by Mick Farren
"I'm going to hurt you, Joe Gibson… and you're going to love me for it."
The White Room
THE CHARADE OF appearing to recover when there was, in reality, nothing from which to recover was proving harder than he had first imagined, and the sessions with Dr. Kooning were becoming a strain. Too much real anger was churning inside him, anger that boiled up despite the drugs and despite all his efforts to convince Kooning that he was emerging from what she considered to be fantasy and returning to the real. He constantly ran into the basic stumbling block of his deception. He had no existence and no history in this world, and if he let go of the "fantasy," all that remained was a blank slate. To Kooning, this was even more fascinating than a patient who was in the grip of a delusion. In psychiatry, the deluded were ten a penny; the real blank slate was rare and exotic. Gibson was now fully convinced that there was no way he was ever going to obtain any legitimate release from the clinic and that the only way out for him was going to be a breakout. The conviction was particularly strong on the days when Kooning took it into her head to probe him on the fine print of his paranoia.
"You claim, although apparently either living or wishing to live in the world of rock 'n' roll music, you've never heard of the Rolling Stones?"
Gibson nodded. He felt weighed down by the seeming contradictions that were built into his story. Only a certain dogged stubbornness kept him from curling up on the couch and refusing to answer. "Where I came from, there was no band called the Rolling Stones."
"Doesn't that tell you something."
Only the drugs stopped Gibson snarling. "It tells me that I have come back to a world that's been radically altered, altered to the extent that I no longer exist."
Kooning regarded him gravely. "That's a very interesting statement."
"Isn't it just? "
"Could it be that because of some crisis in your life, perhaps what you perceived as a failure to win the level of success and recognition that you thought you deserved in music, you fixed on one very successful group and decided that they had usurped what was rightfully yours?"
They must have been round this point a dozen times in previous sessions, and Gibson could see what was coming a mile off.
"You're telling me that the only way I could get what was rightfully mine was by blanking out this band, creating the illusion that they didn't exist."
Kooning smiled and nodded. "It does make a lot of sense, doesn't it?"
"It would, except that it isn't the case here."
"So how do you feel when I make such a suggestion?"
Gibson didn't bother to pretend. "I get scared. If I give up what you call my fantasy, what do I have left? There doesn't seem to be anything else. Without it, I'm quite literally nothing."
"Don't you think this is something we are going to have to work on?"
Chapter Ten
GIBSON WOKE FROM a hideous dream into an almost as hideous reality. In the dream, the well that contained Balg had given up its dead. One by one, and then in increasing numbers, an army of slow-moving, crawling luminous corpses had scrambled painfully over the rim of the shaft, dragged themselves across the flagstones, and started clawing their way up the stairs on their hands and knees while Gibson watched in horror. He had spotted Lancer, the president, in among the crowd, along with a host of friends and faces from his past: Gideon Windemere and Christobelle; Rob Tyler, the bass player from the Holy Ghosts who'd been the most bitter about the breakup of the band; even Desiree and the woman who'd been at his apartment the day that Casillas had come calling were part of this legion of the living dead.
He only recognized the woman that he'd seen seen sacrificed by the torn black lingerie still clinging to her green, decaying flesh. Instead of crawling to the stairs like all the others, she made straight for Gibson, giggling as she dragged herself toward him, the same mindless, stoned-out, space-case giggle that he'd heard the previous night, as she had swayed on the edge of the pit, staring uncomprehendingly at her death. Her black fingernails scraped on the granite flags, and her eyes had the vacancy of madness. He wanted desperately to get away from her but he found that he couldn't move. He was flat on his back, naked, exposed, and helpless, chained by the wrists and ankles to the iron rings set in the flagstones. He twisted and struggled until his wrists were raw and bleeding, but he couldn't free himself. He also didn't seem able to close his eyes, and he was compelled to watch as she agonizingly inched nearer, leaving a slime trail like a slug or snail.
The giggle and the scrape of the nails was close to deafening, and her hands were reaching out for him. "I'm going to hurt you, Joe Gibson… and you're going to love me for it."
His screams were still ringing around the circular chamber when his mind lurched back into the real world, but he experienced none of the grateful sense of relief that usually comes after waking from a nightmare and realizing that it was all just a bad dream. To his horror, he found that he was still in the underground chamber, Balg was still in his pit, and very little was right with the world. No corpses were crawling from the well shaft and he wasn't chained to the flagstones, but he was naked, frozen and stiff and hung over. There were scars across his chest as though he'd been raked by talons, and Nephredana had vanished. He couldn't believe that he had fallen asleep in this hellish place. How the fuck had he managed that? He hadn't even been particularly drunk. The only mercy was that he was alone in the awful place, unless he counted Balg.
His clothes were scattered all around, and Gibson started hastily gathering them up, at the same time praying that Nephredana hadn't locked the door at the top of the stairs, if indeed she had left by the door at all. He didn't want to spend another moment in the green glow of Balg and was already frightened about what ugly long-term effects he might have racked up in his mind or body by sleeping in such close proximity to the monstrous entity. He saw it as the psychic equivalent to bedding down in a nuclear reactor. As he wriggled into his pants, he held off from wondering about what might have possibly happened to cause Nephredana to disappear, leaving him alone in a place like this.
Without bothering to slip into his tux jacket or tuck in the tails to his dress shirt, he started up the steps that led out of the chamber, taking them two at a time and not looking back. To his infinite relief the door opened when he tugged at it. Up to that point, his only motivation had been to get away from Balg. As soon as he was through the door, however, a whole new set of problems dropped on him with lead boots. He was not only in Raus's mansion with no readily available means to get away, but he was also deep beneath the mansion in an area that had to be fatally off limits to strangers like himself. He took the next flight of stairs slower and with a great deal more caution. The very last thing he wanted was to run into a couple of Raus's minions bringing Balg his breakfast. Gibson had no doubt that such an encounter would almost certainly result in his being included on the menu.
Fortunately, he seemed to be blessed with the kind of after-the-fact luck that allows one to crawl away intact following a disaster. The mansion was very quiet. The only noises were what he might expect from an early-morning cleanup crew, plus somewhere in the main hall someone was playing a slow walking-bass figure that was almost rock 'n' roll.
Gibson started down the main corridor in the direction of the grand hall, doing his best to look like a drunk who had woken up in a dark corner somewhere and was now trying to retrieve his bearings and get home. It hardly required any award-winning feat of acting to create the illusion.
The grand hall smelled of smoke and stale booze, and the floor was a sea of debris that was being slowly swept into more manageable piles by four men in gray overalls pushing wide industrial brooms. One of them glanced up as Gibson came across the empty dance floor.
"Where did you come from?"
Gibson rubbed his eyes and looked bleary. "That's a good question."
"You just wake up?"
Gibson nodded. "Sure did."
The man pushed the garbage in front of
his broom for a few more feet. "Some party, huh?"
"What I remember of it."
"They're serving coffee in one of the marquees by the lake for stragglers like you."
Gibson slipped on his jacket. "I could use some coffee."
He glanced up at the stage, where a figure in a tuxedo was standing by himself on the empty bandstand with his back to the room, plucking thoughtfully at the strings of a standup bass. Gibson watched him for a tew moments and then shrugged. Some people never stopped. He started toward the coffee and whatever his next move might be. He had just realized that he had no money. His wallet was still in the borrowed suit in Slide's Hudson. This upset him more than anything since Balg. He seemed to be moving toward a dependency on the kindness of strangers, and this wasn't a pleasing prospect in a place where albinos appeared to be high on the list of targets for prejudice.
The voice that stopped him in his tracks echoed across the grand hall just as he was approaching the French windows that opened on the lake.
"Wait up there, I'll come with you."
There was no mistaking the millennia-old rasp. Gibson spun round. "Yancey Slide?"
The figure on the stage was carefully setting the bass on its side. "I've been waiting for you."
"I didn't know you were a musician."
"You learn a lot of things by the time you're as old as I am."
Slide jumped down from the bandstand and walked briskly toward Gibson, who stood waiting for him.
"You ready for some breakfast?"
"Where's Nephredana?"
Slide made an unconcerned gesture. "She's around somewhere."
"Why did she leave me alone with Balg?"
"You'll have to ask her about that. Nephredana can be a little strange at times." He glanced quickly around. "I also wouldn't go shouting about Balg around here, someone might hear you."
Outside, a gray dawn did little to raise Gibson's spirits. A waist-deep white ground mist was rolling off the lake, lending everything a sad and sinister unreality that was heightened by the handful of leftover guests who wandered aimlessly like lost souls in disheveled evening dress. Crews were already pulling down the marquees, and the one that was left standing, a red-and-white island in the mist, was presumably the one where coffee and breakfast was being dispensed. Gibson never made it there, however. With Slide beside him, he had walked down the steps from the terrace and into the mist until, once again, his quest for creature comforts was interrupted by a voice from behind.
"Stand where you are, Gibson. We want to talk to you."
The four people Gibson most wanted not to see in this world or any other were standing on the terrace looking down at him. Smith, French, Raus, and Rampton had arranged themselves between the statues on the terrace, the classic marbles of gods and heroes, like a quartet of avenging angels, posed dramatically in the dawn against the facade of the mansion, Gibson's first thought was that it was a setup and his instinct was to run like hell, but logic quickly reasserted itself and pointed out that the running would most likely get him shot. Smith, French, Raus, and Rampton weren't alone; behind them, a four-man backup lurked like threatening shadows. Two uniformed streamheat toted their distinctive weapons, and two of Raus's goons, maybe the selfsame ones who had fed the girl in the black lingerie to Balg, were armed with heavy, old-fashioned machine guns that looked very like Thompsons, right down to the fifty-shot drum clips. The pretending seemed to have stopped. The gloves were off, and Gibson wondered how long it would be before someone started hitting him.
He glanced quickly at Slide. "Any way you can get me out of this?"
Slide shook his head and moved a few steps away from him. "Sony, kid, I have a strict policy of nonintervention."
"You bastard! Did you set me up for them?"
Smith spoke from the top of the steps that led up to the terrace. "Don't blame Slide, Joe. We could have picked you up anytime. We just thought we'd let you run around and have some fun until we needed you. Allow you the illusion that you'd escaped."
Gibson's lip curled. "Oh, yeah? If you were so fucking clever, how come you didn't know that I was hiding in the chamber last night when you were all watching Balg get fed?"
Beside him, Slide groaned. "You've got a big mouth, kid."
Just how big became immediately evident. Raus rounded angrily on Smith. "He's seen Balg."
Smith didn't show the slightest concern. "It hardly matters."
Raus, however, thought differently and wasn't about to let it go. "He has to die. It's the rule by which I live. I've not remained the master of this thing for as long as I have by breaking that rule."
Slide guffawed. "You really believe that you're the master of Balg, do you, Raus? Are you really that stupid?"
Smith snapped at him. "Keep out of this, Slide." She turned to Raus. "Gibson can't be killed. We have to have him."
Gibson felt decidedly relieved, but it was short-lived. Smith looked straight at him. "We have to keep him alive until after the Lancer project is completed. After that, we have no more interest in him."
Relief deflated like a punctured tire. Gibson made one last appeal to Slide. "Can't you do anything? They're going to kill me."
"I'm sorry, kid, it's nothing personal. I just can't get involved."
There was the sound of a car engine and Gibson turned to see the Hudson coming across the lawn, bouncing through the mist like a battleship in a heavy sea. Gibson experienced an irrational moment of hope that it was Nephredana coming to the rescue.
The group on the terrace must have thought the same thing, because both the streamheat and Raus's goons raised their weapons and trained them on the car. Slide moved quickly toward the steps. "Hold it! Hold it! It's nothing to worry about, it's just my ride coming to pick me up."
Gibson was drifting into a state of total unreality. The thing from the TV, Balg, Nephredana's unbelievable lovemaking and then the dreams, and now standing, up to his waist, in horror-movie mist while this latest drama unfolded all added up to a feeling that his world was being governed by the laws of surrealism. He also had the impression that some kind of influence was being used. Despite the obvious drama that was taking place in the area between the terrace and the lake, there were no curious bystanders hanging around. Even the small residue of party guests had melted away, and the cleanup crews went on with their work as though nothing was happening.
The Hudson came to a stop beside Gibson and Slide. On the terrace, they still didn't look terribly happy about the arrival of the car, but they weren't about to start shooting. The driver's door opened and Nephredana stepped out. Her image had completely changed from that of the night before. Now she had her hair scraped back into a bun and was dressed in a black leather version of a ninja suit, with decorative chrome shoulder guards. The black sunglasses had been replaced by a diamante creation with flyaway wings. Even her voice had altered. She talked out of the side of her mouth like some B-movie Chicago gun moll.
"Okay, Yance, ya ready to blow?"
Slide began to walk to the car, and Nephredana beckoned to Gibson. "Ya wanna get the shit that ya left in the car?"
Smith started down the steps of the terrace with the two uniformed streamheat behind her. "Don't try anything, Gibson."
Nephredana stepped into Smith's path. "He isn't gonna try nothing. If he does, I'll break him in half. I just want him to get his stuff out of the car."
Gibson didn't know what the hell was going on, but it seemed like the best idea for the moment was to bow to the superior firepower.
He faced Smith. "Is it a problem to get my things out of the car? I can't live in a tuxedo for the rest of my life, no matter how short you think it may be."
Smith nodded. "Get your stuff, but no tricks."
Gibson moved to the Hudson, and Nephredana opened the back door. He leaned inside and started gathering up the look-alike's clothes.
He glanced back at Nephredana, who was standing watching him. "Thanks for leaving me with Balg."
; She moved closer to him and spoke in a low voice. "Don't panic yet, Joe. It ain't over until it's over." It was her normal voice and all trace of the gun moll had gone.
"And what's that supposed to mean?"
She ignored the question. The gun moll was back. "Ya want what ya left in the glove compartment?"
Gibson thought of the gun in the glove compartment and then of weapons that were ranged against him and shook his head. "No, I think I'll leave it where it is."
Nephredana nodded. It was the old voice again. "Wise move, Joe. They'd cut you down before you could get off a shot. Remember, I've seen you shoot a pistol."
Gibson stepped away from the car with the bundle of clothes in his arms. Nephredana reached into the backseat, pulled out Gibson's hat, which he'd left behind, and stuck it on his head; men she and Slide climbed into the car. The doors slammed, the engine revved, and the Hudson backed up, made a fast turn, and drove away into the mist. Gibson watched it go and then, feeling totally abandoned, braced himself to face whatever fate had in store for him.
"Okay, what are you going to do to me?"
Smith gestured to the pair of uniforms who followed at her heels. "Take him."
Raus was coming down the steps after her, still protesting. "I think you're making a big mistake."
Smith regarded him coldly as the two streamheat seized Gibson. "What do you want me to do? Cancel the entire Lancer project?"
Rampton caught up with them. "Be sensible, Raus. There's no way that we can bring it off without Gibson."
"But suppose he talks?"
Rampton blinked impatiently behind the Himmler glasses. "And who would believe him? Who would believe that one of this country's most successful entrepreneurs kept a supernatural monster in his cellar?"
While the argument was going on, Gibson's arms were being pulled behind him and handcuffs clamped on his wrists. It was the final confirmation that the streamheat's pretense of protecting him or attempting to obtain his cooperation was now history. He was their prisoner, pure and simple.