The Ninth Nightmare

vanished.

Rhodajane said, ‘Oh, no. Not the clown guy. I feel like every guy I ever went to bed with in the whole of my life was some kind of clown.’

TEN A Night to Dismember

Walter wedged himself into his usual corner booth in Rally’s, smacking his hands together in anticipation of his triple cheeseburger. Outside the sky had grown even darker, and raindrops began to patter against the windows as if somebody were throwing handfuls of raisins at them.

Netta their waitress came over to take their order. She was four feet ten and as squat as a Munchkin, with fraying gingery hair and a swiveling cast in her right eye which always made Walter feel seasick. ‘Hi, big feller,’ she greeted him, taking her notepad out of her red checkered apron. ‘Guess you want your usual?’

‘You got it, sweet cheeks. But maybe today I’ll go for the loaded fries.’

‘The loaded fries? With the Cheddar cheese sauce and the ranch dressin’ and the bacon bits?’

‘Those are the very babies I had in mind.’

‘You do know that a single regular-sized serving of loaded fries contains nine hundred eight calories, which is almost half your recommended daily intake?’

Netta’s right eye was fixed on the clock on the wall, as if she were timing how much longer he had to live.

‘Is that all? Sheesh! In that case, you’d better fetch me the jumbo-sized serving.’

Charlie ordered a plain hot dog, no bun, mustard only, no ketchup, and a Diet Coke.

‘I don’t know how the fuck you can live on that, Charlie,’ said Walter. ‘You need calories. Calories are very much maligned. They make your brain work, among other parts of your body. And do you know what they put in hot dogs? Chicken’s feet.’

Charlie looked across at him with total seriousness. ‘Believe me, Walter, if I thought that eating a triple cheeseburger would help me to understand how Maria Fortales got out of her bedroom, I’d order one, same as you. And the loaded fries.’

‘We need to ask Mossad,’ said Walter.

‘Mossad?’

‘You know, the Israeli secret service people. They whacked that Hamas dude in his hotel bedroom in Dubai, didn’t they, but they left his door locked from the inside, with the chain fastened, even. Now, how did they do that? I don’t have a clue. But it must be possible because they did it.’

Netta brought their drinks over. As she set down Walter’s Gatorade, she accidentally knocked his glass and spilled it. Walter grabbed two handfuls of napkins from the dispenser and frantically dabbed at the spreading soda to stop it from pouring across the table top and on to his pants. He didn’t want to spend the rest of the day looking like he’d peed himself.

‘Netta, for Christ’s sake!’ he blurted out, but he managed to bite his tongue before he said, ‘Why don’t you watch what you’re doing?’ He didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

‘I’m real sorry, Walt,’ said Netta. ‘I’ve been as clumsy as a ox all mornin’. I haven’t been sleepin’ good.’

Walter wiped up the last of the Gatorade. ‘You need a man to share that lonely bed of yours, Netta. That’s what you need.’

‘A man? What good would a man do me? I need to stop havin’ them nightmares more like.’

‘What nightmares?’

‘Them circus nightmares. I’ve been havin’ them every single night for weeks and weeks and they always wake me up and I’m shakin’ and sweatin’ like nobody’s business.’

‘Circus nightmares?’ asked Walter. He felt a crawling sensation down his back, as if a cockroach had dropped into his shirt collar. ‘What kind of circus nightmares?’

‘Oh shoot, you don’t want to know about them. Probably some psycho-mological thing from out of my childhood. I’ll go bring you another soda.’

‘No, wait up,’ said Charlie. ‘Tell us what they’re like, these nightmares.’

Netta shrugged. ‘I always have them round about the same time of night, about two a.m. I’m walkin’ up this grassy hill and it’s rainin’ cats’n’dogs and I can hear this music playin’ like all off-key. Kind of music you used to hear when a carnival came to town, only all the notes are wrong.’

‘Go on,’ Charlie encouraged her.

‘Right at the top of the hill I see all of these tents, and they’re all black, with red lights hangin’ off of them like shinin’ drops of blood. And I walk between the tents and there’s trailers and animal cages all covered over with black tarps and the music’s still playin’ but I can’t work out who’s playin’ it or where it’s comin’ from.

‘In The Good Old Summertime, that’s what it sounds like, only like I say it’s all off- key and none of the notes are right.’

‘Is there anybody else there, in your nightmare, apart from you?’

Netta shook her head so that her jowls wobbled. ‘Not to begin with, but when I carry on walkin’ between the tents I see shadows runnin’ hither and thither and I can hear people mutterin’ and coughin’ and some people whinin’, too. Then I always turn this corner and there’s a row of trailers and I see this small critter go scuttlin’ across the grass from one trailer to another and he goes scamperin’ up the steps more like a rat or a groundhog than a person, but he’s wearing a coat like a person and this weird kind of hat.

‘I try to call out, hey, where am I? I’m lost! But somehow the words won’t come out, like somebody’s got their hand pressed over my mouth. And this small critter stops at the back of the trailer and starts jabberin’ at me like five different languages all at once.’

‘Can you remember what he says?’ asked Charlie.

Netta frowned. ‘Only a couple of words. Somethin’ that I guess sounds Frenchish, like “prennay guard”. Then some stuff that’s all mixed up and don’t make no sense at all. “Coop sign pianos.” And “may go wordy”. And “gang up you start”. That’s what it sounds like, anyhow, but he says it over and over and over, that’s how I remember it so good. He says it over and over and over.’

‘OK, so he spouts all this gibberish,’ Walter prompted her. ‘Then what?’

‘He opens the door and disappears inside the trailer, and I’m left out there all on my ownsome, and it’s still rainin’ cats’n’dogs and the music’s still playin’. I’m about to turn around and go back the way I come but then I hear a woman sobbin’ her heart out. I follow the sound of her sobbin’ and it’s comin’ from inside of this little black tent.

‘I push my way into the tent but there’s no woman inside it, only a man in a black suit and he’s standin’ with his back to me. I say excuse me, sir, but at first he don’t answer. I say excuse me again and then he turns around and he has this clown face and he’s grinnin’ this greasepaint smile at me even though his real mouth ain’t grinnin’ at all.

‘He says somethin’ to me but I don’t understand what it is and I’m so darn scared that I fight my way back out of that tent and I run and I run in between the tents and the trailers and down the hill and that’s when I usually wake up.’

Charlie said, ‘That’s some nightmare, Netta.’

‘Every night, too. Every night the same. For weeks and weeks and I don’t know how to stop havin’ it. And I don’t know why I’m havin’ it, or what it’s supposed to mean. Like, dreams are supposed to have meanin’s, aren’t they? Like you dream about a pigeon poopin’ on your head and that means you’re goin’ to win the lotto.’

‘This clown you see, what color is his make-up?’

‘His face is like gray but his lips are shiny green.’

‘And he has long gray hair?’

Netta fixed him with her good left eye. ‘How do you know that?’

‘Because I know a whole lot about clowns and I think that this particular clown is called Mago Verde, the