DIRE : BORN

by Andrew Seiple

  “Great Clown Pagliacci.” The whisper was so soft that I barely heard it. And I wasn't even sure I'd heard it right, that last part was no word I recognized.

  “Hm?”

  “Back in the day. Back after Korea and that clusterfuck. Never should have enlisted back up but never mind that... back in the day Great Clown Pagliacci was the villain that other villains told scary stories about. Didn't sound like much at first. Just a guy in sad clown makeup with a knife. But whenever he turned up in a city, the bodies started piling up until he was done. Then he'd paint in blood somewhere it would be found, always the same thing... 'La Commedia e finita.' The comedy is finished.”

  “Sounds like one of those outside the kayfabe.”

  “Huh?”

  “Martin told Dire about faces, heels, the secret of Kayfabe in professional wrestling. Compared it to heroes and villains.”

  “Ha. He's got some funny ideas. Told me about that too, and I laughed my ass off. I went hero a few decades after Korea when times got really bad, joined up with a few local youngsters. We had ourselves a group... Boilerplate, Lucy Goosey, Mister Sandman and me. We had the notion we'd help clean up the city, and go from there. We did some good, but...”

  He fell silent, and I pushed him through the gates. Litter and sand on the old boardwalk crunched underneath his wheels, and I was acutely aware of the groaning of the old wood.

  “Cops and robbers,” he muttered.

  “Say what?”

  “It's less wrasslin' and more cops and robbers. At least it was in my day. The villains would knock you out and tie you up, maybe gloat a bit, then skedaddle. Or you'd capture them and turn them over to the authorities. They'd do some time then bust out or get sprung by their buddies. Bank robberies and stuff, art thefts, maybe a political demonstration or stuff like that. Hell, when Reverend King called for the march to Washington I ended up traveling alongside one of the biggest smash and grab guys in the city, name a' Concrete Jackson, and we laughed our asses off about it all the way up to Maryland. We ended up fightin' off the Hooded Riders together, put their punk asses down before they could lynch a single soul in our group. Jackson got out of the game in seventy-nine and good on him, but I'm saying it was different then. And in eighty-two it changed when that goddamn clown came to town.”

  We were moving down the remnants of a large central area now. A sign at the end of it proclaimed it “Midway”. Old booths and carousels sat, boarded-up or with tarps thrown over them. Here and there gulls pecked at garbage that had probably blown here from off of the mainland. We were alone, and as I was forced to maneuver the chair around holes in the boardwalk, I could see why. The place was a wreck.

  “What happened?” The wind out here was fiercer than it was on shore, and I envied Sparky his scarf.

  “Blood happened,” he sighed. “Blood and death. Every time we thought we had a lead, it just turned into more dead bodies. He was a step ahead of us all the way. Devilish traps to wear us down, expendable mooks recruited at gunpoint, strapped with explosives and the promise that their families would pay if they didn't take us down with them. Oh, it wasn't just the Harbor Watch he targeted, it was the other groups, too. The bastard... he mowed through the Torchbearers like...” He fell silent for a while. “We were Harbor Watch, don't know if I told you that. Worked mainly in the wharves, took on smugglers and gangsters. The Torchbearers were kids. They were a local program set up by the Liberty Brigade vets who came back home after the war. To teach and help young metas come to grips with their powers, show them how to be heroes if that's what they wanted. Pagliacci took offense to the idea, I guess. They disappeared early on. We found them three days later.” He fell silent again, and I snuck a look at his face. It had gone pale and solemn, and had a terrible weight to it.

  For a few moments there was nothing but the soft crash of the waves chopping against the pilings under us.

  “Does she want to know?” I whispered.

  “I bambini devono essere visto e udito,” he whispered back. “Those were the words on the note we found at the scene of the crime.”

  I shook my head, and he elaborated.

  “Children should be seen, and not heard. What do you think he did with their tongues after he got done torturing them to death? Because whatever you might think, what we found was way more horrible then you can imagine. I ain't going into details. That was the day we stopped treating it like cops and robbers with him. That was the day we set out to kill that evil fucker.”

  I swallowed, sickened. He put out a liver-spotted hand, pointed to the left. “Turn here.”

  Silence again, as we rolled past a groaning Ferris wheel, rust holding it up more than any remnants of structural integrity. We started moved out among the arching skeletons of rollercoaster tracks. Some of them had collapsed, leaving the odd stretch of wood and metal twisting down from the pylons that were still standing, here and there. Others were mostly intact, though I certainly wouldn't trust my safety to them.

  And at the end of the boardwalk loomed the ruin of the funhouse. Charred, fallen in, garish-but-faded paint turning the entrance from a laughing clown's mouth to a frenzied scream of red. Old stains, old blood.

  “This is where it ended,” he said, his eyes faraway and his face still as the ice below. “This is where he died... Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “We knew he was here. He'd left clues, and we were nearest the scene when the shooting and the screams started. His goons had blocked the entrance, mowed down anyone who tried to leave. We'd waded through them, and past the panicked crowd, to get here. All save Lucy... she could fly, y'see. We found her on the roof later, unconscious. Beartrap had taken her foot off and she'd bled out before we could get her back to a doctor.”

  I looked at the funhouse again, and couldn't suppress a shudder. He'd called me Lucy the first time he'd seen me.

  I asked the foremost question on my mind. “Why are we here, Sparky? It sounds horrible. Why put yourself through this again?”

  He gnawed at his lip. “You see where the roof is broken there? With the grating right below it?”

  I did. The metal was leaning ladder-like on the wall, with the sagging roof at its lowest point, a mere seven feet above it. “Yes.”

  “I need you to climb it, and feel in the gap between the roof and the wall. Shouldn't be hard to find.”

  I eyed it, shucked my backpack, then moved forward to the grating and started climbing. It twisted under my feet, and took a worrisome amount of balance to keep it from dumping me off. Once I could get a hand off of it and on the wall, the way got a little easier. But the grating compressed as I moved up it, and I scowled up at the gap. I'd need to stretch to my fullest reach to get to it. Took a few tries, a few false starts, but I managed to get a hand on the lip, and another hand in there, poking around.

  But I felt nothing.

  “Sparky? Dire can't seem to find—”

  A hum behind me. Sparky's voice rose, calm and barely audible over it. “Don't move.”

  “What's wrong?”

  “Oh, you know what's wrong.”

  And a cold dread started to seep over me. I glanced down, saw the jagged metal that awaited me if I fell. Glanced up, and saw the lip of the roof above me preventing me from going up and over. The gap I'd put an arm into was too small for the rest of my body. And I had a crazy man who could throw lightning bolts behind me.

  “You planned this. You trapped her.”

  “Ayep. So what did he tell you?”

  “Who?”

  KABLAM!

  The lightning bolt impacted perhaps six feet to my left, and I jerked. Almost lost my balance.

  I shot a glance back at him, saw him sitting resolute, his collar off and beside him on the ground. He was glaring at me, lightning flaring between his cupped hands. “That was a warning shot, kid. Next one won't miss.”

  “Sparky, she really doesn't know what—”

  KABLAM! Pain coursed through me and I grunted, as he hit m
e with a small bolt. I almost lost my footing, and my muscles convulsed. Through sheer effort of will, I kept a grip on the roof.

  “Ho ho no. Ain't falling for that one again,” he shouted. “Near on twenty years, and every time I think it's done, a new assassin shows up! You always seem innocent, but then it's those goddamn words, and a knife in the night, or a grounded garrote, or a jar of acid or some shit. Those goddamn words, those goddamn words!”

  “W-w-w-what words, Sparky?” I forced speech out of my mouth. I was starting to get a glimmer of an idea what had happened here.

  He spat them out like they hurt his tongue. “La Commedia e finita. The comedy is over.”

  “Great Clown Pagliacci didn't die in the funhouse, did he?” The wind howled, and I fought to keep my feet on the grating as he spoke.

  “After we found Lucy I lost it. We chased him in, taking hits as we went. We opened up with everything we had, and his body flew off the roof, fell into the water. There's an undertow here, swept the body out to the ocean. At the time, we figured no one coulda survived that.”

  I bit my tongue as I clutched the roof, tried to stay stable.“Wha-what changed your mind?”

  “He came for me one night. Killed my girl, first. My Beth... but it wasn't Pagliacci, like I thought. It was some young guy in a clown mask.”

  A chill ran down my spine.

  “I beat him, and I killed him even though he weren't any threat to me anymore, and I gave up heroing after. Heroes don't kill, unless it's self-defense. That's the rule.”

  “That's a lousy rule,” I said.

  “Shut up. I tried to retire. I did. I was pushing 60 by then, but your boss couldn't let it slide, could he? Everyone knew the Clown's methods. His madness. He couldn't start a new play until he'd finished the old one! So year after year, they'd come after me. Men, women, even kids sometimes. Seemed like regular folks. Up until the point that I didn't expect trouble, then the mask would come out, and they'd go for me. Got so bad I came out here, came out for one final showdown. Moved out to the beach, where I could watch this place, tempt him out to face me down man-to-man. Finish it where it was supposed to end.”

  “But it didn't work out that way, did it?” I leaned against the building, putting more weight on it. If I timed it right, I could let my feet slip, and perhaps slide down the grating without spearing myself on the jagged part of it. Maybe.

  “No.” He closed his eyes, and I tensed my feet as his face became a mask of grief. But then they were open again and glaring before I could try my maneuver.

  “What happened, Sparky?” My feet were starting to ache on the grating. I didn't have much time left before I slipped one way or the other, and that charge in Sparky's hands kept building. But if I could keep him talking, instead of zapping, I could use what he'd told me earlier...

  “He sent people after my friends. And I couldn't save them.” He sobbed then, and wetness rolled down from his eyes. “Roy's all I got left. And he gave up the best woman he ever had to sit with me out on that damn beach. And now you show up, and Roy tells me you got a mask...”

  And then it happened. His eyes drifted down to the arcs of energy between his fingers, and his face sagged as he watched the lightning dance. He hadn't been lying about the current mesmerizing him, and this was my chance.

  I pushed back from the wall, just as I let my feet slip free of their holds. I slid down the grating, gritting my teeth as jagged metal tore at my wrist and my hip hit a support hard enough to bruise. But I was sliding—

  KABLAM!

  —And as my ears rang, I knew that the lightning had missed me!

  My feet found purchase on the ground, and I dropped, drawing my gun as I went. As soon as I landed I rolled over onto my belly. I pointed my gun at Sparky, and he stopped, hands frozen in the air as he stared at me. Then, almost with a look of relief, he put them down. Sparky bowed his head, and shut his eyes.

  I rose, biting my lip at the pain. My hip informed me that I'd have a hell of a bruise, later. My feet echoed on the boardwalk and Sparky flinched at the sound. I felt an odd emotion in the back of my mind, and identified it as pity. Almost two decades he'd been out here. Almost two decades, waiting to die so that no one else he loved would suffer.

  He said he'd stopped being a hero. I rather doubted that.

  I retrieved his collar. “Hey.”

  He opened his eyes, looked up at me with an inarticulate noise.

  His eyes opened wider when I tucked the pistol back into my pocket. I hadn't even taken the safety off. He stared at the collar, as I offered it to him. “Are we done here?” I kept my voice even. It took some work.

  “I... You're not...”

  I turned my back to him, and went and retrieved my pack. Unzipping it, I walked back over to him. “There's a mask in here all right, but it's not a clown mask. It's Dire's mask. The same person who wiped her memory gave it to her, and left her with too many questions and not enough answers.”

  Once he'd settled the collar on his neck, he took the pack from me, sorted through it, pulled out the mask. He traced his fingers over it, and started shaking. “I could have killed you.”

  “You didn't.”

  “If I'd seen this from a distance... It's different, b-but I w-wouldn't have been able to t-tell... I would have tried to...” He was crying again, and I settled a hand on his shoulder, ignoring the slight snap of static. Now that his collar was back on, it was a fraction of what it could have been.

  “It's all right,” I told him. “You didn't. We're fine, Sparky.”

  He grabbed my hand, and held it to his cheek for a minute. As the cold wind whistled down the ruined and bleak boardwalk, I let him garner what comfort he could from the simple contact.

  Finally, I started tugging until he let go. “Give her a second, hm?” I pulled a strip of what had been my left sleeve off, and used it to bind up the gash on my hand as best I could. It wasn't bleeding too badly, but it wasn't stopping, either.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  “Fooling you. Getting you hurt. Nearly killing you.”

  I shrugged. “She'll let it slide this time. Don't try it again, hm? She's allergic to lightning. Makes her break out in spasms.”

  He snorted, laughed in his old, creaky voice. I joined in, letting the adrenaline drain from me as I roared. “Hmhmhmhmhm... HAHAHAHAHAA!”

  When I finished and put my arms down from where I'd raised fists to the sky, he was staring at me. “Damn, girl. That's a laugh belongs on a grade-a villain.”

  I flushed. “It's just a laugh,” I snapped, reclaiming my backpack and zipping it up.

  “Seriously, sounds like you ought to be sitting in a big swivel chair, strokin' a white cat and planning world domination.”

  “It sounds like nothing of the sort!”

  “You sure you ain't got a last name like Destroyer or Doombringer or something?” His mouth twitched upwards as he spoke, and I glared at him.

  “Do you want a push back to camp or not?”

  He raised his hands. “Easy, easy. Just saying, between that mask, the spikes and that laugh, you're coming across as a mite villainous.”

  “She doesn't want to hear it,” I groused. “Done nothing to warrant that label!”

  “Hey, the day's young,” he grinned. Almost as an afterthought, he rearranged his scarf to conceal the collar again.

  The old bastard kept needling me all the way back through the amusement park, and down the beach. I kept growling and doing my best to ignore him. We passed Martin on the way back, and as we did the black sedan next to him peeled out, burning rubber in its hurry to leave. He shook his head, waved in our direction, and I slowed as he walked over to join us. “Wassup? Ow. That looks painful.” He pointed at my crude bandage.

  I shrugged. “Only hurts when she laughs,” I quipped, using a line the face had used in Smackbrawl last night. He chuckled, and let it drop, turning his attention to Sparky.

  “You treating the Dire l
ady good, Sparky-my-man?”

  “The Dire lady? Heh. Sounds like that could be a villainous na— Hey!”

  I grinned, and helped him rearrange his blanket. “Whoops, sorry. Guess she missed that rock in the path.”

  “Pff, fine,” he puffed up his cheeks, let air escape between his lips. “I'm hungry anyways, should be time for breakfast. How we looking on supplies?”

  “Pretty low, if what she saw last night is the sum of the pantry,” I admitted. “Fortunately we've got that shipment... Coming... In...”

  The MRB airship was back again, and Agent Coleman had pulled Roy off to the side, was talking to him in a low voice. There was no sign of Agent Kingsley. I looked to Sparky, he and Martin looked to me, and I nodded. “Let's go see what's going on here.” The three of us headed that way, and the two men glanced up at our approach.

  “Hey there. Wondered where you got to, you old fart.”

  “He was just showing Dire Funland,” I mentioned. “Had a long talk about mistaken identities.” Roy nodded, but didn't give any indication of understanding me one way or the other. Had Sparky not talked his plan over with his oldest friend beforehand? It seemed unlikely. I shoved my speculation aside, as Coleman started talking.

  “I was telling Roy here that the shipment's going to be late.”

  I nodded. “Cut supply lines, powerless city, probably some bureaucracy too. No real surprise.”

  He shook his head, his eyes unreadable behind his sunglasses. “Good guess, but not because of any of that. We sent it through at four this morning, and it was ambushed before it got here. The guards were overwhelmed, and the food was stolen.”

  I frowned. “By who?”

  Roy grimaced. “Black Bloods.”

  “Shiiiiiiiit.” Martin turned around, punched the air, and sunk his face into his palm. “That is not good.”

  I pulled my hoodie around myself, looked at Roy. “You think that this might be due to...” I pointed a thumb at my face.

  He glared. “Naw. Don't blame yourself. They take what they want and don't give a shit 'bout us anyway.”