a very hastily arranged bail right now. No, you cannot just happen to ‘pick up’ a fully automatic police-issue carbine,” Badger replied. I may have grumbled something about Second Amendment rights and 1776, but I didn’t press my luck. Instead, I pressed ahead by sidling over to the to the rapidly lengthening shadows and slinking carefully toward the former offices of OMG, the real estate agency run by a trio of Irish witches that had been at the center of the madness that had cost me my wife.

  Sometimes, people wonder why bad things keep happening in the same place, and they chalk it up to a curse or “bad vibes.” I don’t know enough about the spooky side of life yet to know how true that is in general, but logic and instinct both told me that, based on the madness that had occurred here the previous summer, this would be the spot from which Senior Auditor Brown would find his way into the Dreamscape and launch his real assault. To wit: a supernatural creature had been summoned here dozens of times, I’d produced a literally face-melting blast of energy from nothing but my willpower and the terror of a zombie trying to devour my testicles, and I’d seen a hole bored into our dimension in that very building. The fabric of reality would be as frayed as my nerves in a room full of screaming toddlers.

  The building had been locked up as part of the ongoing investigation into the events of last summer, but after the initial flurry of police activity, it had been sealed up with a simple padlock and chain setup at both the front and rear exits. However, as we got within a hundred yards of the corner of Old Street, where the office was located, I knew that my guess had been right. Even though the locks were undisturbed, something caustic, like the secretions of a certain madman’s freakish tentacle-arm, had eaten a still-smoking hole through the glass double doors.

  “Why do I suddenly feel like the dog that has finally caught the car?” I muttered, and then turned to Badger and carried on under my breath, “Your informant has successfully identified the location of the alleged suspect. Are we umm…cool now?”

  Badger turned to me. “Mr. Adler, I don’t think you’ve been ‘cool’ for one moment during your entire life. You chose to be a procurement officer, for Christ’s sake. I, on the other hand, am the next best thing to Sherlock Holmes. Nevertheless, on a more serious note, you are quite right. You have found the perpetrator and, unless you have any objection, I’ll be sending in my highly trained, heavily armed officers to apprehend the Senior Auditor, as he has been so kind as to leave me probable cause to enter the premises in the form of a gaping entry point.”

  “So I’ll just take that as a yes then…” I replied, pursing my lips to keep from babbling. Olivia might be less than fifty feet away.

  “Gentlemen, the unconventional target inside may not be alone and may be armed with some form of caustic agent,” Badger said firmly to the armed officers. “And he may be holding hostages, including our informant’s young daughter; please proceed with care,” he finished more gently, nodding toward me.

  I quickly explained what I could remember of the layout of the office, focusing in particular on the entrance mechanism to the ritual room. The two men, one white and one Pakistani or Indian, listened intently, dipped their heads in acknowledgment, and ducked through the entrance hole, vanishing into the darkened interior. Badger and I waited.

  “So…are they some kind of special forces? The Met’s X-files division or something? Do they have special abilities of some sort? Oooh, are they countersorcerers?” I asked into the cool October night.

  “They’re just men, Mr. Adler. We’re all just men. They have a bit of additional training and know that there are weird things out there. That’s all,” Badger replied, his tone far away as he strained to pick up on any hint of what was going on in the nearly pitch-black interior. I wished that there were more than two officers but, on top of the growing riot at the bank, there were reports of violence and disturbances throughout the city—presumably the work of the prisoners that Brown had freed.

  We waited another five minutes, and I felt a frisson of nervous energy spider-crawl down my spine as, somewhere to the west, back toward my home, the sun sank below the horizon. I started tapping my foot; Badger gave me a disapproving glance, but I couldn’t bottle up my nerves. I needed to know what was going on inside. Without realizing exactly what I was doing, I focused on trying to determine what was happening. I strained all of my senses toward the activities in the building and…suddenly I felt my mind questing out, a sixth sense exploring the terrain like I had done in the Dreamscape ten thousand times. First, I felt the pressure of the officers’ minds, a pair of surprisingly similar points of warmth in the void, crouched at the bottom of the staircase. Then my consciousness glided forward, up the stairs to the second story while simultaneously expanding to fill the empty building behind me. I glided through the doors to the OMG partners’ private offices, finding that space empty as well, and then I paused, hesitating at the familiar entrance to the ritual room. If he was going to be anywhere in the building, the Senior Auditor would be in there.

  I was hesitant to take the plunge, not sure what would happen if Brown were actually on the other side. I felt my knees tremble, and it occurred to me that I might not be at my leisure to just wait around—reality was probably going to impose a period of unconsciousness on me soon in retribution for violating its laws, so I screwed up my courage and my willpower and plunged through the wall.

  There was light.

  It was like I had walked into a room full of ten-million-candlepower spotlights, and the psychic force of that brilliance slammed into my senses, making my knees buckle and my mind’s eye go momentarily blind. I felt a hand loop under my armpit and guessed that Badger was buoying me up. After a moment, I adjusted to the brilliance and was able to get my bearings back—enough at least to sense a roiling, greasy, black point of consciousness that gave off the mental equivalent of the stench of rotten meat and taste of ammonium chloride.

  Both entities picked up on my presence simultaneously, and I sensed rather than heard their thoughts. “Daddy?” thrummed into my mind with the clarity of a chime of crystal glass, and immediately on its heels an oily basso rumble of “FREAK!” thundered against my consciousness, flinging my mental probe away and plunging me into momentary blackness.

  The pop-pop-pop of an uncontrolled burst of automatic-weapons fire tore through the air, and I rolled over, slowly reassembling my thoughts while stretched out on the pavement. I struggled to sit up and noticed Badger leaning his head into the opening, his revolver drawn.

  “Walker? Patel?” Badger hollered, cupping his hand to his mouth and leaning farther in. People on the street picked up their pace to get away from the area or ducked into doorways, but there was no repetition of the gunfire, and thirty seconds passed with no further indication of the fight continuing.

  The detective inspector leaned back out of the door and looked at me. With his glasses reflecting the early-evening streetlights, I couldn’t see his eyes, but the force of his gaze fell upon me like a physical weight. “Boy, whatever stupid thing you just did, you don’t have to come with me, but I’m still going in. Someone might be hurt. You’re a civilian, but it’s my duty.”

  “Shouldn’t you call for backup or something?” I asked, my guts turning to jelly at the idea that my daughter might, even now, be bleeding out from a bullet wound.

  There’s no time, and there’s no one else left anyhow, but I’ve sworn an oath. I wouldn’t mind a bit of backup, though—just to hold the flashlight, of course. Are you with me?” He sounded tired, but his back was straight, and my mind went back to how I’d seen him in the Dreamscape: young, and fit, and fearless.

  I hesitated, afraid that my mental probing had given away the police officers and gotten them killed, but then I started to get mad—when things look bad, and it looks like you’re not gonna make it, then you gotta get mean. I mean plumb, mad-dog mean. ’Cause if you lose your head and you give up, then you neither live nor win. At least that wh
at I’d learned from Clint Eastwood. I nodded to Badger.

  “I reckon so.”

  The corner of the detective inspector’s mouth turned up, and he handed me a foot-long, steel-bodied Maglite that could easily double as a truncheon. We crept through the darkened office, but, not wanting to give away our position, I didn’t turn on the light yet. I could just make out the glow of a very dim light source leaking between the wooden doors, standing slightly ajar, that led to the partners’ office. We slowly, carefully tiptoed up to the door, and I detected the noise of someone—or something—chanting in a language that hadn’t been invented for human vocal cords. Then I caught the high-pitched whine of a little girl’s incipient crying.

  My hands started to shake; I thought at first that it was in anticipation of getting my little girl back, but then my knees wobbled and my vision swam.

  “No, no, no…not so soon,” I hissed through gritted teeth. The universe was trying to extract payment for my use of extradimensional forces, but if I passed out now, I wouldn’t be able to help Olivia. I didn’t have time to wait. Badger tried to grab me, but I lurched through the doorway, legs pistoning wildly. The light was stronger on the other side of the doors, spilling out from the hole in the wall where the concealing bookcase had slid to the side, granting access to the normally hidden ritual room.

  I didn’t slow down as I sprinted through the room but, as I dodged around a blocky oak desk, my mind registered the fate of the two police officers. Both of them were lying in a heap on the floor, pinned together by some sort of sticky green goop. It covered their faces, and I could see that one man, the Caucasian, had died of asphyxiation. Presumably, based on the gun in his hand, he’d been the one to shoot. Officer Singh had perished in a much more horrible manner; while the green goop had covered his mouth and prevented him from screaming, some kind of acid had been liberally applied to his chest. The vitriolic fluid had eaten through his Met vest, devoured his skin, made short work of the muscle underneath, dissolved his sternum, and finally poured into his chest cavity, turning his vital organs into a reeking brown soup. Two more things to make Brown pay for…

  I cleared the desk at a sprint and got a look into the ritual room. I saw Brown balancing a large, leather-bound book on his tentacle-arm and standing in a pentagram—a pentagram made of corpses. Five bodies with their throats slit were intertwined to form a star with the Senior Auditor in the middle. My stomach flip-flopped; I recognized them as some of the UnAdled from the party. On the far side of the pentagram, a woman sat on the ground, head lolling; I guessed she’d been drugged. She looked thinner and badly used, but after a moment I recognized her as Donna, the UnAdled who had made a pass at me at the gathering, and my vision blurred at the confirmation that the detective inspector and I had been right.

  Those thoughts were driven from my mind as I spotted Olivia. She was huddled in the corner, hiding behind Donna, and didn’t notice me closing in from the darkened room. Brown was oriented toward my daughter, and he was still chanting in that weird, throat-tearing language, seeming utterly engrossed in the spell. This was my chance.

  I had to blink rapidly to drive away the tears and exhaustion trying to shut down my brain, but I didn’t slow my pace as I focused on the Senior Auditor. I cleared the remaining space in three bounds, raised the heavy flashlight over my head, and brought it crashing down at the back of Brown’s head…and it did sweet fuck-all, rebounding off a dome of viridian power that flared around the sorcerer and made the flashlight tumble from my suddenly numb fingers.

  Off balance from the impact, I stumbled and lurched into the wall.

  “Daddy!” Olivia screamed and ran toward me. Gathering my wits (such as I had), I turned to try and grab her, but sparkles of energy shimmered as she struck the mystical barrier from the other side, rebounding off and landing on her bottom. She let out a surprised wail and pounded her tiny fists against the spell that separated us. There was some kind of commotion behind me, so I glanced over my shoulder to see what was going on as the Senior Auditor kept chanting.

  I had rushed into the room in a panic, and therefore I had run right past two more hostages, who were leaned against the wall just to the right of the secret entrance. Unnatural weariness pulled at my mental defenses, and my eyelids were heavy, but even so, I goggled when I realized who they were: Becky, bound and gagged, was thrashing on the floor, and Badger was trying to untie the ropes of another figure—Toscan! I took a tottering step toward my friend.

  “Mate,” he drawled as he accepted Badger’s hand and rose, stiffly, to his feet. He’d been missing for days and looked the worse for wear, sporting a week’s growth of beard and a shiner that closed his left eye completely. I hadn’t expected to ever see him again, but I didn’t have time to feel anything like happiness at his safety.

  “Help me…” I whispered and collapsed to my knees. My vision started to tunnel, and I watched as Toscan went out of the room and returned with one of the fallen officers’ carbines. I vaguely comprehended that that seemed like a bad idea.

  “Don’t shoo…da…thingy…ricochets…” I mumbled, collapsing onto all fours. Somewhere in the background, Olivia screamed, and the chanting built toward a crescendo.

  Somehow, Toscan must have heard me even over the rest of the din because he replied, “Mate—I think you’ve fundamentally misunderstood who is getting shot here,” and then he pointed the barrel of the gun toward me.

  That didn’t seem right, but I couldn’t quite understand why it should worry me. And then I heard Becky shout, “He’s the one who took us! He’s working with that monster!” Toscan swung around to aim at my sister-in-law and jerked the trigger. A burst of 9mm bullets tore through the air toward the defenseless co-ed—but the detective inspector flung himself in front of her, simultaneously snapping off two shots from his .38 Webley revolver. There was a noise like hammers thudding into a side of beef, and Badger cried out in pain and crashed on top of Becky in a heap while Toscan ducked back around the entrance.

  I, helpfully, collapsed onto the floor. It was cool, and I was so very, very sleepy. Just before consciousness fled, I heard Toscan speak again. “Stupid old man. I’m sorry to do this, Julian, but it’s part of his price for taking me on as his apprentice. Really, though, you are such a loser. You’ve stood on the edge of a grand stage, and you’ve had a peephole in the curtain of reality for your entire life, but you’ve never been curious enough or brave enough to push it aside and find out what lies beyond. The Senior Auditor is going to show me everything. He’s going to—”

  There was a meaty thunk, and then a weight fell on me, the surprise of which roused me sufficiently to open my eyes and look up. Becky loomed, the Maglite in her hand and snot running down her tear-streaked face. I saw her family resemblance to Dana more clearly at that moment than I ever had before.

  “Get up! Wake up, you stupid sack of shit!” she yelled, giving me a not-so-gentle nudge in the ribs with her foot, and I had to reassess my previous thought—now she reminded me of Dana. She hauled at Toscan, and I tried to help but couldn’t seem to find any strength. The blackness was closing in again as the chanting rose to a fever pitch. Then it stopped. Complete silence.

  Suddenly there was a feeling like my whole body was being bathed in static electricity, and Becky must have felt something as well because she let out a high-pitched yip of surprise.

  “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthugha Fomalhaut n’gha-ghaa naf’lthagn!” Brown screeched in one final ejaculation of sanity-warping syllables. There was the unmistakable crackle of a neck being broken, a noise like fingernails on a chalkboard, and a feeling of wrongness permeated the room. However, much to my surprise, the weight of weariness that had pressed me to the very verge of unconsciousness started to abate. I lifted my head.

  Inside of the barrier, I could make out a three-meter-tall rip in the air that emitted a sullen gray light. It was connected to each of the corpses, including Donna’s rapidly cooling body, by streamers of inky blackness. Brown’s
twisted form pulsed forward and, surprisingly gently, lifted Olivia from the ground, tucking her under his arm. Her arms reached out to me; she kicked her feet and wailed forlornly. I snapped.

  Hatred of the man who had ruined my career, murdered innocents, killed my wife, and stolen my daughter sent adrenaline flowing through my veins with the power of a hundred years of compound interest. I surged up with a roar and charged the invisible barrier separating me from my daughter, crashing into it with a flash of green light. Brown casually glanced over his shoulder.

  “I’ll be your new daddy, Olivia,” the deformed sorcerer said, barely intelligibly through a mouth full of fangs, and slithered through the portal.

  “You filth! You evil, freakish thing! You motherfucker! I’ll dip you in salt until your ass falls off, and then I’ll chop you into a thousand pieces, sauté you in butter, and eat you! I will erase you from the universe!” I screamed that and more as I pounded the layer of extradimensional energy blocking my pursuit.

  I looked around the room and spotted Becky tying Toscan’s hands behind him with some of the cast-off rope. “Just shoot the sonofabitch and come help me!” I shouted, holding my hands out in supplication. The young woman looked shocked and shook her head.

  “No. Julian, you should help Detective Badger,” she said, her voice trembling and eyes wide.

  “Fuck Badger. I Need. To. Get. Through. This. Force field!” I said through gritted teeth, biting off every word. I felt my pulse hammering in my temple and saw Becky’s mouth drop open.

  “Julian, your hands…” I looked down and saw red-and-orange sparks coruscating down between the fingers of my outstretched hands. A moment of clarity broke through my rage, and I realized that if my emotions alone were inadvertently manifesting visually, then the laws of physics were acting more like friendly suggestions. I didn’t try to push down my anger; instead, I used it to help me focus my well-honed will and envisioned the tools that I’d need to get my daughter back. I pictured the gladius and trench coat that I’d carried into battle with a thousand howling nightmares. I visualized them in the smallest detail, the sharpness of the steel, the roughness of the grip, and the impenetrable strength of the thick canvas coat filling my mind…and pushed.