The Ninth Nightmare

by Graham Masterton

  ‘OK,’ said John. ‘The Griffin House it is.’ He went to his bedroom door and opened it.

  Springer blinked at him. ‘You’re not going to put on your shoes?’

  John gave him a long, sober look. If the situation hadn’t been so desperate, he probably would have laughed.

  Rhodajane had just stepped out of the shower when they knocked at Room 309. She opened the door with a pink towel wrapped around her head like a turban and a pink toweling robe with Griffin House Hotel embroidered on it. Without her false lashes and her make-up, John thought she looked surprisingly young, although her eyes were a little puffy.

  ‘Well, good morning, boys!’ she greeted them. ‘I was just about to order some breakfast on room service. Want some?’

  ‘Coffee and pancakes would be good,’ said John. ‘And tell them not to be tight-assed with the maple syrup.’

  Springer said, soberly, ‘You did a very brave thing last night, Rhodajane. You saved all of your fellow Night Warriors.’

  Rhodajane walked over to her dressing table and sat down in front of the triple mirrors. She pouted at herself and then she said, ‘I did what Xyrena is supposed to do. Xyrena’s the super slut, right? It wasn’t difficult. That poor clown didn’t know whether he was coming or going, and in the end he did both.’

  ‘It may not have been difficult, Rhodajane, but it took great nerve. Ashapola is aware how courageous you were, and Ashapola is deeply appreciative.’

  ‘We didn’t manage to take out El Grando Freako, though, did we? Are we going to have another crack at him tonight?’

  ‘Actually, we’re considering a different approach,’ said Springer.

  ‘I sure hope so. I’m still sore from the last approach.’

  John shook his head in amusement, but Springer stayed deadly serious. ‘For whatever reason, Dom Magator’s Absence Gun had no effect on Brother Albrecht, so we’re going to go for Mago Verde instead, to see if we can stop him from taking Brother Albrecht his ninth and last sacrifice.’

  Three Rhodajanes looked at Springer out of her triple mirrors. ‘OK – you take out Mago Verde. But won’t Brother Albrecht simply find somebody else to bring him victim number nine? Another one of those – what do you call them – Dreads?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Springer admitted. ‘I can’t tell for sure if Mago Verde is Brother Albrecht’s only contact with the waking world, but so far I haven’t sensed the presence of any other Dreads in this vicinity, not for hundreds of miles, and so I’m assuming that he is.

  ‘If Brother Albrecht doesn’t receive his ninth sacrifice, he’ll have to stay in the world of dreams for ever – or at least until he recruits some other Dread to do his dirty work for him. Which may be hundreds of years. Or never, let us pray to Ashapola.’

  John said, ‘The thing is, sweetheart, we don’t know where Mago Verde is going to find his next victim, which is why we’ve come here, to the Griffin House. Sooner or later, no matter where he first attacks them, he stays here and dreams them into the walls of this hotel. We don’t know why. But from this hotel he passes them on to Brother Albrecht’s circus.’

  ‘It’s my guess that he mutilates them as a way of preparing them for Brother Albrecht’s dream,’ said Springer. ‘He makes it physically impossible for them to think of returning to their normal life. Then – once they arrive at the circus – Brother Albrecht decides what kind of freaks he wants them to be turned into, and his surgeons get to work on them and finish what you might call the finer details. The dogs’ faces, the goats’ legs. All of the other abominations.

  ‘Throughout history, in all religions, from the Aztecs to the Norsemen, a sacrifice is only considered to be spiritually meaningful if the victim is willing to accept their fate – happy, even. Whenever a Viking chieftain died and was burned on his boat, one of his female slaves would volunteer to die with him. By the time Brother Albrecht has finished with them, I very much doubt if any of his victims aren’t willing to stay in his circus. They can never return to the waking world, can they, and pick up their lives where they left off? Not if they have no legs, or snakes instead of arms, or a face like a llama.’

  Rhodajane was pouting at herself as she applied bright red lip gloss. ‘What if I tried?’

  John frowned at her three reflections. ‘What? What if you tried what?’

  ‘What if I tried to take out Brother Albrecht, the same way I took out that clown?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Springer. ‘Brother Albrecht is no ordinary man, and I don’t think he ever was. What goes on inside of his mind, nobody knows.’

  ‘I have no intention of appealing to his mind, Springer! I’m going to appeal to his . . . Kercheval. He might not have arms or legs but he’s not lacking in that department.’

  ‘Too darn dangerous,’ said John, dismissively.

  ‘Then why the hell was I invited along last night?’

  ‘You were chosen for this mission so that you would distract Brother Albrecht’s attention,’ Springer explained. ‘We know that he has a fatal weakness for women. That’s what got him mutilated in the first place.’

  ‘I took out that harlequin, didn’t I – and that harlequin was dreamed up by Brother Albrecht. If the harlequin went for me, so will he.’

  ‘But this time, sweetheart, he’s going to be ready for us, and he’s going to know all about your needles, and how you could make his blood boil.’

  ‘I still think I ought to try.’

  ‘And what happens if he takes you out, instead? Where does that leave the rest of us? If the Absence Gun doesn’t have any effect on him, I doubt if any of the rest of our weapons are going to be much good.’

  Springer said, ‘Listen – all of this is academic until we find Mago Verde. Maybe, when we do, we can persuade him to tell us if the good Brother Albrecht has any other weaknesses, apart from women.’

  ‘Oh, you mean we could torture him?’

  ‘No, I don’t. There are other ways of extracting information from people without torturing them.’

  ‘Like bribing him?’

  ‘In a way, yes. Remember that Mago Verde is a Dread, who can shift at will from the waking world to the dream world, and back again. But in the human sense, Dreads are not alive. They are something between ghosts and zombies. And if there is one thing that all Dreads crave more than anything else, it is to have their humanity back.’

  ‘But how can we offer him that? I don’t know about you, but I’m fresh out of humanity.’

  Springer closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his pupils were a very pale agate color, and luminous. ‘Ashapola is the greatest power in the universe, John. Ashapola can turn the night into day. Ashapola can heal the sick and make the dead dance.’

  ‘OK,’ said John. ‘I’ll take your word for it. But what we need to do now is set up some kind of surveillance, right? One of us needs to keep an eye on the hotel lobby in case Gordon Veitch tries to register, and the rest of us should patrol the corridors. Whatever happens, we mustn’t let him slip into the hotel unnoticed. Otherwise we’re screwed.’

  NINETEEN

  Hunt The Clown

  Detective Wisocky was studying the menu outside the entrance to the Boa Vinda restaurant when Detective Hudson came toward him across the hotel lobby, accompanied by a white-haired old man in a brown three-piece suit.

  He checked his wristwatch and said, ‘It’s five after six, Charlie. You’re twenty minutes late. I was just about to go in and order the tilapia with peanuts. I never ate tilapia with peanuts before. Come to that, I never ate peanuts with tilapia.’

  ‘Sorry, Walter. We had to stop off on the way and buy a new battery for Henry’s hearing aid. By the way, this is Henry Marriott. Henry – this is Detective Wisocky.’

  The old man held out his hand. He was small and frail, with a bulbous nose and large hairy ears, and he put Walter in mind of a miniature version of Jimmy Durante. He wore a crisp white shirt with a red silk necktie and a matching red carnation in his butt
onhole. His hand felt like a turkey’s claw.

  ‘Good to meet you, Henry,’ said Walter. ‘My partner tells me you used to run the Clown Museum down on Pearl Road. When was that?’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Henry, cupping his hand to his left ear. The background music in the hotel lobby didn’t help, and neither did a business executive standing right next to them, yelling into his cellphone.

  Walter leaned forward and shouted, ‘When – did – you – run – the – Clown Museum?’

  ‘Oh! Got you! I was there for almost forty-eight years, from August nineteen hundred and thirty-five through June nineteen hundred and seventy-nine. I was only eighteen years old when I started. I took over the running of it when I was twenty-seven, which was in nineteen forty-four, because Mr Cascarelli was called up to join the Marines. He was killed at Okinawa, poor fellow. Stepped on a mine and got blown to smithereens. Good way for a clown to go, though.’

  Charlie said, ‘Henry knew Gordon Veitch. In fact he knew him better than most – didn’t you, Henry?’

  Walter laid a hand on Henry’s angular shoulder. ‘Let’s go through to the bar, shall we, Henry? It’s a whole lot quieter in there, and you’ll be able to hear me better. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘A long slow comfortable screw up against a cold hard wall, if that’s OK.’

  Walter looked across at Charlie and raised one eyebrow, but Charlie simply shrugged. ‘That’s kind of a circus drink, I guess.’

  They walked across the lobby toward the Lantern Bar, passing beneath the portrait of the stern-faced man with the reddish hair and the formal black suit. As they did so, Henry stopped and pointed up at him and said, ‘Now there’s your guilty party. Gilbert T. Griffin.’

  ‘Gilbert Griffin? Gilbert Griffin built this hotel and it’s the best hotel in Cleveland. What’s he guilty of?’

  ‘Meddling with things that shouldn’t be meddled with. That’s what he’s guilty of.’

  ‘OK . . .’

  ‘That’s Gilbert Griffin and the girl next to him, that’s his child-bride Emily Griffin, God rest her soul, wherever her soul might be.’

  ‘I see. You’ll have to tell us about it.’

  They found a dark corner booth in the Lantern Bar, with squeaky black leather seats. Walter would have given anything for an ice-cold Coors, but he had to settle for a Diet Coke. Sometimes he wished he had picked a career in which drinking was not only acceptable but obligatory, like politics, or acting, or writing fiction. Charlie ordered a glass of water, with a twist.

  ‘So you knew Gordon Veitch,’ said Walter, when Henry’s cocktail arrived.

  ‘You bet. We all knew him, all of us clowns. Gordon Veitch was Mago Verde, the Green Magician. His father before him, Daniel Veitch, he was Mago Verde, too, and he handed it down to Gordon – the make-up, the tricks, but most of all that mean malicious attitude. If there was ever a son-of-a-bitch on this planet it was Daniel Veitch and if there was ever a son-of-a-son-of-a-bitch it was Gordon Veitch. But let me tell you one thing. Gordon Veitch may have been mean and malicious to everybody else, but he was never once mean and malicious to me. I guess you could say that he took me under his wing.’

  ‘How did you come to meet him?’ asked Walter.

  ‘I met him at Corey’s Circus. I used to work there after school, making myself some money by mucking out the animals. You ever smell lion shit? There is no worse smell on this planet than lion shit. Well, tiger shit maybe.

  ‘I got to know some of the clowns and most of them were good to me, considering I was nothing more than a part-time shit-shoveler. Bongo especially. He was Portuguese, believe it or not, and his real name was Remi. He helped me to design my own make-up and he lent me some of his outfits and he showed me how to juggle with knives and how to walk on the low wire and how to fall on my ass without hurting myself.

  ‘But it was Mago Verde who took a real shine to me, especially if I ran errands for him, like placing bets on the horses and bringing him cigarettes and bottles of hooch. All of the other circus folk, though, they stayed well clear of him. He would trip people up when they were carrying boxes of light bulbs; or he would do this trick when he threw an egg up into the air and catch it in a velvet bag, but when he asked some sucker to dip his hand into the bag and pick the egg out for him, the bag was cram-full of razor blades. Like I say, he was a regular son-of-a-bitch. He had the power, though, no mistake about that.’

  ‘The power?’ asked Walter. ‘What power was that, exactly?’

  Henry sucked noisily at his cocktail. Then he held it up to the light and said, ‘Not bad. But too much sloe gin.’

  ‘What power, Henry?’ Walter pressed him.

  Henry blinked at him as if he had never seen him before in his life. But then he lifted one finger and tapped it against the side of his bulbous nose. ‘Daniel Veitch had given Gordon a whole lot more than his make-up and his magic tricks and his mean and malicious attitude. He had passed on the family knack of stepping into other people’s dreams. That’s what he told me, anyhow, and he proved it to me.’

  ‘Excuse me? Stepping into other people’s dreams? How exactly did he do that?’

  ‘Search me. But he always insisted that he could do it, and once he told me that he had stepped into one of my dreams when I was sleeping – a dream I was having about fishing out on Lake Erie and my boat was sinking – and he described that dream to me in every detail – just like he had actually been there, too, standing right behind me.’

  ‘OK,’ said Walter, trying not to sound too skeptical. ‘Go on.’

  ‘Well, the dream thing, that’s where Gilbert Griffin came into it, and Gilbert Griffin was the real instigator of what happened next, although I never told nobody about it because nobody would never have believed me.’

  ‘So what makes you think that we’re going to believe you?’

  ‘You can believe me if you want to, or not if you don’t. I’m ninety-three years old now and I don’t give a rat’s ass. But I might as well tell somebody before I cash in my chips and it might as well be you. Especially young Charlie here. He understands about clowns, don’t you, Charlie?’

  ‘All right,’ said Walter. ‘What heinous act of heiniosity did Gilbert Griffin commit?’

  ‘It was that child-bride of his, Emily. He was nuts about her – and you can see from the picture in the lobby how cute she was. But in July of nineteen thirty-five, only eighteen months after they were married, she came out of Kroger’s Family Store on Noble Road up in Cleveland Heights and she was knocked down by a speeding automobile and she died two days later in hospital.

  ‘Gilbert Griffin, he was inconsolable and it was public knowledge how grief-stricken he was. He placed advertisements in the Plain Dealer every day, offering thousand-dollar rewards to any mediums who could contact Emily in the spirit world so that he could talk to her and tell her how much he missed her. That’s when Mago Verde got in contact with him and said he could visit Emily in his dreams and bring him back messages from her, and even letters. But that wasn’t all. For a price, he said, there was a way that he could bring her back to life.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Walter. ‘Did Gilbert Griffin believe him?’

  Henry sucked more cocktail and nodded. ‘He surely did. Mago Verde told me about it, too. According to him, it was some hocus-pocus they devised in the Vatican in the Middle Ages. You know what hocus-pocus is, don’t you?’

  ‘Hocus-pocus? What are you talking about? Sure I do.’

  ‘No, you don’t. I can tell by your face. Hocus-pocus comes the Latin hoc est corpus, which is the words they speak in the Eucharist when the communion wafer is supposed to turn into flesh. If you can turn a biscuit into a person, it can’t be too much trouble to turn a dream into a person, can it?’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Don’t look so surprised, detective. There’s a whole encyclopedia up inside of this head. I wasn’t no director of no museum for forty-eight years without learning nothing, even if it was only a clown museum.’

  Wal
ter said, ‘OK. I’m impressed. So what was this hocus-pocus, exactly?’

  ‘Mago Verde told me that you had to make a trade. To bring one dead person out of the world of dreams and back to the world of reality, you had to take nine innocent people from the world of reality and take them through to the world of dreams, like forever. Nine for one.’

  ‘Why nine?’

  Henry rolled up his eyes as if he were talking to a six-year-old child. ‘Because nine is the magic number which is the beginning of everything. Nine makes everything tick. Time, space, life, death – everything runs on the number nine. Nine is like the key to the universal clock. So nine people had to be taken away before one could come back.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Why do you think we say that cats have nine lives? And “a stitch in time saves nine”?’ He held up nine fingers, and counted each of them in turn. ‘In the Christian religion, there are nine orders of angels. In Hebrew, God has seventy-two names, and seven and two add up to nine. In Arabic, God has ninety-nine names. The Mayans believed that nine was a sacred number, and in China, on the ninth day of the ninth month, the day of Double Yang, people believe that their dead and faraway friends can appear in front of them.

  ‘Nine is the number that makes dreams work. Next time you have a dream, try to remember how many nines appeared in it. Could be anything – nine doorknobs, nine cakes, nine people, nine trees. But I guarantee you, the number nine will be in there someplace.’

  ‘I don’t dream, Henry,’ said Walter. ‘I don’t dream ever.’

  ‘You do, detective, even if you can’t remember it. Next time, try to remember. Nine bottles of beer hanging on the wall, nine willing women.’

  ‘So what happened?’ asked Walter, trying to change the subject. ‘Mago Verde conned Gilbert Griffin into thinking that he could bring his beloved Emily back to life, and in return Gilbert Griffin paid him to kidnap nine innocent people and take them off to the land of nod? That sounds suspiciously like conspiracy to me, if not murder for hire.’