Dead Jack and the Pandemonium Device

by James Aquilone

  “Did you use a scryer? You know they’re all a scam, right?”

  “I know because I was part of Project Pandemonium. I was one of the dark magicians who cast the banishment spell.”

  That answered that. I poured myself another Devil Boy, drank it down in one gulp. “And you messed it up and got yourself sent here?”

  “No. I was double-crossed.”

  “I guess you can’t trust dark magicians, can you?”

  “No. You cannot. And me most of all. You see, I had planned to double-cross them.” The Duke laughed and flashed his crazy eyes. “Don’t you get it, Jack? Those magicians would be the only supernaturals left in the Other World after the banishment. The government would have to keep them happy, too, because they’d need them to get rid of any new supernaturals. They would be set up for life. Gods among men. But if there were any supernaturals in the Other World, there was always the chance of someone honing in on your action, right? So, I figured I’d banish the other two and rule the world myself. It would have been fookin sweet.”

  “But they figured it out because you’re you, and they voilà’d your arse here, too?”

  “The best laid plans…”

  “So why don’t you just cast a spell to get yourself out of here?”

  The Duke lowered his head. For the first time ever, he seemed reticent. He stroked his whiskey glass. “Jack, this can’t get out. To anyone. You understand?”

  “You can trust me, Eddie—I mean the Duke.”

  “No. It’s all right, Jack. We’re old friends. That Duke business is for the crowd upstairs. Down here I’m just plain ol’ Eddie McCrawley, ShadowShade hustler. Remember that time we got arrested for stealing Lucifer’s goats?” I did. I spent two nights on Purgatory Island before I could make bail. Eddie never set foot on the prison island. I never knew what he did to pull that off.

  He seemed to be lost in thought. “What was it you were going to tell me?” I asked.

  Without looking at me, he said, “I don’t have any powers in Pandemonium. Never have. Those two bastards bound my abilities. It wasn’t enough that they sent me to another dimension.” The Duke threw his glass of whiskey across the room. It shattered against the wall.

  I ignored the outburst. “But I’ve seen you do magic.”

  “Illusions. Parlor tricks. It’s all bullshit to keep up appearances. I’m probably the weakest person in Pandemonium. The most ordinary person here.”

  “You’ve done quite well for yourself considering.”

  He smiled wickedly. Like a vampire who’s just cornered a red-blooded virgin. “I have a knowledge advantage. I knew a little about this dimension before I got here. I began searching for answers, learning, and finally I discovered their existence.” He pointed at the open door.

  “Those things in the glass tubes?”

  “The interdimensional beings.”

  “IDBs.” Something clicked in my rotten head. The leps were looking for an IDB back in Irish Town.

  “They are the original inhabitants of Pandemonium. Beings that can travel as easily between dimensions as you and I travel from one room to another. Once I learned of their existence, I set out to contact them. I figured they could transport me back to the Other World, but the beings aren’t concerned with humans or much else. They ignored me. Never acknowledged my existence. Even after I captured them. I’ve had some of them for decades and not a peep. I begged and bribed the bastards, but they wouldn’t help me. Nothing worked. Not until I tortured them.”

  The way the word tortured rolled off his tongue gave me a chill. I remembered the dead kobold’s words. “The interdimensional ones hurt.” He was sure right about that.

  “They still didn’t talk,” the Duke said, "but I got the answer I needed anyway. Hurting them hurts Pandemonium. They are connected to this place. Perhaps they even are it. I’m not sure, and it doesn’t matter.”

  “I still don’t see how you’ll get out of Pandemonium.”

  “It’s quite simple. I destroy all the interdimensional beings, I destroy Pandemonium. I have a device.” His eyes grew wild. The Duke really had lost his mind.

  I still wasn’t getting it. “Wouldn’t that destroy you and the rest of us, too?”

  “Yes.” He smirked. One hundred percent bonkers.

  “That’s how you get out of Pandemonium? Kill yourself?”

  “I’ll be protected.”

  That’s when it hit me. “The cats!”

  “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I smelled the goblin on you immediately. Cats are natural interdimensional beings. But they’re too uncaring to help anyone but themselves. That must be a thing with IDBs. Believe me, I’ve tried. It doesn’t matter. Their blood will work fine. Once we destroy Pandemonium, we need only to drink the cat’s fresh blood and we’ll be safe.”

  “Sounds like a hell of a plan.” I didn’t know what part of it sounded crazier. I kept the knowledge of the Jupiter Stone to myself, but I was pretty sure what he needed it for.

  “There’s one more piece,” the Duke said. This kept getting better. I figured I’d just play along and hopefully find Oswald, rescue the cats, and hightail it out of the psych ward before he caught on. “The fifth and last interdimensional being will be delivered to me tonight. Then it’s bye-bye, Pandemonium.”

  Someone was going to be very disappointed. That bird-flipping interdimensional baby was long gone. What a genius move on my part, setting him free. I reminded myself to rub it in Oswald’s face.

  “You can come with us, Jack. We’re not just going back to the Old World. We’re going to conquer it.”

  “I’m not much of the conquering type. Pandemonium may be a prison, but it’s home to me. Hell sweet hell.”

  “I knew you’d say that, Jack. You never had many aspirations or any imagination. Kind of a low-hanging-fruit guy. But what should I expect from a soulless zombie?”

  I rolled my eyes. I’d heard that approximately a billion times in my life. “Then why would you tell a loser like me your nefarious plans? Seems a bit unwise.”

  “Because, Jack, you are about to forget everything I told you.” He held up the bottle of Devil Boy and winked.

  “Fook.”

  “Yeah, and it gets better.”

  The Duke’s gaze rose over my head to about the height of an orc hitman. An orc I had no doubt was behind me and about to land a very meaty orc fist onto my skull.

  Then things got the opposite of better.

  14. A Zombie by Any Other Name

  My head felt like a balloon filled with two tons of lead. I was sure it was going to rip off my shoulders. Actually, I prayed it would.

  The world blurred and spun like a mad merry-go-round. I shut my eyes, but the spinning continued. I think I puked.

  Gradually, my vision cleared and the world slowed. But my troubles were only beginning. I had no idea where I was. That was par for the course because I had no idea who I was either.

  I was in a strange room. (Naturally.) But other than the fact that I had never seen it before, it was strange because the torches on the wall pointed down. That couldn’t be right. I looked around as best I could with my lead-filled head. To my left was a wall of bars. I was in a prison? I didn’t remember committing a crime, but then again I didn’t remember not committing a crime.

  I noticed something else inside the small cell. A woman. She stood on the ceiling and hung straight down like a bat.

  “How are you doing that?” I asked, and was startled by the sound of my voice, which seemed to croak like, well, something that croaked. My ability to form similes seemed compromised by my lack of knowing…stuff.

  “Doing what?” the woman responded. She wore her black hair in pigtails, but somehow they didn’t hang down as you would expect for an upside-down person. They pointed up toward the ceiling. She also wore a straitjacket.

  “How are you standing like that on the ceiling? Are you a witch?”

  She looked at me like I was speaking gibberish.
r />   “I am a witch actually,” she said, “but I’m standing perfectly normally.”

  I must have fallen asleep and woken up in some upside-down world. I didn’t know if that type of thing happened, but again I was short on knowledge.

  “What is the name of this world?” I asked. It was probably something like Topsy-Turvy or Up Is Down or Down Is Up.

  “Pandemonium.”

  “Never heard of it. Does Pandemonium mean something like Upside-Down World?”

  She smiled, though it actually looked like a grin. “I think I see your dilemma. You’re the one upside down.”

  She was right. I finally looked at my feet. They were strapped to the wall, as were my hands and chest.

  “Do you know how I got here?” I asked.

  “I assume you pissed off the Duke. The dirty, rotten, lying, piece of scum that he is.”

  “I wonder what I did to piss him off.”

  “Oh, it doesn’t take much. Believe me. I’m surprised he didn’t kill you.”

  “Why did he put you in that straitjacket?”

  “So I can’t do any magic. I need to use my hands and I usually need blood.”

  “No, I meant why are you in here? How did you piss off the Duke?”

  “I could tell you, but what the fook difference would it make? You don’t know anything. I’d probably have to explain a bunch of basic stuff, like what a man is and what a piece of scum is and how a man can lie to your face for years and we’d be here all day.”

  “Aren’t we going to be here all day regardless?”

  “I’d still rather not.”

  “Could you at least tell me why I don’t know anything?”

  “You probably didn’t know much to begin with since you’re a zombie.”

  I screamed. Then I went silent. I tried to listen for a heartbeat. There wasn’t one. I looked closer at my hands. The left one looked terrible. It was nearly all bone like a skeleton hand. The right hand didn’t look much better.

  “Sorry to break it to you,” the witch said. “But for what it’s worth, you seem like a top-notch zombie. I mean, I’ve never met one who didn’t just moan and try to eat flesh, and I used to spend a lot of time on the Zombie Islands as a kid.”

  I did feel a stirring in my guts and a craving for the witch’s flesh, but I kept that to myself.

  “Even if I am a zombie, I feel like I should know how I got here or what I did yesterday.”

  “From the looks of it, and the smell of you, I’d say you were bathing in fish guts yesterday. But you don’t remember most likely because the Duke slipped you water from the River Lethe. It wipes your memory. He loves using the stuff.”

  “How do you know the Duke?”

  “I was kind of his girlfriend. So stupid. I should have listened to my father, but the Duke comes off as a pretty cool dude, and he looks damn good in that tunic.”

  “Any chance of you two getting back together?”

  “You know, when you wind up in a straitjacket in a jail cell in your ex-boyfriend’s dungeon, any chance of reconciliation is probably off the table. Unless he brings me flowers, then I’d totally be his again.”

  “Really?”

  “No, you idiot. I hate flowers.”

  “I don’t know how I feel about flowers.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not used to having a cellmate and I kind of enjoy my solitude. Besides, I think I’m close to dislocating my shoulder, so I can finally get out of this straitjacket. If you don’t mind, please shut the fook up.” She sat on the ground and began to rock back and forth as she wiggled her shoulders.

  She seemed to mean it, so I shut up. I used the quiet time to try remembering basic things about myself. Like my name. Zilch. Where I was from. Nada. How I got there. Uh-uh. Where here was. No dice. Why I was so hungry. How I became a zombie. Why I smelled like seawater and dead fish. My mind was a blank. I had a strong feeling my head was literally empty. That didn’t give me much confidence in my situation. When the white blob slithered under the prison bars, my confidence sunk even lower. If things like that existed in this world, I was happy I didn’t remember.

  15. Return of the White Blob

  The white blob flowed toward me like a puddle of spilled milk on a mission. I screamed. The witch stopped trying to dislocate her shoulder, jumped up, and backed away from the ooze.

  What the hell is that?” she said.

  The living puddle came to rest underneath my head. I tried to pull away, but there wasn’t much give in my restraints. I watched as the puddle coalesced and rose into a cone. A tiny head popped into existence, then two legs and two arms. Finally, two X’s appeared on his head and a slit formed for a mouth. The thing wore an expression on its newly constructed face. It was an unpleasant expression.

  “Well, well, well,” the little creature said in an irritating little voice. “Look at you. I should leave you here. It would serve you right after what you pulled. ‘I bet you can’t turn yourself into a cat, Oswald.’ ‘Go farther out.’ ‘Frolic, Oswald!’ Ha, ha, ha. Was that your brilliant plan? What was supposed to happen after the demon caught me, huh? You really are an idiot, you know that?” The former puddle of milk put his little hands on his little hips. After a moment, it said, “Not going to say anything?”

  “You talking to me, little guy?” I asked.

  The creature’s X-shaped eyes turned into O’s almost the size of its head.

  “I’m talking to the only idiot in this room.”

  “What are you, if I may ask?”

  “What am I? I’m the partner of a self-centered idiot. I guess that makes me an idiot, too, but you know what? I’m free and you’re chained to a wall, upside down. Too bad you don’t have any blood to rush to your head.”

  “You know me? How do you know me?”

  “Ha, ha. Has the dust finally rotted what’s left of your brain? Well, if you’re going to play it like that, I will leave you here. Teach you a lesson. I know where the cats are, by the way. I’m sure I can rescue them myself, and then I’ll get the reward from the goblins and be the hero for once.”

  “Buddy, his memory has been compromised,” the witch said. “The Duke gave him the water of forgetfulness.”

  The blob turned toward the witch. “Isn’t that convenient? He throws me to the demons and now I can’t even nag him about it.”

  “Look, you can do whatever you want with your friend, but I’d appreciate it if you got me out of here first.”

  “This guy doesn’t appreciate anything I do, and if he’d just listen to me we’d both be better off. His idea of a plan—”

  “Listen, I don’t care about your dysfunctional relationship. We shouldn’t be wasting any time. Get me out of here and I can help you get your friend’s memory back.”

  “I don’t know if I want that. He might be better off like this.”

  I didn’t like this sassy pipsqueak, but he might be the only thing that had any idea who I was. “Little blob,” I said, “I don’t remember anything about you, but I will remember this.”

  The creature turned its head and seemed to be in thought. Its X eyes blinked twice. “All right, all right,” he said finally. “I was going to free you. I just wanted to make you suffer a bit.”

  The little man extended his right hand, which then formed into a pick. He inserted it into the lock holding my head to the wall. After a few seconds, I heard a click and the lock opened. My head was free! I tried moving it, but it was damn sore. The bones in my neck popped like popcorn on a hot stove. The little guy went to work on the other locks and soon I came crashing to the ground. My head cushioned the fall.

  I stood and it took a few seconds to adjust to the room being right side up. I needed to steady myself against the wall. As I tried to get the room to stop spinning, the blob freed the witch.

  She seemed much taller now that we were both right side up. In fact, she was at least a few inches taller than me. She was broad-shouldered and had thick muscular legs. She obviously
did calisthenics. With the jacket off, I could now see that tattoos—intricate sigils and random objects—covered her arms. A large sledgehammer took up most of her right arm. She wore a black sleeveless shirt with the words “Fook Off” written across her chest. I didn’t know if freeing her was a good idea.

  “The water of memory is on the other side of the palace,” the witch said to me. “I hope you didn’t forget how to fight.”

  “Trust me, he never knew how,” the blob said and laughed. It sounded like an idiot bird chirping.

  “I’ll only go,” I said, “if you make sure I never remember this tiny creature.” The blob dropped its shoulders and hung his head. I think I hurt the little guy’s feelings.

  16. A Stroll Down Mnemosyne Lane

  As we approached the cell door, demonic snoring stopped us in our tracks. We froze like ghouls caught eating their best friend’s corpse.

  “Sorry. I forgot the guard,” the blob said. “I had no problem slipping past him on account of him sleeping, but I don’t think the three of us can just saunter by.”

  “I got this,” the witch said and then sliced her palm with a fingernail, drawing blood. “You,” she said to the blob, “come here!”

  “My name is Oswald.”

  “Okay, Oswald, I’m Zara Moonbeam. Now that we’re all friends—”

  “That sounds like a pixie name.”

  “I’m half-pixie.”

  “Which half?” I asked.

  “I’m kind of sensitive about my size,” Zara Moonbeam said. “And when I get sensitive, people usually get hurt.”

  She looked at me with psycho eyes, wide and focused. Her tattoos seemed to ripple. This woman meant business.

  “I must have forgotten my manners, too,” I said and took a step back.

  “You never had any,” Oswald said.

  I shot the blob a dirty look. “Hey, since we’re on the topic of names, what’s mine?”

  “Jack,” Oswald said.

  “I like that. I knew I had a strong masculine name. Not like Oswald.”