The Ninth Nightmare

by Graham Masterton

  But now the clowns were swarming so thick and so fast that even Dom Magator’s Absence Gun wouldn’t be able to annihilate them all. The clowns rose ceaselessly out of the ground like the army of skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, grown from the Hydra’s teeth. Their howlings and their hootings began to develop a terrible rhythm of their own, ha! ha! ha! ha! like derisory laughter.

  ‘Let’s back off!’ shouted Dom Magator. ‘If we go back through that settlement maybe we can outflank them – approach the portal from the other side!’

  He locked his Acoustic Carbine back into its rack, and selected a squat black handgun from the weapons that were swinging from his belt. It was a Sonic Blinder, which used very low level sound-waves to increase the pressure of the optic fluid in its target’s eyeballs until they burst. For dream people, the blinding was permanent – at least until the dream was over, and they vanished into oblivion. Real people suffered nothing worse than temporary blurring of their eyesight, when they woke up.

  Dom Magator fired at the nearest group of clowns, and they immediately spun around and dropped to their knees, clamping their hands over their eyes and wailing in distress. As they went down, Zebenjo’Yyx let off another storm of arrows, more than a hundred of them, and scores of clowns behind them fell into the grass.

  Dom Magator took Xyrena’s hand and started to jog toward the settlement, his weapons and his equipment clanking and jingling with every step. Jekkalon and Jemexxa followed close behind, and Zebenjo’Yyx brought up the rear, turning around every few yards to fire off another volley of arrows.

  As Dom Magator had expected the clowns stopped chasing after them directly, and instead turned toward the hilltop. They knew that the Night Warriors would have to return to the portal through which they had entered George Roussos’ dream, and they clearly thought that they could cut them off before they could get there. Dom Magator prayed that George Roussos would stay asleep long enough for them to circle around and reach the portal from the opposite side of the hill.

  Just before the Night Warriors reached the settlement, he looked around and saw the clowns sweeping up the hillside, hundreds of them, a dark clamorous tide.

  The settlement was a rundown collection of shacks and barns and what looked like workshops. Dim lamps were burning in some of the windows, and Dom Magator could hear hammering and sawing, people shouting to each other, and singing. The wind had died down and the thunder had cleared away, but it was still raining, a steady downpour that seemed to have been dreamed up by Brother Albrecht to make them feel hopeless and dejected.

  They splashed through the puddles between the shacks and the workshops. A small boy of about nine years old was sitting on the porch of one of the shacks, wearing only a tattered brown shirt and britches, and brown boots without laces that were two sizes too big for him. He looked up at them as they approached, his short hair sticking up on the crown of his head, his eyes wide. His face was smudged with dirt as if he hadn’t washed in weeks.

  Xyrena went up to him and hunkered down beside him, her golden cloak flapping in the mud.

  ‘Hi, honey. What’s your name?’

  ‘Michael.’

  ‘That’s a very fine name. What are you doing out here in the rain, Michael? You look so cold, and you’re soaked right through!’

  ‘I don’t have anyplace to go.’

  ‘Isn’t this your folks’ house?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘I can’t find my folks.’

  ‘Don’t they live here?’

  He shook his head again. ‘No. They’re awake.’

  Dom Magator came up. ‘Hey, kid,’ he said. ‘Don’t I know you? I’ve met you before, haven’t I? You’re the boy they call Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ashore-Hallelujah. I didn’t recognize you with your face so dirty.’

  ‘Are you hungry, little boy?’ asked Xyrena. ‘You sure look hungry.’

  ‘Xyrena,’ said Dom Magator, ‘we really have to hit the bricks. If George Roussos wakes up we’re going to be trapped here just like little Michael.’

  ‘Can’t we take him with us? Look at him.’

  Dom Magator took off his glove and scruffed Michael’s hair. ‘I wish we could. But we both know why we can’t, don’t we, Michael?’

  ‘I liked my other dream better,’ said Michael, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘In my other dream they gave me Cheerios and milk and cookies and sometimes they gave me ice cream.

  He blinked, and Dom Magator could see tears in his eyes. ‘In my other dream, my mom came to visit me. But now she doesn’t and I don’t think she knows where I am.’

  ‘Let’s just take him,’ urged Xyrena. ‘We can do that, can’t we?’

  Dom Magator helped her to stand up and drew her aside. Jemexxa and Jekkalon went up to Michael and said, ‘How are you doing, buddy? Pretty darn miserable out here, on a night like this.’

  ‘I had a puppy but I don’t know where it’s gone,’ said Michael. ‘I think the Packers took it.’

  ‘The Packers? Who are they?’

  Michael pointed to the nearest ramshackle workshop. ‘They’re in there. They’re always chopping. Chopping and sawing.’

  Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘Why can’t we take him with us? It’s technically possible, isn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Dom Magator told her. ‘But in real life Michael has Mobius Syndrome. It’s a rare congenital birth defect. In real life, Michael can’t walk, or talk, or eat. He can’t even suck a bottle of formula. He spends most of his time asleep, and dreaming. I don’t know how he got himself into this dream. Maybe Brother Albrecht wanted to display him in his freak show, but then realized how serious his disability actually was. I guess there isn’t a whole lot of entertainment value in watching some poor kid just lying there, drooling.’

  Jekkalon came over. ‘Are we going to take him with us or not? We can’t very well leave him here.’

  Xyrena said, ‘We have to. Dom Magator will tell you why.’

  Jekkalon frowned at Dom Magator. ‘We really can’t?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. And we really have to get moving.’

  ‘Can’t we just find his puppy for him? He said that some people called the Packers took it. They’re in that workshop. We only have to ask them politely if they’ll give it back to him, and tell them that we’ll blow their heads off if they don’t.’

  Dom Magator checked the instruments on his wrist. ‘OK. You can try. But you have thirty seconds flat.’

  Jekkalon jogged across to the workshop, followed by Jemexxa and Zebenjo’Yyx. The workshop had a sagging roof and windows that were opaque with grime. Its guttering was crowded with clumps of moss so that the rainwater clattered noisily down the outside walls. For the first time, Dom Magator saw a faded sign over the door that said Roussos Meat Packers.

  ‘You see that?’ he said. ‘This has to be the reason why Brother Albrecht wanted George Roussos to share in this nightmare. He needed his expertise in meat-packing.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Xyrena. ‘You’re not telling me what I think you’re telling me?’

  ‘We should go,’ Dom Magator told them. ‘If those goddamn clowns reach our portal before us—’

  But Jekkalon went up to the workshop door and tried the handle. Inside, they could see dazzling lights shining and they could distinctly hear chopping noises, but the door was locked.

  ‘Leave it!’ said Jemexxa. ‘Come on, Jekkalon, we need to get out of here like now!’

  But Jekkalon said, ‘What was the point of us visiting this dream at all? We couldn’t kill the Grand Freak, we couldn’t catch Mago Verde, we couldn’t save our mom! The least we can do is save this poor kid’s puppy!’

  With that, he kicked at the workshop door. It cracked, but stayed shut. He kicked it again, and again, and the third time it juddered open.

  ‘Jekkalon!’ said Dom Magator. ‘Forget it! We don’t have the time! It’s a puppy, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘It’s the principle! We’re supposed to be warriors, are
n’t we? Well, let’s do some warrior stuff! Let’s be heroes!’

  He disappeared in through the door. Dom Magator said, ‘Come on,’ to Zebenjo’Yyx, and lifted his Sonic Blinder out of its holster. However rashly Jekkalon was behaving, they couldn’t let him enter the workshop without backup. If the clowns reached the portal before they did, they would just have to fight their way through, regardless of the consequences – even if Dom Magator had to use his Absence Gun.

  The workshop door led them into a narrow corridor. There was a changing room on the right-hand side, in which bloodstained coveralls and red safety helmets were hanging up on pegs. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying smell of dried blood and feces, as well as cigarette smoke and sweat.

  The chopping noise was much louder now, as well as persistent sawing. One man was singing O Sole Mio, and two other men were whistling two totally different tunes, out of key. Dom Magator and Zebenjo’Yyx came to the end of the corridor and found themselves on a platform of planks and scaffolding overlooking the main body of the workshop. Jekkalon was already halfway down the steps, but it didn’t appear as if anybody was paying him any attention. The workshop was crowded with at least twenty-five men, all of them in dirty coveralls, and all of them wearing red safety helmets, and all of them far too busy cutting and chopping to notice two or three strangers.

  It looked as if Dom Magator had been right. Brother Albrecht must have drawn George Roussos into his nightmare tonight because he needed the skill of his workforce. These men were nothing more than dream figures, but this was only a dream, and while they were here, they could do whatever Brother Albrecht needed them to; and what they were doing was butchering.

  The interior of the workshop had been set up as a meat-packing plant, with rows of stainless-steel hooks suspended from rails, and stainless-steel tables for cutting and trimming and disemboweling. There were two rows of pressure lamps hanging from the ceiling, hissing loudly, which illuminated the workshop with a bleached, unearthly light.

  On the tables lay cattle and pigs and other more exotic animals, like llamas and mountain goats. The men were bent over them with boning knives and saws, cutting them in half and removing their legs and their heads. The cutting and trimming tables were running with blood, and the paunch table, where cattle had their bellies slit open to let their bowels drop out, was thickly splattered with manure as well as blood.

  Dom Magator looked around the workshop in disgust. When he was a restaurant inspector in Baton Rouge, he had visited more filthy slaughterhouses than he could count, mainly to find out how hamburgers had become contaminated with E-coli bacteria. But this place was a hundred times filthier, and the grisliest spectacle that he had ever seen.

  ‘Shit,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx.

  ‘Exactamundo,’ said Dom Magator.

  It was then that he realized that none of the slaughtered animals had been skinned – even the shaggiest goat. Not only that, none of their meat had been cut from their carcasses in the usual way – no steaks, no spare ribs, no hocks. He thought of Brother Albrecht’s freak show and it dawned on him what was happening here. These animals weren’t being butchered for their meat. Strictly speaking, they weren’t being butchered at all – they were being disassembled so that their heads and their legs and their bodies could be mixed and matched with human beings.

  ‘Jekkalon!’ he told him. ‘Jekkalon, we need to get out of here!’

  But Jekkalon ignored him, and started to walk quickly along the side of the workshop. At the far end, in a shadowy corner, there was a row of cages with various animals in them. Dom Magator could make out at least three sheep and a German Shepherd.

  For a few seconds, Jekkalon was out of sight behind one of the cutting tables. But then he reappeared, and he was carrying a golden Labrador puppy over his arm.

  ‘I got it!’ he said.

  He reached the steps that led up to the platform where Dom Magator and Zebenjo’Yyx were standing. As he started to clamber up them, however, one of the slaughtermen looked up from the pig that he was cutting apart, and roared out, ‘Hey! You! Where the hell do you think you’re going with that dog?’

  Jekkalon ran up the rest of the stairs so fast that he collided with Dom Magator when he got to the top. By now, all of the slaughtermen had turned around and seen what was happening, and they came rushing toward the bottom of the steps, brandishing axes and boning knives and saws. They were led by a thick-necked giant with a bare, blood-spattered chest, who was bellowing like a bull.

  ‘Get out of here!’ Dom Magator told Jekkalon. Then, to Zebenjo’Yyx, ‘Give me some covering fire, will you?’

  Zebenjo’Yyx held up both arms and rattled off two streams of quarrels. The giant slaughterman was already mounting the steps, but he let out one last stentorian bellow and then he toppled backward, bringing down three of his companions with him. His body was unceremoniously heaved aside so that the rest of the slaughtermen could start to climb the steps, screaming and shouting even louder than before.

  Dom Magator took two or three steps back, then lifted his Absence Gun, with the focus set in three stages, from narrow to medium to panoramic. That meant that a concentrated wave function would hit the slaughtermen first, and then two further wave functions would hit the killing floor, and then the entire workshop itself.

  Two of the slaughtermen reached the top of the steps and came lurching toward him. They were both wearing brown leather skullcaps and floor-length leather aprons, and both were carrying bloodstained axes. They looked solid enough, but their faces were smudged and unfocused, with dark holes for eyes and no distinct features. Dom Magator knew that this was because George Roussos was dreaming about them, and although George Roussos knew how many slaughtermen he had working for him, he had no clear idea of what each of them actually looked like.

  ‘Give us back that dog, you thieving bastard,’ growled one of them, in a thick Polish accent.

  ‘Or else what?’ said Dom Magator.

  ‘Or else you wind up like one big hambooger.’

  The slaughterman came forward, swinging his axe rhythmically from side to side, like The Pit And The Pendulum. Although the man’s face was so blurred, Dom Magator could tell that he was grinning.

  ‘You don’t know how much I’m looking forward to this,’ he growled, swinging his axe faster and faster, in a figure of eight, until it whistled.

  Dom Magator pulled the first trigger and – instantly – the slaughterman vanished, as did the rest of the slaughtermen scrambling up the steps behind him. Their knives and saws and axes fell to the floor with a clattering, ringing noise, like hand-bells. Technically, this was a paradox, because the slaughtermen had never existed to pick up their knives and their saws and their axes in the first place. But the paradox was only temporary, because the Absence Gun was set to eliminate their tools, too, and all of the cutting tables where the animals were being dismembered, and then the whole building.

  There was a barrage of ear-splitting thunderclaps as the air rushed in to fill the vacancies left by the non-existent slaughtermen. Even inside his heavy protective helmet, Dom Magator was temporarily deafened. But he fired again, and again, and then there were two more catastrophic bangs, so violent that the ground quaked beneath his feet.

  When he lowered his Absence Gun, Dom Magator saw that there was no workshop any more, no killing floor, no animals and no slaughtermen. He was standing in a briar thicket, with nothing in front of him but trees. The rain was still dredging steadily down, and when he turned around he saw the shack where Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ashore-Hallelujah was sitting on the porch, and Jekkalon, and Jemexxa, and Xyrena, and Zebnenjo’Yyx, all standing around him.

  He looked back to the trees where the workshop had been. But there had never been a workshop, and there had never been any slaughtermen. He felt at least half satisfied with what they had achieved. Even if they had not yet succeeded in putting an end to Brother Albrecht and his hideous traveling carnival, they had at least thwarted his attempt to crea
te even more freaks.

  Michael was hugging the golden Labrador puppy in his arms. Dom Magator walked across to him and said, ‘We have to go now, Michael. But we’ll be back, young feller, I promise you, and we’ll get you out of this nightmare, and find you a really happy dream where they give you Cheerios and your mom can come visit you. At least you have your puppy back.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Michael. His mouth was turned down and he was trying very hard not to cry. ‘You won’t forget about me, will you?’

  Jemexxa hunkered down beside him and stroked the puppy’s head. ‘We won’t forget you, Michael. Ever. When me and my twin brother go on to the stage next time, we’ll sing Michael, Row The Boat Ashore, and we’ll dedicate it especially to you.’

  ‘Does your puppy have a name?’ asked Xyrena.

  Michael nodded. ‘He’s called Froggy.’

  ‘Froggy? That’s a pretty unusual name for a puppy. Most kids would have called their puppies, like, Doggy.’

  Michael rested his cheek against the top of the puppy’s head. ‘That’s what my mom used to call me when I was a baby. She said I looked like a little froggy.’

  Dom Magator saw that one of the needles on his seismic sensor had started to tremble. That meant that George Roussos was now rising through the last phases of REM sleep toward consciousness, and that he would soon be awake.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now we really do have to get the hell out of Dodge.’

  SEVENTEEN

  Flesh Forward

  They ran in silence, like six shadows flickering between the tree trunks, their feet making barely any noise at all. They startled a few deer, and as they reached the edge of the trees, half a dozen gray grouse burst out of the undergrowth in alarm, like feathered bombs. But they kept on running. They had to circle around the right-hand side of the hilltop to stay out of sight of the clowns from Brother Albrecht’s circus until the very last moment.