The Ninth Nightmare

shimmer and flicker more unsteadily than usual, like a faltering fluorescent tube before it pops out for ever.

‘What the hell’s wrong with the goddamned portal?’ asked Dom Magator. ‘Why is it jinking around like that?’

‘Mickey Veralnik’s dream is highly unstable,’ Springer explained. ‘Partly because he’s drunk, and partly because he’s dreaming that he’s in Brother Albrecht’s dream, and Brother Albrecht’s dream is close to becoming reality. It’s like a storm approaching. More than a storm — a major earth tremor. Go very carefully, all of you.’

Zebenjo’Yyx said, ‘Come on. Let’s do it, before it’s too late.’

With that, he ducked his head down and disappeared through the portal. Jekkalon followed close behind him, and then An-Gryferai and Jemexxa and Xyrena. Dom Magator went last, but before he went through, Springer laid a hand on his arm and said, ‘Ashapola be with you, Dom Magator. Ashapola be with all of you.’

‘Yeah,’ said Dom Magator. ‘And you, too, Springer, whatever the hell you are.’

He stepped through the portal. The crackle of energy was much fiercer than it usually was, and showers of sparks bounced off his armor.

He found himself in Brother Albrecht’s dream again, but this was a very different landscape from the dark and rainy hillside that they had visited last night. This was a sunbaked prairie, with fields of tawny wheat stretching all the way to the horizon, and not a single tree in sight. The sky was purple, with huge white cumulus clouds rolling slowly across it from west to east.

An-Gryferai turned around and said, ‘There it is. Look.’

About a mile away, they could see a small township, with a church spire and a water tower and a single main street lined with stores. A few hundred yards to the south, Brother Albrecht’s circus had been set up, with its black tents and its black caravans and its black pennants flapping in the summer breeze.

Very faintly, they could hear the discordant strains of In The Good Old Summertime. An-Gryferai shivered. For some reason, she found the sound of that music even more unsettling than that cluster of black tents. It was like all her childhood fears returning to visit her. And more than anything it reminded her of Daisy, her dead sister, and Daisy’s persistent nightmares about circuses.

‘How about an aerial reconnaissance?’ Dom Magator asked her.

‘Is that such a good idea?’ said Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘As soon as those clowns see An-Gryferai circlin’ around, they’ll know we’re here, won’t they?’

‘Yes, they probably will. But they’ll soon spot us, right out here in the open, even if they haven’t spotted us already. And don’t tell me they haven’t been expecting us.’

‘In that case, I ain’t takin’ no chances,’ said Zebenjo’Yyx. He cocked the quarrel-firing mechanisms on both of his forearms. ‘One peep out of any of those freaks, and they’re goin’ to wind up seriously ventilated.’

An-Gryferai took a short run through the wheat field, flapping her wings. The air was warm and she rose quickly, until she was nearly a hundred feet up. She looked up at the clouds as she flew, and she saw that as they rolled their way from one horizon to the other, they continually changed their shape, from ghostly galleons with tattered sails to monstrous dogs with bulging eyes. For a brief moment, she thought that one of them looked like the face of her dead grandmother, watching her with sadness in her eyes.

As she approached the township, she could make out its name painted on the side of the water tower, Melancholy, IA. The main street was almost deserted except for three or four pick-up trucks and a few pedestrians. She could see a store with a sign saying Clavicle’s General Supplies and a barber shop named for its proprietor, W. Severe.

Melancholy could have been a typical mid-West farming community except for the its purple sky and the fact that its perspective was all wrong and everything about it was out of proportion. An-Gryferai caught sight of a German Shepherd at the far end of the street that was almost twice the size of its owner, but as they came nearer, the German Shepherd shrank and its owner grew taller. At the other end of the street, the church was no bigger than a doll’s house.

She circled around the township twice, and then she angled her wings and wheeled toward Brother Albrecht’s circus. The big top and all of the other tents had been erected in the same pattern as last night’s dream, with the animal cages in a line between the caravans. The site was teeming with circus hands and clowns and freaks, as well as scores of ordinary, bewildered-looking people who must have been dreamers. She was sure she glimpsed Mickey Veralnik amongst them, but she could have been mistaken.

‘D.M? I don’t think the show’s started yet,’ she told Dom Magator. ‘Everybody’s milling around outside. But there are ten times more dreamers here than there were last night. It looks like Brother Albrecht is really pulling them in.’

‘No sign of Mago Verde?’

‘Not so far. I’m going to go round one more time, lower this time. I don’t think anybody’s noticed me yet. Maybe they think I’m a turkey buzzard.’

She swooped around the big top once again. She could hear the organ music playing, and the braying of a distressed donkey. As she circled over the caravans, however, she heard a high voice screaming out, ‘Lookit! Up there! Up in the sky! It’s that bird-woman!’

She twisted her head around and saw a midget clown in red suspenders jumping up and down and frantically pointing up at her. ‘There! It’s that bird-woman! The one who blew up Flammo!’

Another clown tossed a tent peg up at her, which hit her on the left thigh. Then a circus hand threw a mallet, and another clown tossed up a bucket. A whole shower of tent pegs flew up, as well as throwing knives and more buckets. She urgently beat her wings to gain more height, so that none of the missiles could reach her. Then she tilted herself back toward the west, so that she could rejoin the rest of the Night Warriors.

As she flew over the main entrance to the big top, past the sign which read Albrecht’s Traveling Circus & Freak Show, a man stepped out from underneath the archway. A man in a dusty black tuxedo, with ragged white hair and a pale gray face and a sharp green grin.

He looked up at her, his arms folded, but because of his make-up she couldn’t tell if he was really grinning or not. She guessed that he was probably scowling.

‘He’s here!’ she told Dom Magator. ‘Mago Verde is already here! I just saw him standing outside the big top!’

‘In that case, we’ll have to go in right now. You keep circling around, An-Gryferai. I need you to be ready to dive down and grab Mago Verde’s victim, if she’s here. The rest of us will have to try a full-frontal assault.’

An-Gryferai wheeled around again. Below her, the circus hands and the clowns and the freaks were already picking up pitchforks and tent pegs and machetes and beginning to pour between the tents toward the western side of the circus site, where the Night Warriors would be coming from. They were whooping and howling and calling out, ‘No more nightmare! No more nightmare! Real! Real! Real!’

Out in the wheat field, Dom Magator lifted a heavy chrome-plated carbine from the rack on his back. He unhooked a long magazine from his belt and clicked it into the carbine’s rear handgrip.

‘What’s that?’ asked Zebenjo’Yyx. ‘Not another one of your pansy-assed Knock-’Em-Off-Balance-But-Don’t- Hurt-’Em Guns?’

‘Not this time,’ Dom Magator told him. ‘This time I’ve brought something seriously lethal. A Scythe Rifle.’

‘A what do you say?’

‘You’ll see. And pretty soon, too. Here they come.’

Through the heat-distorted wheat field, trampling down the crops as they came, over a hundred clowns and circus hands and freaks came storming toward them.

‘Oh my God,’ said Xyrena. ‘We don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance.’

‘Yes, we do,’ Dom Magator retorted. ‘So long as we don’t lose our nerve. What are they? Clowns, OK? Clowns and tent riggers and midgets. And what are we? Natural born highly-skilled warriors. Absolutely no contest. Now remember — don’t fire until you see the reds of their noses.’

‘We’re about to get ourselves slaughtered to death and you’re makin’ a joke out of it?’ Zebenjo’Yxx protested. ‘You’re really somethin’, man!’

‘What do you want me and Jemexxa to do?’ Jekkalon asked.

‘Hit as many of the clowns as you can. But don’t use up all of your energy, Jemexxa. I want to see that circus