The Ninth Nightmare (32 page)

Dom Magator lifted his Acoustic Carbine and fired into the thick of them. The shot from the carbine was ultrasound, high above the range of human hearing, so that at first the other Night Warriors thought that nothing had happened until over a dozen of the clowns started to stagger and stumble and bump into each other. The resonance from Dom Magator's rifle was vibrating the vestibular nerves inside their ears beyond all human tolerance, and they simply couldn't keep their balance.

Dom Magator fired again, and again, and more clowns tumbled and fell. But Jemexxa said, ‘There are
hundreds
of them! Where are they all coming from?'

She was right. Even as the front ranks of clowns collided with each other and fell to the ground, more of them came surging out of the darkness, with white faces and silvery-green faces and faces fixed in greasepaint grimaces.

‘This is a nightmare, don't forget!' Dom Magator reminded her, aiming at a tall clown with a ghostly white face and pouting black lips. ‘Just about anything can happen in a nightmare!'

He kept on firing, but it was rapidly becoming obvious that even with his Acoustic Carbine he wasn't going to be able to bring down all of the clowns on his own – not before the clowns managed to get close enough to attack them hand-to-hand.

‘
Zebenjo'Yyx!
' he shouted. ‘
Give 'em a quick burst, will you?
'

Dom Magator was always reluctant to kill the people he encountered in dreams, no matter how aggressive they were, because there was no way of telling if they were a figment of some dreamer's imagination, or real people dreaming about themselves. If they were real, their real selves might not actually die, but so much of their consciousness was involved in creating their dream that there was a high risk that they could suffer severe brain damage. If that happened, they could remain in a comatose state for the rest of their lives, unable to wake up, ever.

But now the clowns were swarming so thick and so fast that even Dom Magator's Absence Gun wouldn't be able to annihilate them all. The clowns rose ceaselessly out of the ground like the army of skeletons in
Jason and the Argonauts
, grown from the Hydra's teeth. Their howlings and their hootings began to develop a terrible rhythm of their own,
ha
!
ha
!
ha
!
ha
! like derisory laughter.

‘Let's back off!' shouted Dom Magator. ‘If we go back through that settlement maybe we can outflank them – approach the portal from the other side!'

He locked his Acoustic Carbine back into its rack, and selected a squat black handgun from the weapons that were swinging from his belt. It was a Sonic Blinder, which used very low level sound-waves to increase the pressure of the optic fluid in its target's eyeballs until they burst. For dream people, the blinding was permanent – at least until the dream was over, and they vanished into oblivion. Real people suffered nothing worse than temporary blurring of their eyesight, when they woke up.

Dom Magator fired at the nearest group of clowns, and they immediately spun around and dropped to their knees, clamping their hands over their eyes and wailing in distress. As they went down, Zebenjo'Yyx let off another storm of arrows, more than a hundred of them, and scores of clowns behind them fell into the grass.

Dom Magator took Xyrena's hand and started to jog toward the settlement, his weapons and his equipment clanking and jingling with every step. Jekkalon and Jemexxa followed close behind, and Zebenjo'Yyx brought up the rear, turning around every few yards to fire off another volley of arrows.

As Dom Magator had expected the clowns stopped chasing after them directly, and instead turned toward the hilltop. They knew that the Night Warriors would have to return to the portal through which they had entered George Roussos' dream, and they clearly thought that they could cut them off before they could get there. Dom Magator prayed that George Roussos would stay asleep long enough for them to circle around and reach the portal from the opposite side of the hill.

Just before the Night Warriors reached the settlement, he looked around and saw the clowns sweeping up the hillside, hundreds of them, a dark clamorous tide.

The settlement was a rundown collection of shacks and barns and what looked like workshops. Dim lamps were burning in some of the windows, and Dom Magator could hear hammering and sawing, people shouting to each other, and singing. The wind had died down and the thunder had cleared away, but it was still raining, a steady downpour that seemed to have been dreamed up by Brother Albrecht to make them feel hopeless and dejected.

They splashed through the puddles between the shacks and the workshops. A small boy of about nine years old was sitting on the porch of one of the shacks, wearing only a tattered brown shirt and britches, and brown boots without laces that were two sizes too big for him. He looked up at them as they approached, his short hair sticking up on the crown of his head, his eyes wide. His face was smudged with dirt as if he hadn't washed in weeks.

Xyrena went up to him and hunkered down beside him, her golden cloak flapping in the mud.

‘Hi, honey. What's your name?'

‘Michael.'

‘That's a very fine name. What are you doing out here in the rain, Michael? You look so
cold
, and you're soaked right through!'

‘I don't have anyplace to go.'

‘Isn't this your folks' house?'

The boy shook his head. ‘I can't
find
my folks.'

‘Don't they live here?'

He shook his head again. ‘No. They're awake.'

Dom Magator came up. ‘Hey, kid,' he said. ‘Don't I know you? I've met you before, haven't I? You're the boy they call Michael-Row-The-Boat-Ashore-Hallelujah. I didn't recognize you with your face so dirty.'

‘Are you hungry, little boy?' asked Xyrena. ‘You sure
look
hungry.'

‘Xyrena,' said Dom Magator, ‘we really have to hit the bricks. If George Roussos wakes up we're going to be trapped here just like little Michael.'

‘Can't we take him with us? Look at him.'

Dom Magator took off his glove and scruffed Michael's hair. ‘I wish we could. But we both know why we can't, don't we, Michael?'

‘I liked my other dream better,' said Michael, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. ‘In my other dream they gave me Cheerios and milk and cookies and sometimes they gave me ice cream.

He blinked, and Dom Magator could see tears in his eyes. ‘In my other dream, my mom came to visit me. But now she doesn't and I don't think she knows where I am.'

‘Let's just take him,' urged Xyrena. ‘We can do that, can't we?'

Dom Magator helped her to stand up and drew her aside. Jemexxa and Jekkalon went up to Michael and said, ‘How are you doing, buddy? Pretty darn miserable out here, on a night like this.'

‘I had a puppy but I don't know where it's gone,' said Michael. ‘I think the Packers took it.'

‘The Packers? Who are they?'

Michael pointed to the nearest ramshackle workshop. ‘They're in there. They're always chopping. Chopping and sawing.'

Xyrena said to Dom Magator, ‘Why can't we take him with us? It's
technically
possible, isn't it?'

‘Of course it is,' Dom Magator told her. ‘But in real life Michael has Mobius Syndrome. It's a rare congenital birth defect. In real life, Michael can't walk, or talk, or eat. He can't even suck a bottle of formula. He spends most of his time asleep, and dreaming. I don't know how he got himself into
this
dream. Maybe Brother Albrecht wanted to display him in his freak show, but then realized how serious his disability actually was. I guess there isn't a whole lot of entertainment value in watching some poor kid just lying there, drooling.'

Jekkalon came over. ‘Are we going to take him with us or not? We can't very well leave him here.'

Xyrena said, ‘We have to. Dom Magator will tell you why.'

Jekkalon frowned at Dom Magator. ‘We really can't?'

‘No. I'm sorry. And we really have to get moving.'

‘Can't we just find his puppy for him? He said that some people called the Packers took it. They're in that workshop. We only have to ask them politely if they'll give it back to him, and tell them that we'll blow their heads off if they don't.'

Dom Magator checked the instruments on his wrist. ‘OK. You can try. But you have thirty seconds flat.'

Jekkalon jogged across to the workshop, followed by Jemexxa and Zebenjo'Yyx. The workshop had a sagging roof and windows that were opaque with grime. Its guttering was crowded with clumps of moss so that the rainwater clattered noisily down the outside walls. For the first time, Dom Magator saw a faded sign over the door that said
Roussos Meat Packers
.

‘You see that?' he said. ‘This has to be the reason why Brother Albrecht wanted George Roussos to share in this nightmare. He needed his expertise in meat-packing.'

‘Oh my God,' said Xyrena. ‘You're not telling me what I think you're telling me?'

‘We should go,' Dom Magator told them. ‘If those goddamn clowns reach our portal before us—'

But Jekkalon went up to the workshop door and tried the handle. Inside, they could see dazzling lights shining and they could distinctly hear chopping noises, but the door was locked.

‘Leave it!' said Jemexxa. ‘Come on, Jekkalon, we need to get out of here like
now
!'

But Jekkalon said, ‘What was the point of us visiting this dream at all? We couldn't kill the Grand Freak, we couldn't catch Mago Verde, we couldn't save our mom! The least we can do is save this poor kid's puppy!'

With that, he kicked at the workshop door. It cracked, but stayed shut. He kicked it again, and again, and the third time it juddered open.

‘Jekkalon!' said Dom Magator. ‘Forget it! We don't have the time! It's a
puppy
, for Christ's sake!'

‘It's the principle! We're supposed to be warriors, aren't we? Well, let's do some warrior stuff! Let's be heroes!'

He disappeared in through the door. Dom Magator said, ‘Come on,' to Zebenjo'Yyx, and lifted his Sonic Blinder out of its holster. However rashly Jekkalon was behaving, they couldn't let him enter the workshop without backup. If the clowns reached the portal before they did, they would just have to fight their way through, regardless of the consequences – even if Dom Magator had to use his Absence Gun.

The workshop door led them into a narrow corridor. There was a changing room on the right-hand side, in which bloodstained coveralls and red safety helmets were hanging up on pegs. The air was thick with the sweet, cloying smell of dried blood and feces, as well as cigarette smoke and sweat.

The chopping noise was much louder now, as well as persistent sawing. One man was singing
O Sole Mio
, and two other men were whistling two totally different tunes, out of key. Dom Magator and Zebenjo'Yyx came to the end of the corridor and found themselves on a platform of planks and scaffolding overlooking the main body of the workshop. Jekkalon was already halfway down the steps, but it didn't appear as if anybody was paying him any attention. The workshop was crowded with at least twenty-five men, all of them in dirty coveralls, and all of them wearing red safety helmets, and all of them far too busy cutting and chopping to notice two or three strangers.

It looked as if Dom Magator had been right. Brother Albrecht must have drawn George Roussos into his nightmare tonight because he needed the skill of his workforce. These men were nothing more than dream figures, but this was only a dream, and while they were here, they could do whatever Brother Albrecht needed them to; and what they were doing was butchering.

The interior of the workshop had been set up as a meat-packing plant, with rows of stainless-steel hooks suspended from rails, and stainless-steel tables for cutting and trimming and disemboweling. There were two rows of pressure lamps hanging from the ceiling, hissing loudly, which illuminated the workshop with a bleached, unearthly light.

On the tables lay cattle and pigs and other more exotic animals, like llamas and mountain goats. The men were bent over them with boning knives and saws, cutting them in half and removing their legs and their heads. The cutting and trimming tables were running with blood, and the paunch table, where cattle had their bellies slit open to let their bowels drop out, was thickly splattered with manure as well as blood.

Dom Magator looked around the workshop in disgust. When he was a restaurant inspector in Baton Rouge, he had visited more filthy slaughterhouses than he could count, mainly to find out how hamburgers had become contaminated with
E-coli
bacteria. But this place was a hundred times filthier, and the grisliest spectacle that he had ever seen.

‘
Shit,
' said Zebenjo'Yyx.

‘Exactamundo,' said Dom Magator.

It was then that he realized that none of the slaughtered animals had been skinned – even the shaggiest goat. Not only that, none of their meat had been cut from their carcasses in the usual way – no steaks, no spare ribs, no hocks. He thought of Brother Albrecht's freak show and it dawned on him what was happening here. These animals weren't being butchered for their meat. Strictly speaking, they weren't being butchered at all – they were being
disassembled
so that their heads and their legs and their bodies could be mixed and matched with human beings.

‘Jekkalon!' he told him. ‘Jekkalon, we need to get out of here!'

But Jekkalon ignored him, and started to walk quickly along the side of the workshop. At the far end, in a shadowy corner, there was a row of cages with various animals in them. Dom Magator could make out at least three sheep and a German Shepherd.