Fantasmagoria

by Rick Wayne

  “What?”

  Gilbert waved him off. “It’s not important. The point is, if all you need is that box opened, I can do that.” He wasn’t sure, but it was worth a shot. “And I can fix you. And everything.”

  Jack squinted down at the man in the faded yellow suit.

  Gilbert held out his hand. “It’s just a cylinder combination lock, right?”

  Jack studied Gilbert’s face. Then he handed him his most valuable possession.

  Gilbert turned the box over in his hands. He nodded. “I can crack this.”

  “No.” Jack shook his head. “There’s a piston inside. If it’s opened without the combination, the contents get squashed, and I’m fucked.”

  Gilbert scowled and moved the box back and forth. The key clinked. “Did you actually see this piston?”

  Jack thought. “No. Why?”

  “Because this box is very well balanced. If there were a piston, then one side would be heavier than the other.”

  “Fuck . . .” Jack gritted his teeth. Vernal.

  “Plus, to be honest, it’s kind of crappy workmanship. No offense.”

  “None taken.”

  There was another commotion, the yell of a crowd and the report of a gun, this time from the opposite direction.

  “Probably just saurus fights,” Gilbert shrugged.

  Jack looked around. He wasn’t sure where they were. Clouds obscured the stars. Zen-ji was still out there somewhere. If the samurai attacked, Jack was certain they’d both be killed. And they’d never hear him coming. “We can’t do it here. We need to find a place to hide.”

  “There.” Gilbert pointed to a skull-topped spire, just visible over the tenement roofs.

  “What is it?”

  “The last place anyone will look. Come on. I’ll show you.”

  (TWENTY-SEVEN) Unicorn Blues

  Vernal turned into a unicorn every time he laughed, a fact he discovered after joyously escaping the Old Arcade. The viral serum had worked its dark science, and now he was a permanent lycanthrope.

  He sulked in an alley across the street from the Crystal Phallus and fell into a deep melancholy as he waited for the doors to open. Sunlight cowered behind fresh rain, which had returned in force. It fell just as thick as the morning of the day before, when Vernal had betrayed Cecil to his doom. That seemed like weeks ago. Vernal expected to have the Genix by now. He was running out of time. The world was going to end in less than 24 hours, and his careful plan was falling apart. He’d lost Jack, and now he was afflicted with a disease for which there was no cure, save death. It would follow him throughout the galaxy.

  Vernal sat wet and dour-faced in the alley, dreaming of ways to obliterate his pleasant moods and perpetuate a black humor, when his bad luck soured further. Velma was not alone. Vernal watched from cover as she unlocked the doors to the shop with the aid of someone, a dark-cowled woman. Vernal cursed. His sister didn’t have any friends, and there’d be no need for two workers this early. Not at a sex shop. Not on a weekday.

  Vernal shivered in the rain as the lights of the shop flickered on and the familiar leather-clad mannequin in the window waved at him. It brandished a crystal dildo like a mighty sword.

  “Fuck.”

  There was no place to wait but under the wet cardboard he’d taken from a drunken homeless man. The clubs and theaters of the go-go quarter were dark and silent while their patrons slept off a raucous night of bad decisions. The closest diner was seven blocks away and two blocks from a police station. Vernal leaned against a wall and waited a tiny eternity.

  After twenty wet minutes, the cowled woman left, and Vernal scurried across the street and walked through the door of the Crystal Phallus, the only place Velma had ever found lasting employment. A poster over the counter announced another feature from Mandongo.

  Velma heard the door and walked in from the back room. “Vern?”

  “Hi, sis.”

  Velma ran to the door, pushing her brother into a rack of leather. He knocked loose a zippered mask. Velma dug the keys to the store from the pocket of her jeans and locked the door. She turned the sign to “Sorry, We are Closed.”

  “You stupid moron. Get away from the window before someone sees you.” She pushed Vernal back into a tall rack of ball gags. “Everybody in the fuckin’ world is looking for you.” The fluorescent lighting in the store wasn’t good for her complexion.

  Vernal shook the rain from his clothes and gargled his words. “Yeah? Screw ’em.”

  “What are you doing? You shouldn’t be here.”

  “You gotta help me out.”

  “Fuck. Why should I, you wet little turd?”

  “’Cuz I’m your brother.”

  “So?” Velma trudged toward the counter.

  “Come on, Velm. I’m serious.” At least she wasn’t high this time. “I just need a little money.”

  “Here.” Velma walked to a carton of sex toys and handed him a giant dildo. It was candy-striped and larger than Vernal’s arm. “You might want to practice.”

  Vernal took it and made a face.

  “That’s all the help you’ll get from me.”

  “Velm--”

  “I told you! I told you were stupid, you little shit. I told you if you were lucky, they’d just lube a saurus and let it rape you. Like that one that ate downtown. If you were lucky.”

  “What do you want? Do you want me to say you were right? Fine. You were right. I was wrong. Happy?” Vernal shook the dildo at his sister.

  Velma crossed her arms.

  “You were right, okay? These people are serious. They’re gonna torture me and kill me. You gotta help.”

  “Why’d you do it, Vern?”

  “I found something.” Vernal stepped close. “I was running an errand out in the valley an--”

  “You were disposing of a body, you mean.”

  “It’s good money! But that’s not the point. I found something, Velm. I think it was hurt, like it had a disease or something. It showed me things.”

  “Ugh.” Velma rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to hear any more of your stupid lies.”

  “It’s not a lie. I swear.”

  “Oh yeah? Do you swear like the time you swore you were gonna stop conning the folks at Mom’s nursing home out of their pain medication?”

  “Hey.” Vernal raised a finger. “I happen to know little old ladies can take care of themselves.”

  “Do you swear like the time you swore you’d stop hiding that beetle toy around the house, and then you didn’t and mom had to go to the hospital?”

  “I was fourteen!”

  “Do you swear like the time you swore you’d help me take care of twin little girls, ’cuz otherwise I just would have had an abortion like me and Cecil talked. Is that how you swear? ’Cuz if so, I’m tired of all your swearing, little brother.”

  Vernal stopped. He shut his mouth. She hadn’t insulted him.

  “I’m just tired, okay.” Velma shut her eyes and covered her face with one hand. “Look, I think it’s time we moved on. Okay? I’ve just got to put this shit behind me and get on with my life. I mean, you’re a really bad influence. If you hadn’t attacked that teacher, I never would have gotten involved with Dobie or Cecil or anything.”

  Vernal stepped back. “What did you do?”

  Velma tapped her foot. “What are you talking about?”

  Vernal looked at the front door, the one she had locked right in front of his face. He gritted his teeth. “You already locked the back, didn’t you?”

  Velma nodded. It shook her stringy hair. Her eyes were wide with fear. She was shaking.

  “What did you do?”

  “I met somebody.”

  “Who did you meet, Velm?” Vernal looked around for something to break the door.

  “She told me what happened. What you did.”

  “Who did?” Vernal dropped the giant dildo.

  “A woman. Well, sort of. She’s a mechanoid.”

  Vernal shut h
is eyes. Shit.

  “She told me . . . she--” Velma’s eyes watered. Her mouth twitched and turned down. Her hand covered her face for a moment, then she glowered at her brother. Her voice shook. “She told me what you did to Cecil.” She choked on the name.

  “Velm . . .” Vernal stepped forward.

  Velma was crying, but her eyes burned. “Don’t bother trying to lie, little brother. I know it’s true. I know what you did.”

  Vernal clenched his fists and stepped closer to his sister.

  “She told me that you’d come. You don’t have anyone else. Mom’s dead. Dad’s dead. Cecil’s dead. The girls are dead. It’s just you and me.” She sniffed and wiped her nose. “And I knew she was right. I knew it.”

  “Oh yeah? Did she tell you what Cecil did to your daughters?” Vernal wanted to strangle his sister for all the times she lied to herself.

  “Shut up! That’s a lie! That’s a lie. Cecil would never do that. He loved our little girls.” She was bawling now. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “I promised you, Velm. I promised I’d help look after the girls. And that’s exactly what I did.”

  “You’re such a liar. You always lie. Always. About everything.” She ground the words in anger. She hit him.

  Vernal stood. “I couldn’t take back what happened. But I made it right. Didn’t I?”

  Her face was twisted and crying.

  “What did you do, Velm?”

  “They’re coming,” she whined.

  “Give me the keys.” Vernal held out his hand.

  Velma shook her head. The movement knocked tears loose.

  “Velm . . . give me the keys.”

  Velma stepped back and shook her head again. Her mouth was frozen in a panicked, teeth-baring frown.

  “Give me the keys!” Vernal shouted.

  Velma jumped in fear and fell back against the wall.

  “Give me the keys!” Vernal grabbed his sister and shook her. “Dammit you stupid, stupid junkie. Give me the fucking keys! Give me the keys!”

  Velma screamed and dropped to the floor.

  Vernal turned. Sciever was at the front, still covered in bandages and smiling at him through the glass. Yunique stood behind in a heavy cowl. Vernal hadn’t recognized her under the thick hood and coat. Robots didn’t like rain. Vernal ran for the back room as gunshots rang out. But they weren’t for him. Sciever was letting himself in the locked door. Velma bawled in the corner as the Murderling walked to the back.

  Vernal hit the back door and shook it. He shook and shook and shook. “No, no, no . . .”

  “Hello, runt.” Sciever pointed his gun at Vernal.

  Vernal turned. He kept his hands at his side. “Sceve . . . How you doing?” Vernal smiled. It revealed his chipped teeth.

  Sciever turned his head to Yunique, who stood wide-eyed and smiling by the counter. “Good call.”

  “I’m going to get the reward, right?” she asked.

  “Oh yeah. Mr. Pimpernel will be very pleased. Very, very, very pleased.” Sciever motioned Vernal to the front. He stepped clear as the runt passed.

  “How much am I worth?” It was a point of pride for Vernal. “It better not be less than a hundred large.”

  “Don’t kid yoursel--”

  Vernal charged the mechanoid, hoping to get to the shattered glass of the front door, but she grabbed him and they fell to the ground, knocking the giant dildo into a corner. Vernal cocked his wrist out of instinct and stabbed. The stinger tore the mechanoid’s pseudoflesh and struck hard plastic.

  Sciever stepped on Vernal’s hand and produced a pair of pliers. “Nuh uh,” he cautioned. “That old trick’s not gonna work again. That’s how you killed Rabid, you sonuvabitch.”

  Sciever pushed on Vernal so hard that the stirge’s stinger ejected. Vernal grimaced. The Murderling gripped the serrated barb with the pliers as Vernal lay on Yunique, who held him to her ample breasts. Velma covered her face and sobbed as Sciever ripped the larva from Vernal’s stained palm. It squirted blood and trailed sinew. Vernal screamed.

  The Murderling tossed it away and laughed as Vernal whimpered into the whore’s body. “How many times did you think you were gonna get away, huh?”

  “One more,” Vernal quipped between gasps. Both his hands hurt. He stared at the fresh hole in his palm. It was oozing blood.

  Yunique stared. Her made-up face was flawless except for the drooping eyelid. “This is for Dobie. I wasn’t done with him yet.” She head-butted the scoundrel with the dome of her robotic skull and knocked him out.

  (TWENTY-EIGHT) The Chamber of Ten Thousand Skulls

  “You gotta admit, no one will look for you here.” Gilbert smiled.

  “How’d you know about this place?”

  “I had to come to the temple once.” It was a planning session with the Hand that Pugs had arranged ahead of the show at Hoosegow. Gilbert had gotten lost and discovered the chamber before being escorted off the grounds. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  Jack looked around the room of skulls. It was an ossuary, a locked chapel in a grotto on the grounds of the Minion-Kraxus Temple, whose tower Gilbert had seen rising over the rooftops. The temple stood near the far entrance to the covered promenade, close to the exit so as to receive worshipers from the city. Unlike Goyen and Xueyin, Kraxus had no formal church, but his popularity on the mainland had grown in recent years amid periodic water shortages and famine. The floating island had been spared the worst of it, but the roster of the Minion-Kraxus Temple swelled all the same. The Black Hand started offering protection services to the penitent and donated the grounds for the church. Jack wasn’t sure what they got out of the deal, but it must have been good.

  Jack and Gilbert had wound their way through the maze of the Arcade using the temple spire as a guide, careful to avoid the neon-lit promenade. They passed several back-alley Neverod dens and a saurus fight. Men and women smoked long, thin pipes and screamed over a pit as two blood-soaked raptors shrieked in battle below. It was illegal, and Jack paled to think what would happen if even one of those creatures escaped, but he said nothing and neither did the fight’s patrons. The citizens of the Arcade knew to mind their own business, especially in the dead of night.

  The temple had not been difficult to find. There was a crowd, some kind of midnight mass. That made getting onto the grounds easy. The gate to the grotto, however, was locked; Gilbert had worked his magic with some tweezers and pins from Marcy’s first aid kit, which he had stashed in his lead pants. He’d cracked the box in seconds. Vernal had lied; there was no piston. Jack wasn’t surprised in the least. Truth was a suit the stubby man tailored to his needs.

  Gilbert grunted as he held the key in his teeth and squinted into Jack’s keyhole. Working by candlelight was difficult.

  “Did you know her well?” Jack broke the silence.

  “Marcelline?” Gilbert shook his head. “Not really,” he mumbled. He took the key out of his mouth. “But then it kinda seemed like she didn’t really let anyone know her.”

  “Back in the day, Erasmus messed her up pretty good. To make a point.”

  “I saw.”

  Jack turned. “She showed you?”

  “Don’t move.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You mean did I see under the patch? Yup. Why?”

  “The Marcelline I knew wouldn’t show anyone.”

  Gilbert scowled. “Jack?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I can set this so you don’t ever need to wind yourself again.”

  Jack raised his head. “What?”

  Gilbert nodded. “Yeah . . . If you wind the key forward, then it releases energy from your primary coil to your gears.”

  “I know that.”

  “But it looks like a counter-turn engages a flywheel that allows you to control the energy transfer yourself. I think.”

  Jack couldn’t remember a time he wasn’t slave to the key. “You’re joking.”

  “No,” Gilbert plea
ded. “I’m not.” He counter-turned with a single click. “There. How does that feel?”

  Jack wanted to answer his new friend, but the sensation was indescribable. It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t rapture. It was clarity, completeness. He felt no rush, no surge. He was calm, as if his brain registered there was no need for any more anxiety.

  “Good,” he said. “Real good.”

  Gilbert smiled and removed the key. “What do you want to do with this?”

  Jack looked at his ancient shackle. He took it and put it in his pocket.

  “Anyone who has the key can switch you back.”

  Jack nodded. He fingered the key like a rabbit’s foot, feeling up and down its spiral rows of metal teeth. He couldn’t give it up. Not yet.

  Gilbert carried the candle to a skull-wall and sat on the ground. “I’m exhausted. I’ve been pumping adrenaline so long, I hadn’t felt it until now.”

  “What else did she say?”

  “Marcy?”

  “Yeah.” Jack clenched his working fist. He was growing strong.

  “She said she was dying, lung cancer I think.”

  “And she really said to tell me that?”

  “About not forgetting?”

  Jack nodded.

  “She really did. What does it mean?”

  “Why did she send you after me?”

  “She said you’re the only person in the world who could kill Erasmus Pimpernel.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. “Fuck. Not you, too.”

  He walked toward the entry to the cavelike grotto directly across from the candle-covered altar. The pair only dared light one wick, lest they be discovered. As it shone in Gilbert’s hand, the flickering light made the skulls dance. There were thousands, all laid there at the end of the Great War.

  “I’m not going to kill Erasmus for you people. I’m not. I’m going to kill him for me. And for the kids. And that’s it. And the rest of you can shove it up your ass.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack.” Gilbert leaned against the browned skull-wall and yawned. “I’m not trying to make things worse for you. I promise. To be honest, I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. I just had to get out of there, and I had nowhere else to go.”