Totentanz

by Al Sarrantonio

  Silence. Pup's hands were clenched into tight balls. At first he saw only mirrors and his own red-faced reflection in them. Then he saw another reflection, a mound of something on the floor in front of him. It was a shapeless red and fabric thing. At first his eyes would not focus on it, but gradually the haze cleared from his vision and he saw what it was. Even a horse couldn't do that, he thought, and instantly knew that a crazed horse could. Portions of what had once been human were so beaten that a large horse's hoof mark was plainly visible, as if the animal had stepped into soft mud.

  Pup turned. For a moment he felt sharp, sour bile climbing his throat, but he steadied himself. He took a few long breaths, stood straight and willed himself to look back, and when he did, a small crest of nausea passed over him, but then he felt fine. He had the stomach for it now. He took another long breath and didn't look away.

  He wouldn't be squeamish again. For a moment he thought Ash was standing before him, but he saw only his own cold eyes staring back at him in a mirror. Suddenly, thinking of how Ash had taunted him, he wanted Ash to be there. A flash of pure anger went through him, and his eyes lingered on the mirror, waiting for Ash to appear.

  You'll get yours.

  Abruptly there came a strange light, and fear bolted through him as the House of Mirrors began to disintegrate. Fear turned to awe. Before his eyes one world was being torn down and another erected. The walls around him vanished, turning to insubstantial beads of mist, leaving another place behind, a red world. He found himself in an open area, with clouds high above in a black and crimson sky. There was a low wall of roughly blocked stones to his left; a circular stairway was cut into it, corkscrewing up and around. He walked to it and mounted the steps. Low thunderheads were crawling by above; thick, evil puffs of fog moved beneath them, challenging their slow progress. The world seemed all blacks and reds and deep yellow-browns.

  Did I do this?

  The thought coursed through him, but then he was filled with doubt. He hadn't willed anything like this to happen. Had Ash? No, he knew that Ash did not have that kind of power on his own. He was just a leech; he could only use hate and fear siphoned off from others. At least that's what Ash had told him. That's why he'd been drawn to Pup, he said—because Pup had enough hate to "do all kinds of things." And that was where the idea of the King of the Dead had come from. "Why not?" Ash had smiled. "Why can't you do anything you want?"

  Pup had known that Ash was greasing him up, stringing him along, giving him one of his father's best loan-officer looks—level and cool. But the wheels in Pup's head had begun at that moment to turn smooth and tight. Let Ash jerk him around; then Pup would find out how he ticked and—

  You'll get yours, Ash.

  But if Pup hadn't willed this new setup into being, who had? Who had enough power, or hate, or fear, to make this happen?

  Now real fury rose in Pup to think that there was someone out there who would steal Ash away from him. The idea was unbearable. This new adversary would have to be dealt with immediately, have to be overcome and torn to bits. There could be no negotiation, no drawn-out inquiry. Pup wanted what he wanted now.

  He trudged to the top of the tower and surveyed the countryside surrounding him.

  There was something about it—

  He knew this world. A moan, half-gasp, half-cry of wrath, came out of him. He knew this world. Before him was laid out something so familiar and yet so alien that his mind could not at once comprehend it. A sweeping lowland stretched to the mist-shrouded horizon. To the north stood a dismal, black-watered bay with a foundering ship in its harbor. The same one I used for Jack. But that had been only a temporary hallucination, something he had pulled out of his memory as suitable. This world was much more detailed and complete. On land there were only scenes of death, a sprawling panorama of marching skeletons, and stumbling humans falling before their onslaught. Some of the bone men bore weapons: long blades or sickles or knives, thin and sharp. Some worked in gangs, closing in on one or two people, and then dragging them off to hang or behead or burn. The ground was stained red in spots.

  Grinning skeletons were by far in the majority—possibly the ghoulish Montvale dead Ash had summoned to man Jeff Scott's amusement park.

  As Pup watched, fascinated, a huge phalanx of skeletons swarmed like ants out of a cave and fell upon a group of Montvale citizens. A dim chorus of screams arose as the two groups met head on.

  Pup was mesmerized. This was more than he had ever imagined. The sheer amount of killing filled him with exhilaration. This was the kind of thing he would have liked to have come up with. For the briefest moment he wondered again if he had, somehow, invented it all. But he knew this wasn't true. Someone else held the key to this carnage.

  Off to one side, in the far distance, a lone figure appeared in a spot remarkably free of activity. At first Pup could not make out who it was. Mist drifted in, and the form vanished into a whirl of sickly red smoke. But then the mist cleared and Pup had his answer. And he knew what place this was. He thought of all the times he had stared at this same scene, now come to life before him, as a poster on a wall in a bedroom in a place called Montvale. That same figure stumbling toward him now had stood by that picture many times, pointing out the minute details and explaining what it all meant, how this or that symbolized something or other—making it all seem real, and scary, and fun. That same figure had even carried a copy of that poster in his wallet so he could study it anywhere.

  So it's Reggie Carson.

  A wolf's smile crept over Pup Malamut's face. Reggie, almost within hailing distance now, looked tired and worn and not at all indomitable. Maybe he didn't even know what he had done, what he was capable of doing. And then for some glorious reason,

  Jeff Scott's taunting words to Ash, the ones that had so enraged him, slipped into Pup's mind, and his smile became even wider.

  So this is who Ash is afraid of.

  It all fit so neatly that he laughed out loud. Ash was afraid of Reggie Carson, and had been willing to give himself to Pup to have Reggie out of the way. You'll be King of the Dead, Pup. Sure, and then after Pup had gotten rid of Reggie for him, Ash would turn on him. But what Ash didn't know was that Pup had his, own plans and hadn't been fooled for a moment by that soothing voice, the limp, friendly grin. King of the Dead, Pup. Well, if Ash was afraid of Reggie and wanted someone to help do away with him, fine. And then, once that someone had found out the secret to Reggie's power over Ash and delivered him on a silver platter to the shadow man

  You'll get yours, Ash.

  Reggie was just below the tower. Pup stood up.

  "Hey!" he shouted, waving his arms and putting as much feeling as he could into his voice. "Reggie, it's me!" He wanted to add, "It's me, King of the Dead," but that could wait. The genuine gladness that had spread over Reggie's face upon seeing Pup would do more than well enough for now.

  You won't smile for long, Musketeer.

  Pup nearly raced down the stone steps, trying to keep his heart from leaping with joy. He wanted to crush Reggie with happiness, lift him off the ground and kiss him. Reggie had made it all possible. The hate went off to the side for a moment; there was such genuine feeling on his features that Reggie would take it for granted that this was the reunion of two lost friends. Even as he flew down the remaining steps, Pup's mind was constructing appropriate ways to resolve things. How to handle Reggie? There were probably a hundred, a thousand, good ways. They vied in Pup's mind for attention, and he tried to give them all the loving care they required. Above all other thoughts, one only hung like a huge, joyful, black cloud; one thought alone minimized even the wonderful expectation he felt at the coming extermination of his final problem. It really would come true; he knew finally that his actions up to now had not been in vain, had not been merely the venting of some demented adolescent spleen on those closest to him.

  I really will be King of the Dead.

  TWENTY

  At the moment Reggie Carson faced Pup Malamut's w
ild, grinning, beast's face, he knew how it would happen. Somehow the knowledge calmed him, as if an insistent but relatively trivial question had been answered. Pup clasped him like a brother; and on the outside, at least, he seemed the same friend Reggie had known for years and years. And yet there was something essentially changed in him. He was gaunt inside his flesh, a thin canine thing in a fleshy body. Pup belonged in this world of red flame and black earth, was feeding off it like a fly might feed off a piece of fetid meat. Reggie knew it, despite the fact that this was the same Pup Malamut he had known for so long. This side of his friend had been there all along—perhaps had owned him all along—and now, under this sulfurous air and crimson atmosphere, he was illuminated. Reggie thought of little things Pup had done: the burning of ants with scalding water; the torture of a frog or a turtle; the anonymous letter he had once sent to the parents of a girl in one of their classes, saying that she was sleeping with one of her teachers—all because the girl had turned him down when he asked her to a school dance. These little facets of the flawed and broken gem that was Pup Malamut were brought into cracked light now, and all of the sides of Pup Malamut showed this same black face toward the sun.

  Pup was evasive when Reggie asked about Jack.

  "He's here somewhere," he said. His eyes glowed like nocturnal lamps.

  When Reggie asked about Pup's mother, Pup was more affirmative.

  "I know where she is," he said. He was more wolf than man now, crouching and voracious, like one of those monsters the Three Musketeers had conjured up to scare themselves with in the graveyard.

  Pup pointed to a spot in the distance. "I saw your Mom over this way," he said.

  They moved over red earth. Reggie knew the ground they were walking over as if it was imprinted, map-like, in his head.

  They heard eerie sounds. With each shriek in the distance, Pup became more wolf-like, his features a grinning caricature, his body bony and repellent. He was feeding off the very air. There was no before or after in Pup Malamut—only the moment of death itself. He was a beast, a creature possessed by the act of death, caught in the amber stillness of it. Reggie remembered all the Three Musketeer meetings they had had, remembered the light in Pup's eyes when they told ghost stories or tried to scare each other in the dark. While Jack had only thrilled like a child to it, and Reggie had sought something beyond it, Pup had been drinking the moment of pain itself and wanting more. There had been no thrill, no wonder for Pup Malamut, only the wish for hurt, the desire for death. Reggie now realized that Pup had attained his most secret wish.

  "Not much farther," Pup said. When he turned to Reggie, his face was suffused with an almost angelic evil. Perhaps this was what Lucifer had looked like before his expulsion. Reggie had often dwelled on what evil must be like in its pure form, and now its essence was distilled in the face looking back at him.

  "What's wrong?" Pup hissed. With all of its new awfulness, it was still Pup Malamut's face. "Is anything wrong?" Pup's smile returned layer upon layer until he was grinning again.

  They crested a small rise. The mist rolled back before them like blown smoke. Pup pointed to an incongruous sight, a frayed carnival tent blown by a rusty wind, still intact in the midst of the hell around it. "There." As he said this, a figure appeared in the opening, pulling a shredded canvas flap aside to stand and look up placidly at them. Reggie knew who it was. The figure did something with its hands, and a thin plume of black smoke drifted up from its face. Pup waved, but the figure made no reply, only standing still a moment and then silently turning back into the tent.

  Pup shouted, "Come on!" and then he was loping down the hill toward the tent, Reggie following calmly behind.

  Pup pulled the tent flap aside and went in. When Reggie reached it, he hesitated. For the first time since the eyes had appeared to him, doubt entered his mind. It was as though he had entered another realm, one governed by different powers, and he was not so sure of himself now. A corner of his mind was sprouting another seed, tiny compared to the one the eyes had planted and grown, but one that had been there all along and had now flowered. It was the dark man's flower, and once again he had fear. He knew what awaited him in that tent, and he feared it.

  Panic seized him. He turned wildly, a caught, hunted animal, and saw only haze and red smoke around him. He was doomed, and there was nowhere to turn. Outside, death awaited him (even the lone valiant soldier in Breughel's painting, he knew, would fall to the remorseless grim blade of the white-boned demons), and inside that tent, the same sure fate would befall him. He was surrounded by it. And then another, more horrible thought flowered in that tiny corner of his brain: maybe there was no tunnel of light; maybe there were no warming eyes; maybe there was nothing. Maybe there was only death, a thing with teeth and claws that ripped and sucked at your flesh forever. His hands were shaking, and there was a knot in his stomach that grew to fist size and began to twist within him. He wanted to get out. There was not enough air, there would never be enough cool air, and he had to go somewhere else.

  The tent flap drew aside slowly, and he screamed, expecting to see a horrid white face there, the face of it, but it was only Pup. The same Pup Malamut he had always known, his face flushed, eager and obedient.

  "He wants you," Pup said, and he put a hand that felt like a tight metal clamp on Reggie's arm.

  "Let me go," Reggie gasped.

  Pup's smile grew. "Sorry," he said, and then he placed both hands on Reggie's shoulders and squeezed. A bolt of pain went through Reggie, from his shoulders down through his abdomen and thighs, as though hot lava had been injected into him.

  Suddenly Reggie was sure that there was no way out for him. He had lost control of himself. The elaborate games he had played had all been for nothing. The lighted tunnel, the eyes—they had been only a dream, something he had built his whole false life on. He thought of begging but knew by the look in Pup's hungry eyes that pleading would do no good. He went limp, and Pup laughed, hoisting him up and dragging him through the tent's opening.

  Reggie tensed and threw all his weight upward into Pup's middle. The blow caught Pup by surprise, and momentarily he lost his hold. Reggie fell and began to scramble to his feet.

  Pup leaped onto his back, throwing him to the dust, and suddenly there was a great weight in Reggie's chest, and he could not breathe. He turned over, looking up into Pup's eyes and seeing there a light brighter than any he had ever seen.

  "I'm going to kill you," Pup gloated into his face, his hands like pincers around Reggie's neck. "I'm going to pull your body to pieces with my bare hands." Pup's face seemed to have grown, and his body appeared monstrous, the body of a beastly giant. He raised one hand up over Reggie's face and brought it down hard, and there was a numbing pain and Reggie could see nothing. Then a blurry vision returned to one eye, and he saw Pup's fist raised again, swinging down in a terrible arc.

  "Don't."

  The voice came from behind Pup, and it was almost quiet. Pup hesitated, looking behind him, but then he shouted something hard and turned back to Reggie. His fist rose up, and again he brought it downward.

  "Stop."

  Again Pup stopped. His rage became huge, and he threw himself off Reggie in a quick motion, turning to face the voice. Reggie could not hear what was happening, but the ringing in his ears quieted and he pulled himself up.

  Ash and Pup were face-to-face.

  "Calm down," Ash said placidly, and Pup screamed at him, "I want to do it now!"

  "When I say so," Ash responded, his voice growing impatient. "I want to talk with him.”

  "I said now!" Pup shot back. He seemed to tower over Ash, his face filled with rage.

  For a moment there seemed to be an impasse, but then Ash reached out, touched Pup lightly with his finger and said in the same quiet tone he had begun the conversation with, "I said wait."

  Pup grabbed at his chest where Ash had touched him and dropped to the floor. He tried to gasp but could not; his lungs were frozen solid; he could not e
ven fight for breath. His face went from red anger to a desperate grimace as he fought for air.

  Ash glanced down at him, and suddenly he could breathe again.

  He gulped air for a time before turning to face Ash. "You can't do that," he said, and there was surprise as well as fury in his tone. "No one can do that to me." He pointed at Reggie. "He's the one you're afraid of, and you know it. I was going to kill him for you." He pulled another long draft of oxygen into his warming lungs.

  Ash ignored Reggie, looking down complacently at Pup.

  "And then?"

  "You told me we could work together."

  "Yes," Ash said. "But I never said how long it would last. And I don't think that's what you had in mind. Did you really think you were going to be `King of the Dead'?" He pronounced the last four words in mocking sarcasm.

  Pup's anger began to rise again.

  "I told you no one—" he started, but his chest tightened again, and then it was ice, and he fell, clawing at his shirt, trying to bring some warmth to his frozen lungs.

  "The ego never ceases to amaze me," Ash lectured Pup sedately. "Did you really think you were anything more than an experiment? You had great hate, but in the end it is Frances who has given me everything I need. Which has made you nothing but an amusement. You really imagined that the fact that you were still alive around me pointed to some great power within you?" He laughed.

  Ash turned slowly toward Reggie. Reggie found that he could not look directly into the shadow man's face, and that Ash would not look directly into his. Suddenly there was a definite note of wariness in Ash's voice.

  "I am going to kill your friend Pup," he said, "and very slowly, because I want you to see what physical death is. You needn't feel sorry for him because"—he looked down at Pup's tortured face—"he's been a very bad boy."

  Reggie felt Ash's aura over him lessen. It was as if those tiny flowers of the dark man's had flourished and died, and Reggie's mind was clear again.