The Ninth Nightmare (29 page)

‘Mago Verde?' Brother Albrecht demanded. ‘How did these people get here? Are they
real,
or do they come from somebody else's dream?'

‘Oh, they're real all right, your worship. As real as I am. But I don't yet know where they come from, or how they got here.'

Brother Albrecht said to Xyrena, ‘Come here,
Fraülein
. I want to look at you.'

Under her breath, Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘He wants me to come closer. With any luck I'll give
him
the twitch, too.'

‘Just play it cool, Xyrena,' Dom Magator warned her.

‘What's he going to do? Grab ahold of me? Chase me round the stage? The guy doesn't have any legs.'

‘Just watch yourself, that's all. He hasn't survived for eight centuries without having some kind of serious power.'

Xyrena approached the black contraption and then stood in front of Brother Albrecht, her chin tilted up defiantly, her coronet shining, her heavy golden cloak rippling behind her in a wind that nobody else could feel.

Brother Albrecht said, ‘What is your name,
Fraülein
?'

‘Xyrena. Well – among others. My daddy used to call me his little Fruit-Loop.'

‘Are you
real,
Xyrena?'

‘The last time I looked in the mirror, yes.'

‘You come from the waking world,
nicht wahr
? How did you get here? You realize that this is
my
dream, this circus?
Mein Traum, verstehen Sie
?'

‘I know that. But you have plenty of real people here already, don't you? We didn't think you'd object to two or three more. And we're only passing through, you know? Like Jekkalon says, we're taking a professional interest, that's all.'

Brother Albrecht's left eyelid twitched, as if he had a nervous tic. As haughty as he was, Xyrena guessed that their appearance in his dream had not only baffled him but troubled him, too. It was even more obvious that he was beginning to feel the effect of her sexuality. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and between his thighs his brown velvet jerkin had visibly started to swell, and she knew that she was arousing him.

‘Tell me, Xyrena,' said Brother Albrecht. ‘Do I
know
you?'

‘I very much doubt it, unless you've ever been to The Knick Bar in Milwaukee.'

‘Are you a witch?'

‘A
witch
? What kind of a compliment is that?'

‘You have magic about you. You are fascinating me. But of course you are aware of that, yes? You are doing it deliberately. You think because I am a fallen priest that I do not know how to resist your allure.'

His words sounded very stilted, every syllable perfectly pronounced, as if he were reading them from an English phrase book.

Xyrena shook her head. ‘Not a witch, Your Freakness. Only a woman. But then
you
know all about women, don't you? How dangerous they can be. How much you can lose, if you're not very careful.'

Brother Albrecht was about to reply when all of the clowns and the freaks the animal trainers shuffled noisily backward, and the audience filling the big top let out a low moan of apprehension, like the moan of passengers when an aircraft hits an air pocket and drops several hundred feet without warning. Through the crowd of performers on the stage emerged a thin Italian-looking man dressed in a shiny emerald-green suit, pushing in front of him a large wire cage on wheels. He was closely followed by a sallow man with an iron-gray hairpiece and heavy George Burns spectacles. This man was wearing a long white lab coat spattered with brown stains, and thick brown leather gauntlets.

They were greeted and led forward to the front of the stage by the ringmaster, who cracked his whip and shouted out, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! Perversions and distortions! I give you Signore Guido Serpente, reptile charmer of unparalleled mesmerity, and Doctor J. Friendly, surgeon of a thousand unimaginable agonies!'

Signor Serpente pushed the cage right up to the edge of the stage, and then stepped away. Jemexxa was closest to the cage, but at first she couldn't understand what was inside it. All she could see were gray dusty-looking coils, like worn-out hosepipes.

‘
Voilà!
' Brown Jenkin cried out, prancing around the cage. ‘
Sind hier die neuen Arme für dieses reizende Mädchen!
'

At first, Brother Albrecht didn't take his eyes away from Xyrena. But then he said, ‘Let us talk later,
Fraülein
. For now, this is more important.'

‘You're the boss,' Xyrena smiled at him. Mago Verde had noticed the effect that Xyrena was having on his lord and master, and was glaring at her with undisguised venom.

Brown Jenkin unfastened the catch on the door of the cage, and then Doctor Friendly reached inside with both hands. The ‘hosepipes' immediately reared up and it was only then that Jemexxa realized what they were: two huge snakes, each at least six feet long, and each as thick as a human arm. They both had flat, anvil-shaped heads, yellow eyes, and forked tongues that flickered out between their fangs.

‘Oh my
God
!' she said. ‘I'm totally terrified of snakes!'

Jekkalon took hold of her arm and pulled her back, and Xyrena came up and stood close beside her.

‘What the hell are they going to do with
those
?' asked Jekkalon.

But suddenly it became horribly clear. Signor Serpente returned to the front of the stage, this time pushing a hospital gurney, with a grubby sheet draped over it. On top of the gurney jingled a tray of surgical instruments, scalpels and forceps and clips, as well as a kidney-shaped steel dish containing needles, sutures and swabs.

Brown Jenkin jumped up next to the gurney like an eager child and snatched one of the scalpels. With a rat-like chattering noise, he scurried around to the back of Maria Fortales' chair and began to slash at the cords that bound her. Maria Fortales was screaming now, but Brown Jenkin ignored her, and Mago Verde was actually smacking his hands together in delight and laughing at her. Brother Albrecht heaved himself up even higher in his shell-shaped seat, using his knees for leverage, so that he had a better view of what was happening.

Once Brown Jenkin had cut through the last of her cords, three of the circus hands came forward and lifted Maria Fortales out of her chair. She kicked and jackknifed her body and carried on screaming until her voice was nothing but a reedy squeak, but the circus hands bundled her on to the gurney and strapped her down with wide canvas belts, one around her chest, one around her pelvis, and another round her knees.

Doctor Friendly had meanwhile lifted one of the snakes out of the cage. Xyrena didn't know what kind of snake it was, but she guessed that it was venomous, because he was gripping it tight behind its jaws so that it couldn't bite him. It writhed and twisted even more violently than Maria Fortales, so that two of the circus hands had to help him stretch it out on the gurney right next to her, and keep it pinned down.

Brother Albrecht's eyes were blazing blue with excitement, like the flames from two blowtorches, and he repeatedly kicked the side of his seat with his amputated left knee. ‘
Frau und Schlange
!' he said, in a voice quivering with excitement. ‘Woman and snake!
Gerade wie der Garten Eden, noch einmal
! Just like the Garden of Eden, all over again!'

Selecting a scalpel, Doctor Friendly held the snake tightly in his left hand, about eighteen inches from the end of its tail. Then, without any hesitation, he cut off those last eighteen inches, slicing through its muscle with his scalpel and then clipping through its spine with a pair of surgical pliers. The snake was thrashing so furiously from side to side that the two circus hands had to use all of their strength to keep it on the gurney, but Doctor Friendly continued his operation unperturbed, as if he had undertaken this type of surgery dozens of times before.

Mago Verde approached the gurney and bent over Maria Fortales, and underneath his green painted grin he was grinning for real. She had stopped screaming now, out of exhaustion, but she stared up at him in absolute terror, and Jemexxa could see that she was saying something to him. She couldn't hear what it was. The crowd and the circus folk were all making far too much noise, but from the movement of her lips she was sure that it was ‘
please
.'

Doctor Friendly ripped off the adhesive tapes that were holding the thick gauze pad over Maria Fortales' left shoulder. He pulled off the pad, which was caked with dried blood, exposing raw, half-healed muscle and a sawn-off stump of white humerus.

For the first time he turned around to Brother Albrecht and addressed him directly. He had a warbling, monotonous voice, almost as if he were chanting plainsong in church rather than talking.

‘This is now the most interesting part of the operation, your worship. And also, I have to admit, the most difficult. I attach the muscles and nerves of the human shoulder to the muscles and the nervous system of the snake. In this way, our dear young woman here will be able to use the snake as a substitute for her absent arm.

‘I will also connect the snake's cloaca to the young woman's internal organs so that it will be able to eat and sustain itself and use her digestive system to dispose of its waste.

He paused, and took off his spectacles. His eyes rolled around as if they were two planets in contra-rotating orbits. ‘These snakes are a crossbreed of both reticulated python and krait. Python for strength and size; krait for its venom, which is sixteen times more toxic than cobra venom. When she has both snakes attached in place of her arms, this young lady will be the most dangerous female that any man has ever met. They will not hurt
her
, of course, because they will depend on her for their very existence! But Medusa the Gorgon will be nothing compared to this charmer! Imagine the shows that you can put on, your worship! Challenge the men in your audience to make love to her, and see if they can escape with their lives!'

Mago Verde clapped again, and whooped. Unable to clap, Brother Albrecht closed his eyes and nodded his handsome head in tacit approval. The audience, both men and women, shrieked and whistled with excitement. They might have been dubious about Brother Albrecht's freak show when they first arrived in his dream, but now they were growing ever more aroused. Xyrena could see that Brother Albrecht was aroused, too, judging by the bulge in his jerkin. He mouthed something at her, but it must have been in German, because she couldn't even lip-read it.

Doctor Friendly replaced his spectacles, picked up another scalpel, and started to cut at the muscle of Maria Fortales' shoulder. The pain must have been unbearable, because she found her voice and screamed even louder than before.

Xyrena turned to Jekkalon and Jemexxa and said, ‘Enough, already! I'm calling in Dom Magator. I'm not standing here watching this girl being butchered. You with me? As soon as they come busting in, Zebenjo'Yyx can zap that doctor and put him out of action. You go for Mago Verde.'

‘What about the Grand Freak?'

‘I think we should leave the Grand Freak to Dom Magator. He's the one with the Absence Gun. One shot from that and that'll be the finish of him. He won't even be history.

‘John?' she said. ‘Did you hear that? We need you in here like
now
.'

‘Busting in already, baby – have no fear!'

FIFTEEN

Skirmish In Hell

S
oon after Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa had disappeared into the big top, every clown and circus hand and freak had crowded in through the illuminated archway to see the show, and within minutes the carnival grounds had been deserted, leaving only the animals and the quasi-animals sitting miserably in their cages.

Dom Magator and Zebenj'Yyx had cautiously climbed to their feet and looked around. ‘Clear,' Dom Magator had decided, and behind his fearsome African mask, Zebenjo'Yyx had nodded.

They had scrambled over the ridge where they had first taken cover, and then they had dodged their way through the rain toward the big top. They had run with their shoulders hunched, like a two-man SWAT team – Zebenjo'Yyx keeping his right arm held out straight in front of him in case he needed to shoot off a sudden burst of quarrels, and Dom Magator holding up his Absence Gun, with his finger on the trigger, ready to fire.

The Absence Gun looked like a Gatling machine-gun, with five rotating barrels, except that the barrels were made of pale green ceramic and the gun itself had a stock like a rifle. It worked on the principle of quantum decoherence, producing a wave function which made it a scientific impossibility that its target had ever existed. It was the third stage beyond the paradox of Schrödinger's cat, in which a cat in a sealed box was both alive and dead at the same time. Anybody who was hit by an Absence Gun was neither alive nor dead, and never had been.

Over by the trees, An-Gryferai took a short run and launched herself into the air, her wings softly thundering. She quickly gained altitude, and flew up high over the top of the tent. Then she started to wheel around the four black pennants which were flapping wetly from its flagpoles. She was buffeted by the wind and the rain, and blinded by fitful flashes of lightning, but she managed to keep steadily circling, waiting for Dom Magator to give her the word to attack.

For the past ten minutes, Dom Magator and Zebenjo'Yyx had listened closely to everything that had been happening to Xyrena and Jekkalon and Jemexxa, so that when they pushed their way in through the main entrance and marched side by side into the auditorium, they had a good idea what would confront them. Even so, as they reached the stage, crowded with clowns and freaks and fire breathers, and with Brother Albrecht sitting in his black contraption in the center, Zebenjo'- Yyx said, ‘Jesus
Ker
-ist! This ain't no circus! This is hell on wheels!'