The screams were unlike any Chris had ever heard in Wonderland, or anywhere else for that matter; wails filled with so much horror and insufferable pain that he had to finally cover his ears.
“Am I beaming?” Gamble said, smiling from ear to ear. “I swear, I haven’t been this proud since the whole lot of them brought down that family of moose outside Vancouver.”
Chris was still staring at the boys. Their screams were all but echoes now, their limbs twitching with the last, fading amperes of life. Get a grip, he thought. They’re just pretend, you dumbass weenie. Then he turned away, gagging. The feculence, like everything else, was too substantive to be ignored.
Dead, and no longer desired in their upright positions, all five boys crumpled simultaneously to the ground. Then the girls began scavenging their bodies for leftovers, one occasionally nipping or clawing the other if she got too close.
A pack of hyenas couldn’t have been portrayed any better, Chris thought.
He tried to make the bodies evaporate. And failed.
“The Shreveport School for Wayward Boys frowns on fraternization…and curfew violations,” Gamble explained, as if he were the Dean of said institution, speaking with the parents of prospective delinquents. “In fact, both are grounds for harsh, punitive action. But I think you’ll agree that these little recidivists have just been sufficiently punished.”
Shocked, Chris gaped at the man. “I...I created them, dude,” he finally said, more to himself. “There’s no way those kids could be real. They’re just like this church, this organ—they’re just projections of thought.”
Gamble removed an emery board from the inside pocket of his jacket, then began filing the nail of his right forefinger. “Be careful how you say that, Mr. Kaddison. I, too, was once a projection of thought.”
“No shit?” Chris said, a little more than intrigued. “Then, you must feel right at home.”
“This place home? I hardly think so. I’m only subletting this space until my new universe is fumigated.”
Chris kept returning to the boys.
“I saw you peek into their minds as they were thrashing,” Gamble said. “Tell me, Mr. Kaddison, do illusions so convincingly scream out for mummies and daddies? For God? For sweet death to take them…quickly?”
Chris didn’t want to believe him, but had to. “You’re one sick cookie, dude! You can’t be from topside! You live here, don’t you? In the psyche, in the mind, in the heart?”
“Chris, you’re a fucking poet.”
A succession of vibratory groans rippled through the church, the rings having emanated in either a distant part of the castle, or beyond the dream itself. It was the sound of imagination on a fault line; the land of make-believe shifting on its foundation.
The wrecking ball was coming, Chris knew. As were his deepest fears, no doubt.
“You know what that is, asshole?” Chris said. “That’s Juanita. Because of what your little harem just did, her psyche’s rejecting this dream like a bad kidney. It knows something’s wrong, and it’ll tear this dream apart to find us. Even your glue won’t hold this place together.”
“Shall we stay put then?” said Gamble. “Turn ourselves over to the authorities and take our punishment like the true gentlemen we are?”
“Fuck that,” Chris said, then reached for the organ’s keys.
But his hands weren’t there.
“Play it again, Sam,” Gamble instructed. “With your tongue.”
Chris’s tongue lolled out, all three feet of it now, and latched onto the sheet music holder. It grabbled the scrollwork like a blind worm looking for its hole. He thought of the missing segment of wall, and tried to conjure something.
Gamble softly clapped. “Play that Croche piece, ‘Tongue in a Bottle’— no, no—‘Tongue and Again’—wait—‘Tongue is on Our Side’—I’ve got it!—‘Song Tongue Blue’ by Neil baby!”
Then Chris saw it, the embodiment of his effort, moving like oil through the opening in the wall. Its head, as large as a Volkswagen, glided in on the end of a long neck fringed with a spiny sail. Even longer than his own, its flicking tongue was mottled red and black, and classically forked. Across its buffed scales, torchlight heaved and roiled and surged like the lamentations of a dying assassin. Its nocturnal eyes were sharp and searching, each girded by a row of bony spurs.
The ground shuddered again, followed by a succession of low, booming throbs, like the cadence of a giant soldier marching in place. As Chris listened, more noises joined in: the sounds of metal turning against primal metal; the grating squeals of prison doors being opened for the first time in centuries. Then the jingling of chains wafted through; irons falling to the floor as the foolhardy guards unclasped the ancient demons from their cold dungeon shackles. And set them about their quarry.
Chris, cursing the muse, hoped it was just Juanita’s demolition equipment. But one thing was certain: time was running out.
Imagining his own hands back in their cuffs, Chris hovered over the keys. They appeared, but just as he dropped his finger to play, both hands turned into shear ladies’ gloves. His finger bent backwards the moment it struck the key.
The dragon raised its head. Smoke curled from its nostrils. It was maybe fifty feet from Gamble and closing quickly, stealthily.
As his new prosthetic tongue was parting his hair, Chris added another item to the beast: a thermostat. Then he cranked it up all the way.
The girls remained on the floor, snorting, sniffing, grunting. One was using her prey’s femur to gain access into its skull. She was in after three more blows, pulling out her prize by the handfuls.
For a moment, Chris wondered if he might not be better off finding someone else to play the song, like that dead guy Liberace. Then he was off his stool and on the dirt. He looked up.
And there in front of the organ sat Liberace, wearing Liz Taylor’s jewelry and an outfit that made Elton John look like Rush Limbaugh.
The entertainer turned and smiled his famous smile at the man in the pew, wiggled his fingers at the girls, who were now staring up at him with wary surprise, then proceeded to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb” with more than just one digit.
All five girls were now on their feet, screeching and hissing at the man on the organ.
“Noooo!” Gamble cried. Furious, he too was on his feet now, but keeping a watchful distance. “Your kind are dead! I personally supervised the obliteration of the last one! I was there and wove its suffering cries into chain mail! I distilled its blood and made oil for the creaking cogs of time!”
Liberace kept smiling, never missing a note.
The humor wasn’t lost on Chris. Here was this guy, veins popping up all over his head, delivering some bad if not dramatic verse, and all the orchestra could play to impassion the moment was a candied rendition of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” Quite frankly, Chris felt it was doing for Gamble what ‘potatoe’ once did for a certain Vice-President.
Gamble boldly stepped closer, his voice supernaturally charged. “I felt the universe ascend when I pushed it off the edge! Eternity sighed when the burden of its last suckling bastard child was taken from its teat! How dare you, you extinct motherfucker! I. Watched. It. Finally. Die!”
Although his saliva was flying in that direction, Chris now had the strong impression that Gamble wasn’t addressing Liberace, or even cross-dressing piano players in general. And that begged the question: Who was he talking to?
For that matter, he thought, just who in the fuck is Gamble?
The girls were jumping up and down, pointing and screaming, trying to warn their father.
The dragon hovered above Gamble, inhaled, then doused him in flame.
Just as the fire enveloped the man, it froze, encasing him in a yellow-blue tent. Behind him, as if it were a giant, meticulously assembled art form that’s just been bumped by a clumsy child, the dragon began collapsing into small nuggets.
Well, so much for that idea, Chris thought.
With a tap
of a manicured fingernail, Gamble sent the tent of fire, shattering around him. As the pieces fell, they reignited, burning now on his head, on his shoulders, around his feet. He began walking toward Chris, a stunt man too macho to wear asbestos.
Liberace jubilantly sang, “It made the children laugh and play.”
Gamble, surprisingly, restored Chris’s hands and tongue.
Smoldering, Gamble grabbed Chris’s surplice at the collar. “Do you know what today is?”
“My lucky day?” he said, turning his head to the side. The man’s breath was rancid.
“It’s the day when I get to finally see you, and billions just like you, litter the commons with your torn and broken bodies. Then I’m going to take your souls and, one by one, pull them through my teeth, removing any evidence that might link them to a prior owner. And I’m going to make sure that you, Mr. Kaddison, become one of the first to whet what’s promising to be an insatiable appetite.” He smiled. “Oh, but that’s right. You can’t see beyond sunrise today, can you? For once in your life, you can’t see the bits and pieces of tomorrow. And do you know why? Because the last chapter of the old book ends here, and the rights to the sequel have yet to be negotiated.”
“All finished!” Liberace announced, the pipes still resonating from the last chord.
“Righteous,” Chris said, now free to move if he chose. “Is there a green light flashing on the console?”
Liberace threw back his cape. “There sure is,” he said. “Want to hear Camp Town Races?”
“Thanks anyway,” said Chris. “But now that Juanita’s wired for sound, I’m scooting the hell out of here.”
“You’re a fine man, Chris,” said Liberace. He pointed to Gamble and his daughters. “And don’t let those bullies shove you around. Don’t cut yourself short. You’ve got more going for you than you might think.”
Gamble returned Liberace’s wonderfully warm smile. “I’ll see you on the battlefields. I’ve killed your kind before, and I can do it again. And when it’s all said and done, you ancient fuck, you’ll wish you were rotting on the prairie with the rest of your herd.”
“How simply charming you are,” said Liberace. “But I’d leave the lights on if I were you.” Then he turned to Chris. “Well, I’ve had a wonderful time, really, but I’m expected at a séance in Reno. My brother George wants to chat.” With a bright and mocking smile, he waved his bejeweled hand and disappeared.
Gamble stared at Chris, his eyes afire. “Friends in high places?”
“That’s nothing, dude,” Chris said glibly. “You should be around when I have Presley and Joplin over to clean my oven.”
Gamble looked truly surprised. “You pathetic moron. You really don’t know what just came to your rescue, do you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “A figment of my imagination. I told you I was the best in Wonderland.” Chris didn’t really believe he was behind Liberace’s resurrection, at least not all of it. He had help, but from who or what he had no idea. Nevertheless, he was grateful.
Smiling a victor’s smile, Chris said, “My imagination knows no bounds.”
“You couldn’t imagine that, Mr. Kaddison, even if you could imagine that.”
Chris sucked on the riddle, perplexed.
Disgusted, Gamble leaned in and tendered a gaze that would have made Dr. Anton Mesmer cluck like a chicken. “‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’”
“Hebrews,” Chris said. “So you went to Sunday school, too. What’s your point?”
Before he could answer, one of the girls came forward. “I’m sick of his mouth. Why don’t you just finish him, Daddy?”
Another girl stepped up. “Let me do it, Daddy. Please? I’ll bring him in with us.”
Gamble turned and lunged at his daughters, uttering a shrill noise that sprinkled tingle-dust down Chris’s back. It was a high-pitched scream, akin to a large tree monkey. It faded to a warbling mewl, followed by a series of guttural clicks and hiccup-like barks. Had his eyes been closed, Chris could have easily imagined himself deep in the Amazon, listening to the nocturnal rhetoric of a strange, undiscovered primate living high in the jungle canopy.
When Gamble was finished, he turned back to Chris. Appearing rather humored with himself, he said, “Pardon the interruption, but it was imperative that I explain to them that when one wanders the carnivals of perdition, the most sought after ride is anticipation.”
Chris was certain that the man was paraphrasing. “See, there you go, that’s your problem, dude,” he said. “You’re spending way too much time on the rides and ignoring the gaffed entertainment. I mean, win your girlfriend a Teddy bear, shoot some ducks, throw some hoops, toss some pennies...”
“I might be impressed by your gumption, but I’m afraid it’s vainglory rather than brass balls that drives your mouth.” Gamble nodded toward the empty organ. “Your friend won’t always be here to protect you. And while your skills are laudable for an amoeba, they couldn’t begin to get your worthless, protozoan ass past the welcome mat on my front doorstep.”
Chris, who’d been standing against the organ, suddenly fell to the floor. The instrument had vanished.
Gamble chuckled. “Dreams are so desultory, don’t you agree?”
“I might,” Chris said, “if I knew what ‘desultory’ meant.” He got up, brushed himself off. Then he saw the organ. It was upside-down on the ceiling, directly above the altar, the green light on its console still blinking.
Gamble smiled one last time. “I’ll leave you to Juanita’s whims. Oh, and to your own, as well, I imagine. I believe you refer to that partnership as ‘Door Number Three?’” Leaning in close now, he said, “Maybe you’ll get lucky again, maybe not.” He straightened his tie. “Either way, you’re soul food eventually. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to muster the troops.”
Then, in a blink, Gamble and his girls were gone.
3.
Appearing like a despairing usher, Chris started down the aisle, listening, carefully avoiding the dragon’s crunchy remains. The sounds of demolition had ceased altogether, and now an eerie calm sequestered the church from eviction. Or so it seemed. But the lull was only temporary, just the legendary calm. He knew a storm was coming, the storm of Inevitable Annihilation. And once it made landfall, he could rest assured that it would lift and scatter the remnants of this dream to the farthest crags of Juanita Santiago’s mind.
“Dude, this place is gonna fold like a bad hand,” he mumbled.
Chris had tried leaving the dream without success. That meant that either Gamble and crew were still keeping him hostage or Juanita’s psyche was. If it was Juanita, his chances were good at figuring a way out. If not, he was most likely going to become “soul food.”
He could hear it now, distant and hungry: an encroaching tsunami that began in the deepest depths of the psyche, now threatening to crest over a vacuum where worlds were built and destroyed on white noise and nocturnal discharges.
“Surf’s up,” he reported to the dreary chapel.
Chris had surfed more beaches than he cared to count. He was the master of ARS, had ridden some monster bone crushers, and ate kooks and grems for lunch. And, man, there was nothing like watching his reflection in the glass house. He could line up all the betties on the beach and they couldn’t come close to inspiring the kind of woody he got when it was just him and his board. He was a surfer, a dude. But nothing—absolutely nothing—could compare to beach break in the human mind.
In these last incredible moments, there was no predictable way to guess how things would eventuate; methods of annihilating dreamscapes were as individual as the minds that created them, and Juanita’s psyche would do everything in its awesome power to make sure he didn’t make it out alive.
A woman’s voice hollered from behind the main door. “J.R.? It’s time to come back now. You can talk to your imaginary friends after supper.”
Frozen, Chris gaped at the door. Sh
it. Juanita had found him.
And so, it seemed, had his dead mother.
Door Number Three
Fuck.
“Mommy Dearest,” he whispered.
“I’m coming in,” she said. “Are you decent?”
“Not since I started reading Penthouse Forum,” he yelled. Hell, what was she going to do? Ground him? He could only hope.
“You’ve got five minutes, mister, then I’m coming in after you.”
He looked around, nodding. Perhaps his mother wasn’t permitted to come in. This was a church. An ancient one, but a church all the same. And Juanita—now that Gamble and crew were gone—wasn’t going to allow an unholy act to occur in a place of worship, even against a heathen like himself.
That was just speculation, of course...
As he turned in a tight circle, hugging himself, wondering what dear old Mom was going to do next, he saw the wall behind the altar phase into a limpid, wavy screen of bubbles, very much like a moiré effect. There were thousands of bubbles, each one no larger than a dime, and perforated like a tea ball.
Yet again, the storm fell silent.
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