Undead Ed and the Demon Freakshow

by Rotterly Ghoulstone

  My hand began to twitch at my side.

  “It’s not my fault your crazy suicide went wrong, Cheapteeth,” I screamed back at the clown. “Now just tell us which of your pathetic minions cursed Jemini so Max and I can wipe it out and get on with the rest of our deaths.”

  “Whahahaahahah!”

  The laughter went on and on for what seemed like an age, and I felt Max getting ready to race for the stage. Something was holding my werewolf friend back, probably the same edge of icy fear that prevented me from advancing.

  “Shorry to dishappoint you, Ed . . . but, in fact, my shuichide went almost exactly according to plan,” came the booming voice once more, stifling another round of maniacal laughter. “But you, shadly, were in the wrong plache at the worsht posshible time . . . and now I require your shoul’s complete deshtruction in order to give mine . . . full power.”

  And, suddenly, there it was: Kambo Cheapteeth needed my spirit in order to charge up his own . . . like he was a flashlight and I was a set of AA batteries. Nice. Still, at least it explained why the demented lunatic had hunted me down.

  The clown was still talking, but his words weren’t getting any clearer. . . .

  “Letsh not jusht shtand around all day . . . let ush have shome fun before we draw our show to a grand finale. The cursh you sheek to lift came from none other than my eshteemed colleague, Mishter Carble. Let’s shee if you can get to him, shall we?”

  Max didn’t hesitate. Howling with insane fury, he sprang down the central aisle and tore toward Carble. Unfortunately, the two undead lions ripped forward at the same pace, and both collided with Max in the middle of the circle.

  Carble grinned, his brass teeth flashing in the glint of the spotlight, and scampered off toward a rickety ladder that spanned the gap between the floor and Stein’s arcing tightrope.

  My hand twitched again, and I was off.

  Expecting the sea of demons to pour over me at any moment like a school of piranhas, I closed one eye to steady my balance and ran, desperately trying to circumnavigate the fight between Max and the lions as I made for the foot of the ladder.

  For some reason, it worried me even more when no attack was made. The screeching, squealing ocean of imps just watched the show as the spotlight followed my progress in the chase.

  Carble was moving at incredible speed for such a short-limbed man, climbing the ladder like a spider monkey and then swinging underneath the tightrope before advancing along it.

  Stein swooped in to protect the scurrying midget, looking every inch the spider queen fiercely guarding her young.

  I was closing in on the pair and had just reached the top of the ladder when my ever-failing body chose the most catastrophic moment to let go of a major asset.

  My foot dropped off.

  DROPPED off.

  I felt a lightness underneath me and then watched with horror as the entire foot simply pitched away into the gloom.

  A cacophony of grim laughter deafened my senses.

  “Bad luck there, Ed. I didn’t know it would be shoe eashy to make you looshe your shole. Shole, get it? Hahaha! I’m shuch a heel! Whahahahahah!”

  I gritted my teeth and balanced precariously on one leg. I was going to have to cross the tightrope on one leg.

  Insane.

  My hand twitched again, and, before I could stop myself, I was moving along the tightrope. It was starting to feel like part of my brain was actually embedded in the freaky fingers; despite expelling the Cheapteeth parasite from the arm, I seemed to have very little control over my own movement. As if to underline this thought, I tried to take a step backward . . . but it didn’t happen.

  It was the most pathetic tightrope walk in history.

  I took several strangely controlled steps forward, regained control of my senses, and fell.

  The hand flicked up like a cobra and snatched hold of the line.

  I dangled like a fly on a strand of web, part of me wanting to let go while the rest of me screamed an order not to look down.

  Unfortunately, I had no choice . . . because my bad eyelid fluttered open.

  Far below, on the arena floor, Max was being circled by the two undead lions. Despite the size of the three creatures, they looked like miniatures when viewed from such a height.

  I wanted to help Max—he certainly looked like he would need help against the pair of rotting big cats, but the hand had other ideas.

  I’d barely had time to breathe before I was vaulted upward once more. I shot into the air like a poisoned dart, hung around the circus roof as my descent slowed, and then plummeted back to the wire.

  My landing caused a ripple on the line that made Jessica Stein take to the air once more. Even Carble, who was holding the wire with both hands and feet, scampered for the safety of the far platform.

  I looked down and gasped with shock as my body began to move of its own accord. A sickening crack from my remaining foot echoed around the big top as the bones divided and folded around the wire. I felt sick. My foot was now a boneless flesh maw and had fastened onto the line with an unearthly determination . . . like an old man’s false teeth clasping a chewy sweet. Even a hurricane wouldn’t have shifted me from the wire. . . .

  I was propelled downward and cried out with surprise as I was pulled flat to the line, my demon hand grasping the wire.

  Then, accompanied by a deafening roar that I couldn’t quite believe had originated from my own lips, the hand twisted around the wire and pulled.

  No, not pulled: wrenched . . . with the strength of an army.

  It brought down the entire scaffold, sending both platforms and the wire between them crashing to the circus floor.

  Unfortunately for Jessica Stein, her midget friend had sensed the danger and leapt at her feet for safety, dragging her to the floor along with everything else. On the way down, she became tangled in the wire’s safety netting, kicking free of the midget as she fought to escape.

  Max and his two savage opponents were swallowed up in the debris that mushroomed up from the fallout of the collapse.

  The big top was suddenly a bowl of heavy darkness, with only a single erratic spotlight dancing over the shadows apparently at random.

  I hit the ground like Humpty Dumpty . . . and ended up in roughly the same condition.

  Don’t get me wrong—I knew my body was weakening. What I didn’t know was that one hard impact would send me spinning to the four winds.

  CRUNCH.

  Bear in mind that I only saw this from my one good eye in the sporadic illumination of the single darting spotlight. But I can still put the full picture together. Unfortunately.

  My head snapped away from my spinal column and rolled into the corner of the circle like a really well-kicked soccer ball.

  It’s impossible to describe what it looks and feels like when your head rolls away. All you can see is the floor and the ceiling, spinning in a kaleidoscope of weirdness until you eventually bounce to a halt. Thankfully, I landed facing the circle, otherwise what happened afterward would have been anyone’s guess.

  At least I got to see my foot again: the one that had fallen from the tightrope platform was now three centimeters from my bad eyeball.

  The demon hand ripped away immediately, scurrying into the darkness and taking most of the left arm with it. I wasn’t really shocked at that. I’d only just gotten used to having it around in the first place.

  That left my main body, which broke into two different pieces: the upper torso with my one remaining arm, and the midsection, complete with a partially functioning pair of legs (admittedly minus one foot).

  I didn’t have time to get over the shock of losing so many body bits before I realized with even greater surprise that I could still feel them.

  I gritted my teeth as I urged my legs to g
et to their one remaining foot. They did, blundering around as more and more of the ghostly spotlights flooded back into the arena.

  One of the lions had been speared by the collapsing scaffold. It pawed ineffectually at the ground but had been completely impaled and was becoming increasingly insubstantial: it now looked like nothing more than a child’s drawing of a beast.

  Unfortunately, the other creature was anything but destroyed, and it erupted from a haphazard pile of metal supports, roaring with rage and confusion.

  A short distance away, Max emerged from an equally sturdy heap of wooden struts, looking slightly less alert than he had earlier. There were nasty wounds in his chest and legs, and something about the way he stalked forward suggested that he was slightly dazed. The lion barreled into him, and the battling pair rolled over and over as they each tried to land savage bites on the other. Flesh began to fly.

  I shut my bad eye and tried to focus. My brain-link with the demon hand was practically nonexistent, but I did manage to convince my right arm to make its way toward me, dragging my upper torso with it.

  Then Carble appeared. The little midget clawed his way from beneath the remains of a broken trapeze, his brass teeth gritted as spit flew from his lips. Reaching out with both hands, he snatched hold of my lower back—his grotesquely overgrown nails dug into my flesh and stopped my body’s slow progress across the arena floor.

  I winced as the pain of the attack resounded in my hindbrain.

  “Get off me, you stinking, putrid, spit-faced gnome!” I yelled, concentrating all my focus on the torso and commanding my right arm to fight back. To my delight, the limb swung around and smacked the midget squarely in the face: once, twice, three times. I was about to utter a celebratory cheer when Carble bit hold of my hand on the last pass, sinking his gleaming teeth into the palm.

  The pain took me all the way from mad to furious, and suddenly I knew just what to do.

  Pursing my lips with the effort of concentration, I got my wandering legs to run at the wriggling midget.

  Even with a missing foot, the legs responded well. Guided by my newly sharpened mind, they half hobbled, half hopped to the aid of my struggling torso, leaped into the air, and landed with a decisive stomp on the midget’s fat little face.

  To this day, I can still hear the crack as Carble’s nose shattered.

  Max and the lion were literally tearing strips off each other, but it appeared that the werewolf was now getting the best of the fight.

  Using curved claws like eagle talons and teeth that were barely housed inside his elongated jaw, Max launched a final, deadly assault on the beast, going straight for the big cat’s throat. The lion gave a demented roar and collapsed, but in doing so tore such a savage wound in Max’s side that the werewolf collapsed and began to convulse violently on the floor.

  I surveyed the situation, which looked worse for Mortlake Massive with every new second. It wasn’t about to get any better. . . .

  A bloodied hand reached down and snatched a handful of my hair, lifting my head from the ground.

  My vision soared upward as the circus dropped away, and I just knew it was Jessica Stein holding my decapitated head.

  All at once we landed on the outer circle of the Big Top’s highest row of stalls. Surrounded by crowding demons, I was marched over to the gangly, cackling form of Kambo Cheapteeth, who bowed and gratefully accepted my head as if it was a nicely wrapped Christmas present from an elderly aunt.

  I was abruptly turned to face the middle of the big top, as a fresh flood of light illuminated the clamoring interior. Jessica Stein flew down to aid Carble, who was barely conscious. She dragged him back onto his chubby feet.

  “I’m sorry we never met in life, Ed,” Cheapteeth whispered, his gnarled and yellowing teeth mere centimeters from my good eye. “I think we would have been great friends. Now . . .”

  The clown took a deep breath, used his other hand to raise the twisted microphone to his disgusting lips, and bellowed. “Stein! Carble! Destroy the werewolf. My demons are hungry!”

  “Stop! No! Please! Nooooooooooooo,” I yelled out in frustrated desperation as the hovering witch and her midget collaborator grasped a length of scaffolding between them and drove the pole deep into Max’s heart.

  At least, that’s what they would have done if the side of the big top hadn’t suddenly gaped open at that very moment, ripped asunder by the gargantuan hands of Ten Tow Tom.

  Demons screamed in fury, taking to the skies and rolling over one another to escape the clutches of the eater as it rumbled through the newly ripped gap in the canvas and barreled into the stalls, smashing the wooden seating into splinters.

  A combined force of werewolves and vampires charged in the wake of the behemoth, attacking demons left and right as the creatures rallied to mount an offensive of their own.

  Stein and Carble immediately halted their attempt to kill Max Moon and directed their attention to the ambush, which intensified with the arrival of Forgoth the Cursed and his free-roaming demonic entity, Mumps. Now in the form of an enormous mutant that appeared to be a cross between a tree and a teddy bear, Mumps carved a path toward the middle of the big top in an effort to offer Max some much needed protection.

  When Evil Clive finally appeared, wearing his trademark raincoat with a baseball cap turned back to front on his skull, I was already on the move.

  Kambo Cheapteeth, it seemed, had no desire to hang around for a confrontation with the undead hordes of the Mortlake Massive. Instead, he was leaving. Fast. And still holding on to my head.

  “Heeelllp!” I yelled as each new level of the stalls rushed past at an impossible speed. In those frantic few seconds, I saw many things that were almost too terrible to describe . . . even if they were perpetrated by my own friends.

  I saw Mumps snatch hold of Jessica Stein and rip her to pieces, stomping and crushing the bits that were left over.

  I saw Max Moon stagger to his feet, still clutching the terrible wound in his side, and dropkick Vincent Carble into the waiting arms of the eater, who crunched him with a sound like someone working their way through a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips.

  The demons took to the skies and fled.

  And then I saw Evil Clive in pursuit, closing in on us as we disappeared from the big top and ran through the maze of canvas tunnels.

  I fought to mentally connect with my increasingly disparate body but to no avail. On and on we went, as the canvas tunnels gave way to Midden Field and the circus became nothing more than a wash of eerie light in the distance.

  Evil Clive vanished into mist and shadow as Kambo ran faster and faster, his great boots hitting the grass between leaps. The deceptively fast clown was putting even more miles between us and the circus: I was being carried away at a lightning pace.

  And then, all at once, Cheapteeth stopped running and cast my head away like an old potato as he dropped onto his knees.

  “Just you and me now, Ed,” he growled, his peeling makeup plastered to his sick, lopsided face with a mixture of spittle and blood. “Just you and me.”

  “I beg to differ.”

  Looking back, I think I saw the outline of Evil Clive even before Cheapteeth managed to stagger back onto his feet.

  “You think you can save him?” the clown gabbled, waddling over to my disembodied head and resting one of his big slippers on my cheek. I felt like a football at kickoff.

  It was so humiliating. My hatred for Cheapteeth was practically electric. I could feel a surging wave of angry power shifting through my soul. It felt like a pulse had suddenly begun to beat in my temple, but only the gods knew what was causing such a swelling—not blood, that was certain!

  Evil Clive took a step to one side
and tipped his skull at an odd angle, almost as if he was listening for something. “Your souls will perish together,” he said, at length. “You and the thing that took possession of his arm in your sick bargain with the devil.”

  I felt confused. Surely it was Cheapteeth himself who’d taken possession of my arm when I’d first died?

  “You don’t know what you’re dealing with.” The clown laughed. He lifted his foot from my head, then took a quick run up and kicked it aside, passing it across the open ground as Clive advanced on him. “That arm now has the devil’s fingers . . . and those extra digits now do his work. . . .”

  “Not if Ed can control it.”

  “Ha! A child’s mind against the will of the devil himself? Don’t make me laugh.”

  The world spun around and around as my head rolled over and over on the dirt. If it wasn’t for my nose, I figure I’d have rolled quite smoothly. As it was, I felt like I’d been punched in the face about forty-seven times. The final roll ended with a sickening crack that I just knew was the bridge of my nose actually breaking. I was barely aware of Evil Clive slamming into Kambo Cheapteeth like a rogue missile . . .

  . . . and, then, as the two undead warriors rained terrible blows on each other, I began to feel it advancing toward me . . .

  . . . my arm . . .

  . . . the devil’s arm!

  TWELFTH MISTAKE:

  When something terrible happens, you always look back and feel that there’s more you could have done. This is a normal, healthy reaction to horrible events, but, sadly, you’re often wrong. On some occasions, it doesn’t matter what you try to do: it’s like the films you watch where the guy keeps going back in a time machine and doing things over but can’t seem to sort out any of the stuff he’s trying to fix.